# data[].attributes.body
This article goes on to explain how intersectionality plays a role in the workplace. Different inequalities, such as racism and sexism, can take part in oppressions within the workplace for many individuals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Effect of Intersectionality in the Workplace (Published 2018)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A feeling of having to protect against bias or unfair treatment, of always having to be on guard.

# data[].attributes.headline
Annalise Keating - How to Get Away With Murder

# data[].attributes.subject
Annalise Keating - How to Get Away With Murder

# data[].attributes.body
Annalise Keating is one of the main characters in the television show "How to Get Away With Murder." She is a black women who endures many disadvantages due to the intersectionality of the oppression she faces. In the show she works hard to fight against these privileges and oppressions to bring power to herself and others.

# data[].attributes.body
Lizzo is a singer pop star who has become popular for her empowering music. Her songs have been known to talk about gendered stereotypes about women in society, and she works to fight against it.

# data[].attributes.body
This organization has created hashtags to spread awareness of the representation of gender stereotypes within media/products.

# data[].attributes.body
Women's History Month is put on every March to empower women and spread awareness of the issues they are facing today. 2022 had a the theme of "Providing healing, promoting hope."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 2022 Women's History theme, "Providing Healing, Promoting Hope," is both a tribute to the ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers during this ongoing pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history.

Women as healers harken back to ancient times. Healing is the personal experience of transcending suffering and transforming it to wholeness. The gift of hope spreads light to the lives of others and reflects a belief in the unlimited possibilities of this and future generations. Together, healing and hope are essential fuels for our dreams and our recovery.

This year, in particular, we are reminded of the importance of healers and caregivers who are helping to promote and sustain hope for the future. The NWHA encourages communities throughout the country to honor local women who bring and have historically brought these priceless gifts to their families, workplaces, and neighborhoods, sometimes at great sacrifice. These are the women who, as counselors and clerics, artists and teachers, doctors, nurses, mothers, and grandmothers listen, ease suffering, restore dignity, and make decisions for our general as well as our personal welfare.

Women have long advocated for compassionate treatments and new directions in public health and in women's mental and physical health. Women have also historically led the way in mending divisions, healing wounds, and finding peaceful solutions. This timeless work, in so many ways and in addition to so many other tasks, has helped countless individuals in our communities recover and follow their dreams.

The 2022 theme proudly honors those who, in both public and private life, provide healing and promote hope for the betterment of all.

Announcing Choosing 2022 Honorees
For communities and organizations throughout the country

Instead of selecting national honorees, the NWHA encourages groups throughout the country to use the theme to recognize and honor women in their own communities, organizations, or agencies. The Alliance will continue to focus on being the clearinghouse for women's history information and will continue to network with the many organizations and independent efforts that celebrate women's achievements and contribute to writing women back into history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2022 Theme - National Women's History Alliance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 2022 Women's History theme, "Providing Healing, Promoting Hope," is both a tribute to the ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers during this ongoing pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history.

# data[].attributes.body
Roe v. Wade has recently been overturned to ban abortions around the country. Women, along with many other individuals, have gone out in the streets to protest against this law to fight for women's reproductive rights.

# data[].attributes.body
The COVID-19 Pandemic hurt many people throughout the country, but especially people who experience inequality. Many individuals, such as people who have a low socioeconomic status, people of color, and women, all have disadvantages that lead to even more hurt during hard times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Laboratory of Social Policies, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Covid-19 has been a disrupting event in contemporary social life but is far from being a great equaliser. Preliminary studies have put in evidence how different social groups faced a differentiated risk of contagion and coped differently with the various consequences of the emergency. Evidence shows how minorities and migrants face disproportionally higher risks of contagion than the white upper and middle class, and how vulnerable communities are more exposed to deaths and the rapid spread of the virus. At the same time, societies are coping with social distancing measures and their disruptive social and economic consequences, which have a more significant impact on the most vulnerable segments of societies: women, children, low-income classes and ethnic minorities. This article argues that an intersectional framework allows an understanding of what is occurring in the current pandemic, both in terms of its social determinants and social consequences. To open the black box of inequality, intersectional scholars analyze the intersections of multiple structures of inequalities (such as gender, age, class, ethnicity), which have a multiplying effect when disadvantaged positions intersect in the same individual. Covid-19 is a clear example of an intersectional phenomenon: the impact of individual and community exposure to Covid-19 is the results of multiple and interrelating structures of inequality. Up to now, research in social sciences has underestimated the role of intersectionality in analyzing the social and economic consequences of this pandemic.

