Title

40-hour Work Proposal Significantly Raises Mothers’ Employment Standard
by Vicky Lovell, Ph.D. (May 2003)

44 Million U.S. Workers Lacked Paid Sick Days in 2010: 77 Percent of Food Service Workers Lacked Access
by Claudia Williams, Robert Drago, Ph.D., and Kevin Miller, Ph.D. (January 2011)

103,000 New Jobs in the Private Sector: Women Continue to Lose Government Jobs
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (September 2012)

According to IWPR analysis of the August employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), private sector job growth continued in August with 103,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. However, BLS reported that there were 7,000 fewer jobs in government resulting in a net total of 96,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls in August. Of these, women gained 43,000 jobs, or 45 percent of the total, and men gained 53,000 jobs.

163,000 New Jobs in July: Over Half Go to Women
by Instiute for Women's Policy Research (August 2012)

According to IWPR analysis of the August employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job growth continued in July with 163,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. In July women gained 86,000 jobs, or 53 percent of the total, and men gained 77,000 jobs.

2010 Portrait of Women & Girls in the Washington Metropolitan Area
by Barbara Gault, Ph.D. and Layla Moughari (September 2010)

(Produced by Washington Area Women’s Foundation, Urban Institute, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Trinity University, the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital) In 2003, Washington Area Women’s Foundation released A Portrait of Women & Girls in the Washington Metropolitan Area, with the goal of presenting a clear picture of the lives of women and girls in the region—the District of Columbia, Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Virginia, and the City of Alexandria, Virginia—that could be used as a basis for action.

A Clearer View of Poverty: How the Supplemental Poverty Measure Changes Our Perceptions of Who Is Living in Poverty
by Jocelyn Fischer and Jeff Hayes, Ph.D. (July 2012)

In response to concerns about the adequacy of the official federal poverty measure, a new Supplemental Poverty Measure was recently developed to more accurately assess poverty. This fact sheet presents a rather different picture of poverty in the United States for the various demographic groups based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure and compares this new picture to the understanding of poverty based on the official measure, using data for the 2010 calendar year.

A New Full-Time Norm: Promoting Work-Life Integration Through Work-Time Adjustment*
by Cynthia Negrey (July 2004)

(Cynthia Negrey is an Associate Professor Sociology Department, University of Louisville) This paper is an argument for a new, shorter, full-time work norm in the United States. It examines the context of “time famine” as a product of women’s increased labor force participation and an increase in household total employment hours, a caregiving gap, bifurcation of aggregate work hours, and a gap between workers’ actual and ideal work hours. Inadequacies of current alternative work-time arrangements and the Family and Medical Leave Act are addressed and some international comparisons are discussed. Following Appelbaum et al. (2002), the author argues for a “shared work/valued care” model of work-time allocation.

A Prescription for Good Asthma Care for Children: Paid Sick Days for Milwaukee Parents Parents’ Lack of Job Flexibility Hurts Children with Chronic Health Problems
by Vicky Lovell, Ph.D. (September 2008)

Asthma treatment is a priority for Wisconsin’s public health system, according to the Wisconsin Turning Point Transformation Team.1 The most common chronic health problem for children, asthma sent nearly 3,800 Wisconsin children to the emergency room in 2005, and more than 700 were hospitalized, at a cost of close to $4 million.

Access to Earned Sick Days in Maryland
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (February 2013)

A new analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) reveals that more than 700,000 private sector employees in Maryland lack even a single earned sick day. Access to earned sick days promotes healthy work environments by reducing the spread of illnesses, , increasing productivity, and supporting work and family balance. Earned sick days allow people to take time off work to recover from personal illnesses and to tend to family members’ health without the fear of lost pay or other negative consequences. This briefing paper presents estimates of earned sick days access rates in Maryland by occupation, by sex, race and ethnicity, and personal annual earnings, through analysis of government data sources, including the 2010–2011 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2011 American Community Survey (ACS).

Access to Earned Sick Days in Oregon
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (May 2013)

An analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) reveals that about 596,800 private sector employees in Oregon lack even a single earned sick day. Access to earned sick days promotes healthy work environments by reducing the spread of illness,1,2 increasing productivity,3 and supporting work and family balance.4 Earned sick days allow people to take time off work to recover from illness and to tend to family members’ health without the fear of lost pay or other negative consequences. This briefing paper presents estimates of lack of earned sick days access rates in Oregon by occupation, by sex, race and ethnicity, personal annual earnings, and work schedule through analysis of government data sources, including the 2010–2011 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2009–2011 American Community Survey (ACS).

