Women make up 11.2% of construction—the highest in two decades—but hold only 2.9% of electrician roles.
Having spent the better part of the last three decades in construction and adjacent industries, the opportunities for women in construction are slowly gaining traction yet the gender gap divide remains enormous.
The first time I stepped onto a jobsite, it was 1996. I was in my 20’s, decked out in work boots and a hard hat, I was meeting the construction and design team for a new retail build out. The learning curve was steep and thrilling. The psychology of shopping behavior and translating it into retail design, blueprints, and ultimately a physical space. When people enter a store, which way do they walk? How wide should different aisles be? What are the clearances required for different traffic patterns? What lighting is best to help guide shoppers on their journey through the store? What kind of flooring is best based on the climate of the geography? What are the HVAC needs? The questions were endless and the solutions were plentiful. I was hooked. We would go on to build 87 more large format (50-100,000 ft2) stores over the next 60 months and I never looked back.
I was often the only female around. From time to time, there would be another woman on the design or architectural team. Rarely did I encounter a female tradesperson. Thankfully, times have changed and while still rare, women are finding their way into this world of opportunity.
Women now make up 11.2% of the construction workforce, the highest share in two decades. 1.34 million women work in construction, up 45% since 2015. That is real, sustained progress. But 65.7% of those women work in office and sales roles. Women hold 10.5% of construction management positions, more than double their representation in the field trades. The industry is welcoming women into the office.
The jobsite remains a different story. Women make up only 2.9% of electricians and 3.2% of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters. The largest untapped talent pool for the trades with the worst shortages is sitting ripe for the taking. There has been some movement in the trades. The number of women electricians grew from 21,288 to 27,811 between 2018 and 2023, a 30.6% increase. But against total electrician workforce growth and an accelerating retirement wave, that pace does not change the composition meaningfully. The industry is adding women to the trades. It is not adding them fast enough to make a dent in the shortage.
The broader performance correlation is documented across sectors: companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 27% more likely to outperform their competitors financially. In construction, where margins run 3-8%, marginal improvements in productivity, safety, or retention have direct bottom-line impact.
Women construction managers now earn 98.7% of their male peers' wages, near complete parity, and that gap narrowed 16.8% in a single year.
The practical argument, 92% of firms cannot fill their positions. 77-80% specifically cannot fill electrician, plumber, and pipefitter roles. Women represent roughly 96% of the untapped skilled trades talent pool.
Companies that invest in recruitment infrastructure, apprenticeship support, and workplace conditions that retain women will fill positions that their competitors cannot. That is a competitive advantage available to any contractor willing to build the systems.
The numbers are moving in the right direction. Women's apprenticeship enrollment is growing faster than overall enrollment. Pre-apprenticeship programs are producing measurable returns. Union programs are proving that the right infrastructure dramatically improves completion rates. Prefab is creating work environments that naturally broaden who can do the work and the diversity of the work. None of this is theoretical. It is happening now, tracked by the data, and available to any contractor who decides to invest in it.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (source data U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics RAPIDS database) women who complete electrical apprenticeships earn $35.37 per hour versus $33.60 for men. Women electricians out-earn their male counterparts. The compensation is there. The access, enrollment, and completion rates are not.
omen's construction apprenticeship enrollment has grown 185.9% since 2015. More women are entering the pipeline than ever before. But they are not finishing at the same rate as men, and the type of program they enter makes an enormous difference.
Union programs achieve nearly three times the female completion rate of non-union programs for electrical apprenticeships. The difference is not marginal. It points to the importance of formal mentorship programs, grievance procedures, and structured career pathways in retaining women through multi-year apprenticeships.
Illinois invested in pre-apprenticeship programs and tracked the results. Women's enrollment in construction apprenticeships tripled between 2022 and 2024, a 202% increase that far outpaced the 12.8% growth in overall enrollment. The state estimates a 900% cumulative return on investment over 10 years through higher wages, increased tax revenue, and reduced public benefit utilization.
