CTE Leadership Collaborative Fellows Explore Gender Equity in CTE
A round-up of recent work from ECMC Foundation Fellows
March 23, 2022
By Patrick Bourke, Program Officer, Career Readiness
Although career and technical education (CTE) is an essential pathway for adults seeking a family-sustaining wage during this period of economic upheaval, CTE has a history of vocational tracking that has left women and people of color out of better paying fields. Since launching in 2018, ECMC Foundation’s CTE Leadership Collaborative has been working to change the face of postsecondary CTE leadership by equipping a diverse group of emerging leaders with the tools, resources and skills needed to advance the field. Of the more than 200 Fellows in the Collaborative, 61% identify as women, while more than two in five identify as people of color.
The CTE Leadership Collaborative fosters connection and collaboration across a range of approaches and disciplines, including research, data analytics, business and industry, journalism, higher education, and aspiring state leaders. These diverse perspectives are already deepening the field’s understanding of key issues, such as gender equity, that affect CTE’s present and future.
Recent pieces from ECMC Foundation Fellows that explore women in CTE include:
- Kavitha Cardoza, part of the Higher Education Media Fellowship at Institute for Citizens and Scholars profiled a home health aide training program in her NPR Weekend Edition piece, “Home Health Aides, Who Help Elderly And Disabled People, Are In Short Supply”
- Amy Scott, another media Fellow, looked at women in construction training programs for Marketplace (“Training women in construction — and the employers who hire them”)
- Jenny Brundin of Colorado Public Radio reported a series on the Future of Early Childhood Education in Colorado, including a piece looking at apprenticeships in early childhood education and the role of immigrant and refugee women in the early childhood workforce.
- Sara A. Shaw, an ECMC Foundation Fellow with the CTE Research Program at NC State, is researching women’s leadership in higher education, with a piece in Educational Research: Theory and Practice and a chapter in Voices from Women Leaders on Success in Higher Education.