Women are shaking up apprenticeships

Since the launch of the gender bursary under the 2022 Action Plan for Apprenticeships, female participation has risen by 65%, climbing from 1,531 to 2,519 by the end of April 2025. 

Empowering the next generation of young women in Ireland to build successful careers through apprenticeships is the core tenet of the ‘Women Shaking Up The Future’ campaign. 

Designed to encourage more women to fulfil their potential with apprenticeships across over 80 career programmes, the campaign aims to become a first-choice post-secondary career option for young women, promoting a wide range of fields from engineering and construction to technology. 

“Apprenticeships are increasingly recognised as a valuable pathway for all school leavers,” said Con Ferry, director of apprenticeships at SOLAS, the further education and training authority. 

“With over 80 programmes nationwide, apprenticeships provide rewarding career opportunities across a wide range of industries. We are deeply committed to building inclusion into the apprenticeship system. 

"Continued collaboration with education providers and industry is key to highlighting the apprenticeship route as a dynamic and rewarding career pathway to young women and underrepresented groups across the country.”

Women’s participation in apprenticeships across Ireland has grown significantly in recent years as a result of ongoing efforts to improve gender balance in traditionally male-dominated fields. 

Since the launch of the gender bursary under the 2022 Action Plan for Apprenticeships — an incentive available to businesses that employ apprentices from the minority gender — female participation has risen by 65%, climbing from 1,531 to 2,519 by the end of April 2025. The bursary is paid to employers who employ an apprentice from the minority gender. 

Additionally, a €3,000 Access and Inclusion bursary is available to support eligible learners in accessing and participating in national apprenticeships. Females are not only choosing craft apprenticeships in electrical, construction, engineering and agriculture, but also in diverse areas such as cybersecurity, digital marketing, property, finance, logistics, healthcare, laboratory work, and sports turf management.

Katelyn Cummins, Rose of Tralee 2025 and an electrical apprentice, says she is proud to prove that women can excel in skilled trades to shape Ireland's future. Encouraged by her father to try an apprenticeship as an alternative to college, she tested the water spending a week with an electrician. 

“I absolutely loved it. We worked on a number of different sites, such as a cheese factory, a swimming pool, a warehouse, and a normal house. I was so intrigued by the different schematics needed in each different setting.” 

As thousands of students get ready to sit the Leaving Cert next week, she wants to highlight trades as a hugely rewarding career option. “I’d love to inspire young kids, especially if they don’t like school, and they find that college would be their absolute worst nightmare, which it was for me. 

I would encourage all school leavers to do what makes you happy, whether that's an apprenticeship, a PLC course or university. 

"I couldn’t be happier with my apprenticeship, it’s a great career pathway and whether you’re a woman or a man, you can still do it no matter what.” 

As to frequently being the only female on a work crew, she says: “People wonder if it’s hard to work with all men, and to be honest, it’s not. There’s always a bit of craic, nothing is taken too seriously and we spend the majority of the time laughing.”

There are now more than 3000 women apprentices, representing a rise from just 2% a decade ago to 10% of the overall apprentice population. 

“There’s a reason it is becoming an increasingly attractive option: apprentices earn while they learn, with a contract of employment and a salary while completing training,” says Dr Mary-Liz Trant, former executive director of the National Apprenticeship Office. 

“Aware that ‘you have to see it to be it’, many women apprentices and apprentice graduates are stepping up to tell their stories of experience and success.”

For more information, visit apprenticeship.ie.