Women in Construction Week is run by the National Association of Women in Construction each March, alongside Women's History Month. WIC Week 2026 ran 1–7 March under the theme Level Up. Build Strong. The 2027 dates fall in the first half of March; NAWIC confirms them and the theme a few months out, so check nawic.org/wic-week before you print anything with a date on it.
This guide is for whoever ends up organizing it — a safety manager, an HR lead, a chapter officer, a superintendent who volunteered in a meeting and now owns it.
It is written from a specific point of view: WIC Week is judged by the tradeswomen on the crew, not by the people running it. A week that produces a LinkedIn post and a box of leftover shirts is worse than doing nothing, because everyone can tell the difference.
Start twelve weeks out, not three
The compressed timeline is the reason most WIC Weeks end up as a catered lunch and a photo.
Working backwards from the first week of March:
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 12 weeks out (early December) | Decide what the week is for. Recognition? Recruitment? Retention? Fixing something concrete? Pick one. |
| 10 weeks out | Ask the women on your crew what they want. Not a survey to the whole company — a conversation with the six to twenty people this is actually about. |
| 8 weeks out | Lock the budget. Order merchandise. Made-to-order production plus shipping needs four to six weeks with margin. |
| 6 weeks out | Book any external speaker or partner chapter. Confirm site access and schedules. |
| 4 weeks out | Proof approved by someone who works in the trade. Merchandise into production. |
| 2 weeks out | Merchandise received and sized. Schedule published so night shift and remote sites are not left out. |
| Week of | Run it. |
| 1 week after | Send what changed, not what happened. |
The single most common failure is starting at three weeks and discovering that custom apparel does not arrive in ten days.
Decide what it is for
Four different weeks, four different plans. Trying to do all four produces a week that does none.
Recognition. The people already on your crew. Smallest budget, highest return, easiest to get wrong by making it generic. Recognition means naming individuals and what they did, not congratulating a demographic.
Recruitment. Site tours for apprenticeship programs, high schools, pre-apprenticeship organizations. Highest long-term value, most logistics.
Retention. Use the week to fix something the women on the crew have already told you is broken. PPE sizing is the most common one, and it is the one with actual research behind it — surveys consistently find most tradeswomen working in equipment that does not fit (Construction Dive). If you announce during WIC Week that you have added women's sizing to the standard PPE order, you have done more than any lunch.
Visibility. Public-facing. Legitimate, but only if one of the other three is also happening. Visibility alone is the version everyone can smell.
The merchandise
Shirts are the default and they are fine — if they are good. Here is what separates a shirt people wear from a shirt that becomes a rag.
Design
Do not print a pink hard hat. Do not print a flexing bicep. Do not print "Strong Women Build Strong Things" in a script font. The audience for this week has seen all three on every promotional item since 2015.
What works is specific and unornamented: the trades represented on your crew, named in their own vocabulary. The year. Optionally the project. Something that reads as documentation rather than as a slogan.
Get one tradeswoman to look at the proof before it prints. One. It takes four minutes and it is the highest-return step in this entire guide. An office-approved design reads as office-approved to everyone on the tools.
Blanks
- Heavyweight, garment-dyed. 6 oz minimum. The cheap promotional blank is instantly recognizable and it communicates exactly what you spent.
- Real size range, including the sizes people actually wear. Ordering S–XL and then apologizing is a bad look. Order through 3XL.
- Ask about cut. Some crews want women's cut, some want unisex, and most want to choose. Offering both costs nothing extra when the items are made to order.
- Colors that work on site. Earth tones and black. Whatever your safety color policy allows.
Quantity
Order for the people, not for the storeroom. Made-to-order production means you do not need to over-order against a minimum, and leftover boxes of unworn shirts are the single most visible sign that the week was for someone else.
If you are pricing this: our crew bookings start at twelve pieces with tiered pricing and a proof before anything goes into production, and everything is produced after the order rather than held as stock.
Beyond shirts
- Embroidered crewneck or hoodie for a smaller group — reads as an actual gift rather than a uniform.
- Insulated tumbler with a name on it. Personalization is what makes it a gift. Consistently the highest-kept item in this category.
- Sticker sets for gang boxes and lunch boxes. Cheap, genuinely liked. Not for hard hat shells unless your policy and the hat manufacturer both allow it.
Our full breakdown of what gets kept versus what gets left in the truck is in Gifts for Women in the Trades That Aren't Pink Hard Hats.
A week that is worth the time
A schedule that has worked, adaptable to a crew of eight or eight hundred:
Monday — name people. Not a demographic. Individual tradeswomen, their trade, their year, one specific thing they did. Read out at the morning huddle, posted where the crew actually looks. Merchandise handed out here, not at the end.
Tuesday — a tools day. A skills session run by a tradeswoman on your crew, for anyone. The point is the reversal: she teaches, everyone attends. This does more for how she is read on that jobsite than any speech.
Wednesday — the fix. Announce the concrete thing. PPE sizing added to the standard order. A changing facility. A schedule change. Whatever came out of the conversation ten weeks ago.
Thursday — the pipeline. A site tour for a pre-apprenticeship program or a local high school. Have apprentices run it, not managers.
Friday — the chapter. Connect the crew to the local NAWIC chapter or tradeswomen's organization. Cover the first year of membership for anyone who wants it. This is the cheapest retention spend available.
Night shift and remote sites get the same thing, on their schedule. Missing them is noticed immediately.
The follow-up that matters
One week after: send what changed, not what happened. Two sentences. "We added women's sizing to the standard PPE order. Twelve people toured the site from the pre-apprenticeship program and four applied."
A photo gallery with no changes attached is how a week becomes a running joke by the following March.
Budget reality
For a crew of twenty, a week that is actually worth doing costs roughly:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Apparel — heavyweight tee, one design, made to order | $28–34 per person |
| One upgraded item for a smaller recognition group | $50–70 each |
| Catering for two days | $15–25 per person per day |
| Chapter memberships | $150–200 per person, annual |
| Site tour logistics | Mostly time |
The PPE sizing fix usually costs less than the catering, and it is the only line item anyone remembers in July.
WORKWORTH produces trade-specific apparel for women in the skilled trades, made to order in the US. If you are organizing a WIC Week and want a proof reviewed by someone who works in the trade before you commit, that is included with [crew bookings](/bulk) — ask for it.