Every March, Women’s History Month
brings a familiar rhythm of celebration -
panels, proclamations, and tributes to
pioneers who shattered glass ceilings. Those
stories matter. But if we are honest, the
story of women in America cannot be told
without confronting another truth: this
nation has been built, quite literally, on
the backs of Black women.
From the earliest days of the
republic, Black women’s labor has been both
indispensable and invisible. Enslaved women
worked fields, cooked meals, nursed
children, and produced wealth they would
never see. Their bodies were exploited for
labor and reproduction alike. Even after
emancipation, many were pushed into the
lowest-paid work - domestic labor, laundry,
caregiving - while their own families
struggled to survive.
Economists often talk about
productivity and growth as if they emerge
from neutral markets. But the American
economy was built on coerced labor and
unequal pay structures whose echoes remain
today. Black women remain among the most
reliable workers in the labor force - and
among the most underpaid.
Black
women
working full time are typically
paid about 64
cents for every dollar paid to
white, non-Hispanic men.
Over the course of a career, that
gap can cost the average Black
woman a
million dollars or more in lost
earnings and wealth.
Because Social Security benefits
are calculated from lifetime
earnings, lower wages also
translate into smaller
retirement
benefits,
compounding inequality long after
women leave the workforce.
The devaluation of Black women does
not stop at wages. When a society treats a
group’s labor as expendable, it often treats
their lives the same way. The same systems
that underpay Black women also too often
criminalize and punish them.
Consider the case of Kemba Smith.
As a Hampton University student,
Smith received a 24-year federal sentence
because her abusive boyfriend was involved
in drug trafficking. She had no prior record
and was not accused of violence. Yet the
system treated her as fully responsible for
the actions of a man. After serving six
years, she received clemency from Bill
Clinton. Her case helped expose the cruelty
of mandatory minimum sentencing and the ways
Black women are often punished for proximity
to men’s crimes.
Smith’s story is not an anomaly.
Across American history, Black women have
borne the consequences of policies and
practices designed without them in mind.
More than a century ago, educator
and activist Nannie Helen Burroughs warned
that when society devalues Black women, the
entire nation suffers. She understood that
the progress of women could not be measured
only by the advancement of the privileged.
It had to be measured by the condition of
those at the bottom.
That lesson remains painfully
relevant.
Black women are still paid less
than white men and white women. They carry
disproportionate student debt. They are more
likely to be primary breadwinners while also
providing unpaid care to children, elders,
and communities. In politics, they remain
among the most loyal defenders of democratic
participation, organizing, voting, and
mobilizing communities even when the
policies that follow rarely center their
needs. In recent elections, Black women
voters have been among the most decisive
forces protecting democratic participation
itself.
Yet Black women continue to
organize, lead, and save this country from
its worst instincts.
They did it in the civil rights
movement. They did it in the labor movement.
They did it in the fight for voting rights.
And they continue to do it today.
Women’s History Month should
celebrate achievement. But celebration alone
is not enough.
If we are serious about equality,
we must confront a reality that is both
historical and contemporary: America’s
wealth, its democracy, and much of its moral
progress have been carried forward on the
labor, loyalty, and sacrifice of Black
women.
For
centuries
this nation has relied on their
work, their votes, their
organizing, and their resilience -
while
paying
them less, protecting them less,
and too often ignoring them
altogether.
So
this
Women’s History Month, let’s move
beyond the flowers, the panels,
and the polite applause. Don’t
just celebrate women. Pay
them.
