Building Equity: Women in the Trades — Toronto researcher and PhD student Daniela Gatti was on the job in the utility industry when she became interested in how women overcome barriers in the skilled trades

Date published: March 06, 2026 | Estimated read time: 6 min Social SCiences and Humanities Research Council

During the pandemic, Daniela Gatti was working in the utility sector in a human resources role. It was hard not to notice the gender gap. 

“In my job I worked with the unionized labourers and operators, and out of about 300 people, maybe five of them on the trades side were women,” says Gatti, currently a PhD student at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto. “So, I became interested in how people grow in their jobs when they don’t have any colleagues that look like them.”

Although those numbers are extreme, women are underrepresented in the skilled trades. In 2024, Statistics Canada estimated that tradeswomen represented fewer than 8% of workers in those professions.

Gatti’s research has found, though, that industry-specific social media groups for minorities in the trades can help mitigate feelings of isolation, and help women access resources. These online supports could potentially help women stay in the trades and boost retention rates.

Gender disparity in the trades is a hot topic these days, partly owing to the fact that Canada is facing a labour shortage in skilled trades that could hold the current nation-building initiative back. It also has a negative impact on small- and medium-sized businesses, and drives up cost of living for all Canadians.

“We have a real shortage now and a retirement wave expected in the near future, so it’s partly a demographic problem,” says Gatti. “That’s why the federal and provincial governments are trying to invest in recruiting people for the trades.”

Including, of course, more women, who are especially underrepresented at managerial and elite levels, Gatti found.

Getting at the “why” of those issues is, therefore, a pressing matter.

Double the stigma, double the challenges

“The trades, for some people, is stigmatized because it’s considered ‘dirty’ work,” says Gatti. “And, to a lot of people, it’s also considered a man’s job, so women in the trades face a ‘double stigma.’”

As a result, fewer women consider it as a career path. At the same time, both the stigma and the resulting absence make it harder for tradeswomen to thrive in the workplace once there. When doing research for her master’s of science in management, supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship (now the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship—Master’s, part of the Canada Research Training Awards Suite), Gatti interviewed people working in the trades, and documented stigma both in the workplace and in the community.

A mechanic speaks with a customer.

Photo: FG Trade

“People’s families were very apprehensive about their work,” Gatti recalls. “People hid the fact that they were considering going into the trades. One woman knew her parents would be disappointed, so she told me she was not going to tell her family about it until she was finished her pre-apprenticeship.”

Canada has faced labour shortages in the midst of nation-building efforts in the past. During the second World War, the solution involved campaigns encouraging women to join the trades and manufacturing. One of the better known campaigns featured Veronica Foster, also known as “Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl,” a 19-year-old who, in 1941, started working in a Toronto munitions plant. Sadly, the roles many women took on during the time would turn out to be only temporary jobs.

“There’s a boom of women in the trades often when there is an economic crisis, like a recession or a war, and we start hearing that women should be in the trades,” Gatti notes. “It happens every time there’s a shortage, but the second that shortage is fixed, it’s like, ‘We don’t need you anymore; we’re good.’”

The tradesphere: women connecting online

Gatti initially turned to online forums for women in the trades to find interview subjects for her research, but she quickly became intrigued by the robust community, support and practical advice found for tradeswomen in digital spaces. Members engaged in active discussions about everything from workplace discrimination to where to shop for maternity work clothes, as well as plenty of practical advice about finding apprenticeships and jobs. 

Gatt’s research found that women who were not members of online groups felt their career paths would have been better if they’d had more peer support and access to resources. She says digital tools offer discretion, connectedness, and ongoing reassurance for people who feel stigmatized in the workplace.

In 2025, Gatti and her supervisor Mark Julien of Brock University’s Goodman School of Business co-published “Beyond the water cooler: how online groups foster social capital for women in the skilled trades,” an article based on some of Gatti’s findings. After publishing, Gatti circled back to thank her interview subjects.

“I was surprised at how many wanted to read the whole journal article,” she says. “They thought it was awesome someone had actually written about them, and that their work was important enough to be studied. It was validating.”

Equity, diversity and inclusion in the trades: An idea whose time has come again

In January 2026, Gatti and Julien co-wrote a brief article for The Conversation that singled out the role of online communities. That story found a new audience on social channels and was picked up by several other publications, including Yahoo News.    

It’s more evidence that women and the skilled trade labour shortage is top of mind for many. Gatti hopes, though, that the current drive to promote equity, diversity and inclusivity will be fundamentally different than those in the past.

“Even if we weren’t having a shortage, women, nonbinary people, Indigenous Peoples and newcomers should still be represented in the trades, because they bring a diversity of thought to the field,” Gatti points out. “Different perspectives make a more creative and more efficient workplace.”

Want to learn more?

Find out more about Daniela Gatti’s research in “Beyond the water cooler.” And read about the role online communities play in building social capital, in The Conversation.