Supporting Vulnerable Women Workers in Accessing Employment Rights and Benefits

Background & Purpose: Research suggests that women workers who are particularly vulnerable to experiencing violations of their employment rights and other protections – including those in low-wage, “shadow” and “gig” economy jobs - may lack knowledge of those rights (Alexander & Prasad, 2014), and those who are aware may fear retaliation for asserting them (e.g., Lesniewski & Gleeson, 2022). This raises the question of how to effectively support vulnerable women workers in understanding and exercising their employment rights and related benefits. In a novel initiative, in 2021 and 2022 the U.S. Department of Labor awarded “Fostering Access, Rights and Equity” (FARE) grants to 12 public and nonprofit agencies to support services to address these challenges. This paper reports findings from a qualitative program evaluation of the six nonprofit community agencies funded, reviewing the employment issues facing the women served, the agencies’ strategies for developing and delivering accessible services of this type and to this population, and difficulties they addressed in the process.

Methods: Data were collected through review of program documents (e.g., outreach materials and information session curricula), quarterly administrative reports, and in-person and virtual site visits, which included interviews with FARE grantee staff and participants as well as observations of educational training sessions with FARE participants. Data were analyzed using structural coding (Saldaña, 2013) developed through conversations with the research team in consultation with DOL, and thematic analysis conducted by research team members.

Results: FARE programming participants were primarily low-income, immigrant, and indigenous women of color working front-line jobs at farms, agricultural plants, and distribution centers and in direct health care, hospitality and food services, and construction. They faced a range of employment-related issues including employment discrimination; wage theft; lack of workplace protections during peak COVID and other occupational health and safety concerns; long and unpredictable work schedules and lack of overtime pay; and sexual harassment and abuse and other violence. The women faced intersecting barriers to pursuing their employment rights that included language, immigration, and temporary/seasonal worker status, and fear of retaliation for reporting – including loss of work hours and employment, and abuse at work and from partners at home. The agencies innovatively responded with service provision featuring “train-the-trainer” models that empowered participants to become community educators; bringing technology to participants to engage programs at home, addressing privacy, transportation and dependent care issues and enabling language support; giving participants a say in who provided their services (esp. legal help); hiring staff from the women’s communities; and using social media, role playing, videos and photo novels, and sensitively tailored language (e.g., “disrespect” instead of “abuse” in some cases).

Conclusions & Implications: The findings provide rich data on the workplace experiences of vulnerable and often hard-to-reach women workers, and illuminate strategies for accessing and empowering these populations, with implications for social work research and direct service. Agencies’ inclusive, collaborative approaches to services – centering participants – offer models and techniques for scholars engaged in community-based research with vulnerable populations, and agencies considering improving or expanding services to those populations.