Research about Project Working Mom
Background
In 2008, eLearners.com contracted with Rutgers University’s Center for Women and Work, to conduct an evaluation of PWM. Twenty-nine scholarship recipients agreed to participate in the research study. While each of the 29 participants was interviewed or surveyed during the study period, they did not all respond to every survey and interview request. As a result there are varying numbers throughout the report detailing the number of participants who responded at each point in the survey. This report summarizes our findings.
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Executive Summary
In the U.S. today women comprise a significant portion of the labor force. The United States Census Bureau reports that in 2009 women reached half of our nation’s workforce, and this number is projected to rise in 2010 and beyond. This important moment is simultaneously occurring at a time when the U.S. economy is in a period of deep recession, with millions of Americans fighting to find or keep their jobs, and many families looking to their mothers and daughters to be the breadwinners.
While women have taken on an important role in the workforce many do not earn self-sufficiency wages. Often women need to continue their education in order to increase their wages. Yet, many working mothers—whether married or single— do not have the time, flexibility, or money needed to complete educational degrees and certificates that are necessary to attain and build careers that can lead to economic security. Developing ways to provide education to these women in a manner that complements their work and family demands is needed.
In the past two decades a convenient and flexible new way of learning and skills delivery has exploded on the American educational scene –online learning. Using this type of learning, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can take courses from accredited institutions in an academic field of their choice. Such technical capacity via the computer provides even the busiest Americans—especially working mothers—an enormous opportunity to further their education. Access to skills training and credentials that can lead to the better paying and more satisfying jobs that education makes possible has been a major missing ingredient in many women’s lives.
This report reviews the eLearners.com Project Working Mom (PWM) program, which seeks to address the barriers that women face in accessing education and provide working mothers in the United States with a second chance at education via the Internet.
The report examines the lived experiences of the women in the program and provides an overview of what is working and what is not working in the PWM program. The report includes the following key findings:
- The women involved in this program pursued this educational opportunity for a variety of different reasons including access to better-paying jobs with benefits; a need for credentials, a desire for a certain type of career, a career path, selfesteem, challenge and lack of boredom at work, and role-modeling education for their kids.
- Many PWM participants could not have completed their education had it not been online. The flexibility in time and space that online learning offers helped to alleviate many of the barriers associated with classroom based education.
- The eLearners.com scholarship award was pivotal for almost all of the working moms in this study. The scholarship provided participants with both the motivation and financial ability to continue their education.
- Overall, the women in PWM are highly satisfied with their educational experience.
- Despite the fact that online learning offers flexibility, PWM participants still struggled with the daily challenge of juggling their work and mothering/care responsibilities with their education.
- Online learning requires self-discipline and self-direction.
- While PWM participants enjoyed the online environment, they reported that there are elements from a traditional classroom that PWM participants missed including in person social interaction.
- PWM participants worked to combat the solitary nature of online learning by studying with family members, friends, children and others.
PWM scholarship participants felt nervous about going back to school and were conscious of being different as older learners.
The following recommendations emerged out of the report:
- Many women stated that they would benefit from being able to speak and interact with other PWM scholarship recipients. Further rounds of this program should include an online forum, along with other virtual connections (Facebook page, Twitter updates, etc) for scholarship winners.
- As PWM continues to grow, creating a PWM alumni network is important. This network would provide an opportunity to encourage peer mentoring among recipients and would help to develop a community of learners, a network for job opportunities, and other connections for the women.
- PWM recipients are working mothers and as a result it is important that the schools they are placed in continue to pursue and develop policies that respond to the need these mothers have for flexibility in their educational programming. Schools should design and utilize matriculation and continuation policies that accommodate some of the crisis that these learners experience. One example of this would be instituting open enrollment and exit policies for courses.
- Universities should reevaluate their use of team projects as an integral part of the online experience in light of the almost universal criticism of the team experiences that they offer online. This is also true in classroom learning, but seems from the data to be particularly problematic in the online environment.
- Teachers are still an important factor, even in an online learning experience. Some teachers are far more responsive and interactive than others at these universities. One idea maybe to include a mentor for each of the students to help them navigate their learning experiences.
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About this Report
This report was prepared by Heather McKay, Mary Gatta, Ph.D., and Mary Murphree, Ph.D., of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University.
Heather A. McKay, Director, Sloan Center on Innovative Training and Workforce Development
Heather A. McKay is the Director of the Sloan Center on Innovative Training and Workforce Development as well as the Director of Innovative Training and Workforce Development Programs at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. In this capacity Heather currently directs an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded project that provides technical assistance and resources to states to scale up a New Jersey pilot project of online learning for low wage workers throughout the country. Heather is also currently working on an evaluation program funded by the Nicholson Foundation focusing on offender reentry and the education system. Heather completed her BA at Bryn Mawr College in 2004 she has an MA in World History and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Global Affairs at Rutgers University.
Mary Gatta, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Gender and Workforce Policy
Dr. Mary Gatta is the Director, Gender and Workforce Policy at the Center for Women, and on the faculty in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. She holds a PhD and M.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University and a B.A. in Social Science from Providence College. Her areas of expertise include gender and public policy, low-wage workers, earnings inequality, and sex segregation studies.
Dr. Gatta has published several books, articles, and policy papers. Her latest book, Not Just Getting By: The New Era of Flexible Workforce Development released from Lexington Press's imprint Press for Change, chronicles groundbreaking thinking and research on new and innovative workforce development initiatives that delivers skills training to single working poor mothers via the Internet.
Her book, Juggling Food and Feelings: Emotional Balance in the Workplace was released from Lexington Press in 2002. In addition to books, Dr. Gatta has published numerous scholarly articles and public policy papers on topics including gender equity in academia, the gender-based pay gap, and welfare policy. Finally, Dr. Gatta was recently elected to a three-year Council term of the American Sociological Association’s Sociological Practice Section.
Mary Murphree, Ph.D., Senior Advisor
From 1985 until March 1, 2005, Dr. Mary Murphree served as the Regional Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Region 2 Women's Bureau. In that capacity, she represented the interests of approximately six million working women in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. This Spring, following her retirement from government, Dr. Murphree became the Outreach Coordinator of the Sloan Center for Innovative Training and Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. An internationally known speaker and expert on women's employment, Dr. Murphree has particular expertise in technology and employment as well as low-wage labor issues such as the policy challenges of "contingent work" (part-time, temporary and independent contracting) and the equal opportunity challenges faced nationally by women and minority workers.
Dr. Murphree earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. Her dissertation analyzed the caste system and changing role of legal secretaries in Wall Street law firms, as a result of information technology and the introduction of paralegal personnel during the 1970s. Prior to joining the federal government, Dr. Murphree was a visiting professor at Queens College, City University of New York. She also held a post-doctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center in a program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health on The Economics and Sociology of Women and Work. She also directed Murphree Associates, a workplace consulting firm, whose clients included high technology manufacturing firms, national human resource organizations as well as several New York law firms.
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About The Center for Women and Work
The Center for Women and Work (CWW) is an innovative leader in research and programs that promotes gender equity, a high skill economy, and reconciliation of work and well-being for all. CWW is located in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The CWW houses the Sloan Center on Innovative Training and Workforce Development (ITWD). The ITWD is dedicated to assisting state, county, and city government Departments and Workforce Investment Boards institutionalize technologically based flexible education and training alternatives, especially online learning opportunities, for non-college educated workers. More information can be found at www.cww.rutgers.edu.
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Comments for Research about Project Working Mom :
1 comment(s)
purity kairuthi On Wednesday, February 09 2011
congratulations you are my role models am pursuing social work and community in Kenya.