E35: The Economic Power of Black Women: Impact, Inequity, and Inclusion
In this live‑cast episode of Inclusion Unscripted, host Margaret Spence (founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab) delivers an unscripted, data‑driven talk on the economic power, systemic inequities, and inclusion challenges facing Black women in the United States. She opens with a personal anecdote about a viral LinkedIn post on Black women’s natural hair, which sparked a conversation about the under‑utilized economic clout of Black women. Spence then walks listeners through key research – Lean In’s "Women in the Workplace" report (highlighting the "broken rung" and gender‑racial promotion gaps), Citi’s "Closing the Racial Inequity Gap" study (quantifying a $16 trillion cost to the U.S. economy and outlining policy and individual actions), and Goldman Sachs’ "Black Womanomics" initiative. She illustrates the lived reality of these gaps with a vivid consulting anecdote where a CHRO questioned her ability to speak to a CEO, and with stories of Black entrepreneurs facing capital, certification, and vendor‑access barriers. Spence critiques corporate DE&I practices that remain superficial, calls out HR leaders to adopt concrete metrics, sponsorship, and recruitment practices, and urges Black women to build economic circles, invest in real assets, and support Black‑owned vendors. The episode concludes with a rallying call for both organizations and individuals to recognize and mobilize Black women’s economic power to reshape the market and close the wealth, wage, and health gaps.
You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet.
Well, hello everyone, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted and happy Friday to all of you. Inclusion Unscripted, where we're not just living diversity and inclusion, we're not building, just building diversity and inclusion, where we're not just creating diversity and inclusion, At Inclusion Unscripted, we are living diversity every day. Thank you for joining me another Friday live on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. My name is Margaret Spence, and I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab and the host of Inclusion Unscripted. If you've never joined us before on a Friday, Welcome. If you're listening to us on your favorite podcast app, thank you. If you've never listened to us on your favorite podcast app, go to your favorite podcast app and like and download Inclusion Unscripted. We have about 800 downloads right now. I am so psyched about that. We're trying to push this over the edge, so If you are on your favorite podcast app and you want to listen to our other episodes, this is, I think, episode number 35. I'm so proud of the work that we're doing within Inclusion Unscripted. Let me tell you a little bit about me. I am a consultant. I have been consulting for about 23, 24 years. I am the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab. Within the Inclusion Learning Lab, we have created a professional development community for DE&I leaders and talent leaders. What I know for sure as a person doing this work is that we don't develop diversity and inclusion leaders enough. Oftentimes the person who gets the role as a DE&I person doesn't have the experience to be doing the job. And they often don't have the full support within the organization. The DE&I role is siloed. It is beyond siloed. The DE&I role, beyond being siloed, it is a lonely role. And so we've created the Inclusion Learning Lab as a community platform for learning and development for DE&I and talent leaders doing the work of diversity and inclusion. So if you are a talent leader doing the work of diversity and inclusion, I encourage you to go to inclusionlearninglab.com/community and join the Inclusion Learning Lab community. We'd love to have you participating in our group discussions. Now, one other thing for those of you listening live, This coming Wednesday, Wednesday the 16th of November, um, this recording is on Veterans Day before. On the 16th of November, we are having a workshop, um, through our Inclusion Wednesday, and it is open, open forum. It is free to join. Please join. And we are going to be talking about setting DE&I goals for 2023 and beyond. So that is our program this week. So, so much for the housekeeping stuff. Again, if you've never joined Inclusion Unscripted, thank you for joining us today. So what are we going to talk about at Inclusion Unscripted today? What's our topic? So let me tell you how we got to today's topic, and that's important for me to set this up the right way. Last week on— probably it was actually the week before— I posted a Forbes article on LinkedIn about Black women's hair. That was where this all started. So for all of you that know, that have never joined Inclusion Unscripted before, you know that— um, you may not know that I, um, I don't write a script. This, this show is from the heart. I talk about hot topics, things that are going on out in the world, and I bring to the table, uh, discussions that most people don't want to have. That's where we are. That's the goal of Inclusion Unscripted. So when I posted the, the post