Women in Skilled Trades
From Skilled Trades to Business Ownership
Canada is making significant investments in the skilled trades to build the workforce required for infrastructure, construction and major projects.
An important additional opportunity is emerging: connecting skilled trades investment with women’s entrepreneurship so that more women can move from training and employment into business ownership, procurement and growth.
To help inform a discussion with the Office of the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Jobs and Families, and officials from Employment and Social Development Canada, the Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC) conducted a targeted consultation with organizations and contributors working across women’s entrepreneurship, financing, procurement, Indigenous economic development and regional business development.
The resulting report, Women in Skilled Trades: From Skilled Trades to Business Ownership, explores how Canada can better connect the systems that support skilled trades participation with those that help women start, finance and grow businesses.
Key Insights
The report highlights several important findings:
- Women need intentional pathways to enter, remain and advance in the skilled trades.
- Business ownership should be visible as a legitimate pathway alongside employment.
- Technical expertise alone is not business readiness. Financing, business advisory support, mentorship and industry networks also matter.
- Capital needs evolve from start-up to growth, acquisition and succession.
- Procurement, customers, contractors and supply chains are critical to business growth.
- Canada can build on women’s entrepreneurship infrastructure that already exists rather than creating a separate system.
Why This Matters
A tradeswoman who becomes a business owner can create jobs, train apprentices, compete for contracts and strengthen supplier capacity.
This creates an opportunity to more intentionally connect Canada’s skilled trades investments with the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy and existing women’s enterprise infrastructure.
The Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund is part of that infrastructure, providing access to developmental financing for women entrepreneurs. Combined with business advisory support, mentorship, procurement readiness and market connections, these existing systems can help women move from technical expertise to ownership and growth.
As Canada advances major infrastructure and economic projects, this can help women participate not only as workers, but also as business owners, employers and suppliers.
A Connected Approach
The report identifies five opportunities for action:
- Intentionally increase women’s participation in skilled trades.
- Build ownership into skilled trades pathways.
- Connect tradeswomen to women’s entrepreneurship supports.
- Prepare women-owned skilled trades businesses for larger opportunities.
- Build the evidence base and test integrated models.
The opportunity is not necessarily to create a new system. It is to connect the systems Canada already uses to train skilled workers with the systems that help entrepreneurs finance, start, acquire and grow businesses.
About the Consultation
The targeted consultation included six contributors and was designed to gather timely practitioner intelligence rather than statistically representative national findings.
Contributors included Evol, the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA), PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise, WBE Canada, and Thebacha Business Development Services .
Through its Centre of Excellence for Women’s Entrepreneurship, WEOC will continue working with partners to explore how Canada can strengthen the pathway from skilled trades participation to entrepreneurship, ownership and growth.