Keisha BlairRecent reports, including the new Women in the Workplace study from LeanIn.org and McKinsey highlighted the racial wealth gap, and the fact that even after the George Floyd protests, Black women are still facing significant racial barriers at work and racism has cost Black women an average of $1 million in lost income. In the most recent episode of the Holistic Wealth podcast, I spoke with Candace Spears about the racial wealth gap and the billion-dollar cost of misalignment and why Black women pay it.
A new report published in June 2021 by financial services company S&P Global, authored by U.S. Chief Economist & Managing Director, and Dr. Rafia Zafar, an Independent Researcher, highlighted the racial wealth gap and the depths of the billion-dollar cost of misalignment and why Black women pay it. The report found that obstacles to Black women’s educational attainment cost the U.S $107 billion dollars in economic activity between 1960 and 2019. The report states that: “If educational attainment among Black women had kept pace with that of white women from 1960-2019, the U.S. would have generated an additional $107 billion in economic activity. Moreover, if Black women had also been in positions that better matched their education and skill sets, the productivity boost would have added an overall $507 billion to the world’s biggest economy”. That $507 billion translates into more than half a TRILLION dollars. The report goes on to state: “these inequities, exacerbated by COVID-19, leave Black women even further behind economically, with a bigger percent drop in their participation rate and an unemployment rate now almost double that of white women”.
In Holistic Wealth: 36 Life Lessons To Help You Recover From Disruption, Find Your Life Purpose, and Achieve Financial Freedom (now available for preorder), I also spoke about the need for more accountability in workplaces with regards to promotional opportunities for Black women as well as how women can use Holistic Wealth Project Accountability groups as their own professional mastermind groups to set each other up for success. I also interviewed Candace Spears on the Holistic Wealth podcast, and she shared her perspective on why putting everyone else first has immeasurable opportunity cost – financially, emotionally and socially, and why Black women are so often in a place where this is necessary and what we can do to change that. Candace also shared some strategies for Black women in the workplace as well as those transitioning to their own businesses. In a previous episode of the Holistic Wealth podcast for Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, I highlighted in that episode the fact that Black women lose out to the tune of $1 million dollars in lost income over the course of their careers. On that episode of the Holistic Wealth podcast, I also some discussed some strategies that we can all use to deal with this billion dollar misalignment problem.
Statistics also show that only 2% of women-owned businesses break $1million dollars. Most of the richest businesswomen founded their own businesses (are self-made), and there are more than 2 million black-owned businesses in the United States alone, however, only 35% of Black business owners are women.
These issues are fully explored in my new book Holistic Wealth: : 36 Life Lessons to Help You Recover from Disruption, Find Your Life Purpose, and Achieve Financial Freedom, which is now available for preorder.
