With all the recent focus over the gender wage gap, we often overlook one of the simplest solutions: getting more women into good-paying jobs traditionally held by men.
Take manufacturing, for instance. Once a sector in decline in the United States, manufacturing will need to fill 3.4 million more jobs over the next decade. On the surface, growth in a sector like manufacturing—which provides access to good paying jobs for workers who may not have gone to college, but have had on-the-job training—is excellent news for the economy. But, history does not favor finding a way for women to fill these valuable positions. The manufacturing industry has added well over half a million good jobs since 2010, but less than 7 percent of these new jobs have gone to women.