Introduction

Covid-19 is not a great equaliser ( Alfani, 2020; Berkhout and Richardson, 2020; Fisher et al., 2020; Galasso, 2020; Lokot and Bathia, 2020). Like other more recent pandemics such as the Spanish flu in 1918 or HIV in the '80s, the virus spread more easily among the vulnerable population. Furthermore, the economic consequences of social distancing measures are leading to an increase of inequalities compared to pre-pandemic times ( Alfani, 2020; Haase, 2020; Montenovo et al., 2020; Ryan and El Ayadi, 2020) and interact with pre-existing inequalities along dimensions such as gender, age, socio-economic conditions, geography ( Eaves and Al-Hindi, 2020). However, the current debate on the effects of Covid-19 has not sufficiently considered how the intersections between existing structures of inequalities affect the impact of Covid-19 on societies. In this paper, I argue that these studies have forgotten the relevance that possible intersections might have in determining the social effects of this pandemic.

The relationship between Covid-19 and the inequality structure occurs along two dimensions: how current inequality structures affect the spread of the infection and how its containment measures affect the existing systems of inequality ( Holst et al., 2020). The debate about the social determinants of health is long-standing in sociology: it focuses on how education, socio-economic conditions and the environment in which people live affect their health ( Scambler, 2019; Burton et al., 2020; Joseph, 2020). Covid-19 is a social disease ( Trout and Kleinman, 2020): the likelihood of getting infected is influenced by economic inequalities. The virus is more likely to hit harder among those who have a concurrent illness, live in over-crowded housing or lack regular access to health services ( Burton et al., 2020; Holst et al., 2020; Horton, 2020). Furthermore, Covid-19 distribution is also correlated with the vulnerability of the communities ( Fisher et al., 2020; Hatef et al., 2020). When ethnically segregated, the spread of Covid-19 in a community is greater ( Joseph, 2020). In the debate about social determinants of health, the need for an intersectional approach has long been recognized ( Lopez and Gadsen, 2016).

But Covid-19 is not only a medical issue but a "social disaster" as well ( Connell, 2020). The social distancing necessary to avoid the spread of the virus determines its social impact. These measures affect societies in three manners: 1). exposing existing vulnerabilities, 2). reinforcing current inequalities, 3). amplifying social differences in the future because of scarring effects ( Haase, 2020). Thus, the scope of this review is to argue that an intersectional analytical framework is necessary to grasp the full social consequences of Covid-19.

Exploring the Social Impact of Covid-19 Pandemics Under an Intersectional Perspective

The unprecedented measures taken for coping with Covid-19 have disrupted the labor market, with most recent ILO estimations indicating that 93% of the world's workers experienced some sort of workplace closures. Shuts down have implied a relevant loss in working hours (8.8% compared to 2019), growing inactivity and unemployment rates, with a decline of 8.3% in labor income globally (source: ILO Monitor, seventh Edition, January 2021). The following sections review the empirical evidence emerging from on-going research conducted worldwide on the social consequences of Covid-19 social distancing measures.

Shutdown Sectors

Measures of social distancing caused the closures of non-essential working activities with consequent massive layoffs and furloughs. Activities involving frequent interpersonal contacts suffered more prolonged closures and could not easily turn to telework. Given its characteristics, the crisis has been defined a "pink recession" as it affected especially sectors in which women are the majority of employees, with gendered effects in terms of job loss and reduction of working hours ( Matthewman and Huppatz, 2020).

Adams-Prassl et al. (2020) shows that sectors such as arts and entertainment, education, food, accommodation and retail suffered in all countries considered in their study (United Kingdom, United States and Germany). The same occurred in Australia ( Churchill, 2020) and Italy ( Galasso, 2020). These are sectors in which women are over-represented, leading to a higher impact on their individual income ( Alon et al., 2020). Blundell et al. (2020) demonstrated that in United Kingdom women, young and low-paid workers are those that suffered the most from the lockdown. In Italy, Galasso (2020) observed adverse effects on blue collars, low-educated workers and low-income services workers as well. Social distancing implied more significant job losses among ethnic minorities in the United States, especially Hispanics ( Béland et al., 2020; Montenovo et al., 2020). Layoffs in the United States exacerbated pre-existing forms of parental status and gender inequality in employment, with a consistent fatherhood premium ( Dias et al., 2020). Thus, mothers more than father were more likely to exit the labor force during the pandemics and, significantly, mothers of the youngest children reduced their working hours five times more than fathers ( Collins et al., 2020). The 80% of job loss in Europe occurred among temporary workers, with youth employment significantly affected; the sharpest decrease occurred in elementary occupations (−10%) and sales (−8%) ( Eurostat, 2020). Blundell et al. (2020) also observed a more substantial reduction in earnings for low-income workers and self-employed workers. In the global South, informal work has been significantly affected by job loss, affecting disproportionally the least well-off ( Fisher et al., 2020). As such, the shutdown affected mostly vulnerable and disadvantaged workers: in general, families that were already in a condition of economic insecurity and working precariousness suffered the most from the shutdowns.