on LinkedIn, uh, the post basically says that because Black women have gone natural with our hair. And today is blow-dry hair for me. Most of you are used to seeing me— if you've come before, you're used to seeing me with curly hair. So this week was blow-dry hair. So I've got blow-dried hair, and my hair is really long, and it's blow-dried, and I've got it all up in a little bun in the back. So we— the article was about natural hair and about the fact that because Black women have gone natural with their hair, the perm industry, the industry that, that creates perms for Black women, specifically targeting Black women, those companies are in economic crisis because Black women have stopped perming our hair. So that's where this started last week, and I didn't go on social media all weekend And Monday morning I logged into LinkedIn and I had like 500, um, notifications that people had commented on this post. And I had about, I don't know, 20,000 people that had viewed it and so on and so forth. But the comments— now I don't typically read the comments, but I did this time. So I read the comments and a lot of Black women got into the comments and they said, why are we talking about hair? Why is this important? Why aren't we talking about entrepreneurship and equity and blah blah blah blah blah, um, which I've talked about that over and over and over again, but they had a point. But here's the point that I took out of that commentary. The commentary that the— what I took out of it, what became an issue for me, is the fact that As Black women, we have a level of economic chops— that's a good word, let's use that word— we have a level of economic power that we don't always use. Let's say that first. We have a level of economic power that gets downgraded because of the way we are viewed across the board. There is a level of undervaluing of Black women and our economic power that occurs out in the world. So that's part 2 of this. Um, part 3 is Black women are under an enormous amount of economic stress because of corporate America. Let's go there, right? And I frankly am tired of having the discussion about why we need more effective programs for Black women. Um, oftentimes when you bring up the fact that you need an effective development pathway for Black women, you get told, oh well, what about the rest of the women? I'm okay with the rest of the women. I'm okay with every woman because I am a woman. So when I ask and I say to organizations and I say to leaders We need more women in leadership. You cannot have an organization that is 70, 80, 90% women and no women in executive leadership. You can't. You just can't do it. You can't have an entire industry, i.e., the insurance industry— I'm calling y'all out— where there isn't a Black woman leading as a CEO of a major insurance company of significant value out in the ethers. And we as Black people doing the work of DE&I, especially in the insurance sector, cannot sit on our laurels and act like the DE&I programs that you're creating is doing anything except fluff. Oh Lord, Margaret, I went there today. So I'm gonna come back to this subject. I'm gonna stick a pin in this and I'm gonna return to this subject and I'm gonna call out and work through the insurance industry in this section, but I'm not going to go there first. One of the things that I did to prepare for today is I went out and looked at several reports. Last week, something else significant happened. Lean In came out with the State of Women in the Workplace— not Black women, women. And in the process of coming out with the State of Women in the Workplace, Lean In again, for the 8th year in a row, I think this report has come out now, said the same thing again. Women are not being promoted. Women are not being advanced. Women are not getting the opportunity. Women are still being omitted, um, especially when it comes to promotion. Uh, first level promotions occur, uh, for every 100 men that's promoted, 60, 70 women are promoted. And so there's never enough women in the pipeline for leadership. And by golly, there aren't enough women who have surfaced to the top who can actually qualify to be a board member on any corporate board. So what happens is the same Black women get recycled over and over and over again on the corporate boards across the U.S. because we haven't groomed the lowest level of the organization in order to make this effective. So today's program is going to be a little bit of education for all of you folks in HR, talent management, talent acquisition, and talent development. This program is for you, for all of the Black women who have joined me today and who are listening on your computer or you will listen again on the podcast app, I'm going to talk to you at the very end. So let me get on the bully pulpit today, um, because I tried to figure out what— should I be soft and gentle Margaret or should I just be fierce Margaret? So I think I'm going to be a combo of that today. I'm going to be a combo of fierce Margaret and nice, gentle Margaret Spence. 