FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
If you haven’t seen it by now, you’ve probably heard about it. On Mother’s Day, the Trump administration rolled out a new website—Moms.gov—purporting to offer resources for new and expecting mothers. But unsurprisingly, the website is merely insidious, pronatalist propaganda that does little to actually help pregnant people and families. (Don’t worry if you’ve been sleeping on it; the president was, too.) The site is coercively pro-birth with an emphasis on “natural” fertility messaging; promotes crisis pregnancy centers and [...]
Unpaid care work is the invisible infrastructure of the American economy. This work—done by parents, extended family, and community members—sustains children, elders, and adults in need, keeps households functioning, and fills the vast gaps left by chronic underinvestment in the care system. This failure shifts responsibility onto caregivers—overwhelmingly women and mothers—leaving them to figure out work and family on their own, while the system continues to depend on their unpaid labor to function. We tend to frame unpaid care as [...]
“Women just don’t apply” is a common misunderstanding heard from industry and apprenticeship stakeholders about women’s underrepresentation in the construction trades. Evidence from 12 cohorts (classes) of the co-ed Minuteman “Build It!” Carpentry pre-apprenticeship program in Massachusetts, however, shows that women’s low numbers are far from inevitable, and that their participation dramatically improves with effective outreach. When the first four BuildIt! cohorts were intentionally set up to reach both women and men, women did indeed apply. Women accounted for 72 [...]
It’s fitting that Women’s History Month, which began March 1, kicked off with Women in Construction (WIC) Week—an annual celebration led by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) to highlight and honor the vital contributions women make across the industry. In January 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which rescinded the long‑standing employment goals for women on federally funded construction projects. These goals—set at 6.9 percent of hours [...]
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 imperative to protect against attacks on reproductive freedom and threats that undermine better workplaces—not just to hold firm to progress from the past but also pursue policy solutions that advance gender justice in the future. [...]
This year marked the second consecutive year the gender gap in earnings worsened, increasing from 17.3 percent in 2023 to 19.1 percent* in 2024. In 2024, women earned only 80.9 cents for every dollar earned by men—the lowest gender earnings ratio since 2016, when women earned 80.5 cents to the dollar compared to men. Equal Pay Days across this past year have highlighted how the problem of wage equity is worse for the intersecting identities of women of color, mothers, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and disabled women. On April 7, we recognized Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Women’s Equal Pay Day. In 2023, AANHPI [...]
