IWPR Research News Roundup – January 2019

RESEARCH MAKING THE NEWS 

The Class of 2019 are More Likely to be Older and Have Children 

Jillian Berman |  | February 2019

Like 40% of students who enter college, life got in the way of Shawnte’ Cain completing her degree. Cain, 39, began her college career in 1997 at Wayne State University in Detroit. She successfully made it through three years at the school, but just as she could see her degree on the horizon, her grandmother fell ill. School fell by the wayside as Cain cared for her and her own financial obligations rose.

Citing: Completing College – National 2018 – by NSC Research Center, December, 2018

Read the Full Article | Tweet this | Download PDF

How the 1% Profit Off of Racial Economic Inequality

Derick Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins |  | January 2019

As people of color make up a larger share of the diversifying US population, that persistent racial wealth divide is bringing down America’s median wealth. But while wealth at the middle falters, it’s soaring at the top. In other words, the 1% are profiting off ongoing racial economic inequality. All this is happening against a backdrop of seemingly good economic news. Black and Latino unemployment rates reached historic lows in 2018, and median income has slowly inched up for all households in the last few years

Citing: Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Radical Wealth Divide at Institute for Policy Studies, Jan, 2019

Read the Full Article | Tweet This | Download PDF

The Global Gender Gap will Take More Than 100 Years to Close: Here Are the Countries with the Highest and Lowest Gender Gap around the World

Will Martin and Skye Gould |  | January 2019

It will take more than 200 years for economic gender equality to emerge, and 108 years to completely close the global gender gap across politics, health, education, according to the latest report from the World Economic Forum. The WEF’s annual Global Gender Gap Report compares attitudes towards gender equality around the world. It considered factors such as educational opportunities available to each gender, life expectancy, literacy rates, the number of women in professional positions, and in positions of power in each country.

Citing: The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 at World Economic Forum, Dec, 2018

Read the Full Article | Tweet This | Download PDF

Millennial Women Are Winning the Jobs Recovery as Men Struggle

Jeanna Smialek |  | January 2019

Her case is far from unique. The share of 25- to 34-year-old women who are employed or looking has staged a sharp turnaround since 2016. The group since December 2015 has accounted for 86 percent of growth in the workforce of prime-working-age women, who are 25- to 54-years-old, and for 46 percent of gains in the prime-age labor pool as a whole.

Citing: Current Employment Statistics Highlights by Analysts of the National Estimates Branch Current Employment Statistic Survey at U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan 2019

Read the Full Article | Tweet This | Download PDF

 

NEW RESEARCH REPORTS

The Number of Unionized U.S Workers Edged Lower to the 16.4 Million in 2018

Heidi Shierholz | Economic Policy Institute | January 2019

New data on union membership from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday showed 16.38 million unionized workers in 2018, down from 16.44 million in 2017. However, because employment of wage and salary workers grew by 1.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, the share of workers represented by a union declined by a more significant amount, from 11.9 percent to 11.7 percent.

Download PDF | Tweet this

Gender in the Labor Market: the Role of Equal Opportunity and Family- Friendly Policies

Elizabeth L. Doran, Ann P. Bartel, and Jane Waldfogel | National Bureau of Economic Research | December 2018

Although the gender wage gap in the U.S. has narrowed, women’s career trajectories diverge from men’s after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we find that women are less likely than men to have access to any employer-provided paid leave and this differential is entirely explained by part-time status. Using the NLSY97, we find that young women are more likely to have access to specifically designated paid parental leave, even in part-time jobs. Both datasets show insignificant gender differentials in access to employer-subsidized child care and access to scheduling flexibility. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.

Download PDF | Tweet This

Female Earnings Inequality: The Changing Role of Family Characteristics on the Extensive and Intensive Margins

David Card & Dean R. Hyslop | National Bureau of Economic Research | December 2018

Although women make up nearly half the U.S. workforce, most studies of earnings inequality focus on men. This is at least in part because of the complexity of modeling both the decision to work (i.e., the extensive margin) and the level of earnings conditional on work (the intensive margin). In this paper we document a series of descriptive facts about female earnings inequality using data for three cohorts in the PSID. We show that inequality in annual earnings of women fell sharply between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, with a particularly large decline in the extensive margin component. We then fit earnings-generating models that incorporate both intensive- and extensive-margin dynamics to data for the three cohorts. Our models suggest that over 80% of the decline in female earnings inequality can be attributed to a weakening of the link between family-based factors (including the number of children of different ages and the presence and incomes of partners) and the intensive and extensive margins of earnings determination.