80% of you in HR who are building women's leadership development have done little or no research into why women's leadership development programs are necessary. All you've done is taken your data, you've looked at your data of your internal talent, and you have said to your CEO and your CFOs and your C-suite leaders, Here is why we need more women. We've got 60% of our employee base are women, and only 1% of our executives are women. And maybe we've given the one woman that rose like cream to— we've given her that one role. Maybe that's what we've done. Okay, so I'm gonna do some technical stuff today, and if you're watching, if you're listening to this, on the podcast afterwards. You can go to YouTube, Google Margaret Spence, um, go into YouTube, look for Inclusion Unscripted. You will be able to go back and watch the video portion of this because I think it's essential. As I share my screen and I go through this technical challenge of sharing my screen, which I'm gonna do, once I share my screen, I want you all to understand exactly what is going on the state of Black women. This is what we're going to talk about, the state of Black women. And if I run to a full hour today, so be it. Um, normally we go 40 minutes, but I'm gonna just have to show this information in order for everyone to get it. So I'm gonna go through the process of sharing my screen, and, um, and here we go. So The first thing that I'm sharing is the pipeline report from Lean In. This is the report that Lean In just put out about the state of women in the workplace. So what, what Lean In has said is the state of the pipeline— two pipeline challenges: gender equality is a, is a challenge within every workplace. This is a report that came out this last week. Basically what they're saying is there's been modest gain, modest gain for women, but every year there's modest gain for women. This is not new. We keep putting this data out expecting that organizations and especially HR CHROs, Vice President of HRs, um, Chief Operating Officers are going to understand what they're supposed to do with this report when it lands. And the challenge is most of you don't know how to parse this report. So despite modest progress, women are still dramatically underrepresented in leadership, period. Right, women are underrepresented in leadership. The broken rung is still there, it's holding women back. I'm gonna read this because again, this is a podcast, livecast. The broken rung is still holding women back. If you want to find this report, simply Google Lean In Women in the Workplace 2022. Lean In: Women in the Workplace 2022. The broken wrong is still holding women back. The biggest obstacle women face in the path to senior leadership is at the first step up to manager. For every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted. As a result, men significantly outnumber women at the manager level, and women can never— that is the word that Lean In is using— never ever ever in life catch up. There's simply too few women to promote into senior leadership positions. So we're doomed, women. But we make up 50% of the population, almost. And none of these men could exist if we didn't give birth to them. Let's be real, that is the truth. None of these men could exist if it weren't for us as women, period. That's our economic power, which we don't use. All of these men who are stopping women from advancing have daughters. And HR has never said to them, is this the environment that you want your daughter to walk into in 10 years or 15 years? Or if you have a brand new baby, when she turns 25, is this the work environment you want her to walk into, right? So Lean In had graphs and they basically said, there it is. But here's the issue for all of you who are doing recruiting. There's still a challenge because Black women get recruited at the lowest level. And even when we're extremely educated, you impact our economic well-being because you don't recruit us into jobs that will allow us to have economic solvency. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Lean In goes on to say women remain deeply underrepresented in technical roles. At the same time, you have organizations like Facebook who are laying people off. So if a woman has been last hired in, she's probably first, first exited in the firing, the firing process that is going on right now. So this is Lean In's report, right? And here is what they also said: women leaders are leaving their companies for 3 key reasons. Women leaders want to advance, but they, they face stronger headwinds than men. I have not talked about Black women yet. I'm getting there. I'm just talking about the gender woman. That's what I'm talking about— professional women in the workplace. Women who come out of college, women who don't go to college, women who enter the workplace at any step of the process, whether you enter as a dishwasher and you want to become a manager of the organization, or you enter as a cashier ringing up groceries and you see yourself as a frontline manager. This is not, um, based or couched in anything other than the gender of women. So again, the Women in the Workplace report basically swats women and says, women, you're never going to be anything more than where you are right now. Get used to it. That's what this report said. That's what came out