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The Four Rungs on the Ladder: Why AEC Firms Hire Women and Lose Them Anyway

Women in AEC: Wine After Work

Release Date: 09/23/2026

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Women in AEC: Wine After Work

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Women in AEC: Wine After Work

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More Episodes

Barb Allen spent 20 years on commercial job sites, starting as a carpenter apprentice in 1997 and working her way up to superintendent. She was the first woman her company had ever hired out of college for that track. She left the built environment in 2022 after a meeting where leadership told her she was "difficult to work with," then admitted nobody could say how.

That meeting became a book. In OneLadder to Leadership, Barb names four gender specific challenges as rungs on an unsafe ladder: missing, broken, sticky, and slippery. In this conversation she breaks down all four, tells the story of the day she stood up to a guy on her crew and changed how the whole site treated her, and explains why "are you the safety girl?" stopped making her blood boil once she figured out what to do with it.

This one is for AEC leaders trying to understand why the women they hire don't stay, and for women in the industry who have been handed feedback that sounded like a suggestion and only later found out it was a requirement.

About Barb Allen

Barb Allen is a keynote speaker, author, and 20 year construction veteran who climbed from carpenter to project executive and operations director on projects including $100MM+ high rise towers. She holds a bachelor's degree in construction management and spent most of her career as a commercial job site superintendent before leaving the field in 2022 to speak and write full time. She is the author of OneLadder to Leadership and hosts the Constructive Behaviors podcast. She is most active on LinkedIn, and yes, she has opinions about golf.

 What We Cover

  • Introduction and how Barb found construction management two majors and one near dropout into college

  • Day one as a carpenter apprentice in January 1997, and the tool bags nobody told her to buy

  • Why the hazing started three months in, not on day one

  • The G.I. Jane moment with Don, and what changed on that site afterward

  • Backstage support and why an apology after the meeting is not the same as backup during it

  • The missing rung: why women get feedback that sounds like a suggestion

  • Whether women leaders are as direct as men, and Barb admitting she was harder on the women who worked for her

  • The broken rung: golf, hunting trips, and where sponsorship actually gets formed

  • The sticky rung: how the industry misreads confidence, and the case for humility, curiosity, and collaboration

  • The slippery rung: unconscious bias, "are you the safety girl?", and the response that actually lands

  • The conversation that ended Barb's 20 years in the built environment

  • Three types of firms when it comes to women, and what each one is getting wrong

  • What Barb would tell a young woman walking onto her first job site

  • Where to find Barb and closing thoughts

Key Takeaways

  • If your feedback to a woman on your team sounds like "maybe you could think about doing this differently," you have not given feedback. Direct and actionable, or it goes to the bottom of her list with everything else that is optional.

  • Stop evaluating confidence by who speaks first and asks the fewest questions. Barb's reframe: humility, curiosity, and collaboration. The person willing to say "I don't understand that acronym" in a room of twenty is demonstrating leadership, not doubt.

  • Backstage support is not support. If you apologize to her in the hallway after the meeting instead of speaking up in the meeting, you were part of it.

  • Look at your leadership page. If you are hiring good women and none of them are on it, the problem is not your pipeline, it is how you are evaluating leadership.

  • When someone assumes you are the safety girl, the win is not the comeback. It is leaving them aware enough to ask the next woman on site what she does instead of guessing.

Resources + Links