New York City’s job-training programs do not provide young women with equitable access to higher-paying jobs and often fail to provide training in nontraditional jobs, according to a study by the Center for Public Advocacy Research Inc.
The study examined 28 of the 37 youth employment programs in New York City funded under the Job Training Partnership Act to serve young people ages 16 to 21 years old.
It found that more than half of the 1,738 participants in the programs between January and April of 1984 were women, and that many program operators said that young4women were more highly motivated and skilled than their male counterparts.
‘Nontraditional’ Fields
But the study found that 13 of the 28 programs did not provide training in fields considered nontraditional for women. Some 78 percent of the women, compared with 57 percent of the men, were enrolled in health and clerical jobs. Only 8.5 percent of the women were enrolled in such programs as auto mechanics and building maintenance.
The study found that young people of both sexes were being paid about $4 an hour, but those working in clerical jobs received slightly lower wages, while higher wages were offered in the technical or building-repair categories.
Most of the program officials also said that they were facing severe problems in arranging child care for their participants.
The “failure to locate child care was preventing participants from applying and being accepted to jtpa programs,” the study noted. “Further, many program operators indicated that they had enrolled young women who were forced to withdraw from their program because child-care arrangements had broken down."--at
