The Black Gender Gap (Newsweek, February 26, 2003): ..... Who then could have imagined that an African-American female would one day stand atop the nation's foreign-policy pyramid? Who could have predicted that black women would, educationally, so outstrip black men? Who could have dreamed the day would come when black women would lay claim to "white men's jobs" -- the phrase used by banking executive Malia Fort's former boss as he reminded her of the time when "the only thing a black woman could have done in a bank is clean up"? Today a black woman can be anything from an astronaut to a talk-show host, run anything from a corporation to an Ivy League university. Once consigned to mostly menial work, black women (24 percent of them, compared with 17 percent of black men) have ascended to the professional-managerial class. [...] College-educated black women already earn more than the median for all black working men—or, for that matter, for all women. And as women in general move up the corporate pyramid, black women, increasingly, are part of the parade. In 1995 women held less than 9 percent of corporate-officer positions in Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst, a New York-based organization that promotes the interests of women in business. Last year they held close to 16 percent, a significant step up. Of those 2,140 women, 163 were black—a minuscule proportion, but one that is certain to grow.
It may be that in a truly peculiar way, the notorious lack of marriage among American blacks (roughly 60% of all black children are born out of wedlock) may be serving black women in an oddly positive way. If the point is brought home that strongly that you can only really rely on yourself, then you know that you have to prepare. And if that's what you see -- if, say, two or three generations of your family consist of women who have done for themselves because there was no other choice, then you would start preparing yourself for that choice early.
In fact, if watering-hole conversation is any criterion, the most difficult challenge black women face today may lie closer to home. Go any Friday night to Lola’s Cajun eatery in Los Angeles and you’ll find a weekly gathering of what could easily be dubbed “the black, beautiful, accomplished but can’t find a mate club.” In bars, colleges and other gathering spots across America, the question is much the same: where are the decent, desirable black men?
And that's also going to be a problem. Historically, a man is not a man if he can't provide for his family. In this day and age, that doesn't mean that the woman doesn't work ... but it may well mean that a man somehow still expects that he should outearn his wife. And the plain fact is, you get a tremendous culture clash when you have highly educated women working with men who aren't. Not only are the women earning more, but they simply know more. The combination may leave the men feeling that the relationship is completely unbalanced, that they have no position of strength in the relationship. The effect of that double whammy might be to feel rather ... emasculated.
Posted by iain at February 27, 2003 12:35 AMComments
