Ol’Otis
The Picasso of the Ghetto
Black Women: Supporting Their Families—With Few Resources
The importance of women’s economic health in the black community is hard to overstate. That’s in part because black women tend to shoulder a lot of their households’ financial burden. More than 80 percent of black mothers are the breadwinners (defined as sole earner or bringing in at least 40 percent of total earnings) in their household. That’s compared with 50 percent of white mothers. And three-quarters of the black women who hold breadwinner status are doing so alone.
That heavy reliance on the work of black women helps explain why black women work more than women of other racial groups and are earning higher levels of education than they have historically. But despite their efforts to push for racial and gender equality throughout history, black women still get a raw deal economically, more than just about any other group, according to findingsfrom the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Between 2004 and 2014, median annual earnings for black women who worked full-time, year-round, declined to $34,000, lower than for most groups of men or women in the country. Unsurprisingly, that means that black women experience poverty at a higher rate than any other group, save Native American women. And more than one-third of black women land in the bottom rung of earnings, the report found, while only about 12 percent are part of the highest-earning group.
The importance of women’s economic health in the black community is hard to overstate. That’s in part because black women tend to shoulder a lot of their households’ financial burden. More than 80 percent of black mothers are the breadwinners (defined as sole earner or bringing in at least 40 percent of total earnings) in their household. That’s compared with 50 percent of white mothers. And three-quarters of the black women who hold breadwinner status are doing so alone.
That heavy reliance on the work of black women helps explain why black women work more than women of other racial groups and are earning higher levels of education than they have historically. But despite their efforts to push for racial and gender equality throughout history, black women still get a raw deal economically, more than just about any other group, according to findingsfrom the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Between 2004 and 2014, median annual earnings for black women who worked full-time, year-round, declined to $34,000, lower than for most groups of men or women in the country. Unsurprisingly, that means that black women experience poverty at a higher rate than any other group, save Native American women. And more than one-third of black women land in the bottom rung of earnings, the report found, while only about 12 percent are part of the highest-earning group.
