Equity & Inclusion

In Vietnam, IW’s social media campaign challenging traditional notions of masculinity reached 2.8 million people. A propaganda art campaign had an online reach of 200,000. IW trained 30 filmmakers about gender in cinema, and an artificial intelligence tool helped analyze gender stereotyping in advertising.

IW also supported research by campaign partners and independent researchers to develop a broader understanding of gender norms and how to measure their change through social media. Using qualitative and quantitative evaluations of impact, IW joined the cadre of researchers starting to try to understand how to evaluate the impact of social media on such initiatives. Respondents to a survey in Indonesia and Vietnam reported that some of the campaigns helped build a sense of social support and connection to others with similar views, values, and experiences: “Even if I don’t receive support from my family, I receive support from other women who are part of the campaign,” said a Filipino woman who participates in StartUp Pinay’s Facebook group.

Campaigns also helped women challenge social and family expectations hindering them from pursuing their goals. One 23-year-old Indonesian woman described how she learned from the feminist magazine Magdalene that she does not have “an expiry date”; she is now resisting family pressure to marry by the cultural standard of 25: “I don't think I'm at the right moment to prepare to get married or get married at that age,” she says. “I'm still pursuing what I want.”

To build momentum for women’s economic empowerment in Southeast Asia, DFAT started a new phase of IW in 2023. Phase 3 will build on the strengths of IW’s lessons, networks, and partnerships. This next phase will play a significant role in creating more cohesive, dynamic, sustainable, and inclusive economies in a post-pandemic Southeast Asia.

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For years, efforts to improve economic well-being for low-wage workers in the U.S. focused on the employee: Get a better education and credentials. Get more training. Seek more mentoring and support.

Turns out that’s not the whole answer, especially for workers of color. An Abt study on career trajectories for low-wage earners found that even when people started in the same jobs at similar starting wages, 10 years later Black workers’ wage growth was 27 percent less than that of white workers. Racial barriers to advancement exist at nearly every step of the process on the employers’ side: how they advertise jobs, find applicants, screen them, hire them, train and mentor them, assign tasks and work hours, pay them, treat them, promote them, retain them, and fire them.

It’s not possible to analyze the barriers to economic progress for low-wage earners without recognizing how race discrimination is holding many of those workers back. However, while a wealth of research exists about the racial wage gap, little of this research is focused on low-wage workers. Even less information exists about how we can address bias as part of broader strategies to support their advancement.

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families wants to learn how bias intrudes into each step of the process and how to address those biases in the low-wage labor market. From September 2021 to March 2024, OPRE is engaging Abt to tackle those questions in a project that has included stakeholder consultation, a review of existing research, and site visits to document promising practices and highlight areas for future research. With a rapidly changing labor market as well as increased demands for racial equity, generating information about racial barriers in the workplace has taken on even greater urgency.

Our team consulted with employers, policymakers, researchers, and other interested collaborators. Importantly, we have worked with workers of color who are currently working low-wage jobs to incorporate their expertise as we drew out themes from the literature review, selected sites, and developed data collection processes and instruments. Enthusiasm for the results of our approach prompted OPRE to ask us for more information on our processes to help the office consider how other projects can incorporate expertise informed by lived experience.

These experts will continue to advise the project team through the study’s conclusion. Their input so far has prompted our team to center workers’ experiences of autonomy and agency—whether they are treated with respect and able to make decisions at work—as both an important outcome on its own and a way of reducing racial bias. Their input also made clear that when low-wage earners think about better jobs, they take into account a range of issues in addition to higher wages, such as predictable hours, job stability, and respect.

The study’s literature review goes beyond the typical research on the racial wage gap and focuses on low-wage workers, how racial bias permeates every phase of their employment process, and ways to address pervasive bias to support advancement. The review describes the numerous ways racial bias manifests itself in the low-wage labor market. The team considered direct bias, which stems from racist beliefs, prejudices, and attitudes that are inherent in an individual’s actions or in broader processes, policies, and systems. The team also considered indirect bias, which comprises individual actions and organizational processes, policies, and systems that may appear neutral but disproportionately harm certain groups.

Abt’s analysis outlines forms of direct racial bias in all five of the targeted categories of employment processes. In hiring, for example, job ad placement algorithms may target applicants of certain races for certain jobs, and hiring managers may look at candidate names they think “sound Black” less favorably. Job assignments may segregate workers of color into lower-paid jobs, and workers of color may be more likely to be laid off or receive poor evaluations for actions that don’t lead to the same repercussions for white counterparts. Work culture can also negatively affect workers of color when they experience routine acts of discrimination that lead to denials of promotion and acts of harassment that not only hinder professional advancement but also cause stress and undermine well-being.

Our literature review also highlighted indirect racial bias across employment processes, often related to structural racism in the U.S. that harms job seekers and workers of color. Patterns of residential segregation mean that workers of color tend to live farther from employers, have less information about and access to job openings, and have a harder time with scheduling changes once hired. Racially homogenous social networks also mean job seekers of color often do not hear about good jobs. Other structural issues such as lower educational attainment, higher rates of criminal justice involvement, and less digital access and literacy also undermine economic progress for people of color.