of this report right here. That's what came out of it. Women, you're toast. That's what came out of it. Right? I don't know how else to put it because the report goes on and on and on and on and on for pages and pages and pages about how much we failed women. So let's, let's talk now about Black women. Let's, let's go into the state of Black women, right? And let's talk about Um, again, we're gonna go to Lean In again, and we're gonna look at the state of Black women, right? So we're going to talk about the state of Black women, and we're going to, um, we're gonna go through Lean In's report. So this is Lean In's report: the workplace is worse from Black women. In all of Lean In's report and the state of women of work, we see the same general pattern. Women are having a worse experience than men. Women of color are having a worse experience than white women. And Black women in particular are having a worse experience of all women. I didn't say this. I didn't make this up. I'm not making this up. This is directly from Lean In. This is directly from the state. Again, if you go to Lean In's website and you go up to where it has the tab that says research and you click on it, the report says the state of Black women in corporate America. That's what the report says. The workplace is worse for Black women. That's what it says, okay? And it says, what is— what are Black women up against? Black women are significantly underrepresented in leadership roles. Black women are more— are much less likely to be promoted to manager, and their representation dwindles from there. 49% of Black women feel that their race and ethnicity will make it harder for them to get a raise, get a promotion, and a chance to get ahead, compared to 3% of white women and 11% of women overall. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 58 Black women are promoted, despite the fact that Black women ask for promotions at the same rate as men. So the misconception is that as a Black woman, I don't want nothing. I don't want to be promoted. The truth is Black women are sick and tired of asking y'all for your little promotions. But we're going to talk about the other side of this in a second, right? So basically, Black women's success is often discounted. I can tell you that even as a consultant I face, as a consultant, I face massive discrimination as a consultant of color, even when I'm saving organizations millions of dollars. It doesn't matter. I literally was getting ready about 5 years ago. I was working with the health system here in Florida, and I was working with the health system and they had a massive financial issue going on when it came to litigation and being sued. And they asked me to present to the board of directors, and I was going in to present to the CEO and the entire board of directors for this hospital system. And I went with my gorgeous suit. I went to Macy's, I bought a gorgeous Tahari suit. I put on some beautiful shoes. I had a great bag. I had a Tumi backpack that cost $400, so I looked the part. When I got to the door, walking into the boardroom, the two white women that I was working with, who I had been working with for months and educating and teaching them how to tell the story of the data behind the deficiency that they had in their organization so that they didn't get thrown under the bus, the CHRO stood at the door and she said to me, Margaret, are you sure you're going to be able to talk to the CEO effectively? Are you serious right now? Because, you know, um, the CEO and the board can be a little bit difficult. So I turned to her and said, the men in that room put their pants on the same way I do, one leg at a time. So why don't we just open the door and go in? Because none of you as women are in that room. And I, as the consultant, I'm bringing you into the room to talk to the board of directors and the CEO and the investment team that owns this health system, and you're asking me if I can speak to them. Open the door, please. The utter disrespect. But you're paying me to disrespect me. See, that's the crap that Black women go through even when they need us fully to navigate. That's the crap. But I'm gonna stick another pin in this. We're coming back. So Lean In and the state of Black women Lean In went on to say Black women are less likely to get the support and access they need to advance. I didn't say this. Now, if you are in HR and you are struggling to figure out how to get your leaders engaged in an ERG for Black women or engage in a leadership development program for Black women, maybe you should go to the Lean In website and print this report and hand it to your leaders and stop saying, oh my God, they just need bite-sized information. I keep hearing that from HR. Well, our leaders are so busy, let's just give them bite-sized information. Well, if you're running an organization as a leader and you can't read a 20-page report, then by golly, maybe you shouldn't be a leader as a white man. But I digress. Black women, receive less support from their managers. Women of color, and Black women in particular, tend to receive less support and encouragement from their managers compared to white women. Black