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By Mary Babic and Barbara Gault
A recent study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Oxfam America explores this gender divide and identifies a subset of low-wage women’s jobs. The jobs meet four criteria: most workers are women; the median wage is under $15 an hour; at least 100,000 women do the job; and the number of jobs will grow in the next 20 years.
We found 22 such jobs, and of the 23.5 million workers in these jobs, 81 percent — 19 million — are women. And these jobs are a big segment of the larger workforce, accounting for over a quarter of all women’s employment and 64 percent of women’s low-wage employment.