Economic Security, Mobility and Equity (ESME)
Whether paid or unpaid, women’s work is crucial for their families’ economic security and well-being. Greater gender equality in paid and unpaid work will reduce poverty and improve economic growth and prosperity; persistent inequity in employment and family work is costing all of us. Women are held back by the undervaluation of historically female work, workplaces designed as if workers had no family responsibilities, and a broken-down work-family infrastructure.
IWPR’s ESME program highlights the extent of pay inequalities, and the role played by stark occupational segregation in perpetuating unequal pay. We conduct research and analysis on women’s labor force participation and employment trends; workforce development, non-traditional employment, and apprenticeships; the impact of sex discrimination and harassment on women’s career advancement and mobility; the gender pay gap and pay inequity across race and ethnicity; work-family policies and employer practices; the and the impact of automation and technological advances on women workers.
We work with policymakers, employers, advocates, and practitioners to identify promising practices and policy solutions.
One Year Into Trump’s Second Term, Black Women Face Disproportionate Job Losses
The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Black women lost 251,000 jobs between January and August of 2025. While this number reflects a downward revision from a higher estimate last year, it still represents a large and unequal decrease [...]
From Roe to EOs, This Week’s Anniversaries Underscore What’s at Stake for Women’s Economic Security and Gender Equity
From a landmark abortion access court case to the Trump administration's week-one efforts to erode critical rights and protections, this week marks multiple anniversaries related to women’s health and economic well-being. These dates provide a crucial reminder of what’s at stake and why it is [...]
Revisiting Occupational Segregation and the Valuation of Women’s Work
While population ageing increases the demand for care work, new automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), reinforce the importance of human interaction, with recent research documenting significant wage premiums for social skills. Against this background, we investigate two factors behind the gender wage gap: [...]
Essential but Undervalued: Systemic Barriers Facing Black Women in Social Work
Black women have faced systemic racial and gender discrimination in the labor force, and although historically they have had high labor force participation rates, they tend to be overrepresented in care and service jobs. As such, an intersectional lens is key to understanding Black [...]
The Generational Wage Gap: Pay Equity Decades Away for Women Overall, Centuries Away for Women of Color
The generational wage gap shows just how far we still are from pay equity. At today’s pace, women won’t reach equal pay with men until at least 2071—and for many women of color, pay equity is still centuries away. With the wage gap widening [...]
Native American Women Face the Highest Gender Wage Gap, Earning Barely Half of What White Men Make
This year, November 18 marks Native Women’s Equal Pay Day. In 2023, at the median, all employed Native American women, whether they worked full-time, part-time, full-year, or part-year, earned 53.6 cents per dollar compared to White men, and Native American women working full-time year- [...]
