Why Black Working Women Matter

By Reniya Dinkins, a Summer 2015 Leadership Conference Education Fund Intern

One week ago, five powerful Black women led a special briefing in Washington, D.C., on how working Black women are combatting workplace discrimination and unfair pay practices. The briefing, “Black Working Women Matter,” highlighted the success stories of these women and centered on strategies to promote economic stability among Black working women and their families.

Among the speakers was Valerie Ervin, who at 16 years old became a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union while bagging groceries at her local supermarket. In her junior year at the University of New Mexico, she became pregnant and dropped out of school to work full time. After many years of diligent organizing in several leadership positions, she is now the executive director of the National Participatory Democracy Project under the Working Families Organization, as well as a former council member and president of the Montgomery County Council. She told the audience at last week’s briefing that she would not have been able to accomplish this as a mother of two without the support of her union, which helped her send her sons to college and access health care and affordable childcare.

Rep. Donna Edwards, D. Md., joined Ervin as a speaker at the briefing.

Ervin’s story was just one of many. Each panelist had her own story to prove just how crucial unions and fair pay practices are to working Black women. But these stories, as Ervin pointed out, don’t belong solely to Black women. They’re also the stories of Black families, as Black women are often the heads of their families. Despite this, Ervin explained that Black women are often excluded from economic policy discussions. “Too often, Black women are asked to be the face of a movement but not to be at the table making decisions,” she said. Black women have different perspectives on labor policy, especially since they are three times more likely than White women to serve as both caretakers and breadwinners for their families.

The inclusion of Black women in this decision-making process was only one of several strategies proposed at the briefing. Another was the organization of more Black women into unions.

“Black Working Women Matter” also highlighted findings from And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices | Power | Promise, a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. According to the report, Black women were only second to Black men in having the highest union representation rate compared with other groups in 2014. Additionally, the union advantages for Black women are exceptional. The report revealed that Black women in unions earn an average of $21.90 an hour while non-union women earn $17.04, and more than 72 percent of women in unions have health insurance, while less than 50 percent of non-union Black women do. In the foreword of the report, Rep. Donna Edwards, D. Md., who also spoke at the briefing, notes that “For Black women who are low-wage earners, union membership was a greater factor than education in determining increased wages and benefits.”

The panelists at the briefing stressed these points to encourage Black women to organize and rise together. Their empowering words, combined with those of the late Maya Angelou – which echoed throughout the briefing on several occasions – created an atmosphere of excitement and hope for a better economic future for Black women.

The words of Angelou’s Still I Rise are particularly relevant: