So what would it look like to invest in women workers of color? I’d start with an industry that the pandemic practically decimated: child care and early learning. It is an industry I’m intimately familiar with through my work as executive director at a research organization that works toward racial equity in education.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2021, the median wage for childcare workers was just $13.22. Of the nearly one million early learning and child care professionals nationwide, nearly 44% are women of color. And one analysis cites one in three childcare professionals is food-insecure. Nearly one in twenty has been evicted during the pandemic. Even before COVID-19 hit, one in ten early childcare workers earned below-poverty wages — twice the poverty rate for workers overall. Some of the most important work anyone can do (keeping our babies safe, happy and learning) isn’t compensated well enough to keep the people who do it afloat.
As if $13.22 weren’t low enough, inflation has come for all our wallets — and it hits those earning lower incomes the hardest. That’s because people earning lower incomes spend a higher percentage of their paychecks on basic needs, meaning that it’s much harder to adjust their household budgets accordingly. To put it simply, cutting out a daily latte is harder when it’s not a latte but the electricity bill. What’s more, the consumer items with the highest price spikes are basic-needs items like gas and food. And if you can’t make ends meet, the consequences are more dire: moving from a house to an apartment is one thing, but moving your family from an apartment to your sedan is another.
In addition to the economic toll of COVID-19 and the inflation that followed, we are asking predominantly women of color to subsist on poverty wages (or close to it) in order to raise other people’s children.
And yet, in terms of the mean wage, we pay both parking lot attendants and dog walkers more. Do those jobs require more education? Nope. More advanced skills? Quite the opposite. Do we, as a society, value our pets and cars more than our babies? Cynics may say yes, but I don’t; decades working in education have only convinced me that most parents would do anything for their children. My hypothesis? It’s about who performs the work. Almost nine in ten parking lot attendants are men. A similarly high proportion (86%) of animal caretakers are white. Even when providing skilled care for the most important things in our lives, women of color do not get a fair shake in our economy.
In an age where we’re supposedly “reckoning” with our country’s racist past, let’s put all this in a historical context: our country has never valued the childcare work that women of color perform. Not the childcare labor performed under enslavement. Not when enacting fair labor legislation that excluded domestic workers from benefits like the minimum wage and overtime pay. Not when nearly a third of Black educators in the South lost their jobs after school desegregation, only to be replaced by less experienced white teachers (who also were more likely to be male). Our economy and society’s failure to respect and compensate women of color’s childcare labor is an ugly and persistent truth that goes far back. No wonder we’re failing at it today: we lack practice.
Stakeholders could start by shifting their understanding of early learning and care from what’s too often dismissed as “babysitting” to a demanding profession that requires skill, stamina and care. Some days, the job requires conducting child observations or crafting age- and development-appropriate curricula. Other days may be filled with paperwork regarding which families are eligible for which programs, who is enrolled and how many attend a given program each day. And in a post-pandemic world, it’s even more important that childcare providers and preschool teachers be ready to provide trauma-informed care. Many are also small-business owners and job creators who also manage everything from staff certifications to payroll, from supply inventory to tax payments.
When I dropped off my baby daughter at preschool for the first time a few weeks ago, I was emotional but grateful that she’s in excellent hands. She has a colorful, clean new classroom, where she will spend her day lovingly challenged and supported. When she’s tired, she’ll have soft naptime mats and plenty of yummy snacks. I only want the same — rewarding work, ample support, food security, a safe roof over her head and the ability to rest when needed — for her teachers.