women are less likely to have managers showcase their work, advocate for new opportunities for them, give them opportunities to manage people and projects. Black women are also less likely to report that their managers help them navigate organizational politics, or balance work and personal life, right? This matters. Employees who have consistent manager support are more likely to be promoted, and they're also more likely to believe that they have an equal opportunity to advance. So here is Lean In survey. All women, Black women, white women, Latinas, Asian women, all men My manager helps me navigate organizational politics. My manager advocates for new opportunities for me. My manager gives me opportunities to manage people and projects. My manager provides opportunities for me to showcase my work. My manager helps me manage my career path. I have, um, the sponsor I need to advance my career. So is it hard for you as an HR leader, as a CHRO, as an executive in the HR space, as an HR business partner, to take this information and take the 6 things on here that doesn't happen and create 6 opportunities for Black women to shine in your organization? This is not that hard, people. See, the work has been done for you. The work has been done for you. Um, Black women are least likely, or less likely, to interact with senior leaders. This is true. And even when Black women interact with senior leaders, it's not of substance. I didn't make any of these reports. None of these reports. So what does all this mean? Am I done? I'm not done. I still have more. I have more to share today, right? I have more. So many of you as Black women will decide that you want to go out and start your own business. Yeah. You like me 20-odd years ago, you'll decide, I'm done with corporate America, I want to leave this mess behind, I'm going to go start my own business. So here's what happens the second you leave your corporate role: nobody takes your phone calls anymore. The role of a consultant is 80% living in the valley and 1% living at the top of the hill. The valley work is where you don't get clients, where you put in bids, where you go after opportunities and you don't get it. Or like in our case, my company, my consultants, my team that I work with, we will put in bids for jobs and we'll get told, well, that's not what we're— we're not going to hire you for that because you're just too small. We're gonna go out and give it to the big name box companies who can't give us enough resources to get the job done, but we're going to give it to the big box company because you're just too small. But here's 2 cents of crumbs that we're going to give you so that we meet our minority vendor participation requirement. Next week, I'm going to take on the insurance industry around the lack of minority women who are given opportunity in the insurance industry. I'm coming to y'all because this is my industry. Y'all are on next week's program, but this week's program is about Black women. So you get up and you decide, my boss has pissed me off, this organization is a piece of crap, I'mma file a corporation. I'm gonna start my own business, I'm gonna go out there. Good luck, good luck, because if you think you are being discriminated against now, wait till you're out there trying to get jobs as a Black woman. See if you can survive 25 years. See if you can do that. This February, I think I'm on year 24. See if you could survive where your only paycheck has come from yourself, where you got kids at home to feed, where you got a mortgage to pay, where you got elderly parents to take care of. See if you can survive without the paycheck. So many of you will do the side hustle, which is perfect, because let me tell you how I got here. How I got here. My boss said I I had no potential. That's what she told me. White woman said, you have no potential. Sit in the desk you're in. Be a happy adjuster. Don't leave that desk. Be happy as an adjuster. This is the job for you. I quit. I became a risk manager. I became a director of HR. But the same day I quit, I formed my company because my intent was never to work for anybody else after that. Because I had watched my dad, who is now 93, work for himself his whole life. I had watched my dad come to the United States as an immigrant, and he couldn't get a union card in New York City even though he was a qualified contractor coming to the United States from Jamaica. Even though if you're Jamaican and you're in Kingston and you're at the stadium and you look up the hill to the house that looks like a crown. It's been there my whole life. My dad designed and built that house. So my dad built a mega mansion on the side of a hill in the '60s, and he comes to America, and because of American racism, he couldn't get a union card. My dad worked on the World Trade Center as a contractor. Right, as a bricklayer. But they wouldn't pay him on Fridays. So my mother and I would get on the train from the Bronx all the way down to Wall Street, come off, go to the union office to collect the little brown envelope with my dad's pay because they wouldn't give him his pay. They demoralized the Black men after they gave them the union card