Access to Paid Sick Days in Portland, Oregon
by Isela Bañuelos and Claudia Williams (December 2012)

Access to paid sick days promotes healthy work environments by reducing the spread of illnesses, increasing productivity, and supporting work and family balance. Paid sick days allow employees to take time off work to recover from personal illnesses and tend to family members’ health without the fear of monetary or other negative consequences. Despite the importance of paid sick days, a large proportion of workers in the Portland, Oregon, area receive no paid sick time at all. This fact sheet presents paid sick days access rates by occupation, sex, race and ethnicity, and personal income in the Portland area. The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) derived these estimates through analysis of government data sources including the National Health Interview Survey and the American Community Survey.

Access to Paid Sick Days in the States, 2010
by Claudia Williams, Robert Drago, Ph.D., Kevin Miller, Ph.D., and Youngmin Yi (March 2011)

Achieving Equity for Women: Policy Alternatives for the New Administration
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (April 2009)

This report summarizes the policy research symposium convened by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the Wellesley Centers for Women, held in Washington, DC on April 2, 2009. The symposium highlighted four policy areas in which public policy can work to improve the status of women in the United States: women and economic recovery; retirement, social security and aging; quality early care and education; and women and health care reform. The symposium also featured a luncheon keynote address from Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, as well as an opening keynote from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a closing keynote from Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States and Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls Tina Tchen, and a reception keynote from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York.

Affirmative Action in Employment: An Overview
by Jodi Burns (January 1996)

An IWPR briefing paper providing a review of the employment and wages of white women, black men, and black women relative o white men after implementation of affirmative action policies. Available by mail in limited quantities. E-mail iwpr [at] iwpr [dot] org to place an order.

An Economy That Puts Families First: Expanding the social contract to include family care
by Heidi Hartmann, Ariane Hegewisch and Vicky Lovell (May 2007)

A comprehensive family policy program is needed to make the U.S. economy more family friendly and to enable work- ers to combine work and family responsibilities more easily. Such a program is part of a new social contract that should spread the costs of family care beyond the immediate family and help redistribute the burden of care more equitably between men and women within the family.

An Estimate of Program Cost under Oregon Senate Bill 966, the Family Leave Benefits Insurance Act
by (December 2008)

Children First for Oregon requested that the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analyze the Family Leave Benefits Insurance Act in order to provide lawmakers and policy advocates with information about the likely costs and use of a universal paid family leave insurance program in Oregon. This document presents that estimate.

Are Women Now Half the Labor Force? The Truth about Women and Equal Participation in the Labor Force
by Ashley English, Heidi Hartmann, PhD, and Jeff Hayes (March 2010)

For more than a year the news media have been tracking the moment when women might become half the labor force. In spring 2009, it was said it might happen in the next few months, by summer it was said maybe it would happen in the fall. By one measure, women’s share of employment reached a high of 49.96 percent in October 2009; still 113,000 fewer women than men were counted on payrolls that month, and as of March 2010 the gap has grown to about 360,000 workers. Although still a statistically significant difference, a gap that small is nevertheless close to equality, especially when total payroll employment in the United States is measured at nearly 130,000,000.

Assessing the Status of Women at the County Level: A Manual for Researchers and Advocates
by Misha Werschkul, Barbara Gault, and Heidi Hartmann (October 2004)

This manual provides instructions for analyzing the status of women at the county level. The manual allows advocates, researchers, and others within each state to assess women’s status at the local level, rank counties, and make cross-county comparisons, by ranking and grading each county on a set of indicators. Such analyses can be conducted for an entire state, a portion of a state, or a region including portions of several states.

At Current Pace of Progress, Wage Gap for Women Expected to Close in 2057
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (April 2013)

Before and After Welfare Reform: The Work and Well-Being of Low-Income Single Parent Families
by Institute for Women's Policy Research (May 2003)

This Fact Sheet highlights select findings from IWPR’s new report, Before and After Welfare Reform. The report examines the income sources and employment patterns of low-income families, utilizing longitudinal data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation to shed new light on the characteristics and well-being of low-income single parent families just before and roughly three years after the implementation of welfare reform.