Join us for IWPR’s 2026 Power+ Summit, The Power Grid: Driving Gender Equity Forward, taking place September 28–29 in Detroit, MI.
Together, we will spark bold ideas, share breakthroughs, and shape the future of gender equity.
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.