When engineering executive Diana Zagora got her start in the engineering and construction industry, it was the late 90s and family-friendly workplace policies were nonexistent.

The sector was so male-dominated at the time, her first worksite – setting up for the Sydney 2000 Olympics – didn’t even have a women’s restroom.

“A port-a-loo had to be brought in for me because there were only men’s toilet facilities,” Zagora tells Women’s Agenda on episode four of the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast.

“The dunny that was brought in was nicknamed Diana’s Dunny.

“And then as the project went on there were more women on-site and better, more permanent facilities were established.”

While the industry has made a lot of progress since then, engineering and construction still don’t have the strongest reputations when it comes to being family friendly, or even women-friendly.

The latest data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency shows that the gender pay gap in heavy and civil engineering construction significantly exceeds the national private sector average across all gender pay gap metrics.

“The culture has definitely shifted to be more inclusive,” says Zagora.

“As a young engineer back in the late 90s, there were a lot of challenges.

“Now, there’s more acceptance and greater awareness of people of different ages and from different ethnicities, genders, sexualities and religious backgrounds.”

Looking back, Zagor says progress in the industry over the last 25 years has come in “leaps and bounds”.

But she, like other leaders advocating for working parents and carers in the sector, believes there’s room for growth.

“We need to increase female participation in engineering,” she said.

“Having a workplace that promotes flexibility, that has parental leave and access to carer’s leave and promotes those benefits, as well as recruits and values diversity in their workforce is tremendously important.”

The CEO of Infrastructure Australia, Adam Copp, has led his organisation through the Family Friendly Workplaces accreditation process.

He shares the process it took on the podcast and explains how he built a business case to show what kind of benefits his organisation would reap by taking steps to become more inclusive.

Since making the changes, Copp says the benefits are even more than they could have expected.

“A family-friendly workplace is actually a really good thing to do, I think morally, but it's also good for business,” he said.

“It helps with your talent attraction and wellbeing, helps with productivity, and helps with the brand of you as an employer.”

The media industry, where workers are expected to stay connected, informed and deliver 24/7, may not at first glance seem like a place that’s inclusive for parents and carers.

But broader trends towards family-friendly conditions, flexibility and inclusivity have seen employers in this space driving change in unexpected ways.

The media landscape is constantly evolving, and professionals in the industry are regularly having to evolve with it, whether that be through developing new skills, working across multiple platforms or staying on top of algorithms.

Speaking on the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast, the Village co-founder, Lauren Thornborough, says the “fast-paced” industry is an exciting one but can be challenging.

Her own experience as a parent navigating the media world inspired her to co-found a support and advocacy group for parents in the industry.

Thornborough and her co-founder, Louise Wilson, are ambitious professionals with more than three decades of combined experience in the industry, and both also happen to be working mums.

Thornborough says this is mainly because of a lack of visibility and support for staff juggling family obligations with career goals.

In Australia, employers in many industries are working to improve conditions for working parents and carers, but the media world has a long way to go.

According to data from the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency, the advertising and media sector has a gender pay gap of up to 26 per cent, which is higher than the national average.

Nevertheless, there is progress being made to improve conditions, with 60% of the media firms that completed the Family Friendly Workplaces benchmarking assessment passing, as well as certified employers ranking high on flexible work and work-life balance.

Speaking on the latest episode of the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast, the founding editor of Women’s Agenda, Angela Priestley, says she’s been lucky...

'Family comes first': How innovative executives in the pharmaceutical sector are creating family-friendly workplaces

In this special podcast series produced by Family Friendly Workplaces and Women’s Agenda, we will step into different sectors in Australia to spotlight the challenges working parents face while also speaking to employers carving out new ways of working.

In this episode, we find out how employers in the pharma sector are redefining corporate culture and making workplaces a space for workers to thrive, regardless of their caring obligations or gender.

Women's Agenda podcaster Dinushi Dias has a chat with leaders at Novartis and Medicines Australia to hear how they're doing it.