Download PDF | Tweet This

Gender Equality and Poverty Are Intrinsically Linked

Rense Nieuwenhuis, Teresa Munzi, Jorg Neugschwender, Heba Omar, & Flaviana Palmisano | UN Women | December 2018

This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to explicitly recognize that gender, poverty, and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the paper addresses two sets of questions: First, how do intra-family resource allocation and distribution patterns both reflect and shape gender inequalities in power and well-being, and what factors—including policy-related ones—can mitigate these inequalities? Second, how do families as gendered institutions contribute to broader socio-economic inequalities, and what can be done to reduce/reverse these inequalities? Using data from the LIS Database, this paper shows considerable differences among 42 countries with respect to how likely women were to have their own income. The period from 2000 to 2010/2014 saw increasing rates of own incomes as well as women’s incomes constituting larger shares in total household income. A key finding is that, in countries where many women have an income of their own, relative poverty rates are lower.

Download PDF  | Tweet This

Big Business Bias: Employment Discrimination and Sexual Harassment at Large Corporations

Philip Mattera | GoodJobsFirst | January 2019

Most of the suits ended in confidential settlements. Looking only at cases with disclosed verdicts or settlements, 189 Fortune 500 companies have paid $1.9 billion in penalties: $356 million in 238 cases resolved by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, $65 million in 85 cases handled by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and $1.5 billion in 176 private lawsuits. Adding in cases against corporations from the rest of the Fortune 1000, the Fortune Global 500 and the Forbes list of America’s Largest Private companies brings the total of disclosed penalties to $2.7 billion, including $588 million from 329 EEOC actions, $81 million from 117 OFCCP cases, and $2 billion from 234 private lawsuits.

Download PDF | Tweet This

Americans’ Perspectives on New Retirement Realities and the Longevity Bonus.

Merrill Lynch Bank of American Corporation | January 2019

Age Wave, in partnership with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, undertook nine landmark studies focused on all aspects of life in retirement. To complete this body of work, the Age Wave team reviewed thousands of papers, reports and datasets, conducted over 140 expert interviews and 43 focus groups, surveyed 50,000+ respondents, and put in 70,000+ collective work hours.

Download PDF | Tweet This

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to and Use of Paid Family and Medical Leave: Evidence from Four Nationally Representative Datasets

Ann P. Bartel et al. | Monthly Labor Review | January 2019

Statistics on overall access to and use of various types of paid family and medical leave for the U.S. workforce are widely available. However, much less is known about disparities in paid-leave access and use by race and ethnicity. This article examines this question, using data from four nationally representative surveys—the American Time Use Survey Leave Module, the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, the National Study of the Changing Workforce, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The article’s most consistent finding is that Hispanic workers have lower rates of paid-leave access and use than their White non-Hispanic counterparts.

Download PDF | Tweet This

Happy Labor Day from IWPR!

Dear IWPR Supporters and Colleagues,

Today we celebrate Labor Day. As we enjoy the last days of summer, I would like to take a moment to remember the day’s true meaning—a time to honor the contributions workers have made to strengthen the well-being of our country, the struggle for improved pay and working conditions, and the fight that our value be recognized.

As Chair of the Board for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), I’m proud to be a part of this organization and the important role we play in this on-going effort to improve working conditions and economic security for working families. Women play an essential role in the continued strength and prosperity of this country.

Early this summer, IWPR and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) released The Status of Black Women in the United States. The report provides critical data to identify the barriers that Black women face in the workplace and to suggest investments, programs, and public policies that can lead to positive changes for Black women and their families. At the June event, “From Persistence to Power: Facts, Truth, & Equality for Women,” IWPR collaborated with Spelman College and the Wellesley Centers for Women to discuss many of the key-findings for the report. You can watch the entire event online. To read the key-findings and for more in-depth information, you can find the full report and the Executive Summary on IWPR’s website.

IWPR’s work to promote equal pay for women is important to ending poverty and improving income security for families. IWPR researchers estimate that it will take until 2059 for women to finally reach equal pay (2056 for White women, 2124 for Black women, and 2248 for Hispanic women). Black women participate in the labor force at higher rates than White, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American women, with 62.2 percent of Black women in the workforce. With the support of unions, Black women earn 32 percent more than their nonunionized counterparts.

Closing the gender wage gap would increase women’s earnings and add billions of dollars in wage and salary income to each state’s economy and $512.6 billion to the national economy. In The Economic Impact of Equal Pay by State, IWPR takes an in-depth look at the best and worst states for women workers. In the briefing paper, The Impact of Equal Pay on Poverty and the Economy, the increasingly important impact of pay equality is examined. Approximately 25.8 million children in the United States would benefit from the increased earnings of their mothers with equal pay.