They are workforce development investments with documented returns. The pre-apprenticeship model works because it solves a specific problem: women who might be interested in the trades lack a structured bridge between general awareness and a formal multi-year apprenticeship. Programs that provide foundational skills, safety certifications, and direct placement remove the guesswork and accelerate the timeline from interest to enrollment.
Organizations like NAWIC (120+ chapters, 6,000+ members), Chicago Women in Trades, and WINTER are building the pipeline infrastructure that individual contractors benefit from. The IBEW and United Association are running union apprenticeship programs where women complete at nearly three times the rate of non-union alternatives. The federal WANTO grant program invests $5-6 million annually in community-based organizations doing this work at the local level.
At the company level, the companies reporting the strongest retention results share common characteristics: structured mentorship pairing experienced workers with apprentices, actual enforcement of workplace conduct standards, adequate sanitation and restroom facilities on job sites, and scheduling flexibility where operationally feasible.
The shift toward prefabrication and industrialized construction is quietly broadening who the industry can recruit.
Prefab moves work into climate-controlled factory environments with fixed shifts, predictable locations, and proper facilities. For workers with caregiving responsibilities, the difference between a 7 AM to 3:30 PM factory shift and an unpredictable field schedule determines whether the career is viable at all. For contractors, the same shop environment that improves quality control and compresses project schedules also opens recruitment to a wider workforce.
The work itself is changing too. 90% of construction leaders say better tools, from procurement software to BIM to digital project management, boost labor effectiveness. As construction becomes more technical, digital literacy and systems thinking supplement physical capacity rather than being secondary to it. The skillset is evolving, and the talent pool expands with it.
This matters for workforce recruitment in a specific way. The physical demands of outdoor field work have historically been used, fairly or not, as a reason women do not enter the trades. Prefab does not eliminate physical work, but it does shift the environment. Climate control, consistent supervision, structured schedules, and proper facilities change the baseline conditions. When the work environment improves, the pool of people willing to do the work expands. That is true for everyone, and it is especially true for workers the industry has historically failed to accommodate.
For electrical and mechanical contractors building out prefab operations, material management platforms like Remarcable connect prefabrication workflows, procurement, and inventory into a single system, giving shop teams the same visibility into materials and tool availability that field crews need.
For decades, the industry has been male dominated and that has influenced the culture and policies of the industry. 22% of women in construction have never worked with another woman on a job site. That level of isolation and the lack of camaraderie, mentorship access, social support, and long-term career commitment can impact whether people stay, let alone enter the industry.
For contractors who invest three to five years training an apprentice, losing them before completion means losing the investment and still having a vacancy. Fixing isolation is not only a workplace culture initiative, it is a retention investment with direct financial consequences.
Changes are happening, but they are few and far between. For decades, hard hats, harnesses, and gloves were designed for male body types. The OSHA PPE proper-fit rule, effective since January 2025, now requires employers to provide personal protective equipment that fits each worker regardless of gender. The rule does not solve workplace culture, but it removes one barrier that should never have persisted this long.
The retention challenge is a convergence of factors: isolation on job sites, inconsistent mentorship, schedule inflexibility, and workplace cultures that developed without women present. Any one of these is manageable. Together, they compound.
What’s the real magic?
At the end of the day, what’s so compelling for women to join the construction industry? From my perspective, it is the trifecta that I am always in search of in a career opportunity: challenging and rewarding work, building community, and amazing people.
The work itself is incredibly rewarding, it is creative and precise, it is a cornucopia of multi-tasking and problem solving, it is deadline driven and results oriented.
When you look around our physical environment, construction is everywhere around us. Our homes and schools, hospitals and offices, retail stores and restaurants, daycares and seniors’ homes. When you go to work everyday and know that you are participating in building communities and neighborhoods, the places where we live, work, and play, it matters more.
The most amazing part about this industry is the people. They are humble, hard-working, creative, diligent, they are experts, specialists, generalists, and at the end of the day, they care.
Come and check it out. Maybe you’ll be like me and never look back.
