Even before the pandemic, women of color often stood at the intersection of multiple barriers.
The COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the connections across gender, race, and class. As the New York Times noted, this crisis has a predominantly nonwhite, female face.
Even before the pandemic, women of color often stood at the intersection of multiple barriers. At the top, under 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women of color. Throughout the workforce, black women are paid 62 cents for every dollar that a white man earns. At the bottom, low-income workers (predominantly women) constitute almost 70% of the workers in jobs that pay less than $10/hour, and Blacks and Latinas are overrepresented in those jobs. Lower-income women are far more likely to lack sick leave and access to quality child care than are wealthier women.
These statistics make a difference to people’s lives during the pandemic. As an article in the Harvard Business Review observed, women and minorities may be “hardest hit,” possibly because they are more likely to hold jobs in industries, such as retail, hospitality, recreation, and manufacturing, which are at an increased risk of layoff. The May 8 Labor Department report shows that Blacks and Hispanics have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and women have a higher unemployment rate than men. While 13% of White respondents have already skipped paying a bill, that is true for 37% of Black/African-American respondents and 39% of Hispanic/Latino respondents, according to a recent poll by Data for Progress.
On the other hand, many women of color work in jobs deemed essential, so they can be at higher risk of getting sick; consider that mothers who work in industries on the frontline are more likely to be women of color.
In fact, Blacks have been hit disproportionately by COVID-19, with hospitalization and death rates far higher than those of whites.
