This blog was originally posted on the Workforce Innovation Team blog. In honor of March being Women’s History Month 2012, the Workforce Innovation Team has reached out to their partners who specialize in women’s needs and promoting positive public policy. 

By Jane Henrici

The Institute of Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) released in February our fact sheet showing our gendered analysis of the most recent (2003) National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data. We find that low levels of literacy tend to hurt women’s earning levels more than those of men: “…women need higher levels of literacy than men to earn wages that are comparable with men’s.”

To address this issue, IWPR recommends that educational policies and programs take gender into account and consider adult education and literacy classes as of particular help to women, especially those with dependent children. IWPR research on women’s educational levels, workforce participation, and immigration integration, also finds a need for improved and targeted remedial and bridge opportunities, English language classes, and job training that will help women get better jobs and careers—including those at the highest levels of wages, in STEM fields. Like others with whom IWPR is partnered, particularly in our research on student parents as part of IWPR’s Student Parent Success Initiative, we see reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) as an opportunity for learning and training that responds to the needs across the different states to help prepare women workers for employment demands.

To get out of poverty, women must be able to earn enough to take care of themselves and their families and, to do that, women need to have the skills to begin careers and then move up in fields where jobs are growing, including those in the health and care work occupations. At a minimum, women are going to need to be able to read and, increasingly, they are going to need a postsecondary education and possibly a postsecondary degree. A number of public as well as private efforts, including WIA programming, can help women to get started.

Do you think WIA programming is key to addressing the inequality gap that women still face in today’s workforce?

Jane Henrici is a Study Director with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

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