September 17, 2025 • 52 mins
When it comes to marginalized intersectional identities, Black women and women of color are no stranger. But if we zoom out, what does that experience look like across systems, access, and paychecks? Today we're excited to be joined by economist, advocate, and author Anna Gifty. She’s here to talk about her new book, ‘The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid,’ a powerful, data-driven exploration of the hidden costs of being both a woman and a racial minority in today’s economy. During this conversation, we dive into the concept of the “double tax,” the systemic forces that undervalue women of color, and what it means to work towards an economy that truly works for everyone.
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The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four twenty nine of the
Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our
conversation after a word from our sponsors. When it comes
to marginalized intersectional identities, black women and women of color
(01:18):
are no stranger, But if we zoom out, what does
that experience look like across systems, access, and paychecks? Today
I'm pleased to be joined by economists, advocate and author
and a gifty. She's here to talk about her new book,
The Double Tax, How Women of Color are overcharged and underpaid,
A powerful data driven exploration of the hidden costs of
(01:40):
being both a woman and a racial minority in today's economy.
During our conversation, we dive into the concept of the
double tax, the systemic forces that undervalue women of color,
and what it means to work towards an economy that
truly works for everyone. If something resonates with you while
enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media
(02:01):
using the hashtag TVG in session or I joined us
over in our Patreon channel to talk more about the episode.
You can join us at community do Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for
joining us today, Anna, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So much for having me. I'm extremely honored this platform
has connected with me with my therapist, and so I'm
just so grateful for y'all existing and just being here
for black women.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Oh, thank you so much. I always enjoy hearing that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Yeah, so, I.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Really want to dive into your work, Anna, because you
have coined the term double text, which refers to the
compounded cost of being both a woman and a racialized minority.
Can you tell me how you coin that term and
then how your research really shaped the way the book
turned out.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, as you just noted, Yes, the double tax is
the compounded cost of racism and sexism, and I think
that black women have sort of been ahead of the
game on this front for decades. So I like to
say that the double Tax is sort of the quantification
of massage renoir fully realized. And so for me, I
(03:15):
think that this book and the research that came about
to inform this book was really a product of sort
of my own training in my PhD program. So I
study policy and economics. I'm a PhD student at Harvard,
and a lot of the questions I asked around race, gender,
and the economy. But a lot of times when you're
(03:37):
digging into the research, digging into the literature, they almost
always focus on either race or gender. So there's a
lot of really great work on gender, gender equality, how
do we make things more equal? But then those studies
that are about women don't actually cut across race, and
so you're not sure which women are actually benefiting from
the things that folks are trying to intervene on, or
even what types of inequities that they're trying to under earth.
(04:00):
And so this book really was inspired by the lack
of you know, language around this and the literature, but
also the even like just bringing the literature that we
know that's already touching on this to the forefront since
it tends to not get a lot of attention because
the folks who are doing that tend to look like
you and me.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Hmm, okay, So I'm honestly surprised Anna that, like, right
now we are still having a lack of focus on
what it means to be a minority and be a
woman right like. It feels like, Okay, surely there are
enough people who are doing this work where we're getting
much more research there, but you're saying even still, there
(04:38):
is still a lack of research and a lack of
people kind of doing this work.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Absolutely, So, I think that qualitative researchers, folks who interview
people have done such an exceptional work, such exceptional job,
excuse me, of documenting people's experiences, in people's stories, and
how those stories sort of inform, you know, how we
think about inequality both through race and and sometimes even
through class. But I would argue that the quantitative side
(05:04):
of things is still quite lacking. There's a lot of
black imn economists who have done a great job of
sort of digging into the numbers when it comes to intersectionality.
But it's actually not something that you see widespread, namely
because of who's doing the work. Right, So economics is
notoriously white, notoriously male, and it's almost always, you know,
(05:24):
it leans towards like higher socioeconomic status. And so the
folks who are asking these types of questions that would
inform the discourse, would inform the policies, just don't look
like the people who this particular thing called the double
tax even applies to. And so again, this is sort
of an attempt to bring together what we already know
and to hopefully inspire other folks to ask questions too.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Mm hmmm. So you interviewed over one hundred women for
your book. What were some of the maybe most surprising
or maybe even heartbreaking stories that you found as a
part of your research.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, And so one, I got to give credit to
the folks who helped out with this because I'm a
quantitative scholar, leaned on my qualitative scholar colleagues, and so
shout out to Kaylee, shout out to Alexa who really
kind of took the reins and making sure that we
had cultural competency when we were talking to these women
so they could speak freely. And I would say, like
some of the insights that really shocked me up, Maybe
(06:18):
I'll start with the first one, what inspired the book?
So I remember, when you know, we were getting ready
to sort of pitch this book to publishers, and when
you're doing that for folks who don't know, you have
to write your first chapter. And so I decided to
talk to a group of black high school girls about
what costs they're facing right now as they're navigating adolescents.
(06:39):
And I thought that the costs that they would bring
up were costs that I kind of dealt with when
I was growing up, which was, maybe you're spending a
lot of money on makeup but you can't find the
right shade, or just thinking about other things related to that.
But funnily enough, the cost that I've dealt with, the
ones that you've dealt with, doctor Joy, and even the
costs that like my mother have dealt with, they were
(07:00):
reflected in the answers that these young girls were saying.
I said, so, what is most costly for y'all? And
they said, hair and the fact that hair is still
a cost that young black girls in twenty twenty five
have to think about, despite all the work that's been
done to really destigmatize black hair, to normalize natural hair,
(07:22):
to celebrate our curls and our coils. That made me like, okay, so, like,
I don't want my nieces who are now, you know,
three and four to have to deal with this in
ten years, right. So I think for me that gave
a new sense of purpose for why a book like
this needs to exist, because I think part of it
too is that these costs that you know were being
(07:44):
illuminated by the women that we were speaking to are
costs that are being illuminated by women who are often
forgotten in conversations about women. So this is something I
talked about recently online, where you know, I think people
in power think about womanhood very narrowly, and we are
seeing that in a lot of different ways, right the
dimensions of identity that they're focused on, or maybe like
(08:05):
one or two dimensions of identity, And I think that
that then means that the women who most of the
world is made up of in terms of women in general,
are forgotten. Their stories are not actually illuminated. And I
would say another thing that kind of shocked me, at
least with the hair chapter, is that we actually had
an opportunity to talk to Asian American women, and I
was really surprised to find out that they also go
(08:27):
through the same trial and error process that we do
through products. So products that are advertised for white women
don't actually work for their hair either, and so they
have to kind of go through similar processes of just
trying to figure out what works well. And then I
think the other story that really comes to mind here
that really shocked me was the story about home ownership.
(08:49):
So one of the first questions that we asked the
two groups of women we interviewed black women and we
interviewed white women. We asked them, you know, what percentage
of people you know owned homes? And so I think
for black women it was somewhere between ten percent to
about maybe eighty or ninety percent. For white women, it
(09:10):
was somewhere between like I want to say forty percent
of my beginning that wrong, but up to about one
hundred percent, right, So everybody they know owns a home,
and I think that's the disparity. There was quite striking
this idea that like where even wealth begins is fundamentally
shaped by our networks are upbringing, and these are things
(09:31):
that are not talked about out in the open, especially
as it relates to women's lives. And so I think
that this book, what I love about it is it
doesn't just talk about the numbers, which I think a
lot of folks get maybe exposure to through studies and
even sometimes news articles, but it really brings those numbers
and marries them with the stories to say that these
are not just like coincidences, these are patterns.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I appreciate the story around the cost of hair and
when you Firth mentioned and I was like, oh, are
they spending a lot of money because they want to
like change it up a lot, and like, oh, I
want to answer fun new colors or now I want braids.
But it sounds like the cost is really around like
trying products and thinking that a certain product will work
for your hair and then it doesn't. So it's really
still a lack of products for our hair.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You know. One study finds that there's a difference in
how leading brands sell hair for straight hair and hair
for coily hair by the ounce, So it's like a
twenty cent difference. That twenty cent difference can become a
matter of dollars when it comes down to it, right,
because those ounce busiesf you moultify them by seventeen ounces, Right,
(10:38):
it becomes a certain amount of money that we're spending
on shampoo and conditioner. We're just talking about shampoo and conditioner,
not to mention that we know that there's work that
shows that folks who are of African descent we go
through differences in how our hair sort of sheds or
is damaged easily by the environments that we're in. And
so we're also having to just get more products just
(11:00):
to ensure that our hair remains healthy. And I think
what people don't know, right, this is something that I
dealt with when I was growing up, and I imagine
that you dealt with too, is like just how much
we spend on our hair just to kind of conform
to the beauty standard, right, or to ensure that we
are not penalized for looking unprofessional. I don't think people
(11:21):
really know how much black women are spending on their hair.
