AMHERST — An economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been selected by the federal government to lead a first-of-its-kind study examining how federal contractors fare on gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination.
Lee Badgett, director of the School of Public Policy at UMass, said a $250,000 grant awarded to the university this week by the U.S. Department of Labor will help her and other researchers study the issue.
UMass is one of eight schools to be awarded funds this week, totaling almost $2 million and administered through the Department of Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office.
Awardees will analyze how the department’s policies impact the public, Chief Evaluation Officer Molly Irwin, of the Department of Labor, said in a news release.
“These grants further our goals of supporting rigorous, independent research to understand the effectiveness of our programs and activities,” she said.
In 2014, President Obama issued an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The grants awarded this week aim to gauge how well contractors are complying with the order.
“Nobody’s ever studied that — what kind of problems there might be amongst federal contractors, if any, and whether this executive order is helping to end discrimination,” Badgett said.
Since 2013, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has accepted complaints from LGBT people in the workforce.