Ariane Hegewisch, M.Phil.

About Ariane Hegewisch

Ariane Hegewisch is Program Director of Employment and Earnings at IWPR and Scholar in Residence at American University; prior to that she spent two years at IWPR as a scholar-in-residence. She came to IWPR from the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings. She is responsible for IWPR’s research on workplace discrimination and is a specialist in comparative human resource management, with a focus on policies and legislative approaches to facilitate greater work life reconciliation and gender equality, in the US and internationally. Prior to coming to the USA she taught comparative European human resource management at Cranfield School of Management in the UK where she was a founding researcher of the Cranet Survey of International HRM, the largest independent survey of human resource management policies and practices, covering 25 countries worldwide. She started her career  in local economic development, developing strategies for greater gender equality in employment and training in  local government in the UK. She has published many papers and articles and co-edited several books, including ‘Women, work and inequality: The challenge of equal pay in a deregulated labour market”. She is German and has a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and an MPhil in Development Studies from the IDS, Sussex.

Paying Today and Tomorrow: Charting the Financial Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment remains deeply pervasive in the workplace, wreaking havoc on the lives of survivors. This report fills a gap in our knowledge of the economic costs of sexual harassment for the individual women and men who experience it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with survivors of workplace sexual harassment and stakeholder experts, and a review of the literature, the report provides a detailed pathway for capturing the financial consequences of workplace sexual harassment for individual workers in both the short term and over their lifetimes. The research is based on a collaboration between the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the TIME’S UP Foundation and presents the first step towards identifying the data needed for a comprehensive national assessment of the financial and economic costs of sexual harassment. 

By Ariane Hegewisch, Jessica Forden and Eve Mefferd|2024-10-10T15:13:06-05:00July 21, 2021|Report|0 Comments

Even as Payroll Jobs Recover, Young Workers Face Unemployment and a Hostile Labor Market

New June jobs data show the strongest monthly job growth for women since August 2020. Despite this, it will still take women another 9.3 months to get back to pre-COVID-10 levels, compared with 6.7 months for men. Further, the unemployment rate increased slightly, with rates of unemployment remaining twice as high for younger workers.

A Slow Climb Back from the “She-Cession”: High Jobs Deficit in Child Care and School Sectors Continues

New May jobs data show that despite greater jobs gains, women’s recovery continues to lag behind that of men. Women’s jobs on payroll are still 4.2 million below pre-COVID-19 levels, compared with 3.5 million fewer jobs on payroll for men. Further, high jobs deficits in schools and child care centers point to difficulties for employed mothers and mothers wanting to return to work.

Despite Record Job Growth in March 2021, Gender Gap in Economic Recovery Widened

New March jobs data show that nearly one million (916,000) new payroll jobs were added, yet only one-third of these went to women (34.4 percent, or 315,000 payroll jobs). This marks an increased widening of the gender gap in recovery for a second month in a row. Women still need 4.6 million more jobs to get back to pre-COVID-19 levels, compared to men who need 3.8 million more jobs.

The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation, Race, and Ethnicity 2020

In 2020, women earned less than men in almost all occupations, whether they worked in predominantly male, predominantly female, or more integrated occupations. In the lowest paid of the largest 20 occupations for women, Maids and Housekeepers ($503 per week), women are nine-in-ten workers (and face a wage gap of 10.6 percent); in the highest paid of the largest 20 occupations for men, Chief Executives ($2,402 per week), women are fewer than one-in-three workers (and face a wage gap of 24.4 percent).

Asian and Pacific Islander Women Earn Less than White Men in All but One State

In 2019, the median earnings of Asian American and Pacific Islander women for a year of full-time work were just 84.6 percent of White non-Hispanic men’s, and just 73.3 percent of the median annual earnings of Asian American and Pacific Islander men.2 While Asian American and Pacific Islander women had the highest median annual earnings for full-time year-round women of the largest racial and ethnic groups in the United States, $55,0003 compared to $47,299 for all women workers,4 this hides large differences in the labor market experiences for different groups of women.

The Weekly Gender Wage Gap by Race and Ethnicity: 2020

As lowest paid women lost most jobs, the gender wage gap for full-time workers shrank for all women and men, and by race & ethnicity. The gender wage gap in weekly earnings for full-time workers in the United States narrowed between 2019 and 2020, from 19.5 percent in 2019 (a gender earnings ratio of 81.5%) to 18.7 percent in 2020 (a gender earnings ratio of 82.3%)

Women and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Five Charts and a Table Tracking the 2020 “She-Cession” by Race and Gender

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the U.S. economy, and women, particularly women of color, have been hit especially hard. 2020 ended with women’s numbers of jobs on payroll being still much further below their February levels than men’s.

Women’s Share of Unemployment Insurance Claimants varies Strongly Across States

In 42 of 50 states and DC, women were the majority of unemployment insurance claimants. A third of all unemployed women, and four in ten Latinas, have been out of work for more than 26 weeks. The receipt of unemployment benefits, including those provided under the CARES Act, substantially reduces but do not eliminate the odds of hunger or foreclosure threats for women and their families.

Despite Modest Employment Gains, Women Still 5.5 Million Jobs Below Pre-Pandemic Level

New October jobs data show women gained 280,000 (43.9 percent) of 638,000 new non-farm payroll jobs since October.