For example, these braids that I have in right now gorgeous. However,
the way it turned in my pocket book, Right, Like,
I'm spending three point fifty to four hundred dollars and
that's on the lower end. Folks I know can spend
(11:42):
upwards of seven hundred dollars on their hair. If you're
buying wigs, you're spending a good chunk of change just
to look good. Right. And the gag of the matter
is like, if you decide I'm going to rock my
natural curls, if you decide I'm going to rock my
natural hair, depending on the texture of your natural hair, right,
you might get penalized within the workplace or within the
(12:02):
school yard about that. And this idea that this constant
policing over black women and black girl's looks, and that
actually does come at a cost, not just for you know,
maybe the parent or the guardian that's watching the black girl,
but also for the black girl herself. I think one
thing that was extremely heartbreaking to hear and was also
(12:24):
backup by data that we saw from the UK, from
the US, is that black girls are still being critiqued
for their hair texture. And what I say in the
book is that you know, if we decide to dye
our hair purple, and a white girl decides to die
her hair purple, the white girls called quirky. But our
economic status is now called into question. Oh maybe that
(12:44):
maybe she's coming from an unkempt home. Maybe people don't
think that she was raised right, even though we're still
trying to express ourselves. And so for me, this is
where the double tax shows up at least the cost
of presentability and beauty in general.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, and you know the cost and terms of like
the money, but also the cost in terms of time,
Like I would imagine the braids that you have that
looks like a six to eight hour at least.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
How did you know, job? That's exactly right, bro. I
was sitting there and I said, are we done? And
they were like, you asked for small parts, and I said,
I got you, but like I have somewhere to be.
But that's the point, right, And I think now and
(13:28):
days we're seeing people, you know, when they're in the
brading chair, they'll be on their laptops. But I remember
back in the day, like you weren't really expected to
do that. So it's not just that you're losing eight
hours in the day, you're losing eight hours of wages.
Potentially you got to take the day off and They're
not going to give you a paid day off to
get your hair.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Done, right.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So something else you mentioned, Anna, and this is maybe
related to your work, but maybe not. You talked about
like the questions around like home ownership, and for so long,
homeownership has kind of been the goal standard in terms
of what it looks like to build wealth. Is that
still the case, Like, are we still seeing like home
ownership is like one true way to wealth.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Kind of in our communities. That's such a great question.
I think there's a couple answers to that. So there's
two black economists called Derreck Hamilton and Sandy Daerty, and
they said something along the lines of a lot of
people say that home ownership is the way to build wealth,
but what the actual reality is is that home ownership
is actually the signal that you can build wealth essentially, right.
(14:29):
And I think this is actually a very good point
because if you look at the difference in the wealth
portfolios between black families and white families, white families have
a much more diversified portfolio. They have stocks, they have investments,
they have homes that they own, they also have other
properties that they own as well, whereas with black folks,
(14:51):
almost all of our wealth is tied up in our homes.
One of the most shocking statistics that I came across
us in the research was from the National Realtors Association.
So what they do is they do like a snapshot
report of who's a homeowner in a given year. So
we're talking about twenty twenty four. If you think about
(15:15):
the number like or the share of new homeowners that
were black, right, amongst all black homeowners in twenty twenty four,
forty nine percent of Black homeowners were new or home buyers,
rather new new home buyers, first time home buyers, right,
(15:35):
forty nine percent. That means that out of all the
Black people who bought homes in twenty twenty four, half
of them were buying homes for the first time. Okay,
now look at white folks. This is the number that
kind of radicalized me a little bit. You look at
white folks in twenty twenty four, out of all the
white folks that bought homes, only twenty percent of them
(16:00):
we're first time homemyers. That means eighty percent we're buying
their second, third, fourth, or fifth home. I think when
we talk about home ownership and whether or not it
is the right way to build wealth. I'm not saying
it's the wrong way, because I don't think that's what
the evidence adjusts entirely. But I think what we do
(16:22):
know is that having other streams of wealth, or having
other wells like to draw from, makes a difference. And again,
just to kind of bring in the numbers, the Federal
Reserve Bank of Saint Louis finds that, you know, for
every dollar of wealth a white guy has, white women
(16:42):
have seventy eight cents. Black women. Take a guess how
out of the sense how many how many do you
think we have?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Forty five?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
You said forty five?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Mm hm, go down, Oh wow, thirty four.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Eight cents?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
This is why I think this book is really important
because I think a lot of times when people talk about, oh,
gender inequality or gender equality, they're not including stories about
black women, They're not including stories about poor women, et cetera,
et cetera. And I think that you cannot have a
full holistic conversation about how we achieve gender equality without
(17:36):
talking about racial inequality, without talking about class inequality. And
so to your question about whether or not home ownership
is still the best way to build wealth for black folks.
It's a pathway to build wealth. But you also have
to recognize too that there are other pathways that other
groups are building wealth through, and if you can gain
access to those pathways, great, But the reality of the
(17:56):
matter is, what we know from the data is that
even if black folks saved as much as white folks,
you know, was able to make as much as white folks,
Even if the education distribution was aligned in such a
way that we were being educated at the same level
of white folks, there's only one policy that actually closes
(18:17):
this racial wealth gap that we've been talking about for
so many decades and so many centuries, and that is reparations.
Anybody who's having a conversation about anything else outside of
that is not having a serious conversation. So I can
tell you to go buy a home, and sure, that's
one way that black folks are building wealth in this country.
(18:38):
I will say though, that because you're at the mercy
of the housing market, if your wealth only lies within
your house, what happens with the housing market will affect
your wealth, and so you might want to diversify. But
I also say that the reality is that there are
historic wrongs that absolutely need to be righted, and that
is something that you should be pushing for and the
kinds of people you elect, the kind of policies that
(18:58):
you support.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Except so, these numbers have never been great, but I'm
sure you've been paying attention to and the three hundred
thousand reported Black women who have been impacted by layoffs.
Now this was not, of course the stat when your
book was out. But how are you making sense of
this in the you know, the larger landscape of like
the things that you write about in the kind of
work that you do.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Listen, this is the double tax. So the double tacks says,
you know, we have a compounded cost of racism and saxism.
And what this means is in the book, there are
two chapters that I really want folks to focus on
when they're thinking about what's happening right now. With three
hundred thousand in counting, by the way, because I was
(19:39):
a number I believe back in June or May. Right
in counting, there's a double tax in career choice, and
there's a double tax in career path. Let me break
it down. The double tax in career choice means that
black women minority women, women in general are barred from
certain career paths, right, and so we see this in
(20:01):
the data Among the top ten highest paid career paths
as a twenty nineteen you know, white women have proportional representation,
mean that their representation is equal to the nationwide share
in about three of those careers. Black women, Latino women,
Native women zero, right, top highest paying as for white
(20:22):
men all ten. It's actually they're over represented in all
of those types of career paths. We're talking about physicians,
we're talking about engineers, folks in tech, etc. Among the
lowest paid career paths, Black women have proportional representation or
nationwide share in eight out of the ten. What does
(20:46):
this mean? That means that the types of careers that
black women tend to fall into not by choice. If
I'm being quite honest, right, this is occupational segregation. You're
funneled into certain career paths because other career paths are
barred from you for racist and sexist reasons. That means
that when the economy goes through a crisis, the jobs
(21:06):
at organizations, companies, and different types of entities see as
expendable oftentimes are these low paying jobs these jobs that
lack benefits, these jobs that lack protections, these jobs that
don't have unions behind them. And so that means that
when they need to offload people from their payroll, they're
going to the folks that they are addressing first, the
(21:29):
folks who are low paid, the folks who are low wage, right,
the folks who lack benefits, and a lot of times
those individuals are Black women disproportionately. So if we're even
thinking about the types of sectors that tend to have
those types of protections around them, you know, public sector
definitely has great health insurance, you know that sort of thing.
(21:51):
But what I want to know here is that what's
happening is a targeted effort at laying off the federal workforce.
And black women again are overrepresented amongst federal jobs right,
as well as local and state jobs within the government.
And so once again, if we're thinking about who's seen
as expendable in the workplace, black women oftentimes are falling
(22:15):
to jobs that people are seen as expendable, and so
we're the first to be pushed out. The second aspect
of this is the double tax in career path. So
there's data that shows that Black women are the least
likely to be promoted and the most likely to experience
turnover within the private sector. We don't have a lot
of data on the public sector just yet, but let's
(22:37):
just use the private sector as an example. What does
this mean. This means that if we're already facing barriers
during the good times, what happens during the bad times?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
These things just become worse for us. And so what
I often tell people is that black women are a
very important economic indicator that for some reason and people
keep ignoring, right, Like, what happens to us first is
coming to everyone next. Another way to put this is
(23:11):
that we are the shock absorbers of a future economic
crisis for everybody else. And so if something is hitting us,
you shouldn't turn away and be like, Ah, that's just
affecting those minority women over there. You should be paying
attention and figuring out, wait, why is that thing coming
in that direction? Why are they experiencing that? And the
(23:32):
reason I say that is because black economists back in
two thousand and eight said the same thing. They said,
if folks were paying attention to black and brown folks,
they would have seen the two thousand and eight financial
crisis coming from a mile away. We saw this with
COVID as well. At the very beginning of COVID, black
one's unemployment shot up to seventeen percent, right before everybody
else started losing their jobs. Why are we waiting right
(23:54):
for a nationwide crisis when there's a crisis happening to
a part of our nation. And that's how I think
folks can use the double tax to better understand why
three hundred thousand Black women are suddenly leaving the labor force.
And they're not leaving the labor force, they're being pushed out.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
More from our conversation after the break, it feels like
that's related to the stats around black women's entrepreneurship. Right,
Like a lot of times black women become entrepreneurs because
of like force, right, Like you need to support yourself
(24:34):
and your family and so, But then we know entrepreneurship
is also.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Not an easy path.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So how does the double tax show up in entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
So the double tax shows up an entrepreneurship even in
the way that funding is allocated. So I don't know
if folks know this, but like venture capital is one
of the most lea like it's the least diverse or
among the least diverse like fields. Actually, in finance, right,
folks can get money just because they are attractive white men.