In conclusion, the more fragile workers were more likely to stop working and to suffer immediate income loss from the social distancing measures that affected mostly low-skilled services sectors ( Blundell et al., 2020; Galasso, 2020). The variance in job losses in terms of demographic characteristics depends on the sorting between different sectors ( Montenovo et al., 2020): the affected sectors showed a predominance of youth, minorities, women and low-skilled workers, usually employed with temporary contracts or in precarious working conditions, including solo self-employment.

Key workers vs. Teleworking

Even during stricter restrictions, the majority of workers continued their working activities. In a study from Eurofond (2020), about half of the labor force worked at least once from home during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemics. However, working conditions were highly differentiated between those who could reorganize their work entirely at home and those who had to continue working in their usual workplace. Class divides clearly marked this separation.

The expansion of teleworking following the COVID-19 outbreak is strongly skewed toward high-paid and high-skilled white-collar employment ( European Commission, 2020; Sostero et al., 2020). Galasso and Foucalt (2020), analyzing data from surveys covering several 12 OECD countries, demonstrated that college graduates and white collars were overwhelmingly working from home. Apart from belonging to the most privileged strata of labor markets, those who could telework were less likely to lose their jobs during pandemics ( Adams-Prassl et al., 2020; Montenovo et al., 2020) and to suffer from their economic consequences ( Béland et al., 2020). Teleworking sectors are those in which gender divides are lower. Still, women were more likely to reduce their working hours when teleworking due to the increasing burden of unpaid work with lockdown schools and the lack of help from primary networks following self-isolation ( Hipp and Bünning, 2020).

Conversely, key workers belong to essential sectors such as health care, supermarkets and cleaning, and could rarely access teleworking. They are usually poorly paid with less welfare protection than other categories ( Horton, 2020). Although they were not exposed to unemployment, key workers faced a higher risk of Covid-19 exposure ( Montenovo et al., 2020), with consequent high proportions of contagion and deaths among them ( van Barneveld et al., 2020). Essential sectors are disproportionally populated by low-skilled women and ethnic minorities, usually employed with precarious working conditions and low pay. More than 50% of those who continue working in place despite restrictions belong to the lowest educated groups in the United Kingdom ( Blundell et al., 2020). Despite their essential role and the general appreciation that healthcare workers received during the pandemics, frontline workers could not capitalize on the pandemics for improving their job conditions or increasing its monetary value.

In conclusion, the capacity of teleworking reinforces pre-existing labor market inequalities. High-skilled and high-paid workers were more likely to preserve their jobs and to work safely through lockdowns, avoiding income loss. On the contrary, key frontline workers, mostly active in service and care jobs, are disproportionally low paid and more exposed to contagion. Sorting among the two groups of workers depends on education and earnings, with the most shielded group belonging to the highest classes.

School Closures

After decades of externalization, pandemics have increased the internalization of care for dependent family members, especially children ( Hupkau and Pentrongolo, 2020). School closures implied a deeper involvement of families, both in care and education; and many couples have to concentrate work and home schooling in the same (domestic) space ( Craig, 2020). Social distancing also precluded support from primary networks, such as friends, neighbors or grandparents ( Blaskó et al., 2020). The care burden was particularly heavy for single parents ( van Barneveld et al., 2020). Not surprisingly, most of these additional care hours have been carried out by women.

School closures affected children and youth disproportionally, with a systematic and more profound impact on young from low socio-economic backgrounds ( ILO, 2020). The impossibility to go to school has meant the incapacity to secure food, health, access to services for the lowest-income households ( Blundell et al., 2020; Fisher et al., 2020), and widened educational inequalities among children of different socio-economic backgrounds ( Reimer et al., 2020). Increase in children's inequality occurred primarily when students were taught online ( Reimer et al., 2020). In fact, digital inequalities strongly affected the capacity of families to cope with online teaching ( Auriemma and Iannaccone, 2020; Puckett and Rafalow, 2020): families with lower socio-economic backgrounds had more difficulties in buying adequate instruments to support home schooling or to have sufficient space for study at home ( Auriemma and Iannaccone, 2020; Blundell et al., 2020; Reimer et al., 2020). Better-off families are more likely to have both parents accessing teleworking, increasing the family's capacity to cope with home schooling thanks to a more equal distribution of unpaid care ( Craig, 2020; Del Boca et al., 2020; Hipp and Bünning, 2020). They have better houses with wider spaces and more capacity to face unexpected expenses, such as the devices needed for home schooling ( Blundell et al., 2020).

