Job training programs can provide women with the skills needed to access good jobs with family-sustaining wages. Apprenticeships in particular are a gateway to careers in traditionally male-dominated fields like the trades, manufacturing, and technology, and lead to jobs that provide real financial stability without a four-year degree. These options are particularly important for women who do not have a college-level education and often work in low-wage jobs with limited prospects for advancement, or who are returning to the labor market after a caregiving break.
But while women’s numbers in apprenticeships have grown in recent years, they remain overrepresented in the lowest-paying fields, deepening the gender wage gap rather than closing it. On top of that, everyday barriers, including the cost of child care, lack of transportation, and financial instability, make it hard for many women to enroll or finish job training programs. Women deserve real access to the full range of career pathways, including the trades and other well-paying fields where they remain underrepresented.
Featured Policy Solutions
Enforce, expand, and invest in existing workforce development policies aimed at promoting access to skills training, apprenticeships, and similar pathways to well-paying jobs.
This includes the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act (WIOA) and the Perkins Act. Policymakers should strive to ensure equitable access to workforce development and skills-training programs for all, lowering financial barriers and other obstacles to participation. In addition, policymakers should utilize these programs as tools to dismantle systems of racism and occupational segregation based on gender, explicitly prioritizing gender and racial equity in partnerships and programming, and improve implementation and accountability, including expanded disaggregated, publicly available data collection and outcome measures.
Invest in the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grant.
Policymakers should increase funding for the US Department of Labor’s WANTO to at least $5 million per state program to support the program’s efforts to create opportunities for women and help to recruit, train, and retain them in quality pre-apprenticeship and registered apprenticeship programs, which are critical tools for bringing more women into well-paying, skilled occupations that are traditionally male-dominated.
Prioritize gender and racial equity in apprenticeship initiatives.
Policymakers should seek to use apprenticeships as a tool to break down, rather than perpetuate, systemic barriers, pay inequities, and occupational segregation by supporting continued investments in technical assistance and oversight of employers and unions in their efforts to create welcoming worksites for all workers and implement inclusive recruitment and retention practices.