(25:06):
That's the study, by the way, right, Like, if you're
an attractive white guy, you're a lot more likely to
get funding from a VC. I think what we see
from the data, and I'm summarizing here is even amongst
the funding that's allocated for diverse founders, the majority of
that funding actually does not go towards women of color.
(25:28):
It goes to white women, right. And this is actually
a very important distinction because when folks start saying, well,
we don't like DEI, we don't like diversity. Oh you
thought you were targeting black women, you actually are not.
You're targeting white women most likely, right. So in entrepreneurship,
we definitely see that. And I would even say, like
we quoted a story from the New York Times of
(25:50):
a black woman who owns a hair salon. Right, A
lot of folks complain about the rising cost of getting
your hair done. But I think if we actually look
at the other side of that too, from an entrepreneurial perspective,
black women are already facing bearers as we just noted
in the kind of funny they get, the kind of
even just like getting a building to have your business in,
(26:11):
people don't trust that you can make the rent right
because they look at your skin color, they look at
your gender. They say, I don't think this person has
the financial means to do this. It affects lending, right,
it affects the kind of interest rate you might get.
We see this in home ownership, but I imagine that also
happens in property ownership as well. And so with that
in mind, she was mentioning that there's higher expectations that
(26:32):
black entrepreneurship, at least in hair care and other beauty areas,
have to deal with. And I would imagine that this
is also true just broadly speaking, where as a black
woman entrepreneur, you're having to work three times as hard
to get a crumb of return, right, a crumb of return,
And maybe you can ride the wave of people being
(26:54):
somewhat interested in black entrepreneurship or black women for a time,
but as we know, stuff like that can be fleeting, right.
I've mentioned recently that even folks interested in this book,
I've noticed that, you know, because this book is not
just exclusively about gender. People are throwing it into a category.
They're saying, oh, it's about race, and so we'll talk
about it during Black History Month. We'll talk about it
(27:15):
when we're talking about black folks, even though we're talking
about women still. So these sort of axes of oppression
that black women tend to lie in means that we're
also dealing with what those axes bring about when it
comes to barriers to entrepreneurship, owning a business, having a
successful business. And so I got to give a shout
out to Ashley Wisdom. That's my girl. She founded Health
(27:37):
in her hue. She's done a historic feet by you know,
raising one million plus for that organization. The fact that
that's even historic feet in twenty twenty five, that tells
you that we have a long ways to go and
how the double tax is showing up even today.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So something else that you write in your book that
I think is really important to talk about is pathological productivity.
So this idea that you have to kind of work
hard and like that is the way that we kind
of get a hit is by we're always the one
volunteering for things and like all of that. Can you
talk more about what this term means and how this
actually shows up for us in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, for sure, I think that. So I don't know
if folks know this, but like according to lean In
and the Women at Workplace Report, for embly one hundred
men that are promoted to managers, white women are promoted
like it's like eighty eighty two women, eighty two white
women are promoted, ninety nine Asian women are promoted, right,
(28:32):
and only fifty four Black women are promoted. How does
that tie into what doctor George is asked. If you've
work in the workplace as a black woman, especially the
corporate workplace, you know that you're probably being asked to
do twenty five million things that are not in your
job description, right, and so you're busting your butt to
(28:57):
satisfy whatever standard is being in implemented in your contexts.
But the reality is that might not actually be translating
into whether or not you're seen as a productive member
of the workplace. And a lot of times this is
reflected in your performance reviews. So you might get a
performance review, and this is something we saw with women
(29:17):
in general, that it's just not actionable. What they're saying
is more like personality description oh, that person was nice.
I think we have folks saying like, oh, they were
described as goofy in the workplace. I don't know what
goofy got to do with your productivity, Okay, but you
know this is the kind of stuff that people would
be receiving as women, and then black women receive the
(29:38):
same type of feedback, except with a negative twist. Oh
she was bossy, she was too assertive, she was negative
or whatever. And this is on top of you doing
unpaid labor. So not only is the labor that you're
doing to help the workplace not being rewarded, but then
(30:00):
when the performance reviews come, they start to reflect things
that aren't even actionable. You don't even know where to improve,
and you don't know how this is factoring into whether
or not you're being seen as a productive person within
the workplace, and if it's factoring into your promotion overall.
And so I would say that's kind of how that
pathological productivity shows up for black women in particular. We're
(30:21):
expected to do twice as much only to receive half
as much, and at the end of the day, we
don't even really get credit for the kind of work
that we're putting forth as reflected by our low promotion
rates and how we're characterized within the workplace.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Something we haven't talked about, but I think would be
important to talk about, is that we know that black
women are also often like caregivers in our families. Right,
so not only are we having to show up in
the workspace but also in our family lives.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It feels like it's more than a double tax there, right,
Like there's the double tax of being a woman and
leg but also now attacks of maybe taking care of parents,
taking care of kids. Can you talk about that and
the impact on our mental health?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Woh, hold on, sorry that deep side. Listen, listen, So
let me be very candid about something. I'm twenty nine
years old. You'll see in the book that, like the
first half, I'm talking a lot about my personal experiences
because I've lived through those things. But in the latter half,
(31:26):
I rely a lot more on the women I've encountered
and the women in my life. Writing the chapters about
motherhood and caregiving shifted my brain chemistry because I don't
think people understand how much we rely on our caregivers,
(31:49):
Folks who are raising kids, folks who are taking care
of disabled and six family members, folks who are taking
care of aging parents. I don't think people really understand
what people are sacrificing to take that role on. I'll
tell a really quick story. So the very beginning of
the caregiving chapter, which is titled the Balancing Act, appropriately
(32:12):
titled that, right, you're balancing a lot of things. It's
about my mom. My mom is a remarkable woman. And
you know, my family we immigrated from Ghana. I was
born in Ghana like for two seconds, and then they
popped on a plane and we ended up here, right.
But I remember back in the day, you know, I
would be sleeping, getting ready, you know, I gotta go
(32:34):
to school at like eight am. You know, folks had
alarm clocks. I had my mother out here talking to
folks very loudly on the phone six am, seven am,
telling people what to do. And I remember being like,
I don't understand why she's talking so loud for some
foremos right, But I also don't understand what she's talking about.
It wasn't until I got older that I learned she was.
(32:56):
She's taking care of so many people back at home,
so many people rely on her. And as my sister
has gotten older. I've also noticed the same with her
now she's a mother as well too. So when you
ask me a question about like how does this affect
your mental health, what the stories from the women that
we spoke to revealed is that it is a strain
(33:18):
to have people relying on you twenty four to seven.
And I think what people don't understand is that the
moment women enter any stage of caregiving, whether it's you
become a mom, you start taking care of a family member,
or you know someone who's sick or disabled, the expectation
(33:41):
to take care of everyone never stops. You never get
a break from it. And I think that that has
to change. Well, one like the caregiving responsibilities need to
be shifted to other groups within society. Right there needs
to be better care infrastructure so that people aren't feeling
(34:02):
the burden as individuals and as families, but more specifically
to your mental health. As we're talking about this on
the platform that is Therapy for Black Girls or Therapy
for Black Girls, right is I have noticed that like
feeling like the way of the world is on you,
(34:23):
it can be such an overwhelming thing. And so in
that chapter, and this is something that was at last minute.
I remind people to rest right. This is sort of
the rest is resistance movement, the NAP ministry movement. You
cannot pour from an empty cup. And one thing that
(34:44):
I learned from the conversations about caregiving from caregivers, from mothers,
from folks who are taking care of their aging parents
is that if you are not careful, the responsibilities of
caregiving compound. It's not that the first this month of
caregiving is the same as the second month. It's not
the second month's the first month plus whatever the second
(35:05):
month is bringing and so forth. And so you have
to take time for yourself. You have to establish boundaries.
You have to say, hey, I need my alone time.
No right, It's a complete sentence. And of course I'm
speaking from really a naive perspective. I don't know that
process yet. At some point I will be experiencing it.
(35:28):
But from the folks that we spoke to, from the
women that we heard from, that was how they kept
their sanity. And I think doing that in community is
the number one thing. Knowing that you can be transparent
about how those burdens are affecting your day to day,
how they're affecting the way that you perceive yourself. That
(35:49):
also can I think, help improve your mental health as
you are navigating that stage of your life, and for
a lot of people that stage of their life. One
of the last stories that we feature was a seventy
year old woman called Lena. She was taking care of
her parents up until their death, and then she recently
turned seventy, right, And so the fact that like, even
(36:09):
in your older age, you're still taking care of people,
you have to establish those boundaries. You have to make
sure that rest is a priority for you. And I
think for Black women this is really hard because it's
not just caregiving as an expectation within our families and
within our own communities, but it's like people expect this
to take care of the world, right, and so like
we have to be really really picky about where we're
(36:33):
expending our energy. And I think that that's a hard
thing to do because we're very generous and we're very giving,
but I also think that we need to be generous
and giving to ourselves as well.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I appreciate that, and I would love to hear your
thoughts on like what it looks like to have these conversations,
because I think for so many of us, Like, caretaking
is a cultural expectation and I think one that many
of us are not mad about, right, Like, I think
it's in a lot of ways and honor to take
care of like your elders, like the people in your
community that need you. But they're like to your point,
(37:04):
there has to be a balance, right, And it can't
always be the oldest daughter or the one who has
been most successful in school, right, Like, what does it
look like to shift? And I think the young people
are already shifting some of those conversations, right, So how
do we shift the expectations around that but still stay
kind of grounded in culture and you know, kind of
respectful of the ways that you know, our culture has
kind of raised us.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, I think that, Like that's a question that I'm
still asking myself. Right. What I've kind of noticed from
the women in my life who are at that stage
is that they respect the people that they're taken care of,
but they also establish those boundaries around asking for respect
(37:46):
at the same time. So it's not just that you know,
I have an unlimited amount of care to give you
and on the limited amount of time to give you.
