Commemorating Women’s Equality Day
Commemorating Women’s Equality Day
In 1973, August 26th became officially recognized as Women’s Equality Day in the United States — commemorating certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which secured women the right to vote.
Yet we know the suffrage movement’s history has been substantially whitewashed, largely ignoring the contributions of women of color — particularly Black, Indigenous and Latinx women and femmes — and the struggles they continue to face today, despite their efforts to expand equal rights for all.
Evidence consistently shows that gender-based discrimination is one of the major causes of poverty and food insecurity. Even before the pandemic, women experienced food insecurity at a greater rate than men — and here in the US, food insecurity rates are highest amongst single-mother households. Now, in the midst of the pandemic, single moms and caregivers are facing additional challenges and even higher rates of hunger.
So we know that addressing gender inequality is critical to Oregon Food Bank’s mission to end hunger and root causes. And to highlight the intersectionality of identifying as a woman and a person of color, we are honored to elevate the reflections of our beloved coworker Gaby Saldaña-López (she/her) on Women’s Equality Day.
Women’s Equality Day is August 26th, 2021 and as we approach Latinx Heritage Month, I wanted to take a moment to talk and reflect on these two concepts close to my heart. Over the pandemic, we have heard the narrative that it has been “the great equalizer” that has impacted us all equally. Although we are stumbling through a collective traumatic experience, we have not all been affected in the same way because we did not start on an equitable playing field. For us to ignore intersecting identities like race, gender identity, social-economic status, and generational wealth is a huge miss on how we and others reflect on this experience.
At the height of the pandemic, we saw a huge wave of unemployment particularly for Black and brown women across the service industry. Two communities that have a higher representation in service jobs. A report by the Economic Policy Institute, states that at the height of the pandemic Black women had a 16.9% unemployment rate compared to 15.8% of their white counterparts. And Latinx women had 20.2% compared to 15.0% of their white counterparts. Of course, economic instability is traumatizing for everyone, and at the same time, we can see how racism, sexism and structural oppression affects those made most marginalized in our society.
We cannot ignore the stereotype that has been perpetuated by the media that Latinx people, especially women, are service industry workers, such as waitresses, maids, and similar jobs. As someone who grew up in a mixed-status household, I have family who were only able to work in the service industry. Many women in my family went from cleaning houses and offices to then working for many chain restaurants. On many occasions, I joined them at work.
This later became my reality in a different way, when my boss in a reception job only asked me, the only woman of color, to do the daily cleaning tasks — assuming it was work I would enjoy. In my job working in college dining, I was usually given closing times because I did a good job cleaning. This reality has become a stereotype over the years. One that isn’t really questioned by Hollywood or even in our society outside of those who are directly affected themselves. What we don’t talk about is how these stereotypes exist because of the systematic oppression and control over Black and brown bodies that only allows for limited choices. With that limited choice becomes even more difficult to have economic mobility or even stability creating a continuous cycle of harm in many forms.
During this time, we also saw a significant increase in domestic violence against women and gender non-conforming people resulting in even more harm to our communities. I mention this because economic stability was noted as a big contributing factor to this increase in violence that affected many households. This instability in turn affects many aspects of our lives including food security, housing stability, and mental well-being.
Our societal devaluation of women and those that are femme presenting comes with real consequences. Although we are talking about Women’s Equality Day, we really need to be having conversations about equity because as a queer Latinx cis-gendered woman, I do not have the same experience as other women and femmes. It gives me hope that recently there has been an uptake in registrations, AKA the Great Resignation and building political power for workers, most notably Amazon workers, to have better working conditions. The key difference is in choice, although we can have a greater discussion around if inadequate working conditions really provide choice, it’s important to note this shift around work culture particularly for Black and brown women.
In my final thoughts, I just want to urge everyone to watch and listen to an interview on the podcast “Man Enough '' with acclaimed gender non-conforming author, speaker, and performer, Alok Vaid-Menon. They deconstruct the gender binary and how we can build a greater movement towards liberation- watch here. There’s so much I wanted to talk about in this piece including anti-blackness in the Latinx community especially highlighted in the narratives around Haitian immigration. The gender pay gap that exists even in unionized labor. And so many, many more issues that affect our communities today. These issues are all so irrevocably linked and tied together that we can only address if we recognize how we each individually play a part and work collectively to address these systemic issues.
We elevate these truths to guide our efforts towards achieving inclusive, resilient systems that address hunger at its roots. As Gaby mentioned, systemic injustices upheld by the patriarchy and broader white supremacy cannot be dismantled unless we begin to see our struggles as irrevocably tied to one another.
Moving forward, we urge everyone in our communities, particularly cis-white men, to engage in transformative justice practices that acknowledge the harm caused and eradicate the conditions that enable the oppression of women and femmes. Furthermore, we must continue to work towards a collective undoing of the gender binary in order to address and work towards healing the harm caused by the patriarchy (i.e. toxic masculinity, gendered roles, women’s oppression, queer-antagonism) that negatively impact all of us.
Articles for reference:
Latinx workers—particularly women—face devastating job losses in the COVID-19 recession