and allowed them to come onto the job site. But he showed up every day and he did it. And then eventually my dad purchased an entire street at the Bowery, downtown Manhattan, and he renovated and built and renovated all those properties, and he retired at age 50 quite comfortably. So when I walk into an organization and I see them saying to me as an immigrant woman You can't get nowhere. You don't have any potential. My mother was scrubbing toilets in New York City to make sure that I could be in the United States. You don't get to tell me what I can and can't do. This is pretty simple. This is not hard. This is not hard at all. But for all of you who think corporate America is the worst place ever and you decide to leave corporate America to start your own business That side of the house doesn't look any better than this side of the house where you're sitting right now. So I'm going to share again because I want you to see what happens on the other side of the house, right? What happens on the other side? This report— and I'll back up— was by Citigroup, CityGPS, closing the racial inequity gap for Black people. And this is a beautiful report. And if you go on to Google, which is our best friend, and you search Citi, C-I-T-I, Closing the Racial Inequity Gap: The Economic Cost of Black Inequity in the U.S., right, what is it costing? The path towards equality is where the report starts. This is what the report says, and this is what got me going. The power that is being zapped from us, but the power that we have to make a difference. Not addressing the racial gap between Blacks and whites has cost the U.S. economy $16 trillion over the last 20 years. Because folks are so racist and they feel that they need to pay us less you're actually hurting the entire economy of the United States. Congratulations. So closing the wage gap would have added $2.7 trillion to the income and availability for consumption and investment. Facilitating easy access to higher education and primary education and investing in our schools and not banning freaking books would have saved us $113 billion in lifetime income. Improving access to housing would have, would have looked at sales of $218 billion. The fair and equitable lending for entrepreneurs would have saved us $13 trillion. Here's the thing, here's what we don't know, and here, here is it. I've given this fully to you. If you've, if you've not seen this, I recommend that you go on to the internet and search for this report. And search for this report, right? So it says we have to advocate in order— what can governments do? They can implement tax reform, financial reform, healthcare reform, encourage Black housing, and all this jazz. What can individuals do? Utilize their political power, advocate for their own career, educate, um, use education as a path to success, embrace the delayed gratification, um, and to generate wealth. So I'm going to speak to all of you sisters out there because this is a Black women's thing. We got to buy less red bottoms and buy more houses. Let me say that again. We need to buy less Gucci purses and buy— and buy more real estate. Even if 5 or 6 of us have to come together to do that, that's what we need to be doing. Okay, so the attitudes of equal access— half of the, the folks who are non-diverse in the United States think that we have full access. I remember when I bought the land that my house is sitting on, when I came to the county that I live in and I purchased the land and I decided to build my house. I was turned down by 7 banks, and the 7 banks said my house was a functional obsolescence. I've never forgotten that word. I did not know what that was until I was sitting across from the bank manager and he said, your— the plan you've drawn to build your house is a functional obsolescence. I didn't even know what that word meant. I had no idea what it meant. I looked it up. It meant that the house was too big for the neighborhood. It was, but that wasn't the truth. The house was just too big for me as a Black woman, right? For me as a Black woman, I shouldn't have that. So in this report, in this report, um, what can companies do? What can corporate America do? And again, I'm speaking to CHROs, COOs, CEOs, C-suite level HR business partners. You're doing a lousy job of telling our story so that you could make change in your organization. You're, you're doing a lousy job of telling our story. What can corporations do? You can support diversity and inclusion initiatives from the top. 90% of organizations who made solid commitments after George Floyd's murder have done crap since then. Most of you don't even want to hear the word diversity, and when you hire me and my team to do DE&I work, you really don't want it. And in the end, you come up with stupid slogans like, we're not ready, or we're not perfect, and but we're getting ready. And then you terminate us and you turn around months later and terminate the diversity director that you hired anyway because you had no commitment to DE&I. That's the truth. That's the truth. You'd rather Black and brown people go away quietly or sit in your organization and work every day and be silent. So what does this