But it's not you know, I'm going to do my
very best to take care of you. But in order
for me to take care of you, I've also got
to take care of myself, right, And this is actually
speaking to the larger conversation around care and how I
(38:06):
like to say that we're kind of at a breaking
point where we have the baby boomer generation that's about
to enter sort of this sixty five plus, and there's
a lot of them worldwide, right, and we cannot expect
unpaid caregivers to uphold taking care of this massive group,
(38:28):
And so we have to ensure that these individuals feel
like they're being taken care of. And so, like, very
structurally speaking, like pay caregivers, right, people should be getting
paid to take care of people in their house. If
we're paying nurses at hospitals and paying home care nurses,
we can pay folks who are taking care of their
family members as well. But I think to your point
about conversations, it's really about you know, do you respect
(38:52):
me as a human being? Do you respect me as
a human being that's taking care of you. Are you
respecting me as a human being who also is deserving
of care? My care my look different from your care.
But in order for me to really show up for you,
I've also got to make sure that you know there
are things that are showing up for me as well,
and that sometimes might look like me, but I could
also look like other parts of my life, communities, et cetera,
(39:12):
that are pouring into me. And so having that open
and honest conversation it's hard, right. I mean, I'm from Ghana,
and so like taking care of your elders, like you said,
is part of the culture. I would say, you know,
this is true across the entire black diaspora, and I
think that a lot of times too, even then, Black
women are still being burdened with really unfair care expectations,
(39:34):
and I think we just have to be really intentional,
that you know, intentional about like taking care of ourselves
and being honest with people about how we plan to
do that so that they're not sort of surprised when
we start implementing those things into our life.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
More from our conversation after the break. So one of
the things I love most about your book is that
I think it is a very powerful example of like
sharing people's stories. Right, How do you think we can
(40:10):
get better at having more open and honest conversations about
things like financial stress, economic stress, burnout, depression in the
black women community.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Ooh. First of all, I really appreciate you affirming me
throughout the entire interview and saying that you really love
the book. I really appreciate that. Thank you. It was
a labor of love, and I'm so grateful for the
team that helped bring this together. It's a really great
question about these topics are quite taboo, if we're being honest, right,
people don't talk about the costs that women deal with
(40:42):
day to day cause it's kind of assumed that we
just kind of take it on the chin. And I
think that a book like this is a conversation starter
and so very practically, I think you should get with
your girlfriends and read this book and have an honest
conversation about how these different areas of your life, whether
they apply or not, really sort of shape these conversations
(41:06):
around stressors that you face either economically, emotionally, or even socially,
and how you plan to navigate it. I think what's
really great about a book like this is I'm not
really big on leaving folks with problems, you know. I
don't like to create messages and then just leave them
to be cleaned up by somebody else. And so at
the end of every single chapter, we're talking about ways
(41:28):
to sort of mitigate these costs, to eliminate these costs,
to reduce these costs, because I don't think these costs
need to exist. I've told folks over the last few
days that the individual costs that women deal with, especially
Black women deal with, today, will become societal costs for
everyone else tomorrow. You do not want these costs to
(41:49):
go unaddressed. And I think as Black women, having a
conversation about what these costs mean for us individually is
one way we can start mitigating the societal cost that
are to come. Even if everybody else wants to be
unprepared for what's coming, will be prepared right. We'll have
the tools and the communities fortified and ready to go
(42:11):
so that when these things become societal costs. Hopefully they
don't become, but if let's say they do, we know
how to deal with them, and perhaps even though as
an example, how to show other folks how to deal
with them too, and to overall reduce the costs that
folks are facing in society. I think also being transparent
about what you're going through is really important. Right, we're
(42:32):
on a podcast about therapy therapy for Black girls, and
for me, what I've learned in therapy with my wonderful
black women therapists is that being honest about where you're
at is actually really really important to healing in general,
but also to just like living a life that's fuller
(42:52):
and more fulfilling. What's been really good in my life
is that people have been honest with me about, you know,
where they're at financially, what they're going through economically, socially, psychologically,
et cetera. And that's helped me be just a better friend.
I'll say this I haven't said on any podcasts yet,
but writing this book made me a better human being.
(43:17):
And what I mean by that is, especially after writing
the motherhood chapter and the caregiving chapter, the chapter about
the balancing act and mothering. I had to talk to
my sister, I had to talk to my mom, I
had to talk to women in my life about what
they were going through. And in a lot of these conversations,
(43:38):
those women revealed things that I didn't previously know right
by asking them about you know, can you reflect on
this time of your life, can you reflect on how
you navigated it? Talking about motherhood completely changed how I
saw my sister's current journey as a mom. I remember
once talking to her and being like, why about you
just hiring nanny? As she was like she looked at
(44:02):
me like I was crazy. She was like, huh, And
I said, you know, I don't understand, you know, what
the big deal is until I wrote the chapter and
I said, oh my god, why doesn't anybody talk about
how much a nanny cause, right? Or how much a
babysitter costs? And even you know, talking to my mom
about her experiences in the workplace, I didn't know that
(44:22):
she had faced discrimination right. What I study in my
dissertation right now is, in short, how to make it
really hard for your boss to be racist but for
the sake of this current timeline talent acquisition and development
right and ultimately, learning those stories help me better understand
their experiences and to see their humanity in a much
(44:43):
fuller way. And so I think that having these conversations
will help you become a better friend, a better sister,
a better mother, a better auntie, a better grandmother, a
better niece, a better daughter, just a better woman to
your fellow woman, and hopefully men listen to this podcast too.
You'll be able to better understand the women and girls
in your life so that you can show up for
(45:04):
them in a meaningful way, but also understand how the
decisions that they're making affect your life as well.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
So Anna, I don't often get to talk to black
women economists, so I feel like I have to take
this opportunity to chat with you. There are so many
conversations online about like, oh, this thing happened, that's a
recession indicator. What are people talking about and are there
any actual recession indicators that you can point to where
that you want to make sure we put on the
map during this conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, I guess it's a great question. If I'm talking
to other economists, what they'll say, well, it's a mixed bag,
but what many of them will say is the economy
on paper mean like, if we're looking at the numbers,
things are fine for right now. But there's something called
a vibe session. This has been coined by Kyla Scanalon,
(45:55):
and it's this idea that yes, the numbers are reflecting
a strong economy, but people are feeling economically pressured and
I would say that if we're going off of what
black economists have long said is a recession indicator, what's
happening with black and brown communities economically oftentimes is that's
(46:17):
so raven. You know, we're looking to the future, what's
about to happen, right, And so I'm looking at black
women leaving the labor force in droves, And I don't know,
folks know what the labor force means. The labor force
means that you're unemployed or you're looking for work. So
you really want a robust labor force because that means
that you know there's job opportunities in the job market.
(46:39):
If people stop looking for work and you know they're
also unemployed, that means that people don't even think that
they don't even think that the job market has a chance, right, Like,
they're not even looking for jobs to begin with. And
that's not good. And we kind of saw this reflected
in the most recent jobs report that resulted in the
(47:00):
firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which by the way,
releases these job numbers every month. They're firing, where we
saw a decline in the number of jobs added that month.
I believe it was like seventy three thousand jobs were added.
Usually the break even point is like closer to eighty
six thousand. That's like lower than it's been in the past.
(47:21):
But the break even point is a suggestion that you know,
anything above that that or above means that we got
a strong economy. We're good to go, as you Let's
just do math. Which number is bigger, right, seventy three
or eighty six. And that's why that man was a
little upset, right, because it's like, wait a minute, this
is indicating that the economy is not strong, et cetera,
(47:44):
et cetera. And so I would say that if you've
been paying attention to black women back in March, you
could have anticipated what the July jobs report was gonna say. Now,
there's still economists out there saying like there's nothing to
worry about. Unemployment is still low. But once again, I
think that even if you have a low unemployment rate,
(48:04):
a decline in labor force participation, which is what we
were talking about before with black women leaving the labor force,
is not good. And so I would say that a
recession indicator to pay attention to is what's happening with
black women in the job market. Are the black women
in your community being fired from their job? Are they
being laid off? Are they looking for jobs still? Because
(48:27):
if they're not, that means that even the recovery from
like losing your job is taking some time. If it's
taking time for black women, you better believe that that
is coming down the line for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Thank you. I appreciate this, no problem. So where can
we stay connected with you, Ana? Where can we find
the copy of the book or stay connected to you
on your website or on social media?
