Black Working Women: The System Takes its Toll

by Sharon Broussard

Black women have been prominent in the labor force since the days of slavery, when many were forced to work in fields alongside their men. After slavery, black working women labored as domestics to help support their families. The only other fields open to black women were traditional female professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work.

However, in the late 60's, educated black women began to move into white male dominated professions such as law, business, and medicine, mainly as a result of Affirmative Action programs. This phenomenon has sent many researchers and scholars alike scrambling for data to determine the implications of such sudden career mobility.

Dr. Robert Staples, an associate professor in sociology at San Francisico State and author of "The World of Black Singles: The Changing Patters of Male-Female Relations", is one such scholar. And his conclusions have made him a controversial figure in the black community.

In a lecture last month on the careers and professional relationships of black professional women, given at the four-day-long Black Working Women's Conference sponsored byt the Women's Center here, Staples said that black women are twice as likely as black men to graduate from college and continue their education on the graduate level.

"Black women are in the ascendancy, " he told an audience of approximately 50 people, mostly women, gathered in the Women's Center Lounge. "Womend o better in schools. Men get trapped in the manhood hustle--they believe they'll be basketball stars."

These women are often rewarded with lucrative careers, continued Staples, but they pay a high personal price if they are searching for black marriage partners with similar educational backgrounds and career opportunities. "That's where the rub comes in. There's a numbers problem," said Staples, as he shuffled his yellow legal-sized notes in front of him.

For example, Staples points out there were 150,000 more black women than black men enrolled in college in 1979. In contrast about one million more white males than females were enrolled in college, he said. Unless black women consider "marrying down," marrying working-class men with little education, they may find themselves opthing for alternative relationships ranging from singlehood to lesbianism, concluded Staples.

Staples' lecture was met with hostility and indignation by his audience who accused him of ignoring the general economic status of black women. And rightly so. Only a minority of black women enjoy the material success that Staples described. Economist Julianne Malveaux, an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, castigated Staples for neglecting to discuss the under-employment and unemployment of black women.

In a later lecture at the conference, Malveaux said that approximately 60% of working black women are in traditional low-paying female clerical and service jobs. "Occupationally, the polsiiton of black women has been worse than other groups." she said.

But few women in the audience objected to Staples's contention that black women outnumber black males in college and higher income professions, although the accuracy of Staples's views would affirm the matriarchy myth, the idea that black women dominate their males in the home and job market. They know that in appearances, at least, black women have made gigantic strides in the marketplace, seemingly moving by leaps and bounds out o fthe white man's kitchen and into elite schools and professions once closed to all blacks, such as law, business, and engineering. But in their wake, more myths have sprung up about black women.

One such myth is that black women are eagerly sought after by employers because they satisfy both race and sex Affirmative Action quotas. However, in acutality, black women are usually counted in one category--race. And despite Affirmative Action gains accrued by a few women, black women with education are less less likely than uneducated or black males to earn more than $20,000.

In addition to these myths, however, there are very real problems of black professional women who are single and complaining. Many o fthem have been groomed by parents for middle-class lifestyle. They have been urged since grade school to excel academically and to forego marriage until after they begin their careers. When school finally ends, they begin to consider marriage--to those who reflect their upbringing and values. Many of them are quickly convinced that single black professional men are practically non-existent.

And that belief is not far from the truth because the middle-class itself is a fragile institution maintained by two working marriage partners and heavily dependent on government employment. According to Malveaux, approximately 40% of the black middlecalass hold government jobs, jobs which may be endangered by government cutbacks.

Yet the success of the new black professional class is the bright side of an otherwise gloomy economic picture for other blacks. The economic gap is widening between whites and blacks. More importantly, high unemployment among black males and teenagers coupled with a tremendous growth in poor female-headed households may mean the perpetuation of a vicious cycle of poverty for the majority of blacks.

A closer look at the problems of professional black women exposes the inner tension of black relationships between the sexes regardless of class due to economic conditions. Both lower-class black women who are living alone and middle-class black women who are unable to establish relationships with those who are their peers have the same "male problem". They both lack mates because uneducated and unskilled black men--of which there are many--oftend on't overcome the effects of job discrimination, poverty, and educational inequality. A disproportionate number of black men are in jaiil, on drugs, or die at an early age.

On college campuses, the "male problem" is an important topic among black women, but it is discussed as though it has no relation to the economic position of black people in this country. C. Dianne Howell, a counseling psychiatrist at Cal, said that the lack of single black men is frequently a discussion topic here. "There's a concern about how to develop meaningful relationships with someone they can respect," said Howell.

Some of these women are looking elsewhere for eligible mates, she said, and considering anew interracial dating, sharing eligible men with other women, and marrying outside of their class.

But choosing alternative relationships is no solution to the economic problems which plague the black community. There is a far deadlier numbers game being played than the scarcity of professional black men and it is reflected in the dire statistics on the widespread poverty of black communities. Until the majority of black males and females have equal educational and career opportunities, then black professional women will continue to trade careers for sound relationships and remain a class apart.

Student Affirmative Action

In the Fall, 1975, the University fo California initialted a new effort to identifiy and eliminate potentially discriminatory barriers and to increase educational opportunities for women, members of minority groups, and economically or otherwise disadvantaged students. Five, broadly based, student-faculty-staff Task Groups were established to review specific aspects of the educational process and recommend changes or new, affirmative programs.

