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What is resilience in the context of work environments where women face barriers as significant as career discrimination and harassment? In such a context, is resilience an individual responsibility? How can organizations contribute to and support employee resilience? And where is gender in this equation? This conceptual paper explores these questions using aviation, the skilled trades (i.e., carpentry, welding, plumbing) and the military as case studies to understand how gender inclusion could be better supported by resilient organizations. The barriers for women in male-dominated industries include social exclusion, marginalization, discrimination, harassment, and other forms of social closure. How these barriers can be overcome is not well understood. We argue that individual resilience plays a part in women thriving and developing enduring careers but can only occur in combination with support from gender inclusion strategies and organizational resilience. We have developed the Resilience for Gender Inclusion (RGI) model combining gender inclusion strategies with organizational resilience strategies. The RGI model demonstrates how employee and organizational resilience intersect and may lead to the transformative potential of inclusive cultures of diversity. This will improve employee wellbeing and self-efficacy and create a much needed sense of belonging and social inclusion for women in male-dominated occupations.

The skilled trades are highly gender segregated occupations. Unsurprisingly, research about women in this male-dominated sector focuses on the various barriers to inclusion. In contrast, this article identifies factors that have contributed to women's successes. Drawing on in-depth interviews with tradeswomen, we found that the success factors for women in the skilled trades were aligned with social and cultural capital. Findings also indicate that women's success is driven by their individual attributes and resources rather than any forms of systematic support. There is limited evidence of a coordinated approach from industry and government to increase gender equity and inclusion. Success for women is, therefore, most likely to be singularly occurring, unpredictable and difficult to replicate. We use a Bourdieusian approach to understand how capital facilitates women's success and how forms of capital can be translated into measurable and repeatable strategies. We argue that capital offers women an opportunity to circumvent traditional resistance to gender inclusion because it provides cultural legitimacy. Replicating social and cultural capital through industry initiatives that are measurable and repeatable are likely to be the most constructive ways forward. We recommend a coordinated industry approach to improve diversity and inclusion in the sector.

Social and cultural capital are valuable assets that assist individuals to succeed in work. This article reports on gender segregation in the skilled trades. We use Bourdieu’s theory of capital to illuminate how women are successfully recruited and retained in the skilled trades. Our findings indicate that women with pre-existing forms of capital are advantaged. Notably tradeswomen utilise masculine gender capital while maintaining aspects of feminine and female gender capital. In doing so, they re-gender the skilled trades and do gender differently. The study also found that female and feminine gender capital detracts from other forms of capital women bring with them or acquire in their trades work. Male gender capital privileges men and disadvantages women. We conclude that capital is an important point of intervention where women can be supported; however, the problems that gender capital creates for women can only be resolved by cultural change.

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