Furthermore, data from live surveys in Italy ( Del Boca et al., 2020), Spain ( Bonal and González, 2020), Germany, Ireland and United Kingdom ( Dietrich et al., 2020) show that not all the parents looked after children in the same way: mothers holding a degree and their partner spent more time on children's education, even controlling for working arrangements. All preliminary evidence shows that schooling disruptions are likely to affect students' cognitive development and educational attainment with 65% of young reporting lesser learning outcomes since pandemics ( ILO 2020), but with differentiated effects depending on classes. Educational inequalities are more pronounced in the Global South: families with children accessing private education have been further advantaged since public schools could not provide even basic online teaching ( Fisher et al., 2020).

In conclusion, the social consequences of school closures again affected the most vulnerable populations: children and young, especially if they belong to low socio-economic backgrounds or live in the Global South, might experience persisting scarring effects that might compromise their educational attainment in the future. At the same time, families were particularly stressed, with additional care burden distributed unevenly among genders.

Home Confinement

Self-isolation imposed generally on the population implied a renovated relevance of housing in terms of accessing sufficient and secure space. Houses have suddenly become the space in which people work, study and spend their free time with the consequences of exacerbating inequalities between those who can access sufficient space for all family members and those who cannot ( Auriemma and Iannaccone, 2020). Socially excluded populations, such as homeless, refugees or those who have fragile access to housing have been significantly affected by home confinement for their chronic lack of secure access to housing. Especially for undocumented migrants, their undeclared conditions implied a higher likelihood of losing their jobs when home confinement took place. Usually, they were excluded from income support schemes or housing protection measures, leaving them particularly exposed to insecurity and poverty ( Guadagno, 2020).

Furthermore, home confinement and school closure have also implied an increase of gender-based violence, since women and children were locked up with their persecutors without the capacity to evade or to ask for help ( Evans et al., 2020; Fisher et al., 2020). Data from the US showed an increase of up to 30% of reports on intimate violence ( Eaves and Al-Hindi, 2020), a trend confirmed in China ( Sacco et al., 2020). In other countries, the number of reports dramatically fell, as happened in Italy ( Sacco et al., 2020), because of the impossibility for women to ask for help outside the family. Additionally, financial insecurity might force victims to stay with their abuser ( OECD, 2020). Domestic violence is a phenomenon that cuts across all levels of income, education and occupation; however, empirical evidence on the Covid-19 effects on domestic violence are too preliminary to argue if they tend to concentrate among families of lower socio-economic background.

In conclusion, the adverse effects of home confinement were not evenly distributed across social groups. The preliminary empirical evidence shows the higher vulnerability of women and children, and socially excluded populations compared to the better-off families, both in terms of access to adequate housing and safe environment for study and living. Domestic violence has been on the rise for the incapacity of women to escape their persecutors during home confinement measures.

The Intersectional Pandemic Effects

The intersectional theory has gained increased success over recent years in women's studies for its capacity to go beyond a simple binary approach to gender inequalities. In fact, intersectionality considers what occurs when multiple axes of inequalities enter in relation, so that gender should always be seen in interactive and complex relations with other factors, such as ethnicity, class, age, etc. ( Berkhout and Richardson, 2020; Eaves and Al-Hindi, 2020; Ryan and El Ayadi, 2020). Under this perspective, these structures of inequalities are "crosscutting and mutually reinforcing systems of domination and subordination", which "may construct multiple, uneven and contradictory social patterns" ( Anthias 2005, 36-37). They are interrelated but different systems of inequality. Thus, people hold positions that may be conflicting with each other-such as for black middle-class women, who are privileged for their belonging to the middle class but discriminated for their being women and blacks.

As seen in the previous section (§ Exploring the Social Impact of Covid-19 Pandemics Under an Intersectional Perspective Section), pandemics' direct and indirect social consequences impacted differentially on individuals belonging to different social groups. Each of the phenomenon considered (the closure of non-essential sectors, teleworkers and key workers, school closures and home confinement) had an impact differentiated by gender, class, age, ethnic background (etc.), while these structures of inequalities were mutually reinforcing each other at the intersections. For example, we can consider the case of a single mother working in an essential sector coping with the care and education of her children in the total absence of help from public services and primary networks. Her vulnerability does not merely emerge from the fact that she is female but from the contemporaneous presence of other disadvantaged conditions (being a single mother and a key worker) that magnify her vulnerability facing an adverse event (the social distancing due to pandemics).

Each social group we have identified as particularly vulnerable to the pandemic (women, young, children, ethnic minorities) is not a uniform group ( Berkhout and Richardson, 2020): women differ among each other for their socio-economic conditions, if they have a partner that can support the increased burden of unpaid work determined by school closure, if they belong to vulnerable communities or have access to adequate housing. And this happens for all the other groups considered: data showed that almost three quarters of youth suffered from an interruption in their education, but for those belonging to low socio-economic classes this situation will probably imply a scarring effect in future educational attainment and, consequently, in their future capacity to secure their living on the labor market ( ILO, 2020).

