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Stephanie Rutherford used to work in the recreation, agricultural and equine sectors.

Nancy Skyba-Bruneau took over her family’s bathtub reglazing business after graduating from university.

Samantha McFadyen operated a home day care in northern Ontario.

Now they all work in the construction field, representing a cohort identified in the Ontario Building and Construction Tradeswomen (OBCT) 2025 Recruitment and Retention of Women in the Building Trades survey: They entered the field as a second career, and after age 25.

They still are very much a minority.

An Ontario Construction Association Alliance (OCAA) report, Women in Construction, released March 8, 2026, finds women remain significantly underrepresented at nearly every level of the industry.

Just nine to 11 per cent of Canada’s ICI/broader workforce are women, and 18 to 20 per cent of the residential construction workforce.

Until her late 20s, Rutherford of Orono worked a patchwork of jobs, some of them seasonal, to maintain a fulltime living. A career path in the trades was never identified as an option to her in high school and she had limited understanding of those jobs.

When she took a job as a carpenter’s helper in 2017 for a local contractor, that all changed.

She was offered a carpentry apprenticeship and “ran with it.”

Rutherford’s now one of about 1,300 females, or 4.6 per cent, among 28,000 journey carpenters in the province, states the OCAA.

She worked in various non-union jobs, such as nursing homes and condo construction, until joining Aecon Group Inc. last year. Today, at age 38, she’s working at OPG’s Darlington site on the project to build North America’s first grid-scale Small Modular Reactor.

Aecon is providing construction services for the project.

The job itself is engaging, as she and the team are working on a project that’s the first of its type. They are building mock-ups, recording the process and learning new skills before they start getting the reactor buildings, each with a specific purpose, out of the ground.��

Rutherford likes knowing that her job at the OPG site, or in the industry, will be long-term and the advantages of a unionized setting.

“I do love the residential world, but I chose to go to the unionized world, where there are a pension and benefits, and a commitment to safe workplaces and regulated hours,” she says. “And there are washrooms. I’ve been on non-union jobsites with no washrooms available.”

Skyba-Bruneau, with undergraduate degrees in environmental management and environmental politics, took over her family’s bathtub reglazing business after her father’s death, but realized it wasn’t for her.

She then earned a diploma in Geographic Information Systems just as jobs in that field got scarce, so she went into sales for Bell Canada for six years until the stress of that workplace got too much.

Her mother had been one of the few female site superintendents in Ontario in the 1980s. But after hearing about her mother’s experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world, Skyba-Bruneau was wary of following in her footsteps.

Ten years ago, at age 30, Skyba-Bruneau realized construction offered the type of pay level and opportunity she sought. She started in the residential sector as a customer care representative, then a quality assurance manager, before realizing site superintendent was the role she wanted.

She took a job as a site clerk for a residential builder. Six months later, she was promoted to finishing superintendent and worked on a couple hundred homes before the residential industry hit pause. Then she had to look for a new job.

“I was more interested in ICI, but as I was looking to break in, it was almost impossible as a woman,” she recalls. “I was discouraged. I would apply for jobs and never get a call back.”

She finally landed a site clerk position with a Quebec-based civil company, EBC, that has a female president and offers programs to encourage women in construction careers.

“It’s a wonderful company to work for. It’s been enjoyable not to have to deal with some of the nonsense I’ve had to in the past.”

Skyba-Bruneau is onsite assisting the project manager and site superintendent, handling paperwork, chasing invoices, making phone calls, following up on materials, payroll, etc. With EBC, she’s worked on a dam rehabilitation in Six Mile Lake for Parks Canada and is currently working in Sudbury on an OPG hydro-electric dam rebuild. There are multiple women working onsite, including the site superintendent.��

Skyba-Bruneau says she’s still learning about the civil construction world and is actively educating herself so she will be able to seize the opportunity to move up and closer to her goal when the opportunity arises.

McFayden hadn’t considered a construction career until she was giving a speech as a volunteer at a festival in Cobalt. An acquaintance in the construction industry, impressed by how confidently she had spoken, suggested she’d be a natural to teach health and safety. She’d operated a day care but was looking for a new direction and took the training required to pursue a health and safety career.

McFadyen, 48, who lives in Port Perry has been working in the field for 16 years and is health and safety manager with Xcel Construction Ltd., a Toronto company specializing in building envelope and concrete restoration at apartment buildings, parking garages, etc.

“My job is in the field and in the office, and I’m responsible for all health and safety, including getting people trained onsite, conducting investigations and filling out documentation,” McFadyen says. “At the beginning of a project, I consult with contractors to make sure they are doing things safely and I have done some site supervising.

“I like that my job’s different every day and I enjoy teaching things to keep sites safe. I enjoy being an advocate for workers. The pay is good and I enjoy the flexibility I have with this company.”

The OBCT report found because women often discover trades later in life, this trend signals untapped potential through earlier outreach.��

To young women considering the field, Skyba-Bruneau suggests “don’t be afraid to put your foot in the door. There are so many sectors you can work in, in the construction field. You don’t have to work with tools. There are jobs such as architecture or cost estimation that don’t require that. There are so many opportunities, especially in things that require fine detail or strong oversight. Women excel at that because we have the ability to look deeply and critically into things.”

McFadyen’s advice: “Look for a mentor. Try to find a company that will allow you to grow and further your abilities. If you can find a company willing to support you and push you forward, that’s better than all the training in the world.”

In her trade and others, Rutherford advises going to school and pursuing a proper apprenticeship.

“In carpentry, anyone can hang out a shingle. There’s a huge advantage in going to school and being taught the skills. On the job I have now, there was a problem that required me to pull out my advanced geometry to figure it out. Then I was able to turn around and teach other carpenters that skill. If I never went to official trades school and had those resources, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”