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Well, hopefully you'll tune into this podcast. Therapy for Black
Girls is a wonderful, wonderful platform, and I really encourage
that everybody continues to stay subscribed and tuned in to
this podcast and what the platform offers. So thanks again,
doctor Joy for having me on. I would say, I
am on the interwebs, so I'm in Blue Sky, which
is kind of like the tamer version of Twitter these days.
(49:14):
At its afronomics. But I'm also on Instagram as well,
at its afronomics. Its afronomics. But folks who want to
check out the book, just visit annagifty dot com or
go to your local bookseller. One thing I've been telling
folks to do is make sure you request this book
at your local library. Make sure you support a black
owned bookstore or one own bookstore. These are the ways
(49:34):
to ensure that the book reaches folks who might not
get exposure through other means. And so just ensuring that
the book is freely available and available at your local
bookstore will make sure that as many people get their
hands on it.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Perfect. And I heard you mentioned dissertation, So it sounds
like that's the stage of you of grad school you're in.
Is there anything else you want to let us know
about anything happening next for you that you'd like us
to support.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Oh, I really appreciate that. Yeah. So, as I mentioned before,
I'm a PhD student. I'm dissertating right now. For those
who don't know, a PhD is like a terminal degree,
and so the point of the degree is to essentially
do your own research and then maybe become an academic
or something else. So I actually am interested in becoming
an academic. I think that, you know, the next generation
(50:21):
needs some good educators, and I feel very called to
that work. So I think that might be what's next
for me. But also I feel like public scholarship in
general is really the ethos of my calling. It's like
what I believe I've been called to do, and what
that means is, I'm really really interested in democratizing knowledge.
I just want as many people to know as much
(50:42):
information that is accurate and reliable as possible so that
you can make informed decisions about your life and hopefully
improve your life along their way. So I feel like
that's kind of what's next for me, making sure this
book hopefully becomes a success. I know that black women
always show up for black women, so I'm really looking
forward to seeing a lot of you share that you've
(51:03):
ordered the book and that this book has touched your
life and also touched the lives of folks in your community.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Thank you, Anna, and thank you for spending some time
with us today. We'll make sure to include all of
your information in the show notes so that people can
grab their copies and stay connected.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Thanks so much, Doctor Joy. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I'm so glad Anna was able to join me for
today's conversation. To learn more about her or to grab
a copy of her new book, The Double Text, be
sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com slash Session four twenty nine, and don't forget
to text this episodes to two of your girls right
now and tell them to check it out. Did you
know you could leave us a voicemail with your questions
(51:43):
or suggestions for the podcast. If you have books or
movies you'd like us to review, our thoughts about topics
you'd like to hear discussed. Drop us a message at
Memo dot fm slash Therapy for Black Girls and let
us know what's on your mind. We just might feature
it on the podcast. Looking for a therapist in your area,
visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com
(52:05):
slash directory. Don't forget to follow us over on Instagram
at Therapy for Black Girls and come on over and
join us in our Patreon community at community dot Therapy
for Blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Elisa Ellis,
Indechubu and Tyree Rush. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford.
Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week.
(52:27):
I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all
real soon. Take good care,
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four twenty nine of the
Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our
conversation after a word from our sponsors. When it comes
to marginalized intersectional identities, black women and women of color
(01:18):
are no stranger, But if we zoom out, what does
that experience look like across systems, access, and paychecks? Today
I'm pleased to be joined by economists, advocate and author
and a gifty. She's here to talk about her new book,
The Double Tax, How Women of Color are overcharged and underpaid,
A powerful data driven exploration of the hidden costs of
(01:40):
being both a woman and a racial minority in today's economy.
During our conversation, we dive into the concept of the
double tax, the systemic forces that undervalue women of color,
and what it means to work towards an economy that
truly works for everyone. If something resonates with you while
enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media
(02:01):
using the hashtag TVG in session or I joined us
over in our Patreon channel to talk more about the episode.
You can join us at community do Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for
joining us today, Anna, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So much for having me. I'm extremely honored this platform
has connected with me with my therapist, and so I'm
just so grateful for y'all existing and just being here
for black women.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Oh, thank you so much. I always enjoy hearing that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Yeah, so, I.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Really want to dive into your work, Anna, because you
have coined the term double text, which refers to the
compounded cost of being both a woman and a racialized minority.
Can you tell me how you coin that term and
then how your research really shaped the way the book
turned out.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, as you just noted, Yes, the double tax is
the compounded cost of racism and sexism, and I think
that black women have sort of been ahead of the
game on this front for decades. So I like to
say that the double Tax is sort of the quantification
of massage renoir fully realized. And so for me, I
(03:15):
think that this book and the research that came about
to inform this book was really a product of sort
of my own training in my PhD program. So I
study policy and economics. I'm a PhD student at Harvard,
and a lot of the questions I asked around race, gender,
and the economy. But a lot of times when you're
(03:37):
digging into the research, digging into the literature, they almost
always focus on either race or gender. So there's a
lot of really great work on gender, gender equality, how
do we make things more equal? But then those studies
that are about women don't actually cut across race, and
so you're not sure which women are actually benefiting from
the things that folks are trying to intervene on, or
even what types of inequities that they're trying to under earth.
(04:00):
And so this book really was inspired by the lack
of you know, language around this and the literature, but
also the even like just bringing the literature that we
know that's already touching on this to the forefront since
it tends to not get a lot of attention because
the folks who are doing that tend to look like
you and me.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Hmm, okay, So I'm honestly surprised Anna that, like, right
now we are still having a lack of focus on
what it means to be a minority and be a
woman right like. It feels like, Okay, surely there are
enough people who are doing this work where we're getting
much more research there, but you're saying even still, there
(04:38):
is still a lack of research and a lack of
people kind of doing this work.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Absolutely, So, I think that qualitative researchers, folks who interview
people have done such an exceptional work, such exceptional job,
excuse me, of documenting people's experiences, in people's stories, and
how those stories sort of inform, you know, how we
think about inequality both through race and and sometimes even
through class. But I would argue that the quantitative side
(05:04):
of things is still quite lacking. There's a lot of
black imn economists who have done a great job of
sort of digging into the numbers when it comes to intersectionality.
But it's actually not something that you see widespread, namely
because of who's doing the work. Right, So economics is
notoriously white, notoriously male, and it's almost always, you know,
(05:24):
it leans towards like higher socioeconomic status. And so the
folks who are asking these types of questions that would
inform the discourse, would inform the policies, just don't look
like the people who this particular thing called the double
tax even applies to. And so again, this is sort
of an attempt to bring together what we already know
and to hopefully inspire other folks to ask questions too.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Mm hmmm. So you interviewed over one hundred women for
your book. What were some of the maybe most surprising
or maybe even heartbreaking stories that you found as a
part of your research.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, And so one, I got to give credit to
the folks who helped out with this because I'm a
quantitative scholar, leaned on my qualitative scholar colleagues, and so
shout out to Kaylee, shout out to Alexa who really
kind of took the reins and making sure that we
had cultural competency when we were talking to these women
so they could speak freely. And I would say, like
some of the insights that really shocked me up, Maybe
(06:18):
I'll start with the first one, what inspired the book?
So I remember, when you know, we were getting ready
to sort of pitch this book to publishers, and when
you're doing that for folks who don't know, you have
to write your first chapter. And so I decided to
talk to a group of black high school girls about
what costs they're facing right now as they're navigating adolescents.
(06:39):
And I thought that the costs that they would bring
up were costs that I kind of dealt with when
I was growing up, which was, maybe you're spending a
lot of money on makeup but you can't find the
right shade, or just thinking about other things related to that.
But funnily enough, the cost that I've dealt with, the
ones that you've dealt with, doctor Joy, and even the
costs that like my mother have dealt with, they were
(07:00):
reflected in the answers that these young girls were saying.
I said, so, what is most costly for y'all? And
they said, hair and the fact that hair is still
a cost that young black girls in twenty twenty five
have to think about, despite all the work that's been
done to really destigmatize black hair, to normalize natural hair,
(07:22):
to celebrate our curls and our coils. That made me like, okay, so, like,
I don't want my nieces who are now, you know,
three and four to have to deal with this in
ten years, right. So I think for me that gave
a new sense of purpose for why a book like
this needs to exist, because I think part of it
too is that these costs that you know were being
(07:44):
illuminated by the women that we were speaking to are
costs that are being illuminated by women who are often
forgotten in conversations about women. So this is something I
talked about recently online, where you know, I think people
in power think about womanhood very narrowly, and we are
seeing that in a lot of different ways, right the
dimensions of identity that they're focused on, or maybe like
(08:05):
one or two dimensions of identity, And I think that
that then means that the women who most of the
world is made up of in terms of women in general,
are forgotten. Their stories are not actually illuminated. And I
would say another thing that kind of shocked me, at
least with the hair chapter, is that we actually had
an opportunity to talk to Asian American women, and I
was really surprised to find out that they also go
(08:27):
through the same trial and error process that we do
through products. So products that are advertised for white women
don't actually work for their hair either, and so they
have to kind of go through similar processes of just
trying to figure out what works well. And then I
think the other story that really comes to mind here
that really shocked me was the story about home ownership.
