Today, 78 percent of black moms with children are employed compared with an average of just 66 percent of white, Asian American, and Latinx moms. 4īecause of discriminatory employer and government policies against black men and women, black mothers with school-age children have always been more likely to be in the labor force compared with other moms. Indeed, the backlash against poor black moms receiving cash assistance eventually culminated in the dismantling of the AFDC program and the enactment of TANF-a program with strict work requirements. The state simultaneously undermined the well-being of black families by denying black mothers the cash assistance that they needed to support their children and leaving black women with no other option but to work for very low wages. This helped to secure the well-being of white families and alleviated white women of having to do this work. This exclusion meant that for most of the history of welfare, the state actively undermined the well-being of black families by ensuring that black women would be in the labor force as low-wage caregivers for white families. Up until the 1960s, caseworkers excluded most poor black women from receiving cash assistance because they expected black women to be employed moms and not stay-at-home moms like white women. These policies were first implemented at the state level with Mother’s Pensions and then at the national level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. This has been most evident with protective welfare policies that enabled poor lone white mothers to stay at home and provide care for their children since the early 20th century. Nearly a third (28 percent) of black women are employed in service jobs compared with just one-fifth of white women.ĭiscriminatory public policies have reinforced the view of black women as workers rather than as mothers and contributed to black women’s economic precarity. Black women continue to be overrepresented in service jobs. The 1970s was also the era when large numbers of married white women began to enter into the labor force and this led to a marketization of services previously performed within the household, including care and food services. Until the 1970s, employers’ exclusion of black women from better-paying, higher-status jobs with mobility meant that they had little choice but to perform private domestic service work for white families. 2 Revealingly, although whites have devalued black women as mothers to their own children, black women have been the most likely of all women to be employed in the low-wage women’s jobs that involve cooking, cleaning, and caregiving even though this work is associated with mothering more broadly. 1 Even after migration to the north during the 20th century, most employers would only hire black women in domestic service work. Consequently, married black women have a long history of being financial contributors-even co-breadwinners-to two-parent households because of black men’s precarious labor market position.īlack women’s main jobs historically have been in low-wage agriculture and domestic service. Black women’s higher participation rates extended over their lifetimes, even after marriage, while white women typically left the labor force after marriage.ĭifferences in black and white women’s labor participation were due not only to the societal expectation of black women’s gainful employment but also to labor market discrimination against black men which resulted in lower wages and less stable employment compared to white men. In 1880, 35.4 percent of married black women and 73.3 percent of single black women were in the labor force compared with only 7.3 percent of married white women and 23.8 percent of single white women.
Ĭompared with other women in the United States, black women have always had the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home. African-American women’s unique labor market history and current occupational status reflects these beliefs and practices. Since the era of slavery, the dominant view of black women has been that they should be workers, a view that contributed to their devaluation as mothers with caregiving needs at home. Negative representations of black womanhood have reinforced these discriminatory practices and policies. The black woman’s experience in America provides arguably the most overwhelming evidence of the persistent and ongoing drag from gender and race discrimination on the economic fate of workers and families.īlack women’s labor market position is the result of employer practices and government policies that disadvantaged black women relative to white women and men.