The value women workers bring to the economy and the positive changes they make to our country inspire IWPR to continue to produce the reliable research that informs and promotes effective policy. At this time in our country, facts have come under attack in many ways and are challenged like never before. The news media rely on IWPR to provide them with the information necessary to tell the stories and struggles of women across the country. With your support, we can continue to fight back against misinformation and allow the media, policymakers, activists, and supporters like you to see the research for themselves.

I encourage you to take a moment today to contemplate the past, present, and future of working women in this country and how to best support their continuing achievements and struggles. As the Chair of the Board of IWPR, I ask for your support. Please make a donation to the Institute today in honor of a hard-working woman in your life.

 

 

Lorretta Johnson, Chair, IWPR Board of Directors
Secretary-Treasurer, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO

 

 

Socioeconomic Supports in Job Training Programs: How You Can Help Determine their Value

This post originally appeared in the August/September 2015 edition of NAWDP Advantage, the newsletter of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals. September is designated as Workforce Development Month.

---

By Rachel Linn, Communications Associate, and Cynthia Hess, Study Director

Job training can provide an entry into family-sustaining jobs and careers, yet many adults face economic, scheduling, and other challenges that make it difficult for them to enroll and succeed in job training programs. Socioeconomic supports—or wraparound services, such as child care assistance, access to public benefits, and transportation or housing assistance—can help adults, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities, to complete job training programs that will ultimately improve their economic standing.

Socioeconomic supports, as a route to job training access and success, are especially important for women, who increasingly serve as breadwinners for their families, but still face a pay gap. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that as of 2013, women were the primary or co-breadwinner in half of families with children under age 18 in the United States — yet women continue to earn less, and experience higher poverty than comparable men.

Evaluation research points to the importance of socioeconomic support services for job training completion and success. An evaluation of nine sectoral programs found that supportive services were often necessary to help participants complete job training and obtain jobs. In particular, Project QUEST, a community-based workforce development program in San Antonio, had higher completion rates than other training programs of similar duration, which the evaluator attributed to the strong support system that Project QUEST provides. An evaluation of the outcomes of participants in three job training programs in Maryland, Missouri, and New Mexico that implement an approach developed by the Center for Working Families (which bundles core services for participants) found that integrated service delivery was associated with the completion of job training or degree programs, as well as job retention and advancement. In all of the programs, the highest achievers were more likely to have received wraparound services, compared with all other participants.

Despite anecdotal evidence and some studies pointing to the importance of wraparound supports for job training participants, little is known about how many job training programs offer supports of different types and which supports best meet the needs of low-income women, who typically have more caregiving responsibilities than comparable men. IWPR recently launched a research initiative to address this gap. “Socioeconomic Supports and Women’s Job Training Success,” seeks to improve knowledge about the landscape of socioeconomic support provision within the U.S. workforce development system and stimulate national dialogue about the importance of these supports in promoting job training success.

Funded by the Walmart Foundation, the initiative will use a variety of research methods—including a literature review, expert interviews, a promising practices study, and online surveys of administrators and participants from job training programs—to gather and examine information on the prevalence of socioeconomic supports in job training programs, their perceived effectiveness, and promising practices in service support delivery. The project will produce a series of research products and hold outreach activities to promote dialogue among program leaders, advocates, policymakers, and workforce development researchers.

The project aims to provide information that can help programs, and the workforce development system as a whole, effectively target their investments in socioeconomic supports. To help with this study, IWPR is seeking input from professionals in the field as well as job training participants. Please contact Rachel Linn if you would like to participate in a survey, as a part of this national study, or have suggestions for programs that are effectively providing socioeconomic supports.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

Research News Roundup: July 2015

The Research News Roundup (RNR) is prepared monthly by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). Articles contained in each edition of the RNR address research on women’s issues and topics of interest to women and their families. To receive the RNR by email, subscribe or update your subscription settings.

RESEARCH MAKING THE NEWS

Black Children are Nearly Four Times as Likely as White Children to Live in Poverty, Report Says

By Mark Berman | Washington Post | 7.14.2015

“Black children were nearly four times as likely as white or Asian children to be living in poverty in 2013, according a new Pew Research Center report analyzing Census Bureau data. The poverty rate fell among Hispanic, white and Asian children in 2013, yet even as this rate declined for them, it remained the same for black children. About four in 10 black children were living in poverty in 2013, compared to about three in 10 Hispanic children and one in 10 white or Asian children. Black and Hispanic children are acutely over-represented in terms of child poverty.”

Citing: Black Child Poverty Rate Holds Steady, Even as Other Groups See Declines, by Eileen Patten and Jens Manuel Krogstad, Pew Research Center

Read Full Article | Download PDF

More Than 95% of Women Who Get an Abortion Don’t Regret Their Decision, Even Three Years Later

By Ed Cara | Medical Daily | 7.13.2015

“Fighting back against long-held stereotypes about the inherent shame and grief that supposedly comes with obtaining an abortion, a study published in PLOS-One last week has found that 95 percent of women surveyed felt their abortion was the right choice to make, even when reflecting back on the decision over three years later… ‘Women in this study overwhelmingly felt that the decision was the right one for them: at all time points over three years, 95 percent of participants reported abortion was the right decision, with the typical participant having a greater than 99 percent chance of reporting the abortion decision was right for her,’ the authors concluded. ‘Women also experienced reduced emotional intensity over time: the feelings of relief and happiness experienced shortly after the abortion tended to subside, as did negative emotions. Notably, we found no differences in emotional trajectories or decision rightness between women having earlier versus later procedures.’”

Citing: Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States: A Longitudinal Study, by Corinne H. Rocca, Katrina Kimport , Sarah C. M. Roberts , Heather Gould, John Neuhaus, Diana G. Foster, PLOS-One

Read Full Article | Download PDF

Black Girls Matter: For Too Long, the Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline has Gone Unchecked

By Teresa C. Younger | Huffington Post | 7.10.2015

“The report tells the story of how sexual abuse–which begins for many girls in the juvenile justice system between ages five to seven–directly leads to their imprisonment. Up to 80 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system have been sexually abused. Black girls who have been sexually abused and their Native American and Latina sisters–no matter how young–are not seen as victims. As the report explains, the justice system is plagued with a bias of race, class and gender that results in these young women and girls being seen as perpetrators. Too often the initial choice to punish and incarcerate an abused girl sets in motion a vicious cycle of abuse and imprisonment that continues throughout her life. In fact, a girl with a history of sexual abuse is five times more likely to be re-arrested once released.”

Citing: The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story, by Malika Saada Saar, Rebecca Epstein, Lindsay Rosenthal, and Yasmin Vafa, Human Rights Project for Girls, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, and Ms. Foundation for Women

Read Full Article | Download PDF

Women Less Likely to be Shown Ads for High-Paid Jobs on Google, Study Shows

By Samuel Gibbs | The Guardian | 7.08.2015

“Female job seekers are much less likely to be shown adverts on Google for highly paid jobs than men, researchers have found. The team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon built an automated testing rig called AdFisher that pretended to be a series of male and female job seekers. Their 17,370 fake profiles only visited jobseeker sites and were shown 600,000 adverts which the team tracked and analysed. The authors of the study wrote: ‘In particular, we found that males were shown ads encouraging the seeking of coaching services for high paying jobs more than females.’ One experiment showed that Google displayed adverts for a career coaching service for ‘$200k+’ executive jobs 1,852 times to the male group and only 318 times to the female group.”

Citing: Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice, and Discrimination, by Amit Datta, Michael Carl Tschantz, and Anupam Datta, Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Read Full Article | Download PDF

Colorado’s Effort Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success

By Sabrina Tavernise | The New York Times | 7.05.2015

Citing: Reducing Unintended Teen Pregnancy in Colorado, by Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

“Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them? They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.”

Read Full Article | Download PDF

---

NEW RESEARCH REPORTS
Gender, Urbanization, and Democratic Governance

By Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the National Democratic Institute | Institute for Women’s Policy Research | June 2015

With two-thirds of the world’s population predicted to live in urban areas by the year 2050, the global landscape is changing rapidly. Urbanization brings with it numerous benefits, but the growing inequality between and within cities has complicated implications for urban residents, especially for those that have been historically marginalized. For women in particular, accessing the increased social, economic, and political opportunities ostensibly available to them in cities can be, in reality, incredibly difficult to take advantage of.

Download PDF

Raising the Minimum Wage to $12 by 2020 Would Lift Wages for 35 Million American Workers

By David Cooper | Economic Policy Institute | July 2015

“Decades of infrequent and inadequate adjustment to the federal minimum wage have left today’s low-wage workers earning significantly less than their counterparts 50 years ago. Raising the federal minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020 would lift wages for one-quarter of American workers and help restore the minimum wage’s role as a labor standard that ensures work is a means to escape poverty, according to EPI economic analyst David Cooper. In Raising the Minimum Wage to $12 by 2020 Would Lift Wages for 35 Million American Workers, Cooper analyzes the impact of the Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Robert ‘Bobby’ Scott’s (D-VA) Raise the Wage Act of 2015, which proposes raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 and gradually eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers.”

Download PDF

Raising the Future: Parenting Practices Among Immigrant Mothers

By Julia Gelatt, H. Elizabeth Peters, Heather Koball, and William Monson | Urban Institute | June 2015

To understand how children of immigrants are faring in the United States, it is important to examine contextual factors. In this paper, we analyze family influences; specifically, differences in parenting among immigrant mothers with different national origins, focusing on mothers from Mexico, other Latin American countries, China, and other Asian countries. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we look at the economic, work, social support, and health contexts in which immigrant families are situated, and at differences in parenting practices. We then explore whether differences in contexts mediate the parenting differences our analyses reveal.

Download PDF

A Policy Agenda for Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

By Center for Global Policy Solutions | Center for Global Policy Solutions | June 2015

“The 200 members of the Experts of Color Network released ‘A Policy Agenda for Closing the Racial Wealth Gap’ today. Black and Latino families hold 6 and 7 cents respectively for every dollar of wealth held by white families. These wide-ranging policies aim to remove structural barriers preventing families of color from attaining economic stability for themselves and future generations. The policies are grouped in seven categories: employment, financial services, entrepreneurship, housing, education, tax policy, and retirement. The document also highlights the importance of targeting policies to address the needs of those most disadvantaged and, in the process, provide positive race-specific results.”

Download PDF

Child Care in America: The 2015 State Fact Sheets

By Child Care Aware of America | Child Care Aware of America | June 2015

“To remain competitive in the 21st-century global economy, the United States must recognize the value of child care as an investment in early childhood education and as a support system for working families. Child Care in America: 2015 State Fact Sheets provides important data to better understand America’s working families and the circumstances they face. As such, it is a critical tool for child care advocates, policymakers and program administrators to guide decision-making about child care programs and costs.”

Download PDF

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

In Memoriam: Mariam K. Chamberlain, 1918–2013

By Jennifer Clark

Dr. Mariam K. Chamberlain, a founding member of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the founding president of the National Council for Research on Women, was the driving force behind the cultivation and sustainability of the women’s studies field of academic research. She is the namesake of IWPR’s prestigious Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship for Women in Public Policy, which trains young women for successful careers in research. Throughout her life, Dr. Chamberlain fought discrimination, established new roles for women, and championed the economic analysis of women’s issues. She passed away on April 2, 2013, at 94, just a few weeks shy of her 95^th birthday, following complications from heart surgery.

A Lifetime of Lifting Up Women’s Voices in Academia and Research

The daughter of Armenian immigrants, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain was born and raised in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a working class suburb of Boston. Interest in the prevailing conditions of the depression led her to economics. She attended Radcliffe College on a scholarship and worked as a research assistant in the summers for Wassily Leontief, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics. During World War II, she worked at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), on the staff of a “brain trust” of economists and other social scientists assembled by General William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan to aid in the war effort. As part of the research and analysis branch, she worked on estimates of enemy, military, and industrial strength.

In 1950, Mariam Chamberlain received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, making her one of the few women of her generation to earn a Ph.D. in the field. In 1956, Dr. Chamberlain joined the Ford Foundation, where she served as a program officer in Economic Development and Administation, and then Education and Public Policy, until 1981. While at Ford, she spearheaded the funding of the academic women’s research and women’s studies movement; she is said to have provided nearly $10 million in support of new feminist initiatives. Her projects fostered a new analysis of women’s position in society, expanded women’s choices in the university, and supported the development of equality in law. She played a major role in building the academic infrastructure necessary to better understand women’s experiences and inform improved policies for women. In short, she paved the way for organizations like IWPR to thrive, and stocked the research pipeline with skilled women and men who have made important contributions to the study of women and public policy.

Economics and the elimination of discrimination against women around the world remained the heart of her wide-ranging activities. After leaving the Ford Foundation in 1982, she headed the Task Force on Women in Higher Education at the Russell Sage Foundation. The Task Force’s work culminated in a published volume, Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects. Before leaving Ford, she had funded an initial meeting of a group of women’s research centers. That meeting established the National Council for Research on Women, which unanimously elected her its first president. She served in that role until 1989, after which she continued to go into the office every day as Founding President and Resident Scholar.