Focusing on only one axis of inequality at a time impedes grasping the real reach of the pandemic effect and its unequal distribution across social groups in society. Applying an intersectional approach to Covid-19 implies using a fractal analytical approach to the complexity of reality, as shown in Figure 1: independently of which axis of inequality we consider as first, the inclusion of the others generates a tree of multiple inequalities in which the focus lies at the intersections, not at the single analytical dimension. In each intersection, the experience of Covid-19 and the relative vulnerability changes.

FIGURE 1. The figure represents in a simplified way the logical reasoning behind applying an intersectional approach to a social phenomenon, such as Covid-19.

Measures of containment did not equally affect economic sectors, nor countries: each government decided which measure to implement, in certain cases lengthy interruptions in school provisions and longer duration of home confinement, while in others only lighter restrictions in the activities considered at highest risk of interpersonal contacts. The social and economic effects of the pandemics depended not only on the individual characteristics of the person but on the type of policy response to it, with certain countries-such as Southern Europe-more exposed than others ( Moreira et al., 2020). As Wenham et al. (2020) reported, only 16 countries have enforced social protection measures that make explicit reference to women, overlooking the fact that the worst economic consequences of this crisis are likely to affect women. Quite rarely women or ethnic minorities were included in the political and technical committees that managed the emergency, and parliament's voicing capacity was significantly undermined by the need to make rapid decisions ( Blaskó et al., 2020; OECD, 2020; United Nations, 2020). The lack of an intersectional lens in assuming decisions to fight the emergency might drive away governments in their capacity to tackle the social consequences of Covid-19 effectively.

Future research with an intersectional perspective is required to understand the complexity of the current situation and tailor policy responses to cope with this complexity. The empirical evidence provided in this article has confirmed the stances of those authors that call for intersectionality in analyzing the effects of Covid-19 ( Bowleg, 2020; Eaves and Al-Hindi, 2020; Ryan and El Ayadi, 2020; Wenham et al., 2020). Up to now, data have been just collected without sufficiently considering how the different structures of inequality intersect. Using an intersectional approach underlines the difference in the impact of pandemics between individuals and social groups, and helps in designing policy responses that mitigate, instead of increase, the potential unequal effect of this pandemic.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Andrea Bellini for reading a preliminary version of this text.

References

Bowleg, L. (2020). We're not all in this together: on COVID-19, intersectionality, and Structural Inequality. Am. J. Public Health 100, 917.

Galasso, V., and Foucault, M.. (2020). 'Working during COVID-19: Cross-country evidence from real-time survey data', OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 246. doi:10.3386/w27359

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Joseph, T. D. (2020). Being an immigrant with limited social protections is a killer during a pandemic too. ASA Footnotes 48 (3).
Google Scholar
United Nations (2020). "Policy Brief: The impact of COVID-19 on women".
Google Scholar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Covid-19 Pandemics: why Intersectionality Matters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Covid-19 has been a disrupting event in contemporary social life but is far from being a great equaliser. Preliminary studies have put in evidence how different social groups faced a differentiated risk of contagion and coped differently with the various consequences of the emergency.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A woman works at a distribution station in Staten Island, New York, February 2019. (Getty/Johannes Eisle/AFP)

Author's note: CAP uses "Black" and "African American" interchangeably throughout many of our products. We chose to capitalize "Black" in order to reflect that we are discussing a group of people and to be consistent with the capitalization of "African American."
Black Women's Equal Pay Day arrives around this time each year, marking the estimated number of extra months-roughly eight months-that a Black woman working full-time year-round in the United States must work into the current year to have earned what her white male counterpart earned during the prior year. This year, Black women will have to work well into the month of August to catch up to the wages that white men earned in 2018 alone. In concrete terms, this means that Black women experience a pay gap every day-and this gap adds up. In 2017, for example, Black women earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by white men, amounting to $23,653 less in earnings over an entire year. In the span of a 40-year career, this translates into an average lifetime earnings gap of $946,120 between Black women and white men.

The earnings chasm between Black women and white men is not new. Closing the divide, however, requires widening one's focus beyond numerical differences that tell only part of the story. It requires developing a deeper understanding of the different factors driving the wage gap for Black women, some of which consistently devalue their experiences and work and limit their future opportunities. It requires prioritizing reforms that specifically address the unique discrimination that Black women face at the intersection of race and gender. And it requires creating greater accountability and transparency in pay practices in order to surface and tackle the most persistent problems.

Connecting the dots: Why equal pay matters to closing the wage gap

The gap in earnings between women and men, known as the gender wage gap, is fueled by multiple factors. Some of the gap can be attributed to factors that are measurable, such as differences in seniority or experience, but these types of observable factors cannot explain a portion of the gap. It is this unexplained portion of the gap that is often ascribed to reasons that are harder to quantify and detect such as discrimination. There is also a racial wage gap that has led to persistent wage disparities between workers of color and white workers. Similar to the gender wage gap, this racial wage gap is driven by explainable factors such as education levels as well as unexplained factors that could stem from bias.

