Women and apprenticeships: An Australian perspective

INTRODUCTION

Apprentices in Australia may be adults or young school-leavers; only a small proportion are still at school, unlike in many other countries (Smith & Brennan Kemmis, 2013). The apprenticeship system in Australia, as in the UK, was established in the immediate post-World War II period, where the system was at that time confined to certain occupations, and was dominated by trade unions (Gospel, 1994). Such apprenticeships involved a three- to four-year contract of employment, and a lengthy period of study in the occupational area, at, or provided by, a training provider.

The expansion of the apprenticeship system beyond these traditional trades, which, apart from hairdressing, were primarily taken up by young men, was achieved by the introduction of one and two year "traineeships" in the mid-1980s, organized along similar lines to apprenticeships. Traineeships were introduced in occupational areas such as retail, tourism, hospitality and business, that had not previously provided apprentice-like training (Smith, 2022), and now are becoming more common also in health and welfare occupations. From 1997, funding for apprentice/trainee training became available to private training providers as well as the public system of technical and further education (TAFE) colleges, through a system known as "user choice" (Smith & Keating, 2003); this helped the growth of traineeships but also led to suspicion among some commentators (Smith, 2022). The separate term "traineeship" is retained in everyday usage, although official data use the umbrella term "apprenticeship".

Hence apprenticeship has been more available to women, through the growing diversity of occupational coverage, for around 40 years, and also the role of women in the labor force more generally has changed considerably over that same period. Yet women's occupations remain disadvantaged in apprenticeship policy and women's participation is much lower than men's (Smith, 2022).

As in most countries, apprenticeship policy is created through negotiation among the social partners, employers, trade unions and governments (Burgi & Gonon, 2022) with the relative influence of one party or another varying over time, and depending on the government in power. The paper asks how apprenticeship policy has considered and shaped women's role in apprenticeships, including but not confined to, traditional apprenticeships. How has this arisen, and what might change. This is a major question which cannot be answered in one paper, but the evidence provided will aid understanding.

METHODS AND RESEARCH DESIGN

Firstly, major government-commission reports were analyzed for their gender implications, and recent initiatives related to women in traditional trade apprenticeship were analyzed. The topic was then researched through analysis of official apprenticeship data from 1985 onwards to show the proportion of women in the Australian apprenticeship system, the relative concentrations of women and men in different occupational areas nationally, and the funding for those occupations, using the State of Victoria as an example; each State or Territory sets its own funding rates. The funding rates are no longer publicly available, but access was provided via a TAFE college. Finally, recent economic changes, specifically skill shortages, industry 4.0 skill needs and green energy skill needs were analyzed for the effects which they have had both directly and indirectly on women's participation in, and access to, apprenticeships.

RESULTS

Table 1 shows a late twentieth century move away from traditional gender assumptions about apprenticeships (1954) to an expansion of the system to include feminized occupations (1985, 1991). Changes to the system were then enacted via the introduction of funding for "traineeships" often in feminized occupations. However, the attempts to roll back this system began from 2011, and are evident in the 2024 report.

Figure 1 shows how these policy directions affected total numbers of apprentices in Australia, and on the gender breakdown of apprenticeships, from 1995 to 2019.

Figure 1. Number of apprentices (including trainees) in-training, in thousands, Australia, 1995-2019, by gender. Source: Derived from NCVER's National Centre for Vocational Education Research) "Apprentices and Trainees" data collection.

The two peaks in Figure 1 reflect favourable funding environments for apprentice training providers, with a sharp drop-off after 2011 when funding ceased for many female-dominated occupations. Women's participation increased at times of peak numbers. For the subsequent five years from 2020 the proportion of women continued at about one-third of apprentice commencements. There were slight increases in the proportion of women during the 2020-2021 year and the 2021-2022 year during coronavirus disease (COVID), when there were generous subsidies for employers to take on apprentices (Smith, 2024). In those two years, numbers rose, and as in previous peaks shown in Figure 1, the gender gap narrowed slightly.

We now examine male-dominated occupations compared with female-dominated occupations. Table 2 shows occupations with 85% or greater commencing apprentices of one gender or the other. The first four male-dominated occupations had 10,000 or more commencements; while none of the female dominated occupations did.

For the occupations in Table 2, the funding rate per hour of training in Victoria in 2024 varied from $13.50 AUD to $15.50 AUD per hour for the male-dominated occupations, while the rates for the female-dominated jobs ranged from $7.00 to $10.00 per hour, except for hairdressing (always a "trade apprenticeship") which received $13.00 per hour. Some other female-weighted occupations received far less funding, e.g., retail $3.50, business $4.50 per hour.

Female entry into traditionally male trade apprenticeship's has been nominally encouraged for some time (see the earlier government reports in Table 1), but the proportion of females in those occupations has not increased, as Table 2 shows. Many barriers exist including perceived gender roles, safety issues, masculinized work environments and lack of female toilet facilities (Simon & Clarke, 2016). Post-COVID labor shortages and the growth in male-oriented "green energy" jobs have created national concern (Smith, 2024) and a recognition that gender imbalance affects shortages. It has now become economically important to attract women to these apprenticeships, which are now receiving the bulk of government funding and policy attention. The 2024 "Skills for tomorrow" report in Table 1 suggests measures such as subsidies for small and medium business to employ female apprentices in trades, and a "Building Women's Careers" initiative is funding pilot projects to "advance structural and cultural change to improve women's access to flexible, safe, and inclusive training and work opportunities in the key male-dominated industries". The shift in emphasis from equity to skills imperatives suggests that the measures may succeed only temporarily, however.

Table 3 suggests a possible interpretation of the move towards including women in these male-dominated apprenticeships.

These developments echo imperatives during the Second World War in Australia. Reekie (1985) describes the Australian government's mobilization campaign encouraging women to take up work in "essential" industries such as munitions, clothing and food processing, followed by "direction" into such work in the second half of 1942. One wonders whether, in the future, there may be an analogous movement of women back into their former occupations or activities as there was following the War, in 1945.

CONCLUSION

Internationally, apprenticeships are gendered in nature, reflecting occupations' gender composition (Pan, 2015); vocational education and training (VET) is also gendered (e.g., Gessler, 2019). The focus on women entering these apprenticeships, as opposed to support for all apprenticeships, has returned the gender debate in apprenticeship to a decades-old comfort zone for many actors in the Australian system, and prevents a critical analysis of the treatment of women in apprenticeship policy. There is unlikely to be a sudden large increase in females considering a "trade" apprenticeship, and instead one might to hope for a move towards equal treatment of women's occupations in terms of funding levels and respect, to supplement the encouragement to women to choose different types of occupation.

A large-scale international research project into occupational coverage of apprenticeships, to supplement evidence given in an International Labor Organization survey of G20 countries (Smith et al., 2018), of female participation, and of the intersection of those two, would be extremely useful in informing these debates and influencing policy-makers.