Mariam K. Chamberlain (left) with Angela Carlberg, the 2007-2008 Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow (center) and Susan McGee Bailey (bottom right) of the Wellesley Centers for Women, at Dr. Chamberlain’s 90th birthday bash in New York City in 2008.

A Legacy of Training the Next Generation of Women Policy Researchers

IWPR owes much to Dr. Chamberlain. In 1987, Dr. Heidi Hartmann founded IWPR out of a need for comprehensive, women-focused, policy-oriented research. Dr. Chamberlain, who dedicated her career to lifting up women’s voices in academia, recognized the importance of a policy research institute centered on women, grounded by social science methodology, economics, and rigorous data analysis. Applying academic research to inform better policies for women was a natural extension of Dr. Chamberlain’s work, and she became a founding member of IWPR and served on its Board of Directors for nearly 20 years.

IWPR endowed the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship in Women and Public Policy to recognize the legacy of Dr. Chamberlain’s tireless efforts to open doors for the women researchers who came after her. Nearly 20 young women have gained valuable research experience as Fellows at IWPR since the beginning of the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship. Past Mariam K. Chamberlain scholars have gone on to hold positions at government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Congressional Research Service, earn advanced degrees from universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, The George Washington University, and Brown University. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, IWPR’s current Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow, was just recently named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. The fellowship has allowed IWPR to expand its research capacity, strengthen its commitment to cultivating the next generation of women researchers and leaders, and ensure that a pipeline of experienced women researchers are at the policy-making table.

The fellowship helps sustain Dr. Chamberlain’s legacy, built on the belief that relying on credible data and research, rather than anecdote and bias, leads to better policies for working women, which in turn contribute to improved long-term outcomes for their families. May she not only rest in peace, but rest assured that, because of her efforts, there are many more women able to take up the torch she leaves behind.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

IWPR Fellow is Named Rhodes Scholar

By Caroline Dobuzinskis

IWPR is pleased to announce that Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the Mariam K. Chamberlain fellow at IWPR since September 2011, has been named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. These illustrious scholarships are awarded not only for academic excellence, but also for character, commitment to service, and potential for leadership. Starting at Oxford University in October 2013, Gunn-Wright plans to study comparative social policy. In the future, she aims to improve social welfare policies and hopes to find a position in government. “I want to create and design policies related to issues of poverty, welfare, and urban violence,” said Gunn-Wright.

Gunn-Wright graduated from Yale University magna cum laude with a double major in African American studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies. She was first encouraged to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship at the end of her junior year by her academic advisor. But when she graduated she chose not to apply, instead looking to gain some experience outside of higher education.

Ultimately, she was inspired to apply for the scholarship after learning that people she admired, who were as dedicated to public service as she, were Rhodes Scholars. For example, after reading that Newark Mayor Cory Booker had run into a burning building to save a woman in a fire, she found out that he himself was a Rhodes Scholar. Another one of her heroes, television anchor Rachel Maddow, also has the honor. “I thought maybe this [scholarship] could help me to do the work that I want to do,” said Gunn-Wright.

While at IWPR, Gunn-Wright has contributed to several research projects including the Student Parent Success Initiative and work on paid sick days. Gunn-Wright will leave IWPR with many valuable lessons as she takes the first steps toward what promises to be a very successful career in policy. “IWPR inspired me a lot,” said Gunn-Wright. “It was the first time I had seen the way policy gets made, hands on. More than anything I saw the effect of laws that really take into account people’s well being, and how trying to address their needs really does impact their lives.”

In her research, Gunn-Wright will continue to take a gendered perspective. “The research that I intend to do is going to look at welfare from an intersectional perspective, how welfare policies are designed to meet the needs of people who are at the intersections of multiple identities of the disadvantaged.”

“Gender will always be in my analysis,” said Gunn-Wright.

Watch an interview with Rhiana Gunn-Wright on ABC7 News Chicago.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

New Guide to Illustrate Women’s Needs in the MENA Region

By Caroline Dobuzinskis

A new toolkit by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research  and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), serves as a guide for the creation, dissemination, and promotion of reports on the status of women in the Middle East and North Africa. Using Research on the Status of Women to Improve Public Policy:A Capacity-Building Toolkit for Nongovernmental Organizations lays out a blueprint for using accurate research on the status of women as a means to shape public policy and give women in the MENA region a voice.

