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Photo: Connie Evans
Exploring how women of color, especially African American women, perceive their financial security and how to encourage asset development in this population was Evans’ primary goal while on campus.
Evans, founder of the Women’s Self-Employment Project in Chicago, was able to consult with University researchers and other activists, and to convene “town meetings” with women of color to hear their perspectives on asset development and financial security. Evans began investigating the savings rates of African-American Women after discovering that in 2001, African-American households had only 16% of the median household net worth of whites.’ Similarly, 1998 figures indicated that one-half of all minority women said they had no money saved for retirement.
The town meetings, held at CEW and on the medical campus, brought women of color from the community and the University together to discuss money and savings. Evans found that one important barrier to saving identified by many of these women was their responsibilities within kin networks. They did not accumulate wealth in many cases because they provided emergency support to extended family members: sisters, nephews, parents, cousins. Similarly, they anticipated contributing to the financial needs of such kin. Evans noted that the aggregate wealth represented by this kind of spending is significant and that the financial and banking communities remain unaware of this transfer of assets on the part of women of color.
Connie Evans’ visit coordinated with several other efforts on the part of CEW. In 2006, CEW has chosen to focus many of our efforts on gender equity and economics, particularly regarding low-income wage earning women. Activists, scholars, and speakers are working with CEW to explore some of the issues surrounding the economic status of women and the wages of low-income women, particularly women of color.
The need to remove barriers to economic equality and equity, the desire to improve the economic status of women, the concern with the number of women working in the low-wage economy, as well as the lack of assets held by women, inform the work of Sara Gould, Anne Ladky, and Connie Evans.
Sara Gould, President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation, gave CEW’s 2006 Mullin Welch lecture, speaking on “It’s Just Common Sense: Women Building a High Wage Economy.” Gould has been instrumental in creating the Ms. Foundation’s economic development program to support community-based initiatives that create jobs for low-income women and to help women revitalize their local economies.
The second Twink Frey Visiting Social Activist will be Anne Ladky, who will join CEW in the fall. Ladky is the Executive Director of Women Employed, a Chicago-based organization that works with women, businesses, and other interested groups to improve wages, help identify the business advantages of investing in low-wage workers and represent workers in low-wage and women-dominated sectors of the labor force.By bringing each of these women to campus in 2006, CEW is encouraging their work on these common concerns:
Low-wage work and women: In her lecture, Sara Gould discussed the low-wage workforce. She pointed out that the greatest expansion in the economy is currently in the low-wage sector. Many of these jobs, especially those in the caregiving sector, are held by women. The caregiving sector is one that also concerns Anne Ladky.
Women working in caregiving professions such as child care and home care are often unable to afford care for their own families. According to Gould, the Ms. Foundation is concerned with raising the minimum wage for such jobs. Similarly, Ladky’s Women Employed organization seeks to inform the business community of the economic and business advantages of investing in low-wage workers through a higher national minimum wage and access to benefits such as sick time and health care.
Connie Evans focused first on lower income and lower middle class women of color as she considered the development of tools to assist women in saving. This generated her interest in the specific situations and concerns that limit women’s ability to save, especially those particular to African-American women.
Economic Development: As women’s economic status increases and as women create businesses, they contribute to economic development within their communities. Anne Ladky’s work aims to improve the economic status of all women by removing barriers to economic equity and specifically by investing in low-wage workers. In this way, the local economy changes as workers are able to increase assets and women have easier access to entrepreneurial opportunities. Similarly, in its work, the Ms. Foundation seeks to support projects that enable such development in low-income communities.
In her lecture, Sara Gould pointed out that economic development does not always equal economic growth. She stressed that economic development initiatives should address wage earners, especially low wage earners. Gould also noted that remedies to women’s lower
economic status are often directed at individuals. She explained that we cannot become too focused on the job preparation of individual women; in addition, we need to address systems change in order to make a difference in gender inequities in economics across the
country.
CEW’s ability to bring these speakers and activists to the Center provides our staff with a series of provocative conversations concerning women’s economic status and gender equity. These conversations are repeated in ever-widening circles throughout the University community and the state of Michigan. In a time of economic uncertainty across the state, CEW is committed to keeping the economic status of women a part of the discourse.
