Revision with unchanged content. The last few decades of the twentieth
century were a period of tremendous change in organized labor and
apprenticeship programs in the United States. Going into the
twenty-first century, skilled trade union apprenticeship pro-grams are
in a change, coping with decline in union membership and pressure to
open their ranks to under represented groups. Insuring inclusion of
women and minorities in registered apprenticeship has been an
acknow-ledged problem among policy makers. Failure to improve
meaningful, representative access in apprenticeship programs,
particularly to women, was cause for the author to perform research
study. The research study was to investigate the experiences of five
women who entered into a skilled trade apprenticeship program that has
been predominantly male oriented. The in-vestigation examined three
components of the apprenticeship program: application and entry,
on-the-job training and working relationships with the journey person.
The significance of the study was to identify: - What barriers do women
describe as restrictive to becoming an accomplished apprentice in a
skilled trades program?- Do women experience discrimination as an
ap-prentice?- Do women experience inappropriate sexual bias as an
apprentice?- What are the expectations of women entering into an
apprenticeship?
