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The article is titled “Preventing gender-based violence in trades is both a labour issue and an education one.” It was originally published on December 4, 2025 and is authored by Shannon Welbourn, Assistant Professor and Technological Education Program Coordinator, Brock University.

The recent killing of a 20-year-old tradeswoman in Minnesota has struck a nerve across Canada’s skilled trades community. Amber Czech, a welder, was slain by a male colleague while on a work site.
Statements from labour unions and personal stories from tradeswomen shared recurring themes of harassment, exclusion, unsafe conditions and retaliation for reporting.
This tragedy is not isolated to the United States, and exposes a larger pattern of hostile and unsafe work sites for women and gender-diverse workers.
The timing of Czech’s death has fuelled calls to action. In Canada, Dec. 6 marks the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, honouring 14 women students murdered in 1989 at École Polytechnique. Preventing gender-based violence is not only a labour issue, but also an education issue.
A long-standing pattern
As a researcher and educator in technological education, I see an opportunity. I help experienced tradespeople become high school teachers. They become certified to teach in one of the 10 broad-based technology subject areas — communications, computers, construction, green industries, hairstyling and esthetics, health care, hospitality and tourism, manufacturing, technological design or transportation.
The culture of industry has an impact on the adults who enter teacher education, and those teachers in turn shape the culture of tomorrow’s shops and labs. For safer workplaces, the work of prevention must start long before anyone steps onto a job site.
Czech’s death reflects painful familiarity that research has documented for decades. Studies across construction, transportation and manufacturing show that women and gender-diverse workers continue to face barriers.
These extend beyond individual incidents, including exclusion from key tasks, minimal mentorship and ineffective or risky reporting systems.
Canadian reports from the Canadian Labour Congress, the B.C. Centre for Women in the Trades and the Canadian Association of Women in Construction highlight recurring issues. These problems are rooted in workplace culture and everyday norms that determine who gets opportunities, whose concerns are taken seriously and how co-workers respond when something goes wrong. These shape whether workers feel safe.
These patterns are not new. Interviews with tradeswomen from the 1970s and ‘80s described similar conditions. The fact that the same issues are still being raised decades later reveals a deep systemic culture that has been slow to transform.
Efforts at progress
There are initiatives happening aimed at bringing about change. Fostering women in trades, the federal Canadian Apprenticeship Strategy announced several projects in March 2024. These were funded under the Women in the Skilled Trades Initiative.
The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, a non-profit organization that connects the country’s apprenticeship community, has an initiative entitled Supporting Equity in Trades (SET).
In Ontario, the province says its recently announced Skills Development Fund is investing more than $8.6 million to support women in the skilled trades. The province’s College Trades organization highlights young women’s initiatives and pathways to the trades.
Shared responsibility is also highlighted in the federal government’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence:
“Preventing and addressing GBV (gender-based-violence) in Canada requires a co-ordinated national approach, with federal, provincial and territorial governments working in close partnership with survivors, Indigenous partners, direct service providers, experts, advocates, municipalities, the private sector and researchers … Joint efforts in support of this National Action Plan will align with and complement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Calls for Justice.”
A broader context of violence
Global statistics are reinforcing the urgency. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women report 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024, or one every 10 minutes.
While home is unsafe, so too are workplaces. Violence reflects broader societal norms that shape all institutions, including education. Yet many trades and apprenticeship systems lack the structures to protect women.
At first glance, the slaying of a U.S. welder may seem distant from Canadian high school classrooms. But in technological education, the connection is direct.
In Ontario, the pathway to becoming a technological education teacher begins with years of related industry experience. Those, who are transitioning from the trades in favour of a second career as a high school teacher, come from spaces where these cultural issues persist.
They bring valuable practical expertise but also the norms, assumptions and coping strategies formed in their prior workplace environments.
Some have spent years navigating exclusion or witnessing harassment. Others come from supportive workplaces and are surprised to learn how widespread these issues are. This means teacher education programs cannot assume shared understanding of safety, inclusion or harassment.
Instead, programs must deliberately prepare future teachers to recognize and challenge the norms that reproduce inequity.
This dynamic creates both a responsibility and an opportunity. Technological Education teachers shape learning spaces where young people first encounter trades culture. They influence whether girls, gender-diverse students and other underrepresented learners feel welcome or pushed out, long before they reach apprenticeships.
4 ways to help aspiring teachers tackle GBV
Teacher education programs can help shift ingrained attitudes in trades-related fields. Research on adult learning, workplace culture and gender-equity education points to several effective strategies:
1. Explicitly teach about gender-based violence in trades contexts
Gender-based violence is often taught as a general social issue, not as a trades-specific concern. Programs should address how harassment and exclusion appear in shops, labs, apprenticeships, co-operative placements and how school reporting structures differ from those in industry.
2. Use experiential, reflective learning
Experiential learning emphasizes structured reflection. Case studies, workplace scenarios and opportunities to practice inclusive responses in realistic contexts deepen learning more effectively than policy readings alone. For second-career learners, connecting personal experience with broader patterns is especially meaningful.
3. Teach candidates to identify early warning signs
High school technological education environments can subtly reproduce workplace hierarchies, for example with task assignments, uneven access to tools or normalizing jokes about who is naturally mechanical. Teacher candidates need practice spotting and interrupting these patterns early.
4. Position tech ed teachers to lead and advocate workplace culture
Technological education teachers often maintain close ties to industry, apprenticeship and co-ops. They can advocate for safe placement sites, challenge stereotypes about who belongs in the trades and create spaces where all students feel welcome. Preparing candidates for these responsibilities means inspiring them to be culture shapers.
Cultural change begins before the job site
The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women reminds Canadians to confront the roots of gender-based violence and commit to dismantling them.
Czech’s killing is a painful reminder that the trades remain a vocation where cultural transformation initiatives are urgently needed.
But responsibility cannot rest solely with employers and unions. It must extend into teacher education programs and the high school classrooms where young people first experience skilled trades instruction.
By equipping future technological education teachers to recognize, prevent and challenge gender-based violence, we take meaningful steps toward safe workplaces and a skilled trades sector where everyone truly belongs.

Preventing gender-based violence in trades is both a labour issue and an education one

December 5, 2025 • My Project Name

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