report say corporations should do? Let's go to number 2: recruit more Black board members. But you can't recruit more Black board members if you don't have Black executives somewhere in the process, so this is sort of an oxymoron. Address the racial gap in hiring and retention and firing. This comes to y'all HR people. Recruiters tend to hold on to pocketbooks, undervalue Black talent, offer and lowball wages for Black people coming into the workforce, and specifically for women, right? You do this, HR. It says engage in corporate social responsibility, but what does that mean? That means that you don't put just statements on your website, you don't make ERGs as your basis for, for DE&I, you really engage in corporate social responsibility. You look at talent acquisition, you look at talent development, you create programs and processes that will change the gap for women, Black women, Black men, right? Dismantle structural barriers to hiring Black talent is a thing. I didn't come up with this. I didn't come up with this. Develop metrics to analyze, report, and react. We just launched a course called DEI Data Storytelling. We launched this course because what we realize is 99% of the folks doing DE&I work do not know how to tell the story of DE&I in their organization. DEI Data Storytelling, which we have trademarked, because it is a thing. DE&I data storytelling is essential for us to move the needle, and if you cannot tell our story, then how do we expect the needle to be moved? We can't move the needle by ourselves. We just can't do it. We can't. Right? It cannot happen. We have to dismantle the barriers to hiring Black talent. I did a program a couple weeks back about Black talent, about how we overlook Black talent, and then when we promote Black talent, we do everything in our power to undermine that talent. This is the truth. We do everything in our power to undermine the talent when we hire them. So I have one more share. I have one more because I think it's imperative that we see this process fully. And again, if you're listening to the podcast, you really should watch the video. Which is on YouTube, which will be on YouTube as soon as the program is done. So Goldman Sachs has a program where they're investing billions of dollars in underrepresented and underinvested groups, and so they call it Black Womanomics— economics, woman economics— investing in the underinvested. I love the word underinvested versus underserved and under, um, appreciated and all the other under words that we use. Okay, I love this word. It says Black women face a 90% wealth gap. 90% wealth gap. 90%. Black women remain heavily disadvantaged across a broad range of economic measures: wealth, earnings, and health. The median single Black woman earns— owns 92% less net wealth than the median single white man and white woman, right? This is the earning gap. The earning gap continues. We have lower access to capital. We have less financial information. We have fewer investment opportunities. We have unaffordable, inadequate housing. This is what we're giving to the next generation of Black women. We, the current generation of Black women, have to understand where we are. The wage gap between Black and white women is widening. The access to better paying occupation and industries drove a substantial reduction in the wage gap for Black women in the '80s and '90s, but that progress has stalled. For over the last 20 years, the wage gap between Black women and white women has increased from 10% to 15%. Insignificant, basically. Fewer Black women earned college degrees in 2020 because we were the caregivers. We were the caregivers despite significant progress. We were the ones who had to take care of the family, and we couldn't do both, right? So yes, Black women own— earn more college degrees than any other subset But we, we didn't do that in 2020. Black women are less likely to own or inherit a high return asset. Black women are much, much less likely to own a high returning asset than white individuals, right? Um, percentage of inherited wealth We don't have anything to give our children. Black women are underbanked, right? And the list goes on. One-third of homes occupied by Black women are unhealthy because we're under so much stress. You face a substantial housing inequality and gap. Black women have poor health and shorter lives than white women, right? Solutions to close the gap. Here's a solution: reduce the barriers to college education and increase graduation rates. Provide access to capital for entrepreneurs, increase financial education, invest in Black communities. This is the, the solution. The solutions are here. They're here. The solutions are here. So what do we need to do as people of color? As Black women. As Black women, we need to start creating economic circles. We need to start to exchange inside of organizations what we're being paid. We need to tell another person, if you're going after this job, this is what you should ask for in terms of earnings. We need to support within organizations Black advancement. We need to start reaching back and saying Who am I grooming to take over for me? We need to do total capital