Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C. last month signaled great progress for women -- especially Black women and Latinas who have traditionally lagged behind men and white women in every marker of success, including wealth and education.
Among the historic firsts that day: Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, administered the oath of office to Kamala Harris, America’s first female vice-president, who is also Black and South Asian.
But figures released 12 days earlier by the U.S. Department of Labor told a very different story -- of the thousands of Black and brown women whose lives have been upended by the pandemic.
December’s jobs report revealed that men gained 16,000 jobs in December, while women lost 156,000. The nation’s total net job loss was 140,000 jobs -- all to women, a disproportionately high number of whom were women of color.
“These are women who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and continue to be desirous of employment,” said Elizabeth Ananat, an economics professor at Barnard College and Columbia University.
“And women, and particularly Black and Latino women, are losing more jobs during the pandemic because of the sectors that they're concentrated in, which are the lower paid sectors of hospitality and food service in particular,” said Ananat. “Hotels, restaurants, retail, et cetera. And these are the sectors that have been the hardest hit by the pandemic.”
Doña Chemene Duncan is among the thousands of African-American women who lost work last year due to the pandemic. After eight months of searching, the 50-year-old East Orange resident had finally found a job as a client coordinator for a medical services company in early 2020. She said it felt like the opportunity she had been praying for.
“I really was going to give up, but I prayed on it,” said Duncan. After four interviews, she was hired. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I got insurance’ and, you know, just feeling much better about everything.” But Duncan’s job was classified as operational. That meant it could only be performed from the office, not remotely. And her start date was March 16th, just days before the region went into a pandemic lockdown.
“They basically gave me a separation agreement because I was the last to come, so the first to go out. Because of COVID, they basically let me go,” Duncan said.
A friend initially helped her with her rent, and she borrowed from her life insurance plan. She also got two weeks of severance money from that job at the medical company.
“The good thing is that I'm getting food stamps,” said Duncan. “So that helps, food-wise.”
Now she said she spends her days online applying for clerical or administrative jobs, but she is facing a difficult job market.
Listen to reporter Karen Rouse's radio story for WNYC:
Professor Ananat said that while white people also lost jobs in December, their rates of loss were lower than those of Black and Latino workers because of one key factor. “More white families have access to higher education,” she said. "Higher education is always a protective factor for unemployment." She added that while racial discrimination has been an obstacle for Black and Latina women even if they have college degrees, having one is still an asset.
Tara Dowdell is an African-American businesswoman who is surviving, even thriving during the pandemic. But she agrees that the potential for discrimination is real. She calls it a “racial caste system.”
“Across all sectors, there is oppression and then we wonder why we see these outcomes,” said Dowdell, 40, who owns her own public relations and marketing firm in Jersey City.
“These are direct outcomes of that lack of racial equity within the system,” said Dowdell, who cited as an example discrimination by banking institutions against women of color applying for business loans. “They can't get loans despite being credit-worthy."
Dowdell, who first came into the public spotlight in 2005 when she was a contestant on former President Donald Trump’s game show “The Apprentice,” said one way to change the trajectory and improve the employment numbers for women is for those in power to mentor and sponsor women, to help them gain experience and opportunities.
Dowdell is starting with herself. She recently hired two Black women who were unemployed. One is a marketing associate and executive assistant. The other is a budding entrepreneur whom Dowdell plans to help launch her own firm.
Karen Rouse reported this story for the Race & Justice Unit at Gothamist/WNYC
This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Professor Elizabeth Ananat's name.