Black women experience both a race and gender wage gap that reflects the intersectional reality of their daily lives. The sharpest earnings differences are between Black women and white men, who are benchmarked as the highest earners, but Black women also experience wage disparities when compared with white women and Black men. As experts have noted, it is important to understand that this race-gender wage gap consists of more than simply adding the separate numbers associated with each gap. Rather, it reflects a unique effect that results from how the combination of race and gender are perceived together.

While the wage gap refers to the gap in earnings between groups of workers, equal pay refers to the legal principle of equal pay for equal work. This principle embodies our nation's overarching commitment to equality and is the cornerstone of legal protections aimed at combating pay discrimination and ensuring fair pay. The vast majority of employers have a continuous legal obligation to ensure equal pay for equal work in their hiring and pay practices, and this obligation does not shrink or waver based on the size, scope, or presence of a pay gap within their workforce. Actions taken to promote equal pay play an important role by helping to tackle the unexplained and perhaps most stubborn portion of the wage gap that is frequently attributed to discrimination. These efforts must work in tandem with other strategies to close the wage gap in its entirety.

How biases about Black women and work affect wages

Achieving equal pay for Black women, which will begin to close their overall wage gap, requires a deeper and more comprehensive understanding Black women's work and the context in which they perform that work. The reality is that how work is viewed is frequently based on who is doing the work and what type of work is being performed. Whether the work is done primarily by women versus men or by white workers versus workers of color; whether the work is highly paid, low paying, or unpaid; whether the work is full time, part time, or seasonal; and whether the work requires physical labor, specialized skills, or research and analysis are all factors that influence how work is perceived and valued. Identifying factors that affect how Black women's work is viewed and valued is key to pinpointing where discrimination is occurring and implementing strategies to ensure fair pay practices.

Today, Black women work in a variety of jobs and industries at all different levels. Yet, many Black women still confront the same misperceptions about their work that have formed at the intersection of racial and gender biases for decades. As a result, Black women face unfair expectations, unique challenges, and biased assumptions about where they fit in the workplace that differ from the perceptions held about women from other racial and ethnic groups as well as men. Black women have had to navigate and at times confront competing, flawed, or incomplete narratives about their work ethic, family responsibilities, and overall value that influence decisions about what they should earn. When sexism and racism intersect in the workplace, the effect is devastating.

Black women have always been expected to work and have had the highest labor force participation among all women for years. This work expectation is deeply rooted in longstanding racial and gender biases that have been present since the nation's founding-extending back to the nation's dehumanizing history of slavery and continuing into the post-slavery era, 20th-century workforce expansions, and the present day. Historically, Black women's work was tied, in part, to their less-privileged status in comparison with white women, who were elevated within the societal hierarchy and expected to represent a paternalistic feminine ideal focused exclusively on the home. From the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, Black women worked but were frequently relegated to the lowest-paying jobs. Legal restrictions were used to exclude all women-regardless of their race or ethnicity-from many high-paying jobs reserved exclusively for men. Although these outdated views were rejected over time, Black women still face the potent remnants of this historical narrative that devalued their status as women and as workers. As a result, Black women's greater labor force participation has not always translated into higher wages. It has also not quelled negative stereotypes about Black women's attitudes and work ethic that assume that Black women do not work hard, resist hard work, must be pushed to perform well, and should be satisfied with any job rather than deserving of the best job.

Black women frequently encounter a workplace narrative that deemphasizes the importance of their personal caregiving responsibilities or suggests that their caregiving roles should be secondary to their paid work. This narrative has historical roots dating back to the era of slavery, when Black women faced sexual violence and exploitation to produce free labor without rights to their children. In later years, this narrative was also visible in Black women's disproportionately high rates of work in domestic and caregiving jobs, where they received low wages and little consideration for their own family obligations. Yet, today, Black women disproportionately work in caregiving jobs, and Black mothers with young children have the highest labor force participation rates among all mothers. Minimizing the importance of responding to care needs has practical consequences that affect Black women's earnings, job success, health, and well-being. Black pregnant workers, for example, who are denied accommodations such as additional water breaks or access to light duty positions may have to choose between jeopardizing their health or losing their job. Moreover, this traditional preference in favor of paid work also reflects the historically male-centered view of work that obscures a more holistic perspective about how work should be valued. Unpaid work in the home-which, in most cases, is performed primarily by women-is frequently ignored but increasingly important to families. While women overall work fewer paid work hours than men, they spend more time than men doing unpaid work around the home and caring for children. On top of these responsibilities, Black women are the most likely among all women to spend the most time continuing to do paid work. The skepticism about the importance of caregiving responsibilities means that Black women may face a wage penalty when trying to be more responsive to their work and family roles.

