Equal Pay Day Black Women

Ever notice how a thread like this gets no replies but MizIndependent will post until she is blue in the face on the others that leave even a little room for pea drama.

The pushback against institutionalized work patterns and the movement for work-life balance is an emerging, yet critical wing of feminism that is long overdue. But this wave can’t ignore the unique circumstances of women of color nor the socioeconomic dynamics of how white women came to even begin to have the conversation about work-life balance in the first place. Throughout history, white women have used the labor of women of color to reduce their own domestic burden and free themselves up for corporate and civic pursuits. Simply put, the labor of Black, Hispanic and Asian American women has raised white women’s standard of living.

So if we’re talking about work-life balance, let’s be clear that many white women of means have achieved that balance standing on the backs of women of color.

After all, women of color’s participation in the labor force has always outpaced that of white women. As early as 1900, 26 percent of married black women were employed, compared to only 3.2 percent of white women. Asian American wives also had high employment rates, according to Evelyn Nakano Glenn in “Cleaning Up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in ‘Women’s Work.’ ” And there was a time when the only work options available to women of color were doing the work that white women of means did not want to do. White women needed us and we needed them.

So we breast-fed your babies. We raised your children. We cleaned your houses. We did your laundry. We cooked your food.

By 1920, for example, black women comprised 82 percent of the female servants in the South; native born white women made up 15 percent and foreign born Whites accounted for the remaining three percent. In southwestern cities such as El Paso and Denver, approximately half of all employed Mexican women were domestic or laundry workers. In 1930, half of all employed Japanese women in the San Francisco Bay area were private household workers, according to Glenn. The cultural norm was concretized and repeated. Today, women of color and immigrants dominate the domestic worker ranks, comprising some 54 percent of that workforce compared to 46 percent whites. Yet, the 2012 Domestic Workers Survey found that white domestic workers had the highest median wages compared to women of color.

With much of the caring duties covered by women of color, many white women had the privilege to freely seek educational and other professional and civic opportunities. “Ironically, many white women fulfilled White society’s expectation of feminine domesticity only through the domestic labor of their servants, who were women of color,” Nakano Glenn writes.

While white women were on the come-up, black women’s devalued identity as a means of labor was sealed, with very little regard for their own responsibilities as mothers and wives.

There was no flex time. No work from home options. Work-life balance was an impossible dream.

It was simple economics, and simple economics created different value systems that divide our priorities today. White women had money but wanted more time. Black and brown women needed more money. The limited ability of our men to find work that could solely sustain a family is a documented phenomenon and the subject of many a research papers, therefore our role as economic providers was critical for our family stability. In that regard, our personal value system as mothers was created around providing financially—not necessarily by the measure of “time spent.” We took pride in seeing our children in new shoes, clean clothes or with fresh toys and books and we developed community mothering models with extended family members and other care-givers who gave “time” to our children. The money earned from work was our gateway to getting our children into good schools, having swimming or music lessons, and other experiences that would give them cultural and educational opportunities—things that white families could easily access. This was our pride and focus. This was our value system for mothering. Our matrix also included a trade off of time spent now for the chance of greater opportunities for our children later.



Much of that way of being still exists.

As do the economics. White women are calling for time to mother, but black women still need money to mother. While the male-female pay gap has been slowing decreasing, the pay gap between white women and black women is the fastest growing income inequality there is, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. In 1979, black women earned only 6 percent less than white women. Today, black women earn 19 percent less than white women, according the the report.

According to Molly Redden and Jana Kasperkevic who reported on the study in the Guardian, “At the beginning of the 1980s, black women with a college degree or higher and white women with a college degree or higher earned roughly the same wages. But today, wages for black women with a college degree or higher are 12.3 percent less than those of their white counterparts. That is double the disparity experienced by black women with only a high school degree,” the report found.

About 28 percent of employed black women work in service occupations, the occupational group with the lowest wages. Jobs in this broad occupational group often lack important benefits such as paid sick days, according to a report by the Institute of Women’s Policy Research.




Long article I meant to share awhile back. I stopped C&P mid article so you do have to click the link to finish the read.



slate.com/human-interest/2018/03/for-women-of-color-work-life-balance-is-a-different-kind-of-problem.html