Black Press International |

Date: Feature Week of March 16, 2003
Topic: Black Press Business/Economic
Author: William Reed
Article ID: article_ema031603a

LOOKING AT BLACK HOME ECONOMICS
How The Gender Gap Is Affecting African-American Households

Today's Black Woman isn't the Black Woman of old. For some Black Americans, particularly Black Women, these are the best of times. Almost 50 percent of Blacks own homes and employment has gone up sharply among Black females. The African-American middle-class is growing, and its median annual household income has surpassed $33,500.

The economic emergence of the Black female is changing the economics of the Black household. Nowadays, Black men trail Black women in educational success. That gap is widening, as is the economic clout Black women are gaining with their education. The number of African Americans in college surged by 43 percent since the 1970's. But Black women have far outpaced Black men in both undergraduate and graduate school settings. Between 1977 and 1997, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded to Black men increased 30 percent, while the number for Black women increased by 77 percent. For master's degrees, the increases were 8 percent for black men and 39 percent for women. The 454,000 black women in the country with master's degrees more than double the 222,000 black men holding them.

The changes in Black home economics are far-reaching. As few Black males enter higher education, they continue to be rare in corporate boardrooms and others spheres of capitalistic power. As the economic gap widens at home, Black women have questions of whether they will find Black men who can carry their financial share in the household.

Black women were a major fact in African-American households having the highest median annual income ever recorded. This upward trend started in the 1990s when employment of young Black females dramatically increased. At the same time, the employment of their male counterparts stagnated, even in a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Today, Black women are more likely to work than white or Hispanic women. But, Black men are less likely to be gainfully working than their ethnic counterparts. Among non-college-educated young Blacks the gender gap is even starker. Whereas young non-college-educated Hispanic males now work at about the same rate as their white counterparts, the rate for African-Americans is 30 percentage points lower. Half of young Black men are unemployed or not in the labor.

Black women are in Corporate America. They are at the professional-managerial class level - 24 percent to 17 percent for Black men. Though 14 percent of working Black women remain below the poverty level, college-educated Black women earn more than the median for working Black men. And as women in general have moved up the corporate pyramid, Black women were increasingly part of the parade. In 2001, women held 16 percent of corporate-officer positions in Fortune 500 companies.

Black women now earn 96 percent of what white women earn. In a recent study of corporate women of color, Catalyst a firm tracking women in business found that 57 percent were promoted between 1998 and 2001. The study said 62 percent of the Black women reported having mentors, up dramatically from 1998 when the number was 35 percent. This indicates Black women are overcoming one of the most significant barriers to career advancement - connecting with influential people in the work hierarchy. Though corporate types still may not see Black women as members of "the club," they feel less threatened by them than they do Black men.

The gender gap can affect the cohesion of Black families. Data collected from graduates of selective colleges and universities reveal evidence of serious marriage trouble when the wife is the dominant wage earner. The divorce rate is higher among highly educated Black women who make more money than their mates.

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