investment in our future. If you start a business, you need to understand— get into a circle where you understand how to price your services. It is the one thing that kept me underdeveloped in this industry for years because I had no idea what my competitors charging, and so I undercharge every single time. If you are a Black professional in an organization, it's imperative that you advocate for Black vendors. I can't say enough to my good friend Sabrina, who is on here today, where she's saying hi from Tampa. Hi Sabrina. Sabrina went to her company and said, I want you to hire Margaret Spence. She's the best at this. If you're in a position to get someone hired and you are a person of color, use your capital to help us get hired. You cannot sit on your laurels and hire fully white companies as a Black individual in a position of power and not recommend that at least if you hire a massive white organization, a white corporation, to handle your HR or your services or your consulting or, and, or your training or anything else that you have high ticket on, you say to them, I want you to find a Black consultant to do parity work with them. Give them 25% of the contract as our corporate social responsibility. If you don't do that as a person of color, then you are not serving your own people of color, because Black women in our frustration start the most businesses out there because we're frustrated with what happens in corporate America. But we're starting the businesses and we're underfunded. I took a line of credit on my home to fund my business. I took a second line of credit to fund payroll. I cashed in my 401k to keep the business afloat so I could get to year 23. In my early days of this business, I put all of my own personal capital on the line because there was no funding source. And all of you who are running minority vendor programs in your organization, stop asking us to prove that we are Black. You want me to be minority certified. It takes money to be minority certified. If you're not giving us the contract and we're having to go out to become minority certified, and only to find out that you don't give us the contract any— anyway. We're spending the minuscule amount of capital we have trying to become minority certified, and you sit on your high horses in corporate America thinking you're doing something great by saying let the Black people be certified, or let the women be certified that they're women. I think we know who we are. You can look in the mirror and tell that I'm a Black business person. The corporate name is my own. Why do I need to go get certified? It's another hoop that's put in place to keep Black women particularly in the disadvantaged category. Because if you don't have the money or the time to expend on the certification because you're so busy trying to bring income into your organization, and the only way to get business is to be certified, you're creating another cycle of oppression. This is what's happening to us. So we can't say we want entrepreneurship. We can't say that because entrepreneurship now has a whole new set of barriers that's been put in place by the folks who are already oppressing us when we work for them. And all of you who are Black people running these vendor programs you're re-oppressing your own people by the number of hoops that you're making us jump through. Unacceptable, but nobody's calling it out. So I'm gonna end today because I think Black women, you have power to shape and shake this system. We are more than the data and the statistics that is out there about us. We are more than the data. We are more than the dismal outlook for us. We need to invest in ourselves, not compete against ourselves, not scratch our eyes out, not try to put each other down. If you're in a position of power, it is essential, and you have the opportunity to hire a vendor that you go out there and you look for minority vendors to hire. Asian women, Black women, Hispanic women, Native women— hire a woman, a Black woman, hire a woman as a vendor in your organization. We cannot go into 2023 with this dismal process that we're in. We can't do it. So Black women, you've got economic power. We're about to put the perm industry out of business. Think what would happen if we all recognize the level of power that we have as Black women from an economic block, and we supported our own Black businesses in our own neighborhoods, that we supported the woman who's doing hair, the woman who is I'm trying to start a little thing. We support that person. What would this look like for us if we took our economic power and invested it in our fellow Black women? On that note, I'm ending. Thank you so much, and thank you who joined us live. Those of you who are listening from your desk through your headsets, I know you're here. Tell a friend about this podcast, download it from the podcast app, and join me again next Friday as we have another Inclusion Unscripted. Take care, everyone.
You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings, but now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet.
Take care, everyone. Thank you for joining and the beautiful comments in the chat. Thank you again.
