Blog | Gender Equality

Virtual Event: Lifting Up Women on the Shop Floor

Two women assemble a truck

 

Updated 4/2/23

Picture a manufacturing worker. Are you imagining a woman wielding a torch or assembling an SUV? 

The manufacturing sector provides good jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits, which do not require four-year degrees. More women should hold these jobs.

Yet they are underrepresented in manufacturing, particularly in the highest-paying jobs. This industry is poised to grow as the United States invests billions of dollars in infrastructure, technology and clean energy. 

Join the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) for a webinar to discuss the policies needed to create fair and equitable access to good production jobs in manufacturing. All workers should be part of this growing workforce. 

IWPR will be launching its new report, Advancing Women in Manufacturing: Perspectives from Women on the Shop Floor.

You’ll hear the voices and experiences of women in manufacturing—especially union members and those who have completed apprenticeships. Learn about what helps and hinders their access, retention and success in good manufacturing jobs.

Speakers include Latifa Lyles, special assistant to the president for gender policy, White House Gender Policy Council; Leeann Foster, international vice president, United Steelworkers; Ariane Hegewisch, senior research fellow, Institute for Women’s Policy Research; Lark Jackson, program director, Chicago Women in Trades’ National Center for Women’s Equity in Apprenticeship and Employment; Zoe Lipman, deputy director, AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council; Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy, Home Grown; and Shana Peschek, executive director, Machinists Institute.


 

Gender Equality

Institute for Women's Policy Research's Advancing Women in Manufacturing Webinar Recording

As the nation invests in infrastructure, clean energy and domestic production of new technologies, America’s manufacturing industry is poised for significant growth. Will women share equally in this expansion? And how do women in the manufacturing sector today feel about their jobs and what barriers do they see to true equality? A new report by IWPR, “Advancing Women in Manufacturing: Perspectives from Women on the Shop Floor,” shows that many women are indeed thriving in the manufacturing sector, but that they remain underrepresented in the industry as a whole and particularly so in high paying production jobs. AFL-CIO and our partner, IWPR, co-hosted several industry speakers as they explored the experiences of women in the manufacturing industry, the challenges they face, and policy solutions from apprenticeship to child care that that can help women access good paying manufacturing jobs.

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