Mission

The Center for Women and Work addresses the needs of working women by studying public policies in the field, fostering research on areas of concern and sponsoring educational programs for working women, policy makers, corporate leaders, students and community organizers.

History

The Center for Women and Work was founded in 1993. It is within the School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) and is a unit of the Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL), a consortium of six women's programs at Rutgers University created to study and promote how and why women lead, and to develop programs that prepare women of all ages to lead effectively. The member units of IWL are: the Center for the American Woman and Politics (CAWP), the Center for Women and Work, the Center for Women's Global Leadership (Global Center), Douglass College, the Institute for Research on Women (IRW), and the Women's Studies Program.

Early activities of the Center involved a scholarly seminar series that culminated in a book, Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership, edited by Professor Sue Cobble, who was also the Center's founding director. The Center also cosponsored New Jersey Women Count (1994), a compilation of social indicators regarding the status of women in New Jersey. Professor Barbara Lee assumed the director’s position in 1997 and was succeeded by Professor Eileen Appelbaum, the current director, in 2002.

The Center encourages the study of women and workplace issues and promotes dialogue among decision-makers in corporations, government, labor and community organizations to develop public policies and company practices that promote women’s advancement. The Center disseminates research findings and benchmarks best practices in the workplace with the goal of improving outcomes for working women. In addition, the Center draws on the substantive faculty expertise on women and work within the Rutgers community to carry out the long-standing SMLR tradition of delivering quality educational programs to the labor and management communities of New Jersey and the nation.