Increased female participation in trades could be key to easing housing workforce shortages

Women’s underrepresentation in trades is becoming a major labour market constraint as Australia struggles to expand the construction workforce needed to meet its housing targets. BuildSkills Australia’s Housing Workforce Capacity Study found the sector needs an additional 116,700 workers to meet national housing goals. Increasing female participation is alone capable of adding around 51,000 workers to the construction workforce, as seen in Figure 1 below, making gender imbalance in trades a direct constraint on the domestic labour pipeline.

Women remain heavily underrepresented across construction, particularly in on-tools trade roles. They make up only 13.2% of the construction workforce, with such an imbalance meaning the industry continues to rely overwhelmingly on a traditional male apprentice and trade pipeline, despite persistent labour shortages, weak trade commencements and rising demand from housing, infrastructure and the energy transition. If the industry is to expand its workforce quickly enough to meet housing targets, it cannot rely solely on the same narrow recruitment base that has historically supplied the sector.

However, there are many barriers to female participation that are both cultural and practical and need to be addressed. Various concerns including poor site amenities, limited female toilets, inadequate changing facilities, harassment concerns and inflexible site culture all discourage entry and retention. Queensland’s new construction amenities rules, which from 1 January 2025 require designated female toilets and improved facilities on certain projects, show governments are beginning to treat basic site conditions as a workforce issue rather than a secondary workplace concern. Training initiatives, scholarships and women-in-trades programs can help attract more women into apprenticeships, but retention will depend on whether worksites become places where women can realistically build long-term careers.

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