(08:49):
So one of the first questions that we asked the
two groups of women we interviewed black women and we
interviewed white women. We asked them, you know, what percentage
of people you know owned homes? And so I think
for black women it was somewhere between ten percent to
about maybe eighty or ninety percent. For white women, it
(09:10):
was somewhere between like I want to say forty percent
of my beginning that wrong, but up to about one
hundred percent, right, So everybody they know owns a home,
and I think that's the disparity. There was quite striking
this idea that like where even wealth begins is fundamentally
shaped by our networks are upbringing, and these are things
(09:31):
that are not talked about out in the open, especially
as it relates to women's lives. And so I think
that this book, what I love about it is it
doesn't just talk about the numbers, which I think a
lot of folks get maybe exposure to through studies and
even sometimes news articles, but it really brings those numbers
and marries them with the stories to say that these
are not just like coincidences, these are patterns.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I appreciate the story around the cost of hair and
when you Firth mentioned and I was like, oh, are
they spending a lot of money because they want to
like change it up a lot, and like, oh, I
want to answer fun new colors or now I want braids.
But it sounds like the cost is really around like
trying products and thinking that a certain product will work
for your hair and then it doesn't. So it's really
still a lack of products for our hair.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You know. One study finds that there's a difference in
how leading brands sell hair for straight hair and hair
for coily hair by the ounce, So it's like a
twenty cent difference. That twenty cent difference can become a
matter of dollars when it comes down to it, right,
because those ounce busiesf you moultify them by seventeen ounces, Right,
(10:38):
it becomes a certain amount of money that we're spending
on shampoo and conditioner. We're just talking about shampoo and conditioner,
not to mention that we know that there's work that
shows that folks who are of African descent we go
through differences in how our hair sort of sheds or
is damaged easily by the environments that we're in. And
so we're also having to just get more products just
(11:00):
to ensure that our hair remains healthy. And I think
what people don't know, right, this is something that I
dealt with when I was growing up, and I imagine
that you dealt with too, is like just how much
we spend on our hair just to kind of conform
to the beauty standard, right, or to ensure that we
are not penalized for looking unprofessional. I don't think people
(11:21):
really know how much black women are spending on their hair.
For example, these braids that I have in right now gorgeous. However,
the way it turned in my pocket book, Right, Like,
I'm spending three point fifty to four hundred dollars and
that's on the lower end. Folks I know can spend
(11:42):
upwards of seven hundred dollars on their hair. If you're
buying wigs, you're spending a good chunk of change just
to look good. Right. And the gag of the matter
is like, if you decide I'm going to rock my
natural curls, if you decide I'm going to rock my
natural hair, depending on the texture of your natural hair, right,
you might get penalized within the workplace or within the
(12:02):
school yard about that. And this idea that this constant
policing over black women and black girl's looks, and that
actually does come at a cost, not just for you know,
maybe the parent or the guardian that's watching the black girl,
but also for the black girl herself. I think one
thing that was extremely heartbreaking to hear and was also
(12:24):
backup by data that we saw from the UK, from
the US, is that black girls are still being critiqued
for their hair texture. And what I say in the
book is that you know, if we decide to dye
our hair purple, and a white girl decides to die
her hair purple, the white girls called quirky. But our
economic status is now called into question. Oh maybe that
(12:44):
maybe she's coming from an unkempt home. Maybe people don't
think that she was raised right, even though we're still
trying to express ourselves. And so for me, this is
where the double tax shows up at least the cost
of presentability and beauty in general.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, and you know the cost and terms of like
the money, but also the cost in terms of time,
Like I would imagine the braids that you have that
looks like a six to eight hour at least.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
How did you know, job? That's exactly right, bro. I
was sitting there and I said, are we done? And
they were like, you asked for small parts, and I said,
I got you, but like I have somewhere to be.
But that's the point, right, And I think now and
(13:28):
days we're seeing people, you know, when they're in the
brading chair, they'll be on their laptops. But I remember
back in the day, like you weren't really expected to
do that. So it's not just that you're losing eight
hours in the day, you're losing eight hours of wages.
Potentially you got to take the day off and They're
not going to give you a paid day off to
get your hair.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Done, right.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So something else you mentioned, Anna, and this is maybe
related to your work, but maybe not. You talked about
like the questions around like home ownership, and for so long,
homeownership has kind of been the goal standard in terms
of what it looks like to build wealth. Is that
still the case, Like, are we still seeing like home
ownership is like one true way to wealth.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Kind of in our communities. That's such a great question.
I think there's a couple answers to that. So there's
two black economists called Derreck Hamilton and Sandy Daerty, and
they said something along the lines of a lot of
people say that home ownership is the way to build wealth,
but what the actual reality is is that home ownership
is actually the signal that you can build wealth essentially, right.
(14:29):
And I think this is actually a very good point
because if you look at the difference in the wealth
portfolios between black families and white families, white families have
a much more diversified portfolio. They have stocks, they have investments,
they have homes that they own, they also have other
properties that they own as well, whereas with black folks,
(14:51):
almost all of our wealth is tied up in our homes.
One of the most shocking statistics that I came across
us in the research was from the National Realtors Association.
So what they do is they do like a snapshot
report of who's a homeowner in a given year. So
we're talking about twenty twenty four. If you think about
(15:15):
the number like or the share of new homeowners that
were black, right, amongst all black homeowners in twenty twenty four,
forty nine percent of Black homeowners were new or home buyers,
rather new new home buyers, first time home buyers, right,
(15:35):
forty nine percent. That means that out of all the
Black people who bought homes in twenty twenty four, half
of them were buying homes for the first time. Okay,
now look at white folks. This is the number that
kind of radicalized me a little bit. You look at
white folks in twenty twenty four, out of all the
white folks that bought homes, only twenty percent of them
(16:00):
we're first time homemyers. That means eighty percent we're buying
their second, third, fourth, or fifth home. I think when
we talk about home ownership and whether or not it
is the right way to build wealth. I'm not saying
it's the wrong way, because I don't think that's what
the evidence adjusts entirely. But I think what we do
(16:22):
know is that having other streams of wealth, or having
other wells like to draw from, makes a difference. And again,
just to kind of bring in the numbers, the Federal
Reserve Bank of Saint Louis finds that, you know, for
every dollar of wealth a white guy has, white women
(16:42):
have seventy eight cents. Black women. Take a guess how
out of the sense how many how many do you
think we have?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Forty five?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
You said forty five?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Mm hm, go down, Oh wow, thirty four.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Eight cents?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
This is why I think this book is really important
because I think a lot of times when people talk about, oh,
gender inequality or gender equality, they're not including stories about
black women, They're not including stories about poor women, et cetera,
et cetera. And I think that you cannot have a
full holistic conversation about how we achieve gender equality without
(17:36):
talking about racial inequality, without talking about class inequality. And
so to your question about whether or not home ownership
is still the best way to build wealth for black folks.
It's a pathway to build wealth. But you also have
to recognize too that there are other pathways that other
groups are building wealth through, and if you can gain
access to those pathways, great, But the reality of the
(17:56):
matter is, what we know from the data is that
even if black folks saved as much as white folks,
you know, was able to make as much as white folks,
Even if the education distribution was aligned in such a
way that we were being educated at the same level
of white folks, there's only one policy that actually closes
(18:17):
this racial wealth gap that we've been talking about for
so many decades and so many centuries, and that is reparations.
Anybody who's having a conversation about anything else outside of
that is not having a serious conversation. So I can
tell you to go buy a home, and sure, that's
one way that black folks are building wealth in this country.
(18:38):
I will say though, that because you're at the mercy
of the housing market, if your wealth only lies within
your house, what happens with the housing market will affect
your wealth, and so you might want to diversify. But
I also say that the reality is that there are
historic wrongs that absolutely need to be righted, and that
is something that you should be pushing for and the
kinds of people you elect, the kind of policies that
(18:58):
you support.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Except so, these numbers have never been great, but I'm
sure you've been paying attention to and the three hundred
thousand reported Black women who have been impacted by layoffs.
Now this was not, of course the stat when your
book was out. But how are you making sense of
this in the you know, the larger landscape of like
the things that you write about in the kind of
work that you do.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Listen, this is the double tax. So the double tacks says,
you know, we have a compounded cost of racism and saxism.
And what this means is in the book, there are
two chapters that I really want folks to focus on
when they're thinking about what's happening right now. With three
hundred thousand in counting, by the way, because I was
(19:39):
a number I believe back in June or May. Right
in counting, there's a double tax in career choice, and
there's a double tax in career path. Let me break
it down. The double tax in career choice means that
black women minority women, women in general are barred from
certain career paths, right, and so we see this in
(20:01):
the data Among the top ten highest paid career paths
as a twenty nineteen you know, white women have proportional representation,
mean that their representation is equal to the nationwide share
in about three of those careers. Black women, Latino women,
Native women zero, right, top highest paying as for white
(20:22):
men all ten. It's actually they're over represented in all
of those types of career paths. We're talking about physicians,
we're talking about engineers, folks in tech, etc. Among the
lowest paid career paths, Black women have proportional representation or
nationwide share in eight out of the ten. What does
(20:46):
this mean? That means that the types of careers that
black women tend to fall into not by choice. If
I'm being quite honest, right, this is occupational segregation. You're
funneled into certain career paths because other career paths are
barred from you for racist and sexist reasons. That means
that when the economy goes through a crisis, the jobs
(21:06):
at organizations, companies, and different types of entities see as
expendable oftentimes are these low paying jobs these jobs that
lack benefits, these jobs that lack protections, these jobs that
don't have unions behind them. And so that means that
when they need to offload people from their payroll, they're
going to the folks that they are addressing first, the
(21:29):
folks who are low paid, the folks who are low wage, right,
the folks who lack benefits, and a lot of times
those individuals are Black women disproportionately. So if we're even
thinking about the types of sectors that tend to have
those types of protections around them, you know, public sector
definitely has great health insurance, you know that sort of thing.
