The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) is the primary basis for federally funded workforce development. One of its stated purposes it to “increase the employment, retention and earnings of participants…” While earnings data suggest that both men and women benefit from WIA services, average earnings among women who received WIA services are significantly lower than average earnings for men. The data suggest that women’s and men’s participation in training for traditionally ‘female’ and ‘male’ occupations is a major factor contributing to the earnings gap between women and men who received WIA services. The gap is not the result of less extensive WIA services for women. During the current legislative session, Congress will consider the reauthorization of WIA. It is important to discuss policy measures that would more effectively target resources to increase female WIA service recipients’ earnings. Improving women’s earnings would help to promote and sustain the economic self-sufficiency of women and their families during the current recession and beyond.
About the author
Ariane Hegewisch is Program Director of Employment and Earnings at IWPR and Scholar in Residence at American University; prior to that she spent two years at IWPR as a scholar-in-residence. She came to IWPR from the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings. She is responsible for IWPR’s research on workplace discrimination and is a specialist in comparative human resource management, with a focus on policies and legislative approaches to facilitate greater work life reconciliation and gender equality, in the US and internationally. Prior to coming to the USA she taught comparative European human resource management at Cranfield School of Management in the UK where she was a founding researcher of the Cranet Survey of International HRM, the largest independent survey of human resource management policies and practices, covering 25 countries worldwide. She started her career in local economic development, developing strategies for greater gender equality in employment and training in local government in the UK. She has published many papers and articles and co-edited several books, including ‘Women, work and inequality: The challenge of equal pay in a deregulated labour market”. She is German and has a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and an MPhil in Development Studies from the IDS, Sussex.
