About the Western Resources Center for Women in Apprenticeship

The Western Resources Center for Women in Apprenticeship is a joint project of Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., Seattle-based Apprenticeship & Nontraditional Employment for Women (ANEW), and Oakland, California-based Tradeswomen, Inc.

The mission of the Western Resources Center (WRC) is to help women and girls access and thrive in family-supporting, high wage and high skill trades careers in construction, utilities, and manufacturing.  

The WRC promotes trades apprenticeships to women and girls as well as provides them with information about how to successfully apply to and navigate apprenticeship in a variety of skilled trades. We also support existing tradeswomen and female apprentices by linking them to support networks and tradeswomen’s organizations, and providing them with legal resources for dealing with discrimination and harassment.

The WRC and its member organizations provide technical assistance at no cost to construction and manufacturing industry stakeholders, including but not limited to registered apprenticeship programs seeking to diversify their workforces throughout the western United States.  We encourage users to reach out to us with questions, comments, or technical assistance requests.   Technical and promotional resources offered via the WRC website are made available at no cost to users through Creative Commons license agreements.

The WRC welcomes contributions of ideas, tools, publications, and financial resources from industry and apprenticeship stakeholders.  Please get in touch if you have a great idea to improve our resources!

Resources developed and offered by the WRC are supported by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration’s Women in Apprenticeship and Non-Traditional Occupations (WANTO) Program.

The WRC is a member of a network of WANTO-funded regional technical assistance centers whose mission is to increase women’s access to and success in registered apprenticeship in nontraditional occupations.

WANTO Regional Technical Assistance Network

Midwest Technical Assistance Center (a project of Chicago Women in Trades)

Northeast Technical Assistance Center (a project of Nontraditional Employment for Women, based in NYC)