Women in the Skilled Trades: The 1978 Federal Goal Nobody Updated, and Where Equipment Operation Fits In

3 days ago

6 min read

There's a federal rule sitting on the books since 1978 that most contractors have never heard of, and it says something uncomfortable: the government's own goal for women's participation in construction trades on federal and federally-assisted projects is 6.9%. That number hasn't been updated in nearly five decades, and the honest reason it's never been raised is that the industry has struggled for years to even consistently hit it. Women in the skilled trades, operating equipment, running crews, working the field rather than the office, remain a small slice of this industry's workforce. That's starting to shift, slowly, and it's worth understanding both the real numbers and the real opportunity behind them.

The 6.9% Goal Nobody Talks About

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) set a 6.9% goal for women's participation in construction trades under 41 CFR Part 60-4.3 back in 1978, tied to federal and federally-assisted construction contracts. It has never been revised upward since, which tells you two things at once: the industry has historically fallen short of even that modest bar often enough that regulators haven't felt comfortable raising it, and the number itself has become something of an informal benchmark that contractors doing public work still get measured against on compliance reviews.

Overall, women make up a meaningful share of the construction industry's total payroll, but that figure is misleading on its own. The large majority of women working in construction hold office, administrative, sales, and professional roles rather than field positions. The share of women actually working the trades, on the tools, running equipment, framing, welding, operating a skid steer or an excavator, is a much smaller fraction, and it's the number the 6.9% goal is actually trying to move.

Why Equipment Operation Is a Genuine Entry Point

A lot of the physical barriers that have historically kept trades male-dominated don't apply the same way to equipment operation. Running a skid steer, an excavator, a backhoe, or a dozer well is a skill built on coordination, spatial awareness, and controlled technique, not raw upper-body strength in the way that manual framing, masonry, or pipefitting can demand. That doesn't mean operator seats have filled up with women at the same pace the logic would suggest, but it does mean the usual argument for why a trade stays male-dominated, that the physical demands are simply too high, holds up less here than it does elsewhere in the industry. Groups like NAWIC, the National Association of Women in Construction, founded in 1953 and still the largest and longest-running organization advocating for women in the trades, have pointed to equipment-operation and heavy-machinery roles specifically as an underused on-ramp for women entering the field, often through union apprenticeship programs that increasingly run dedicated outreach and mentorship tracks for women applicants.

What's Actually Changing

Apprenticeship outreach: Many state and union apprenticeship programs now run pre-apprenticeship tracks specifically aimed at recruiting and retaining women, often paired with mentorship from established tradeswomen, a structure that research on workforce retention consistently finds matters more than recruiting alone.
Equipment manufacturers taking notice: Caterpillar, John Deere, and other major equipment manufacturers have increasingly featured women operators and technicians in training materials, dealer outreach, and marketing, a small but real signal of where the industry sees its labor pool expanding.
Regional advocacy groups: Organizations like Chicago Women in Trades and Oregon Tradeswomen run hands-on equipment exposure programs specifically designed to let women try operating heavy machinery before committing to an apprenticeship, addressing the simple fact that most people, regardless of gender, don't choose a career path they've never been able to picture themselves in.
NAWIC's own growth: NAWIC has grown its chapter network nationally over the past decade, and its annual Women in Construction Week every March has become a genuine industry event rather than a token gesture, with contractors, manufacturers, and trade schools increasingly participating.

The Business Case for a Contractor, Not Just a Policy One

Setting aside the fairness argument, which stands on its own, there's a straightforward labor-supply argument here too. This industry is short-handed. Every demographic that's historically been underrepresented in the trades is, by definition, an underused labor pool in a market where finding a reliable operator or crew member is one of the hardest parts of running a contracting business. A contractor who builds a genuinely welcoming crew culture, proper PPE sized for a broader range of body types, a jobsite culture that doesn't tolerate harassment, fair and transparent pay, isn't checking a diversity box. They're competing for talent in a labor market where plenty of competitors still aren't even trying.

There's also a federal-contracting angle worth knowing if your business bids public work. Meeting or working toward that 6.9% goal isn't just a compliance checkbox on larger federally-assisted jobs, it can be a documented part of how your business presents itself in a bid package, alongside other workforce-development commitments larger owners and agencies increasingly ask contractors to describe.

What This Doesn't Fix on Its Own

It's worth being honest about the limits here. Outreach and apprenticeship pipelines help people get into the trades, but retention is a separate, harder problem, and the research on why women leave construction trades at higher rates than they enter points consistently at jobsite culture, harassment, and a lack of advancement paths rather than a lack of physical capability or interest. A pre-apprenticeship program that gets someone onto a jobsite accomplishes very little if the crew culture they land in drives them back out within a year. That's a leadership and culture problem for a business owner to solve directly, not something a recruiting flyer or a diversity statement handles on its own.

What a Welcoming Jobsite Actually Requires

None of this requires an expensive overhaul. The changes that retention research points to most consistently are mundane and cheap relative to what they fix. Properly sized PPE and safety harnesses, rather than assuming a single range of sizes fits everyone. A clear, enforced anti-harassment policy that isn't just a line item in an employee handbook nobody reads. Restroom and changing facilities that meet basic decency standards on a jobsite, which still isn't universal practice on smaller sites. And a foreman or superintendent who actively sets the tone for how a new crew member, of any background, gets treated in their first weeks, since that early period is consistently when someone decides whether a trade is somewhere they can build a career or somewhere they're just passing through.

None of that is complicated. It's also not automatic, which is exactly why the gap between hiring and retaining a more diverse crew tends to persist even at companies that genuinely want to close it.

Resources Worth Knowing

NAWIC (nawic.org): chapter network, mentorship programs, and the annual Women in Construction Week every March.
Chicago Women in Trades and Oregon Tradeswomen: regional nonprofits running hands-on equipment exposure and pre-apprenticeship programs, with models increasingly adopted by similar organizations in other states.
State and union apprenticeship offices: most now have a designated outreach contact or program for recruiting women, worth asking about directly if you're looking to diversify your crew's applicant pool.
The OFCCP's 41 CFR Part 60-4.3 goal: worth knowing if your business bids federal or federally-assisted construction work, since compliance officers still measure against it.

Why Seasonal and Project-Based Hiring Makes This Harder, and More Worthwhile

Construction's project-based hiring cycle cuts both ways on this issue. On one hand, seasonal layoffs and the gap between projects make it harder for any new entrant, regardless of background, to build the kind of continuous track record that leads to steady advancement. A new apprentice who gets laid off after a slow winter loses momentum just as they're building the skills and relationships that matter for staying in the trade long-term. On the other hand, a contractor who can offer something closer to year-round, stable work, by diversifying into storm work, maintenance contracts, or simply running a leaner but steadier backlog, has a real recruiting advantage in a tight labor market, and that advantage applies just as much to retaining a new woman entering the trades as it does to retaining anyone else. Stability is a recruiting tool that costs nothing extra to offer once you've built the business to support it.

Building the Crew That Runs the Equipment

Wherever your next operator comes from, the machine they're running still has to get financed, maintained, and kept productive. BFC Equipment Loans finances the backhoes, excavators, skid steers, and dump trucks that growing crews depend on, for startups and established businesses nationwide, with programs built around a range of credit profiles. We've also written about the journeyman-to-owner path for experienced operators and about mental health and workforce wellness in construction, two more pieces of the same larger picture: who's actually running your equipment, and how you support them, shapes a business as much as the machines themselves. If a reliable backhoe for a growing crew is next on your list, our construction equipment financing programs are built for exactly that.