The toolkit, Using Research on the Status of Women to Improve Public Policies, outlines how to:

1. Create a diverse working advisory committee;
2. Identify relevant data sources and key research indicators;
3. Plan and create a press release strategy;
4. Communicate with aligned or peer organizations to push advocacy forward; and
5. Train women for leadership roles through mentorship and other programs.

A report on the status of women is a powerful tool for informing policy decisions. The reports are useful in indicating where women need to be better served through educational and health care systems, and how they can be better integrated into the labor market. International advocates and NGOs, and other individuals and groups in the private and public sectors, have long argued that women’s empowerment and full participation in the economy can help them, their families, and their communities, and can strengthen the productivity and economy of an entire nation.

In September 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the economic cost of lack of inclusion or restrictions to women’s full participation in the economy: “By increasing women’s participation in the economy and enhancing their efficiency and productivity, we can have a dramatic impact on the competitiveness and growth of our economies,” she said in her remarks to the APEC Conference that year. In October of this year, at a meeting titled “Power—Woman as Engine of Growth & Social Inclusion”,  Clinton cited the economic costs of lack of women’s participation or supports for women in the Asia Pacific, Eurozone, and other regions.

As part of a joint project on the Status of Women in the Middle East and North Africa, in 2010, IWPR and IFES released topic briefs on the status of women in Yemen, Morocco, and Lebanon. Among the findings in Yemen, for example, is that women who work for pay have greater freedom of movement, and have greater financial savings and access to credit. The surveys in Yemen also found that women with higher levels of education tend to have more access to health care resources.

IWPR’s new capacity-building toolkit provides information for non-governmental organizations to organize and use similar research to to support women in leadership roles, and how to design an advocacy campaign and a call-to-action for improved policy to support women.

The toolkit is available online at the IWPR website and IWPR experts are available to comment on its recommendations. 

Caroline Dobuzinskis is the Communications Manager with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

IWPR’s Fellowship Encourages Advancement in Research Careers

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, 2011-2012 Mariam K. Chamberlain

By Caroline Dobuzinskis and Mallory Mpare

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research Mariam K. Chamberlain (MKC) Fellowship in Women and Public Policy is named for a founding member of IWPR and the founding president of the National Council for Research on Women. Dr. Chamberlain has fought discrimination, established new roles for women, and championed the economic analysis of women’s issues.

The MKC Fellowship in Women and Public Policy pays tribute to Dr. Chamberlain’s vision of a world of gender equality in which women reach their highest levels of achievement. Fellows work as research assistants on a variety of IWPR projects and are encouraged to take advantage of wide range of academic, policy,  and networking events in Washington, DC. Currently, IWPR is accepting applications to the fellowship program.

This is an introduction to this year’s fellow, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who offers her insight on her experience with IWPR.

Since joining IWPR’s staff in September as the 2011–2012, Mariam K. Chamberlain fellow Rhiana Gunn-Wright has brought great energy to IWPR’s offices. Originally from Chicago’s South Side, Gunn-Wright graduated from Yale University magna cum laude with a double major in African American studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies.

During her time at Yale, Gunn-Wright embraced women’s issues completely—from the focus of her thesis to her extracurricular volunteer work both on and off campus. Gunn-Wright’s thesis looked at welfare policy and its impact on poor black women by analyzing methods for managing teen pregnancy in the city of New Haven, CT.

Gunn-Wright also served on the board of the on-campus women’s center at Yale for two years, managing staff and resident groups. In this role, she conducted outreach to other groups at her university in order to make the center more inclusive. “When I came in [as board member], the women’s center was almost exclusively upper-class white students so I did outreach to communities of color and LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] groups,” said Gunn-Wright. “We also started doing activism around sexuality on campus.”

As part of this activism, Gunn-Wright helped start a pioneering student forum to talk openly about establishing sexual respect on campus and building a healthy sexual culture. These talks involved a diverse range of students, including student faith groups. Some participating groups took the baton by hosting their own talks, and the entire initiative eventually grew into a larger program now called Sex @ Yale.

When Gunn-Wright came across the description of the Mariam K. Chamberlain fellowship with IWPR at her campus, she immediately thought it would be a good fit. One of the aspects that Gunn-Wright enjoys about her fellowship is being able to answer queries and point people to relevant research on women’s issues. She is also appreciative of the opportunity to work on issues that she is most passionate about, particularly education, by assisting with the Student Parent Success Initiative (SPSI).

“I enjoy the work we do on student parents and looking at the intersection between welfare, race, class gender, and education—especially for a population that isn’t usually recognized,” said Gunn-Wright. “It’s nice to build a community especially when people are as invested in it as they are in SPSI. They are invested in seeing student parents do well.”

