Building a Post-COVID Recovery That Works For Women STARs
As the economy slowly recovers, it’s clear the COVID recession did not affect the genders equally. The economic effects of COVID are acutely felt by the 33 million women who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes — or STARs.
The challenges women STARs face during the pandemic are an exacerbation of the systemic disparity they faced in the workforce well before the pandemic began. However, the COVID recovery offers us a chance to finally address the disparities felt by women STARs by removing barriers to higher-wage work and increasing gender equity in the workplace.
Chart 1: Proportion of Women In Essential Roles By Job Family
Women STARs continue to face significant job losses, even as other demographics of workers get back to work. Moreover, as our analysis below shows, Women STARs who remained employed are more likely to work in industries such as health and personal care which have a high risk of COVID exposure.
Women STARs struggle with the same disadvantages all STARs face when compared to workers with a bachelor’s degree: They are less likely to work in middle- to higher-wage roles and have fewer opportunities to transition to higher-wage work based on their skills as compared to workers with a bachelor’s degree. Women STARs are also less likely to work in roles that provide options such as teleworking and flexible schedules, making it harder for women STARs to remain employed when schools and workplaces closed when compared to women with a bachelor’s degree.
However, disparities exist when comparing women STARs to men STARs. A higher proportion of women STARs begin their job transitions at lower-wage jobs than their male counterparts. When they transition to a new role, they are often more likely to be limited to roles that require the same skills as their previous roles compared to men, and far less likely to transition to higher-wage roles.
Chart 2: Upward Mobile Transitions By Gender
When women STARs do make transitions to higher-wage occupations, they are often not paid as well as their male counterparts. Men STARs who transitioned to a substantially higher-skilled role made $9.40/hour more, but women STARs making a similar transition only earned $6.60/hour more. These factors hinder a woman’s ability to access higher-wage work. Ultimately, this impacts the distribution of workers in the workforce: While women STARs make up 56% of low-wage roles, they only make up 23% of high-wage ones.
Chart 3: Women STARs Representation Within Occupations By Wage
To help women STARs in a post-COVID world, we have to reset the way the labor market traditionally worked for them by removing the barriers which keep women STARs from transitioning to higher-wage work.
Some women STARs will need targeted support to transition to higher-wage work. This is especially true for those who lost their jobs in hard-hit industries such as hospitality and food services. These roles often offered little upward mobility and were already at high risk of automation. These women will need access to additional training that will allow them to pivot to growing and higher-paying industries.
There are many women STARs who already have the skills to do higher-wage work within their industry, but they’re inhibited by unnecessary degree requirements. For example, Home Health Aides are disproportionately women STARs who have the skills to do higher wage roles such as Medical Assistant and Patient Care Coordinator but face significant barriers to transitioning to these roles due to degree requirements. By removing the degree requirements for these roles, employers can open up paths to upward mobility that otherwise didn’t exist.
Chart 4: Pathway From Home Health Aide to Patient Care Coordinator
Finally, it’s important to note that better training and clearer pathways to higher-wage work will not be enough to address the inequity that women STARs face in the workplace. Research shows that women with bachelor’s degrees earn significantly less than their male counterparts, and historically, when jobs move from predominantly male to predominantly female, wages for those jobs decline. Employers must do more to close the gender pay gap within their organizations to ensure a more equitable labor market for women STARs.
The COVID pandemic exposed and exacerbated the problems women STARs face in the labor market. However, as the country begins to recover we have a chance to build a more equitable economy that works for women by training women STARs who lost their jobs for higher-paying roles, defining pathways to high wage work for women still working, and tackling the gender pay gap.
This blog post was written by Martin Evelyn, Insights Manager at Opportunity@Work as part of the new STARlight Blog Series.
The STARlight Blog Series shares data, insights and stories, from Opportunity@Work research as well as the research of others in the field, to shed light on barriers to and opportunities for economic mobility for STARs.
