Canada's labour market has a women's career gap that shows up in hiring pipelines, pay progression, and return-to-work support. WomenAtWork.ca exists to close that gap from both directions: a dedicated space where employers can reach qualified women candidates, and where job seekers can find roles built for real careers, not just entry-level postings.
Quick takeaways
- WomenAtWork.ca is a Canadian job board built specifically to connect women job seekers with employers who are actively hiring for gender diversity.
- The platform features federally regulated employer postings, return-to-work roles, and dedicated trades and STEM pipelines.
- Employers can use WomenAtWork.ca to meet Employment Equity Act reporting goals and reach a targeted, qualified talent pool.
- Job seekers can browse listings by province, industry, and career stage, including postings aimed at women returning to work after a career break.
- The site links out to provincial hubs and background on the federal Employment Equity Act framework that shapes hiring obligations for many Canadian employers.
What is WomenAtWork.ca?
WomenAtWork.ca is a national job board built around one focus: connecting women across Canada with employers who are serious about hiring and advancing women in their workforce. It is not a general job aggregator with a women's filter bolted on. Every part of the platform, from the postings that get approved to the resources published on the site, is built with the career realities of women job seekers in mind: gaps for caregiving, sector segregation in trades and STEM, and the extra scrutiny women often face returning to a field after time away.
The site serves two distinct audiences at once, and it is worth being direct about both.
For employers
If you are a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR lead trying to build a more balanced workforce, WomenAtWork.ca gives you a channel to post roles in front of candidates who are specifically looking for employers with a track record on gender diversity. This matters for federally regulated employers under the Employment Equity Act, and it matters for any organization that has set internal diversity hiring goals and needs a credible pipeline to hit them.
For job seekers
If you are a woman looking for work in Canada, whether you are entering the workforce, changing careers, returning after parental leave or another absence, or moving into a trade or technical field for the first time, WomenAtWork.ca is built to surface roles and employers that are a genuine fit, not just a keyword match.
For job seekers: how WomenAtWork.ca works
The job seeker experience on WomenAtWork.ca is organized around the stages and paths that matter most to Canadian women in the workforce today.
Federally regulated employer postings
A significant share of postings on the platform come from federally regulated employers, meaning banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, and Crown corporations that fall under the Employment Equity Act. These employers have formal obligations to report on the representation of women and other designated groups in their workforce, which means they tend to have structured, well-resourced diversity hiring programs rather than one-off initiatives. For job seekers, that translates into postings with clearer advancement paths and, often, established mentorship or sponsorship programs once you are hired.
Return-to-work roles
Career breaks are common and rarely explained well on a standard resume. WomenAtWork.ca includes a category of postings from employers who explicitly welcome candidates re-entering the workforce after maternity or parental leave, caregiving responsibilities, or an extended personal leave. These employers have usually thought through how to structure onboarding and flexible scheduling for someone stepping back into a role, which reduces the friction that often discourages women from applying after a gap.
Trades and STEM pipelines
Women remain underrepresented in skilled trades, engineering, and technology roles across Canada, not for lack of interest but often for lack of visible pathways in. WomenAtWork.ca maintains a pipeline of postings and apprenticeship-adjacent opportunities in construction, manufacturing, utilities, and STEM fields, working with employers who have active mentorship or women-in-trades programs already in place. For a job seeker considering a move into a trade or technical role, this section functions as a shortcut past the guesswork of figuring out which employers actually support women entering these fields.
If you are ready to start browsing, you can see the full range of current openings at WomenAtWork.ca for job seekers, organized by province, industry, and career stage.
For employers: why post on WomenAtWork.ca
Posting a job on a general board and hoping the right candidates find it is not a diversity hiring strategy. Employers come to WomenAtWork.ca because they need a more direct route to qualified women candidates, and because the compliance and reporting pressure around gender representation in Canada is real and growing.
Employment Equity Act context
Federally regulated employers, and increasingly provincial public-sector employers and large private organizations bidding on federal contracts, operate under employment equity obligations that require them to track and report on the representation of women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities in their workforce. Meeting those obligations is not just a reporting exercise. It requires an actual hiring pipeline that reaches qualified women candidates, which is exactly the gap WomenAtWork.ca is built to fill.
Reaching qualified candidates, not just applicants
Posting on a platform where every job seeker has opted in specifically because they are looking for employers focused on women's career advancement changes the quality of who applies. Employers are not sorting through a general applicant pool hoping to find diversity; they are reaching a self-selected audience that already matches the hiring goal.