Gunn-Wright’s biggest tip for incoming fellows?  “Be mindful of remembering that you really are working to better the status of women,” she said.  “It’s easy to get caught up in work tasks, but you are working on a daily basis to make things better, more tolerant, and more loving.”

Applications for the 2012-2013 Fellowships are due by March 1, 2012. For more information on how to apply please visit our website.

Caroline Dobuzinskis is the Communications Manager with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Mallory Mpare is IWPR’s Communications Assistant.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

New Research from IWPR Finds Low Literacy Hurts Women More Than Men

By Kevin Miller

In an analysis of data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy that was recently published, IWPR found that women earn less than men regardless of literacy level, but that women with low literacy levels are particularly likely to have low earnings relative to men. Higher literacy levels are associated with higher earnings for both men and women, but the “jump” in earnings from low to high literacy is especially noticeable for women at earnings levels that can sustain women and their families.

These findings are consistent with the phenomenon that women need to do more to reach the earnings of men. The gender wage gap remains substantial after decades of measurement, occurs both between and within occupations, and—we now know—exists regardless of men and women’s degree of literacy. In order for women to earn the same amount as men, they must obtain more education and develop more skills than those possessed by men. Low literacy—which occurs at similar rates among women and men—is a barrier to effective education and training that can help low-income individuals obtain jobs that allow for family economic security.

Programs that help women (and men) improve their literacy, obtain job training, and get degrees are key elements in the effort to help low-income Americans get better jobs. Adult and basic education programs, bridge programs that connect teens and adults to college, workforce training programs, and supports for nontraditional students enrolled in colleges are needed to help hard-working Americans get higher-paying jobs. Many of these programs are under threat of budget cuts. Cuts in education and training are short-sighted cost-saving measures that reduce workforce readiness while also threatening one of the few pathways out of poverty for millions of Americans with limited literacy.

Kevin Miller is a Senior Research Associate with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org

Top 5 Findings of 2011

by Caroline Dobuzinskis, with Jocelyn Fischer and Rhiana Gunn-Wright.

In 2011, IWPR released several important findings on relevant topics such as the continuing impact of the recession, increased reliance on Social Security among older Americans, and the value of paid sick days for improving public health. Read the top findings below and continue to follow IWPR or sign up for our e-alerts to stay informed on our latest research on women, families, and communities.

1. During the recovery, men gained more jobs overall than women. Contrary to the image presented by a new, widely-panned sitcom, the recovery is not proving to be easier for female job seekers. Overall, men have regained one out of three jobs lost in the recession, while women regained one of every four jobs they lost. But the last quarter of 2011 saw women making some gains in the job market: men and women had equal job growth in the past three months at 206,000 jobs each.

2. Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and some cannot afford to put food on the table. Last September, IWPR released findings from the IWPR/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security showing that only 43 percent of women and 61 percent of men would have the savings to pay for living expenses for a period of two months. In households with more than one person who experienced unemployment for one month or longer in the two years prior to the survey, 27 percent of women and 20 percent of men went hungry because they could not afford food.

3. Americans strongly support Social Security and have grown increasingly reliant on the program in the last decade. A large majority of Americans (74 percent of all women and 69 percent of men in the IWPR/Rockefeller survey) say they  don’t mind paying Social Security taxes for the benefits they will receive when they retire. Between 1999 and 2009, the number of men aged 65 and older relying on Social Security for at least 80 percent of their incomes increased by 48 percent to equal more than a third of all men aged 65 and older in 2009. The increase for comparable women was 26 percent to equal half of older women in 2009.

4. The number of on-campus child care centers has declined and presently can only meet five percent of the child care needs of student parents. There are 3.9 million student parents pursuing postsecondary education in the United States, 57 percent of whom are also low-income adults. Access to affordable, on-campus child care has decreased, partly due to the increase of for-profit postsecondary institutions.

5. Paid sick days would reduce emergency department visits–saving $1 billion in health care costs. Access to paid sick days would eliminate 1.3 million emergency department visits per year and would save $500 million to taxpayers through public health insurance costs because regular doctors’ office visits would substitute for expensive emergency room care. Informed by research from organizations such as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, paid sick days legislation gained significant momentum across the country last year.

Caroline Dobuzinskis is the Communications Manager at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Jocelyn Fischer is Assistant to the President and Rhiana Gunn-Wright is this year’s Mariam K. Chamberlain fellow.

---

To view more of IWPR’s research, visit IWPR.org