Dear Dr. Nowrouzi-Kia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please kindly address each comment from reviewer one. The context influencing the selection of electrical workers and not any other worker needs justification and the provision of background to situate the study in other similar work in the gender inclusivity space.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 29 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mwazvita TB Dalu, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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“ZS received financial support from the Ontario Electrical League (https://www.oel.org/). Grant number is not applicable. The Ontario Electrical League contributed to the study conceptualization, recruitment, and data collection.”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I think this is likely very interesting data with promise for the future. That said, the current work is in need of substantial revisions prior to publication. The majority of my comments are contained in the attached document. Broadly speaking, I feel the article needs to be substantially developed. This includes additional discussion of the existing literature, the methodology used, the contents of the interviews, and the narrative stories developed. I do not think this is an insurmountable task, and, hopefully is not one that will require additional interviews to generate additional data. That said, I also do not feel as if minor revisions would be sufficient. As the article stands, it feels like a loosely connected collection of quotes from interviewees, which are then used to support conclusions that are not fully supported by what is presented. It feels like a lot of the interview data is hidden from the reader, and the discussion and conclusions are presented in somewhat of a "trust me, this is supported by the interviews" kind of way. I am not doubting the interviews do support the conclusions, but as a reader I need to see it.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-25-55981.docx

Dear Dr. Nowrouzi-Kia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 25 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mwazvita TB Dalu, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Thank you for a much improved submission. Please kindly address these few comments before we finalise the decision.

Methods

Add more detail on recruitment. How were they approached? Which method of modification of sampling? What was the study population? How many participants were approached and what was the response rate?

Data collection

Thank you for the appendix, please add detail to the structure and selection of the interview questions, and the justification behind this choice as it relates to the study aim.

Data analysis

Much improved, thank you. Please add a critical science approach by adding a reflexive note on the positionality of the two researchers involved in the narrative writing to make readers aware of any positional biases or otherwise.

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

A qualitative study of lived experiences of underrepresented electrical workers using creative non-fiction

PONE-D-25-55981R2

Dear Dr. Nowrouzi-Kia,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Mwazvita TB Dalu, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: