“Women just don’t apply” is a common misunderstanding heard from industry and apprenticeship stakeholders about women’s underrepresentation in the construction trades. Evidence from 12 cohorts (classes) of the co-ed Minuteman “Build It!” Carpentry pre-apprenticeship program in Massachusetts, however, shows that women’s low numbers are far from inevitable, and that their participation dramatically improves with effective outreach.

When the first four BuildIt! cohorts were intentionally set up to reach both women and men, women did indeed apply. Women accounted for 72 percent of participants, and almost half (47 percent) of participants were women of color. But when women were no longer explicitly invited to participate, they stopped applying. In the next eight BuildIt! cohorts, women accounted for just 17 percent of participants, and women of color for just 13 percent.

The flyer on the left recruited classes that were 72% women, while the one on the right recruited classes that were only 17% women.

This lack of inclusion hurts both employers and women. The construction industry needs to recruit and train a new generation of workers to prepare for pending retirements and for future growth. Recruiting and retaining more women in the trades is essential if the industry is to meet its workforce needs. For women, the trades offer well-paid careers that typically can be accessed through earn-as-you-learn apprenticeships and often pay substantially more than jobs in female-dominated fields. Yet, while women’s numbers in the construction trades have grown rapidly in recent years, the trades remain among the most male-dominated fields.

“When I saw that this pre-apprenticeship program was actually geared toward women, you know, toward people like me, it totally changed the game for me. I was raised loving to work with my hands, but I always assumed that these good union jobs didn’t want people like me. And I was proved so wrong!
~Ahna W.A., graduate of the first Build It! cohort and now a union carpenter

BuildIt! is funded through the Massachusetts Career Technical Initiative, a grant program established in 2020 to respond to the need for skilled labor in construction and manufacturing by leveraging existing facilities at vocational high schools for pre-apprenticeship programs for un- or underemployed adults. Program participation is free, involves 220 hours of instruction, and is delivered over 15 weeks on two weekday evenings and Saturdays. Trade pre-apprenticeship programs provide fundamental skills and knowledge for entering and succeeding in a registered apprenticeship program (RAP) in construction; they also allow participants to figure out whether a construction career is right for them. This matters particularly for women, who often have had fewer opportunities to work with tools than men.

The Minuteman Build It! program is the result of a collaboration between Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School District, Minuteman Technical Institute, the Northeast Center for Tradeswomen’s Equity, the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters (NASRCC), and the MassHire system. For the NASRCC, high screening and attendance requirements and an agreement to hire carpenter union instructors meant that participating in this pre-apprenticeship program provided an opportunity to build a new pipeline of good candidates for their apprenticeship program. The program’s commitment to recruiting high numbers of women and people of color—Minuteman High School agreed to goals of 50 percent women and 50 percent people of color—would help the union meet workforce-hiring goals increasingly common for large owners and developers in Massachusetts.* Last but not least, the NASRCC was also responding to advocacy for more fairness and inclusion from women in the union.

“I wasn’t sure [whether I could do this], but prior to being a correctional officer, I was a nursing assistant and used to working with my hands. . . . So I was not intimidated, and my expectation basically was if you can show me how, then I can do it—just like anybody else.”
~Kim P., graduate of the first Build It! cohort and now a union carpenter

The first Carpenter Build It! cohort started in February 2021, and to date, 12 cohorts have been completed. The high share of women participants and their success during the first four cohorts was based on the following steps:**

• Program flyers included images of women and explicitly invited women to apply.
• Experienced tradeswomen and tradeswomen’s social media networks were enlisted to help with program outreach.
• Experienced tradeswomen were prominent during information sessions, showing that women were already succeeding as carpenters.
• All applicants had to pass a rigorous assessment process that tested physicality, ability to learn, and teamwork, as well as math and comprehension tests.
• Involvement of RAP training staff who assessed, trained, and helped place participants of the program.
• Cooperation with carpenter locals to ensure that BuildIt! graduates enter the apprenticeship program and are put to work.

Perhaps the most overlooked step is outreach to ensure a large enough number of good candidates to survive the attrition during the application and selection process. It took 20 people signing up for an information session to recruit one student. This means outreach strategies that reach large numbers of women are critically important to equal employment opportunity.

The vast majority of women and men (86 percent) graduated, and nearly 9 in 10 graduates entered a RAP. At the time of writing, several of the women graduates had completed their four-year apprenticeship.

In February 2023, efforts to proactively reach out to women stopped, and a more gender-neutral flyer was used. The impact of the change was immediate and dramatic: In the subsequent eight cohorts, women’s share dropped to 17 percent. Compared to women’s meager 5.1 percent share of construction apprentices, this may look acceptable. However, for women participants, this means isolation. None of the subsequent cohorts had more than two female participants, and at least two cohorts had only one.

[At the program] we could see our future—and start making plans. Since starting, I’ve been experiencing the growth of my life! I’m able to have my own house. And I got the opportunity to study for my associate’s degree in construction technologies with the help of the union.
~Anaclediene F., graduate of the first Build It! cohort and now a union carpenter

The data from the 12 co-ed Build It! cohorts demonstrate that women’s underrepresentation in trade apprenticeships is not inevitable. When best practices were implemented, women participated and succeeded at high rates; when those practices were discontinued, participation dropped sharply. This contrast offers a clear, evidence-based case study of what effectively recruits women into the trades: expanding outreach and making it unequivocally clear that women are actively welcomed and needed in the industry.

*Such goal-setting and outreach strategies continue to be fully within the law and are not quotas.

**For a more detailed discussion of these steps, see “A Case Study in Successful Outreach to Women for Construction” by the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues (PGTI).

Written by Ariane Hegewisch, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and Liz Skidmore, carpenter and workforce consultant in Massachusetts.