The following is an overview of the Task Group's activities and other related developments as of 1975.

RECRUITEMENT TASK GROUP

The Recruitment Task Group is charged with the responsibility of surveying present practices of informing students about entrance into the University system, and recommending ways in which current procedures could be modified to more effectively meet the needs of women, ethnic minorities, and disadvantaged students. The manner in which outreach is presently carried out involves a number of University personnel. Generally, the Office of Relations with Schools (ORS) has primary responsibility to carry out this task; although, practically speaking, EOP personnel, faculty members, and students are also actively involved in this process.

The Recrruitment Task Force believes that non-traditional methods are needed to encourage the enrollment of non-traditional students. Based on the experience of EOP recruiters who find that even highly qualified students from disadvantaged backgrounds often need to be convinced that there is a place for them within the University, the members of the Task Group believe that active outreach efforts must be initiated by the University on a comprehensive basis if the enrollement of students from disadvantaged backgrouns is to be increased.

In order to be effective, recruiting activities must be personalized, well-coordinated, and persuasiver. The Task Group believes that there are several steps to this process, including
(1) the identification of major sources of underrepresented students,
(2) the encouragement of these students, early in their high school careers, to work to become eligible for UC;
(3) persuasion of these students to apply for admission and complete admissions procedures; and,
(4) persuasion of admitted students to accept offers of admission and enroll.

ADMISSIONS TASK GROUP

The Admissions Task Group has been asked to review the admission of undergraduate and graduate students, and to identify any barrieers within that process to non-traditional students.

The Admissions Task Group divided its area into graduate and undergraduate issues; then subdivided these into questions of procedure and questions of admissions criteria. Procedural matters, as well as some policy issues at the undergraduate level were considered first, and a consensus reached on certain recommendations including extending the open filing period, working to provide earlier feedback to applicants regarding their eligibility or deficiencies; posing clear alternatives with regard to campus or major preferences; and asking for ethnic identity on the application form. Under continued investigation are the general use of admissions criteria such as GPA and standardized test scores. These and other recommendations are in the drafting stage.

The Admissions study group view graduate admissions as its next major task. However, because of the number and variety of professional schools and graduate departments which have their own, often unwritten, priorities in admissions selection, a review of current practices will be time consuming and the subsequent recommendation procedure complex.

ACADEMIC SUPPORT GROUP

The main concentration of effort by the Academic Support Services Task Group to date has been the drafting of program proposals for the 1975=76 funding. The drafts were in the form of two proposals for academic support programs, one at the undergraduate level, and the other for entering graduate students.

The undergraduate draft proposal now being circulated is a guideline for campuses to perfect a comprehensive network of academic support services to provide assistance to educationally disadvantaged students.

The graduate draft proposal is an attempt to reduce the underrepresentation of minority, disadvantaged, and women students in the graduate programs. Some of these students may have special needs in the academic support area; therefore, a summer session is recommended at the pre-graduate level. The emphasis is twofold, that is, to instruce students in their area of deficiencies and to acquaint them on an individual level with faculty members in their field so as to ease the transition from undergraduate status to graduate status.

NON-ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES TASK GROUP

The charge of this Group is to identify barriers that may impede the success of minority, disadvantaged, and women students within the UC system; and, after identification of barriers, to make recommendations on means to alleviate them. This has been one of the more difficult areas to work on because of the diverse nature of the subject matter--student services.

The immediate goal for the members of this group was to attempt to prioritize subject areas. They defined general areas of interest and are now in the process of gathering information on those areas below:
(1) personal counseling services;
(2) career counseling and placement services;
(3) health services;
(4) housing;
(5) child care;
(6) due process (avenue whereby students can air grievances);
(7) athletics.

Generally, one of the major problems facing all of these areas is a need for more funding. Setting this need aside, however, the Task Group members were aware of their need to assess to what degree the existing services are now being used by women, minorities, and disadvantaged students, and to determine if specific barriers exist which either prevent or hinder a greater usage of these services.

The Non-Academic Support Services Task Group is working to devise effective mechanisms which will allow the users of student services to have a major input in the recommendation process.

FINANCIAL AID TASK GROUP

The Financial Aid Group has divided its charge in two segments. The first segment is the identification of financial barriers to the success of disadvantaged, minority, andwomen students. The second is the recommendation of possible solutions to eliminate, or at least improve these barriers.

In the first area, the Task Group believes that, as a side effect of existing economic situations, parental contributions from historically "middle income" families may be markedly reduced, if not eliminated completely in some cases. This will put a greater burden on the pool of existing financial aid dollars.

The group would also like to explore the increased use of work study. A greater amount of work study could allow students to supplement their income, as well as permit them to shift some of their indebtedness to a work study reimbursement program Although it is now possible for a student to repay part of their loan through services performed in work study jobs, administrative policy restricts the number of hours a student can work, thereby forcing many students to increase the proportion of loans they must assume.

Along with the work study repayment plan, the Task Group is also exploring a plan of Income Contingency Loan Repayment. The level of loan repayment would be determined by a schedule calibrated on the graduate's income.

At the graduate level, the problem is in many ways much worse than at the undergraduate level. Competition at the graduate level for grants and research fellowships is quite intense, and the social benefits involved in encourageing minority and women graduate students in medicine and other sciences is great. The Task Group has realized that financial aid may be one of the few areas that greatly affects both the access and success of many students in the UC system, and in particular the Student Affirmative Action student.