Kit McMahon doesn’t hesitate when asked to describe what drives her. “I’m a feminist—it’s the core of my value and belief system,” she says simply. “And I’m optimistic, which is a daily act of defiance.”
Both clear-eyed about the scale of the problem and unwavering in her belief that change is possible, that combination has shaped a career spanning education, training, and gender-equity advocacy. Today, Kit sits on the Board of Tradeswomen Australia (TWA), serves as Convenor for Women in Adult and Vocational Education, Co-Chair of ICOS (Independent Collective of Survivors), and CEO of WHISE (Women’s Health in the South East). A single thread binds it all. “All the work is about equality, and addressing intersectional gender inequity.”
What she is most proud of professionally is a particular kind of transformation: bringing together people and organisations who initially saw themselves as competitors, and helping them recognise they had more to gain through collaboration. “When groups working toward equity can share the journey—combining their resources, knowledge, and influence—they create far greater impact than any could achieve alone,” she says. “That shift from competition to collective action for a better world is what I openly lay claim to and find most meaningful in my work.”
It’s a philosophy that shapes how she thinks about leadership itself. For Kit, a leader doesn’t look like any one particular type of person.
“The best leaders deeply know they’re imperfect—that they’re not necessarily the smartest person in the room—but they step in anyway and decide to be accountable.”
She is candid about her reservations with conventional leadership training, which she finds “strangely patriarchal and colonial.” What actually works, she argues, is deeply conversational learning drawn from real experience; frameworks are useful, but only once you’ve made them your own.
The barriers that have always been there
When it comes to what’s keeping women out of trades, Kit doesn’t mince words.
“It’s the same as it has ever been: systemic barriers rooted in how we humans tend to react when someone looks different, loves differently, has different abilities, different skin colour, an accent, is Aboriginal—and especially when someone embodies multiple differences at once.”
Over time, these attitudes have quietly embedded themselves into everything: policies, procedures, legislation, workplace design, education structures. The assumption that work and learning are inherently gendered sits at the heart of it all, flowing through into inadequate facilities, workplace harassment, lack of childcare, inflexible hours, and active resistance to women on site.
With Australia facing acute skills shortages in construction, clean energy, and infrastructure, she is blunt about the cost. “Why would you cut off one half of your country’s potential?” Fixing it isn’t a matter of installing women’s toilets and calling it done. “We spend money without question training people to handle high voltage powerlines safely—yet somehow the skills to manage the high voltage impact of intergenerational inequity aren’t considered as important.” Real culture change, she says, requires genuine investment, expert guidance, and the patience to understand it takes time.
Building a pipeline that actually works
The women who have already made it into trades mid-career leave Kit genuinely awestruck. “I have been known to say that they could ‘run the country,’” she laughs. But she’s equally clear about what their success reveals: right now, navigating that transition requires women to be exceptional, assembling almost single-handedly an alignment of personal resilience, financial support, safe workplaces, and supportive networks that most men never have to think about.
That’s exactly what TWA is working to change. Central to the organisation’s next strategic plan is a focus on retention over commencement, because currently seven out of ten women don’t finish their apprenticeships. “Every woman retained becomes a role model who helps dismantle the perception that trades are ‘not for women,’” Kit says. “The next five to ten years are about creating a sustainable cycle where retention fuels representation, representation drives equity, and equity reshapes systems.”
With Victoria set to host the major international conference Women Deliver later in 2026, and Kit recently commencing a PhD exploring inequity in Australia’s VET system, the momentum feels real. Through it all, her outlook stays the same.
“I genuinely believe most people want to do the right thing—they just need to be given the chance to. Which is hard in a world that prefers a particular way of working, living, and playing for a particular type of person.”
Changing that preference, one coalition at a time, is the work she’s committed to.