With a solid foundation from the literature review, our team is now exploring what addressing racial bias in the low-wage labor market looks like in practice. We held initial calls with nine organizations for potential site visits, ranging from software firms hoping to make technology solutions more equitable to nonprofit organizations with cohort-based programs for employers to work on diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Together with OPRE, we'll select four sites for in-depth visits this year. We will examine motivations for addressing bias and for the potential strategies that sites opted to pursue; how their strategies work; the experiences of staff members, employers, and workers; and whether they might be good prospects for more in-depth evaluation. We will also explore what broader research questions and methodological approaches could help OPRE identify interventions to address employment disparities.

Developing and learning from promising employer strategies that reduce racial gaps is imperative. Business as usual hasn’t worked, and race-neutral approaches haven’t reduced racial disparities in employment. If Abt and OPRE find potentially viable solutions, this project may be the first step in what may be a long—but invaluable—learning journey.

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Apprenticeships are a common path to higher-paying jobs in many countries. Not so much in the U.S., where for decades, apprenticeships were primarily limited to training in the building and construction trades—an industry predominantly consisting of non-Hispanic white men. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) funded the American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI), with the goal of expanding apprenticeships to underrepresented populations and non-traditional industries other than construction.

The result was an unequivocal success in achieving this goal, according to an Abt evaluation of the initiative. AAI enlisted high percentages of people who have been historically underrepresented in apprenticeships and developed apprenticeships in new occupations. Our study found that employers received direct and indirect returns on their apprenticeship investments.

“Apprenticeships show promise to help employers identify and develop workers for a variety of occupations and improve company culture, something that is important in the current tight labor market” said Elizabeth Copson, the study’s deputy director. Apprentices themselves have also benefited: Participants increased earnings significantly, though the study could not conclusively say it was their apprenticeships that caused those increases.

Under AAI, DOL awarded $175 million in five-year grants to 46 grantees that included state government agencies, colleges, nonprofits, and sector-based organizations such as labor unions and trade associations. Abt evaluated the effectiveness of AAI apprenticeships for workers and employers and generated lessons for developing and operating apprenticeship programs.

Our evaluation found that AAI diversified the industries implementing apprenticeships. Grantees sought out employers to hire apprentices in a range of occupations. Three-quarters of the 2,600 AAI apprentices who we surveyed registered in nontraditional occupations, with 33 percent in manufacturing, 17 percent in healthcare, and 7 percent in IT.

Grantees recruited individuals from populations historically underrepresented in apprenticeships, including women, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities: more than 60 percent of AAI apprentices were from underrepresented populations. Compared with all U.S. apprentices, a greater share of AAI apprentices were women or people of color.

Abt’s evaluation found that AAI apprentices experienced substantial increases in earnings. Among all AAI apprentices, annual earnings grew by an average of 49 percent from the year before starting the apprenticeship to the year after, rising from $35,408 to $52,876. Among different occupations, apprentices in IT experienced the highest earnings growth at 174 percent, followed by apprentices in healthcare, who experienced a 97 percent increase.

Earnings growth for AAI apprentices was broad-based, with apprentices from all racial and ethnic groups experiencing growth in average earnings, though gaps remained in average income levels between groups. Earnings for Hispanic apprentices increased by 50 percent, compared with 45 percent for white apprentices and 37 percent for Black apprentices. This growth in earnings for all racial and ethnic groups is consistent with AAI’s goal of promoting racial equity. Additionally, women’s earnings rose 65 percent versus 43 percent for men. This suggests that apprenticeship may be a promising strategy for reducing a significant gender pay gap: The gap narrowed from 31 percent one year before the apprenticeship to 13 percent one year after.

The AAI evaluation also built evidence about the value of apprenticeship to employers. Abt’s study projected employers’ return on investment from the first program year and for five years after, including direct and indirect benefits. Five years after the end of the apprentice’s time in the program, the typical employer experienced an estimated 44 percent return on investment—that is, for every dollar invested in the apprentice, the employer ultimately earned $1.44 in benefits. During the program, the typical employer didn’t recoup all its costs. But after the program, employer benefits were estimated between $33,000 and $40,000 for each apprenticeship program. This included both direct benefits (the apprentice’s productivity) and indirect benefits, such as reduced turnover, improved talent pipeline, worker loyalty, and company culture.

Registered apprenticeships have allowed Baystate Health to build tailored, flexible training programs that often amplify training that was already happening. Since we tend to focus on using competency-based models, it ensures all of our registered training pathways have defined skills that are mastered by the employee as they learn. Our employees appreciate the national credential that apprenticeship registration affords.

          - Jason Pacheco, Director of Workforce Planning, Analytics, and Compensation at Baystate Health

Some questions remain unanswered, such as the extent to which apprenticeships are responsible for participants’ earnings gains; how to promote entry into higher-paying occupations, especially for underrepresented populations; and how to encourage employers to launch apprenticeship programs. That said, clear evidence now exists to promote apprenticeships in the U.S. And the indications are that it would be a big win for a diverse group of both workers and employers.

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