Areas of Expertise: Access to Higher Education, Child Care & Early Education, Flexible Work & Fair-Scheduling, Investing in Single Mothers' Higher Education, Job Training Success, Paid Sick Days, Pay Equity & Discrimination, STEM and Innovation, Student Parent Success Initiative, The Status of Women and Girls
Barbara Gault, Ph.D., is the Vice President and Executive Director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Scholar in Residence at American University. Her work covers a wide range of issues, including college access and affordability, job quality, paid leave, poverty, political engagement, and the need for better early care and education options for working parents. She founded and leads IWPRs Student Parent Success Initiative, and has authored dozens of reports and publications, including Improving Child Care Access to Promote Postsecondary Success Among Low-Income Parents, Resilient and Reaching for More: Challenges and Benefits of Higher Education for Welfare Participants and Their Children, " and Working First But Working Poor: The Need for Education and Training Following Welfare Reform. She has testified in Congress on low-income women’s educational access, has spoken and delivered keynote presentations in venues throughout the country, and appears in a range of print, radio and television media outlets. Prior to joining IWPR, Dr. Gault conducted research at the Office of Children’s Health Policy Research, and served as a staff and board member of organizations promoting human rights in Latin America. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Coalition on Human Needs, and is a Research Professor of Women’s Studies at the George Washington University.
Investing in Single Mothers’ Higher Education: Costs and Benefits to Individuals, Families, and Society Postsecondary education is a reliable pathway to economic security and is increasingly important to securing family-sustaining employment. For single mother families, who make up a growing share of U.S. families, and who are especially likely to live in poverty, college attainment…
Time Demands of Single Mother College Students and the Role of Child Care in their Postsecondary Success Single mothers enrolled in postsecondary education face substantial time demands that make persistence and graduation difficult. Just 28 percent of single mothers graduate with a degree or certificate within 6 years of enrollment and another 55 percent…
Independent college students, once considered “nontraditional,” now constitute the majority of students in the United States. As of 2012, just over half of all U.S. college students were independent (51 percent)—meaning they had at least one defining characteristic outlined in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), including being at least 24 years old;…
Publicly funded child care assistance helps many low-income parents afford child care while earning a postsecondary credential that can lead to long-lasting economic security. States have flexibility in setting eligibility requirements for receiving subsidies funded by the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program (Adams et al. 2014; U.S. Department of Health and…
Single student mothers are growing in both absolute numbers and as a share of the college population. They often face significant financial and time-related obstacles that make it difficult for them to persist to graduation. Investing in programs and supports that target the needs of single mothers has the potential to improve their rates of…
The 80.5 percent wage ratio figure, the most commonly used figure to measure the gender wage gap in the United States, is often derided as misleading, a myth, or worst of all, a lie. In this post, we argue that the figure is an accurate measure of the inequality in earnings between women and men…
Analysis of the 2011-12 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) finds that three in ten single mothers in college attend private, for-profit schools, a larger share than students of any other family type (Figure 1).[1] At for-profit institutions, single mothers account for 26 percent of the student…
This paper presents a portrait of the community college student parent population, their unique needs, and discusses the role that child care plays in their educational success. It provides an analysis of the availability of child care on community college campuses, a state-by-state review of student parents’ eligibility for Child Care Development Fund subsidy programs,…
This report presents findings from a national, online survey of more than 1,800 participants in job training programs. It captures their perspectives on the role of supportive services such as child care and transportation assistance in facilitating their success in job training, the availability of supportive services across different types of training programs, the unmet…
This report provides a national and regional profile of undergraduate college students who are raising dependent children. Drawing on original analysis of national postsecondary education data, it quantifies the growth in the student parent population over time, both nationally and regionally, and describes trends in student parents’ economic status, their declining access to oncampus child…