Compliance and sourcing support
Beyond the posting itself, WomenAtWork.ca is built to support the practical side of employment equity sourcing: categorized postings by sector, visibility into return-to-work and trades pipelines, and a platform history that HR teams can point to as part of a documented, good-faith recruitment effort.
Employers ready to post a role or review pricing can get started at WomenAtWork.ca for employers.
Provincial pages and how to navigate them
Canada's labour market is regional, and hiring patterns in Alberta's energy sector look nothing like hiring patterns in Ontario's financial services corridor or Quebec's manufacturing base. WomenAtWork.ca reflects that by organizing postings with provincial context rather than treating the country as a single undifferentiated market.
Finding roles by region
When you browse the platform, postings are tagged by province so you can filter down to opportunities in your own labour market rather than scrolling through listings for cities you have no intention of relocating to. This matters most in provinces with concentrated industries, where the right employer connections are often clustered in a handful of sectors.
Why regional context matters for employers too
For employers, the provincial structure also matters. A federally regulated employer hiring in multiple provinces can use the platform to target postings by region, which is useful when a role has location-specific licensing or trade certification requirements that vary across Canada.
Understanding the Employment Equity Act framework
The Employment Equity Act is the backbone of formal diversity hiring in federally regulated Canadian workplaces, and understanding its basic shape helps explain why a platform like WomenAtWork.ca exists in the first place.
Designated groups under the Act
The Act identifies four designated groups whose workforce representation federally regulated employers must track: women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities. Employers covered by the Act are required to conduct workforce analysis, set numerical goals where underrepresentation exists, and report progress.
What this means for hiring practices
In practice, this means covered employers cannot treat gender-diverse hiring as optional or aspirational. It is built into their reporting obligations, which is why a channel like WomenAtWork.ca, aimed squarely at connecting these employers with qualified women candidates, fills a functional need rather than a symbolic one. For job seekers, this context is worth knowing: an employer posting on WomenAtWork.ca is very often doing so because the hire supports a formal, tracked commitment, not just a marketing message.
Career advancement resources for women
Getting hired is only the first step. WomenAtWork.ca is also positioned as a resource for the career stages that follow, particularly the two moments that tend to be hardest to navigate alone.
Returning to work after a career break
Whether the break was for parental leave, caregiving, illness, or a planned pause, returning to the workforce after time away is one of the most common friction points for Canadian women. Employers listed on the platform who specifically welcome returning candidates tend to have thought through onboarding ramp-up, flexible early scheduling, and updated skills training, which removes some of the burden of proving yourself twice.
Moving into trades and STEM fields
For women considering a shift into a skilled trade or a technical field for the first time, the biggest obstacle is often simply not knowing which employers will take the transition seriously. Postings in the trades and STEM pipeline on WomenAtWork.ca come from employers who have already built out mentorship structures for women entering these fields, which shortens the path from interest to a real offer.
FAQ
What is WomenAtWork.ca?
WomenAtWork.ca is a Canadian job board that connects women job seekers with employers actively hiring for gender diversity, including federally regulated employers, employers offering return-to-work roles, and trades and STEM employers with women-focused hiring programs.
Is WomenAtWork.ca only for job seekers, or can employers use it too?
Both. Job seekers can browse and apply to postings across provinces and industries, and employers can post roles and review pricing to reach a targeted pool of qualified women candidates.
Do I need previous experience to apply to trades or STEM postings on the platform?
It depends on the specific posting. Many employers listed under the trades and STEM pipeline have entry points for candidates transitioning into the field, including apprenticeship-adjacent roles, so it is worth reading individual postings closely rather than assuming a technical background is required.
What does "federally regulated employer" mean?
It refers to organizations operating in sectors regulated by the federal government, such as banking, telecommunications, and interprovincial transportation, which fall under the Employment Equity Act and have formal obligations to track and report on workforce representation of women and other designated groups.
How does WomenAtWork.ca support women returning to work after a career break?
The platform includes a dedicated category of return-to-work postings from employers who explicitly welcome candidates re-entering the workforce after parental leave, caregiving, or another extended absence, and who have generally structured onboarding to support that transition.
How do employers get started posting on WomenAtWork.ca?
Employers can review pricing and post a role directly at WomenAtWork.ca's employer page, where they can also learn more about reaching qualified women candidates across federally regulated, trades, STEM, and return-to-work hiring categories.
Whether you are hiring or job hunting, WomenAtWork.ca serves both sides of the market. Employers can review pricing and post a role at WomenAtWork.ca for employers. Job seekers can browse openings and create a profile at WomenAtWork.ca for job seekers.