(21:51):
But what I want to know here is that what's
happening is a targeted effort at laying off the federal workforce.
And black women again are overrepresented amongst federal jobs right,
as well as local and state jobs within the government.
And so once again, if we're thinking about who's seen
as expendable in the workplace, black women oftentimes are falling
(22:15):
to jobs that people are seen as expendable, and so
we're the first to be pushed out. The second aspect
of this is the double tax in career path. So
there's data that shows that Black women are the least
likely to be promoted and the most likely to experience
turnover within the private sector. We don't have a lot
of data on the public sector just yet, but let's
(22:37):
just use the private sector as an example. What does
this mean. This means that if we're already facing barriers
during the good times, what happens during the bad times?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
These things just become worse for us. And so what
I often tell people is that black women are a
very important economic indicator that for some reason and people
keep ignoring, right, Like, what happens to us first is
coming to everyone next. Another way to put this is
(23:11):
that we are the shock absorbers of a future economic
crisis for everybody else. And so if something is hitting us,
you shouldn't turn away and be like, Ah, that's just
affecting those minority women over there. You should be paying
attention and figuring out, wait, why is that thing coming
in that direction? Why are they experiencing that? And the
(23:32):
reason I say that is because black economists back in
two thousand and eight said the same thing. They said,
if folks were paying attention to black and brown folks,
they would have seen the two thousand and eight financial
crisis coming from a mile away. We saw this with
COVID as well. At the very beginning of COVID, black
one's unemployment shot up to seventeen percent, right before everybody
else started losing their jobs. Why are we waiting right
(23:54):
for a nationwide crisis when there's a crisis happening to
a part of our nation. And that's how I think
folks can use the double tax to better understand why
three hundred thousand Black women are suddenly leaving the labor force.
And they're not leaving the labor force, they're being pushed out.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
More from our conversation after the break, it feels like
that's related to the stats around black women's entrepreneurship. Right,
Like a lot of times black women become entrepreneurs because
of like force, right, Like you need to support yourself
(24:34):
and your family and so, But then we know entrepreneurship
is also.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Not an easy path.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So how does the double tax show up in entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
So the double tax shows up an entrepreneurship even in
the way that funding is allocated. So I don't know
if folks know this, but like venture capital is one
of the most lea like it's the least diverse or
among the least diverse like fields. Actually, in finance, right,
folks can get money just because they are attractive white men.
(25:06):
That's the study, by the way, right, Like, if you're
an attractive white guy, you're a lot more likely to
get funding from a VC. I think what we see
from the data, and I'm summarizing here is even amongst
the funding that's allocated for diverse founders, the majority of
that funding actually does not go towards women of color.
(25:28):
It goes to white women, right. And this is actually
a very important distinction because when folks start saying, well,
we don't like DEI, we don't like diversity. Oh you
thought you were targeting black women, you actually are not.
You're targeting white women most likely, right. So in entrepreneurship,
we definitely see that. And I would even say, like
we quoted a story from the New York Times of
(25:50):
a black woman who owns a hair salon. Right, A
lot of folks complain about the rising cost of getting
your hair done. But I think if we actually look
at the other side of that too, from an entrepreneurial perspective,
black women are already facing bearers as we just noted
in the kind of funny they get, the kind of
even just like getting a building to have your business in,
(26:11):
people don't trust that you can make the rent right
because they look at your skin color, they look at
your gender. They say, I don't think this person has
the financial means to do this. It affects lending, right,
it affects the kind of interest rate you might get.
We see this in home ownership, but I imagine that also
happens in property ownership as well. And so with that
in mind, she was mentioning that there's higher expectations that
(26:32):
black entrepreneurship, at least in hair care and other beauty areas,
have to deal with. And I would imagine that this
is also true just broadly speaking, where as a black
woman entrepreneur, you're having to work three times as hard
to get a crumb of return, right, a crumb of return,
And maybe you can ride the wave of people being
(26:54):
somewhat interested in black entrepreneurship or black women for a time,
but as we know, stuff like that can be fleeting, right.
I've mentioned recently that even folks interested in this book,
I've noticed that, you know, because this book is not
just exclusively about gender. People are throwing it into a category.
They're saying, oh, it's about race, and so we'll talk
about it during Black History Month. We'll talk about it
(27:15):
when we're talking about black folks, even though we're talking
about women still. So these sort of axes of oppression
that black women tend to lie in means that we're
also dealing with what those axes bring about when it
comes to barriers to entrepreneurship, owning a business, having a
successful business. And so I got to give a shout
out to Ashley Wisdom. That's my girl. She founded Health
(27:37):
in her hue. She's done a historic feet by you know,
raising one million plus for that organization. The fact that
that's even historic feet in twenty twenty five, that tells
you that we have a long ways to go and
how the double tax is showing up even today.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So something else that you write in your book that
I think is really important to talk about is pathological productivity.
So this idea that you have to kind of work
hard and like that is the way that we kind
of get a hit is by we're always the one
volunteering for things and like all of that. Can you
talk more about what this term means and how this
actually shows up for us in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, for sure, I think that. So I don't know
if folks know this, but like according to lean In
and the Women at Workplace Report, for embly one hundred
men that are promoted to managers, white women are promoted
like it's like eighty eighty two women, eighty two white
women are promoted, ninety nine Asian women are promoted, right,
(28:32):
and only fifty four Black women are promoted. How does
that tie into what doctor George is asked. If you've
work in the workplace as a black woman, especially the
corporate workplace, you know that you're probably being asked to
do twenty five million things that are not in your
job description, right, and so you're busting your butt to
(28:57):
satisfy whatever standard is being in implemented in your contexts.
But the reality is that might not actually be translating
into whether or not you're seen as a productive member
of the workplace. And a lot of times this is
reflected in your performance reviews. So you might get a
performance review, and this is something we saw with women
(29:17):
in general, that it's just not actionable. What they're saying
is more like personality description oh, that person was nice.
I think we have folks saying like, oh, they were
described as goofy in the workplace. I don't know what
goofy got to do with your productivity, Okay, but you
know this is the kind of stuff that people would
be receiving as women, and then black women receive the
(29:38):
same type of feedback, except with a negative twist. Oh
she was bossy, she was too assertive, she was negative
or whatever. And this is on top of you doing
unpaid labor. So not only is the labor that you're
doing to help the workplace not being rewarded, but then
(30:00):
when the performance reviews come, they start to reflect things
that aren't even actionable. You don't even know where to improve,
and you don't know how this is factoring into whether
or not you're being seen as a productive person within
the workplace, and if it's factoring into your promotion overall.
And so I would say that's kind of how that
pathological productivity shows up for black women in particular. We're
(30:21):
expected to do twice as much only to receive half
as much, and at the end of the day, we
don't even really get credit for the kind of work
that we're putting forth as reflected by our low promotion
rates and how we're characterized within the workplace.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Something we haven't talked about, but I think would be
important to talk about, is that we know that black
women are also often like caregivers in our families. Right,
so not only are we having to show up in
the workspace but also in our family lives.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It feels like it's more than a double tax there, right,
Like there's the double tax of being a woman and
leg but also now attacks of maybe taking care of parents,
taking care of kids. Can you talk about that and
the impact on our mental health?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Woh, hold on, sorry that deep side. Listen, listen, So
let me be very candid about something. I'm twenty nine
years old. You'll see in the book that, like the
first half, I'm talking a lot about my personal experiences
because I've lived through those things. But in the latter half,
(31:26):
I rely a lot more on the women I've encountered
and the women in my life. Writing the chapters about
motherhood and caregiving shifted my brain chemistry because I don't
think people understand how much we rely on our caregivers,
(31:49):
Folks who are raising kids, folks who are taking care
of disabled and six family members, folks who are taking
care of aging parents. I don't think people really understand
what people are sacrificing to take that role on. I'll
tell a really quick story. So the very beginning of
the caregiving chapter, which is titled the Balancing Act, appropriately
(32:12):
titled that, right, you're balancing a lot of things. It's
about my mom. My mom is a remarkable woman. And
you know, my family we immigrated from Ghana. I was
born in Ghana like for two seconds, and then they
popped on a plane and we ended up here, right.
But I remember back in the day, you know, I
would be sleeping, getting ready, you know, I gotta go
(32:34):
to school at like eight am. You know, folks had
alarm clocks. I had my mother out here talking to
folks very loudly on the phone six am, seven am,
telling people what to do. And I remember being like,
I don't understand why she's talking so loud for some
foremos right, But I also don't understand what she's talking about.
It wasn't until I got older that I learned she was.
(32:56):
She's taking care of so many people back at home,
so many people rely on her. And as my sister
has gotten older. I've also noticed the same with her
now she's a mother as well too. So when you
ask me a question about like how does this affect
your mental health, what the stories from the women that
we spoke to revealed is that it is a strain
(33:18):
to have people relying on you twenty four to seven.