While Black women have moved into more diverse fields over the years, they have also faced extensive occupational segregation, meaning they are concentrated in jobs that pay lower wages with limited mobility. Even when they have moved into jobs traditionally held by men or white workers and moved up the career ladder into managerial or leadership roles, Black women often encounter resistance because they are not perceived as fitting the traditional, typically male standard of success. This narrow view perpetuates a narrative that limits Black women's job options and erects barriers to their future career advancement.

Black women's unique challenges are often ignored or not raised at all. Too often, the public narrative about women has focused primarily on the experiences of white women as opposed to those of Black women and other women of color. While it is increasingly common for employers to tout the steps that they have taken to respond to women's challenges in the workplace generally, there is less conversation about specific, targeted efforts to address how different types of biases play out for women across race, ethnicity, and other factors. The lack of intersectional analysis can result in an incomplete picture that excludes crucial perspectives and gives little attention to why disparities, such as those between white women and Black women, in earnings, advancement opportunities, unemployment rates, and other areas continue to persist.

Left unaddressed, these different narratives and workplace dynamics will continue to have real consequences for Black women's earnings. They also reveal how discrimination and stereotypes become entrenched in workplace structures and practices.

Reforming equal pay to combat race and gender biases

In order to secure equal pay for Black women, policymakers must focus on the range of actions needed to respond directly to the race and gender biases that affect wages. This means providing Black women with stronger legal protections and better information about pay practices, promoting greater transparency and accountability, and identifying new tools to target discrimination, including:

Strengthening legal protections to make clear the availability of intersectional legal claims to address pay discrimination and adding new protections to better guard against caregiver discrimination.

Promoting transparency by requiring public reporting of employer pay gaps broken down by race and gender to provide greater visibility into employer pay practices.

Establishing a right to request for all job applicants to allow them to receive information about a potential job, including the salary range, the employer's equal pay policy (with explicit protections covering intersectional pay discrimination claims), the employer's pay gap by race and gender, and the frequency of the employer's compensation analyses.

Creating a new federal glass ceiling commission tasked with undertaking a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of strategies to improve Black women's earnings and advancement as well as those of women overall. The 30th anniversary of the original federal Glass Ceiling Commission, established by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 for a four-year period, will occur in 2021.

Targeting employers who are federal contractors with heightened accountability and enforcement measures such as updated federal contractor glass ceiling reviews to analyze progress for Black women-and women more broadly-across industry in advancing into upper-level management. Such reviews should include an examination of attrition rates by race and gender and the prevalence of workforce segregation. Future research should explore ways to incorporate race and gender equity assessments into the contractor selection process to reward high-performing companies that have succeeded in expanding opportunities for women and people of color.

Providing new funding for worker advocates to assist workers with questions about pay and other forms of discrimination as well as legal counseling about their rights.

Supporting economic policy changes to improve access to paid family and medical leave, affordable and high-quality child care, and caregiver stipends.

Requiring employer reporting of steps taken to address pay discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, and other factors in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. This includes anti-bias training for all levels of staff, including leadership, managers, and supervisors.

Increasing funding for enforcement to ensure compliance with equal pay protections and to undertake targeted efforts to examine the prevalence of race and gender bias in pay discrimination cases.

Initiating comprehensive research on the state of the workforce by industry broken down by race and gender to gain a better understanding of Black women's workplace experiences.

These measures can complement other actions aimed at improving workplace conditions for women such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and the Domestic Worker's Bill of Rights.

Conclusion

Black women's work is vital to the success of their families, their communities, and the overall economy, yet Black women are confronted by unique workplace and societal barriers that undermine their ability to thrive. Disparities in Black women's wages stem from a mix of interconnected factors, including the devaluing of the work that Black women do, the prevalence of entrenched biases rooted in race and gender bias, perceptions about the relative importance of certain types of work, occupational segregation, resistance to structural change, and more. To be effective, equal pay measures must focus on pursuing new strategies and reforms that acknowledge and tackle these problems head-on. Black women deserve more than one day of recognition about the pay gap. They deserve concrete action steps that prioritize fair pay and economic stability for themselves and their families. Equal pay for Black women is long overdue-and it cannot afford another year's wait.
Jocelyn Frye is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Racism and Sexism Combine to Shortchange Working Black Women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The fight for Black women's equal pay must address race and gender biases that erode Black women's wages and undermine their ability to thrive.

# data[].attributes.body
This Tik Tok video shows an interviewer going around to individuals in the area asking about their opinions on abortion ahead of the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade. He ends up talking to the grandson of the women who created Planned Parenthood, and went on to explain his reasons to fight for women's rights.

