How Trump’s DEI rollbacks could hit women in skilled trades

President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting and repealing diversity, equity and inclusion policies bring a rash of uncertainties about what lies ahead for women and other minority groups in the workforce.

These changes create a particularly fraught environment for women in skilled trades — occupations such as construction, welding and carpentry.

Skilled trades offer competitive salaries and benefits, especially so for those without a college education, but they have some of the smallest shares of female workers among all occupations in the U.S., according to a government survey. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which compiled data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, also reported that in 2023, women comprised 4.3% of workers in construction and extraction occupations, which include construction laborers, carpenters and electricians.

Kina McAfee, who has been involved in the skilled trades for 40 years, said she has seen discrimination persist across the trades. Harassment is common, she said, and at smaller worksites, a tradeswoman will often find herself the sole female worker.

A 2021 study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research that surveyed women in trades showed 47.7% report they are held to a different standard than their male co-workers, face discrimination in many aspects of their work and sometimes deal with “an unsupportive if not hostile” environment. More than a quarter of the study’s respondents said they are always or frequently harassed for being a woman. The report also found that 44.4% of women in the study have seriously considered leaving the industry, with most citing discrimination or a lack of respect as reasons to leave.

McAfee worked as a carpenter between 1985 and 1995 in Chicago before becoming an instructor. She is now a coordinator for a carpenter’s union, guiding women in its apprentice program.

In an interview with CNBC, McAfee said some of the women she has spoken with have faced overt incidents of harassment, often verbal, and sometimes of a sexual nature. She said a tradeswoman told her that a foreman hit her on the buttocks with a shovel in front of other workers. Another woman told her that a worker locked her in a porta-potty on a jobsite, McAfee said, and one tradeswoman told her that a co-worker fondled her while on a lunch break. 

“I just can’t count the number of young apprentices that come to me with some kind of … really bad story like this,” McAfee said. “But they refuse to allow us to contact their company. Because still, even in this day and age, you can be blacklisted and not be able to work.”

McAfee said these complaints have slowed somewhat over the past few years and that more men are willing to work alongside women than when she started in the field.

But she and other tradeswomen and nonprofit leaders across the country said Trump’s attack on DEI policies and the ideas behind them will erode that progress — and embolden some workers to discriminate against women. 

On the first day of Trump’s second term in office he signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which rescinded policies requiring federal contractors to promote diversity and affirmative action.

The next day he issued another order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which rolled back an array of executive orders issued over the past 60 years intended to curtail discrimination, including those meant to bolster the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. 

“In the prior Trump administration, we found that violence and harassment of women increased on job sites without all of these anti-DEI initiatives,” said Meg Vasey, who worked as an electrician for 20 years and now serves as a policy committee co-chair for the National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s Issues.

“This, no doubt, will increase and intensify that, not just for women, but for people of color, and then double for women of color,” Vasey said. “It’s anecdotal, but it’s national, and it’s clearly only going to intensify as things go.”

Jayne Vellinga, executive director of nonprofit group Chicago Women in Trades, which trains and provides resources to tradeswomen, told CNBC her organization wouldn’t exist without federal incentives for diversity, which have helped bring more women into the skilled trades.

Vellinga said DEI efforts by President Joe Biden’s administration led to a palpable difference in the industry, with positive changes she thought weren’t possible a decade ago, and notably better reception from contractors, unions and apprenticeships.

She noted that a U.S. Commerce Department initiative, “Million Women in Construction,” announced by former Secretary Gina Raimondo in 2022 aimed to double the number of women in the industry to 2 million over the next decade.

“Understanding this is what the government was looking for, I think, created a level of receptivity that was unique, at least in my experience here at Chicago Women in Trades, which is 25 years,” she said.

Chicago Women in Trades, which receives federal grants to help support its programs, is one of several nonprofits to sue the administration over Trump’s executive orders on DEI. The organization’s lawsuit alleges that the orders are vague and unconstitutional and will prohibit groups such as Chicago Women in Trades from doing any work at all.

“Diversity is not illegal. Equity is not illegal. Inclusion is not illegal,” the lawsuit says. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are aspirational ideals that have for centuries been fundamental to our progress as a nation. Efforts to promote them do not violate federal civil rights laws.”

A White House representative, in an email to CNBC, said, “Protecting the civil rights and expanding opportunities for all Americans is a key priority of the Trump Administration, which is why he took decisive actions to terminate unlawful DEI preferences in the federal government.”

“Every man and woman in this great country should have the opportunity to go as far as their hard work, individual initiative, and competence can take them,” the representative said. “In America, grit, excellence, and perseverance are our strengths.” 

Attorney Jessica Stender, the policy director and deputy legal director for legal nonprofit Equal Rights Advocates, pushed back against the idea that DEI policies are unlawful.

“This notion that DEI is illegal is really a false narrative, when it’s really intended to ensure underrepresented groups have the opportunities of everyone else,” she said.

Stender called harassment “the price of the paycheck” for women in trades. She told CNBC that some women “choose to put up with the harassment and discrimination” to attain the economic stability and benefits these jobs offer.

Vasey said her job as an electrician helped her support her family, buy a house, build a retirement fund, and maintain the economic stability to eventually attend law school.

Kelly McClellen, an operating engineer in Kansas for 28 years, told CNBC that even though she excelled at woodworking in high school, no one advised her to seek out jobs in construction.

“I had to find the career myself,” she said, adding that getting a construction job allowed her to provide for her child as a young single mother.

McClellen, who co-founded Heartland Women in Trades, a nonprofit that supports tradeswomen with the help of federal grants, said she hasn’t seen a lot of change in her area when it comes to letting girls know about these opportunities.

“We’re not educating the public about these good jobs — and that women are really good at these jobs,” she said.

Conditions for women in the trades have changed since she began her career, but not nearly enough, McClellan said.

She emphasized that workplace culture can be unfair for women in ways other than overt harassment. She said she had one boss who didn’t give her overtime hours, saying it was because, as a woman, she wasn’t the main breadwinner of her household. McClellen was married at the time and said her boss assumed her husband made more money than she did.

Vellinga, too, said women face barriers in the trades beyond harassment, right from the beginning.

They are less likely to know about opportunities, consider themselves eligible and receive mentorship, she said. 

Women who are perceived to be “DEI hires” on worksites are given menial tasks and treated as if they are unqualified, which stymies their progress, she said. 

“It is jarring to hear some of this talk about how just because someone is a woman or a person of color they are automatically less qualified than the white male applicant that didn’t get the job,” Vellinga said.

“But our experience has always been that women have to be more, not less, qualified in order to get opportunities in this industry,” she said.