Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative’s (MLICCI) Executive Director Carol Burnett was recently featured in a national gender inequality report from the Roosevelt Institute and the Ms. Foundation For Women called Justice Doesn’t Trickle Down. How Racialized and Gendered Rules Are Holding Women Back. The report stems from research conducted by Roosevelt fellow Andrea Flynn.
The report chronicles how among all social groups in the United States, women of color experience some of the starkest disparities, inequities, and injustices across nearly every social and economic indicator.
According to the report, “Compared with white women, women of color have higher levels of unemployment and poverty; they have significantly less wealth; they are more likely to be targeted by and come in contact with the criminal justice system; they are at a much higher risk, regardless of their income or education, of dying as a result of pregnancy and of losing their children in infancy; they are less likely to own a home and more likely to have high-risk mortgages when they do own a home; they are less likely to attend college and, when they do, tend to carry heavier student debt burdens.”
It also details how women of color are also at the greatest risk in the current political environment, in which conservatives are threatening a range of public services from health coverage to education access to financial regulations, while some on the left wish to abandon “identity politics” in favor of a singular focus on class and economic issues.
The report also detailed how MLICCI was born out of Burnett’s experience as a provider of child care and job training for low-income women. It noted that Burnett recognized that many of the challenges her organization faced were policy challenges and notes MLICCI’s efforts to change those policies.
“Women are facing a spider web of obstruction to economic security. Policy agendas have to include all of these policies to clear the way for women to do the work they do: a livable wage with benefits and safety for themselves and their children,” said Burnett in the report.
Among several key findings, Flynn’s research found that “It is time for policymakers to learn from grassroots leaders like those featured in this report, who center women of color and have long called for a deep and intersectional approach to fulfilling the human rights of women of color and their families.”
To read the entire report, visit Justice Doesn’t Trickle Down. How Racialized and Gendered Rules Are Holding Women Back.