# data[].attributes.body
Nail polish has typically been seen as a feminine hobby. Men have started to go against this gender role and also engage in this activity. It has been a trend that has surfaced on social media within the past couple of years.

# data[].attributes.headline
Actress Used Surrogate Because of Fear of Losing Career

# data[].attributes.subject
Actress Used Surrogate Because of Fear of Losing Career

# data[].attributes.body
Jamie Chung is an actress who decided to choose a surrogate to have her children because she was fearful of losing her job. This shines a light on the privileges that men experience over women in the world of occupations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jamie Chung revealed that despite wanting children, she was “terrified” that becoming pregnant would completely sideline her career.

In October of last year, the actress and her husband Bryan Greenberg, welcomed twin boys to their family and, now, Chung is opening up about what led to their decision to use a surrogate. In an interview with Today, the Dexter: New Blood star said, “I was terrified of becoming pregnant. I was terrified of putting my life on hold for two-plus years. In my industry, it feels like you’re easily forgotten if you don’t work within the next month of your last job. Things are so quickly paced in what we do. So it’s a compromise that we made together as a couple.”

She added that one of the reasons she kept their pregnancy so private — even though she publicly shared her experience freezing her eggs in 2019 — is that there's still so much stigma surrounding surrogacy. “I think there’s a little bit of shame,” Chung confessed. “It’s still not a very common thing and we weren’t ready for judgment. We really just did it to protect ourselves. We announced things when we were ready to.”

Chung first made a name for herself in 2004 on MTV's The Real World: San Diego and since then has been diligently carving out a real acting career for herself, just recently wrapping on a comedy called Reunion in which she co-stars alongside Jillian Bell and Chace Crawford. “People probably think, 'Oh, she's so vain. She didn't want to get pregnant,' and it's much more complicated than that,” she explained. “For me, personally, and I will leave it at this, it’s like, I worked my ass off my entire life to get where I am. I don’t want to lose opportunities. I don’t want to be resentful.”

In January, the actress also opened up about experiencing postpartum depression while making the “scary transition” into becoming a first-time mom. She told People, “Therapy really helped me prep mentally for this lifestyle change and to not be afraid to talk about certain issues because it's not the first thing you want to say when you have kids. You don't want to start with something negative or challenging, but I do think that these postpartum depression issues are so real.” She continued, “I felt quite guilty feeling certain things that I felt. And just knowing that it's normal and it's just because you're overwhelmed and you're full of anxiety and it's a scary transition for some people.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jamie Chung Used a Surrogate Because She Was “Terrified” Pregnancy Would Hurt Her Career

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The actress recently welcomed twin boys with her husband, Bryan Greenberg.

# data[].attributes.headline
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter Organization

# data[].attributes.subject
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter Organization

# data[].attributes.body
George Floyd was a black individual who was killed by police officers in 2020. An uproar of anger came from many individuals around the country, bringing more awareness to police brutality and the oppression of people of color. Black Lives Matter is an organization that works to fight this oppression and create equality among races.

# data[].attributes.body
Bathroom signs in public restrooms are typically labeled as the genders of either a man or women. Transgender, and any other individual you doesn't fit into those two categories, experience discrimination based on these labels.

# data[].attributes.body
This Instagram post makes a joke on how gender roles are put into marketing products. The lower amounts are associated with women, while the men are associated with the stronger ones. This also shows difference of what emotions are connected to men and women.

# data[].attributes.headline
Middle School Girl Violating School Dress Code

# data[].attributes.subject
Middle School Girl Violating School Dress Code

# data[].attributes.body
Specific dress codes for males and females have been put into place throughout all schools. Although this student was wearing clothing that covered her chest, legs, and even shoulders, she was still told to change into new clothes.

# data[].attributes.body
Paw Patrol is a television show for young children where pups work to save the day! In the first seasons of the show, there was only one female dog, which was obviously shown as a girl by gender norms surrounding clothing, colors, hairstyles, etc.

# data[].attributes.body
U.S. Soccer has recently provided men and women players equal pay. Women soccer players were being paid lower amounts compared to men players, and have been battling for equal pay until this year, 2022.

# data[].attributes.body
Black-ish is a television show that has shown different discrimination, stereotypes, and oppression associated with people of color. They confront these ideas and fight against them.

# data[].attributes.body
Sarah Thomas was the first female Super Bowl referee in recent years. She has worked against stereotypical gender norms and chose to work in a field that we typically see men occupying.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
0:00 / 3:18•Watch full video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet the NFL's first female Super Bowl referee

# data[].attributes.body
Harry Styles is a popular singer who has recently went against gender norms and began wearing clothing that has normally been seen as feminine. His 2020 Vogue cover created a lot of controversy because of his clothing choices.