And I think what people don't understand is that the
moment women enter any stage of caregiving, whether it's you
become a mom, you start taking care of a family member,
or you know someone who's sick or disabled, the expectation
(33:41):
to take care of everyone never stops. You never get
a break from it. And I think that that has
to change. Well, one like the caregiving responsibilities need to
be shifted to other groups within society. Right there needs
to be better care infrastructure so that people aren't feeling
(34:02):
the burden as individuals and as families, but more specifically
to your mental health. As we're talking about this on
the platform that is Therapy for Black Girls or Therapy
for Black Girls, right is I have noticed that like
feeling like the way of the world is on you,
(34:23):
it can be such an overwhelming thing. And so in
that chapter, and this is something that was at last minute.
I remind people to rest right. This is sort of
the rest is resistance movement, the NAP ministry movement. You
cannot pour from an empty cup. And one thing that
(34:44):
I learned from the conversations about caregiving from caregivers, from mothers,
from folks who are taking care of their aging parents
is that if you are not careful, the responsibilities of
caregiving compound. It's not that the first this month of
caregiving is the same as the second month. It's not
the second month's the first month plus whatever the second
(35:05):
month is bringing and so forth. And so you have
to take time for yourself. You have to establish boundaries.
You have to say, hey, I need my alone time.
No right, It's a complete sentence. And of course I'm
speaking from really a naive perspective. I don't know that
process yet. At some point I will be experiencing it.
(35:28):
But from the folks that we spoke to, from the
women that we heard from, that was how they kept
their sanity. And I think doing that in community is
the number one thing. Knowing that you can be transparent
about how those burdens are affecting your day to day,
how they're affecting the way that you perceive yourself. That
(35:49):
also can I think, help improve your mental health as
you are navigating that stage of your life, and for
a lot of people that stage of their life. One
of the last stories that we feature was a seventy
year old woman called Lena. She was taking care of
her parents up until their death, and then she recently
turned seventy, right, And so the fact that like, even
(36:09):
in your older age, you're still taking care of people,
you have to establish those boundaries. You have to make
sure that rest is a priority for you. And I
think for Black women this is really hard because it's
not just caregiving as an expectation within our families and
within our own communities, but it's like people expect this
to take care of the world, right, and so like
we have to be really really picky about where we're
(36:33):
expending our energy. And I think that that's a hard
thing to do because we're very generous and we're very giving,
but I also think that we need to be generous
and giving to ourselves as well.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I appreciate that, and I would love to hear your
thoughts on like what it looks like to have these conversations,
because I think for so many of us, Like, caretaking
is a cultural expectation and I think one that many
of us are not mad about, right, Like, I think
it's in a lot of ways and honor to take
care of like your elders, like the people in your
community that need you. But they're like to your point,
(37:04):
there has to be a balance, right, And it can't
always be the oldest daughter or the one who has
been most successful in school, right, Like, what does it
look like to shift? And I think the young people
are already shifting some of those conversations, right, So how
do we shift the expectations around that but still stay
kind of grounded in culture and you know, kind of
respectful of the ways that you know, our culture has
kind of raised us.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, I think that, Like that's a question that I'm
still asking myself. Right. What I've kind of noticed from
the women in my life who are at that stage
is that they respect the people that they're taken care of,
but they also establish those boundaries around asking for respect
(37:46):
at the same time. So it's not just that you know,
I have an unlimited amount of care to give you
and on the limited amount of time to give you.
But it's not you know, I'm going to do my
very best to take care of you. But in order
for me to take care of you, I've also got
to take care of myself, right, And this is actually
speaking to the larger conversation around care and how I
(38:06):
like to say that we're kind of at a breaking
point where we have the baby boomer generation that's about
to enter sort of this sixty five plus, and there's
a lot of them worldwide, right, and we cannot expect
unpaid caregivers to uphold taking care of this massive group,
(38:28):
And so we have to ensure that these individuals feel
like they're being taken care of. And so, like, very
structurally speaking, like pay caregivers, right, people should be getting
paid to take care of people in their house. If
we're paying nurses at hospitals and paying home care nurses,
we can pay folks who are taking care of their
family members as well. But I think to your point
about conversations, it's really about you know, do you respect
(38:52):
me as a human being? Do you respect me as
a human being that's taking care of you. Are you
respecting me as a human being who also is deserving
of care? My care my look different from your care.
But in order for me to really show up for you,
I've also got to make sure that you know there
are things that are showing up for me as well,
and that sometimes might look like me, but I could
also look like other parts of my life, communities, et cetera,
(39:12):
that are pouring into me. And so having that open
and honest conversation it's hard, right. I mean, I'm from Ghana,
and so like taking care of your elders, like you said,
is part of the culture. I would say, you know,
this is true across the entire black diaspora, and I
think that a lot of times too, even then, Black
women are still being burdened with really unfair care expectations,
(39:34):
and I think we just have to be really intentional,
that you know, intentional about like taking care of ourselves
and being honest with people about how we plan to
do that so that they're not sort of surprised when
we start implementing those things into our life.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
More from our conversation after the break. So one of
the things I love most about your book is that
I think it is a very powerful example of like
sharing people's stories. Right, How do you think we can
(40:10):
get better at having more open and honest conversations about
things like financial stress, economic stress, burnout, depression in the
black women community.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Ooh. First of all, I really appreciate you affirming me
throughout the entire interview and saying that you really love
the book. I really appreciate that. Thank you. It was
a labor of love, and I'm so grateful for the
team that helped bring this together. It's a really great
question about these topics are quite taboo, if we're being honest, right,
people don't talk about the costs that women deal with
(40:42):
day to day cause it's kind of assumed that we
just kind of take it on the chin. And I
think that a book like this is a conversation starter
and so very practically, I think you should get with
your girlfriends and read this book and have an honest
conversation about how these different areas of your life, whether
they apply or not, really sort of shape these conversations
(41:06):
around stressors that you face either economically, emotionally, or even socially,
and how you plan to navigate it. I think what's
really great about a book like this is I'm not
really big on leaving folks with problems, you know. I
don't like to create messages and then just leave them
to be cleaned up by somebody else. And so at
the end of every single chapter, we're talking about ways
(41:28):
to sort of mitigate these costs, to eliminate these costs,
to reduce these costs, because I don't think these costs
need to exist. I've told folks over the last few
days that the individual costs that women deal with, especially
Black women deal with, today, will become societal costs for
everyone else tomorrow. You do not want these costs to
(41:49):
go unaddressed. And I think as Black women, having a
conversation about what these costs mean for us individually is
one way we can start mitigating the societal cost that
are to come. Even if everybody else wants to be
unprepared for what's coming, will be prepared right. We'll have
the tools and the communities fortified and ready to go
(42:11):
so that when these things become societal costs. Hopefully they
don't become, but if let's say they do, we know
how to deal with them, and perhaps even though as
an example, how to show other folks how to deal
with them too, and to overall reduce the costs that
folks are facing in society. I think also being transparent
about what you're going through is really important. Right, we're
(42:32):
on a podcast about therapy therapy for Black girls, and
for me, what I've learned in therapy with my wonderful
black women therapists is that being honest about where you're
at is actually really really important to healing in general,
but also to just like living a life that's fuller
(42:52):
and more fulfilling. What's been really good in my life
is that people have been honest with me about, you know,
where they're at financially, what they're going through economically, socially, psychologically,
et cetera. And that's helped me be just a better friend.
I'll say this I haven't said on any podcasts yet,
but writing this book made me a better human being.
(43:17):
And what I mean by that is, especially after writing
the motherhood chapter and the caregiving chapter, the chapter about
the balancing act and mothering. I had to talk to
my sister, I had to talk to my mom, I
had to talk to women in my life about what
they were going through. And in a lot of these conversations,
(43:38):
those women revealed things that I didn't previously know right
by asking them about you know, can you reflect on
this time of your life, can you reflect on how
you navigated it? Talking about motherhood completely changed how I
saw my sister's current journey as a mom. I remember
once talking to her and being like, why about you
just hiring nanny? As she was like she looked at
(44:02):
me like I was crazy. She was like, huh, And
I said, you know, I don't understand, you know, what
the big deal is until I wrote the chapter and
I said, oh my god, why doesn't anybody talk about
how much a nanny cause, right? Or how much a
babysitter costs? And even you know, talking to my mom
about her experiences in the workplace, I didn't know that
(44:22):
she had faced discrimination right. What I study in my
dissertation right now is, in short, how to make it
really hard for your boss to be racist but for
the sake of this current timeline talent acquisition and development
right and ultimately, learning those stories help me better understand
their experiences and to see their humanity in a much
(44:43):
fuller way. And so I think that having these conversations
will help you become a better friend, a better sister,
a better mother, a better auntie, a better grandmother, a
better niece, a better daughter, just a better woman to
your fellow woman, and hopefully men listen to this podcast too.
You'll be able to better understand the women and girls
in your life so that you can show up for
(45:04):
them in a meaningful way, but also understand how the
decisions that they're making affect your life as well.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
So Anna, I don't often get to talk to black
women economists, so I feel like I have to take
this opportunity to chat with you. There are so many
conversations online about like, oh, this thing happened, that's a
recession indicator. What are people talking about and are there
any actual recession indicators that you can point to where
that you want to make sure we put on the
map during this conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, I guess it's a great question. If I'm talking
to other economists, what they'll say, well, it's a mixed bag,
but what many of them will say is the economy
on paper mean like, if we're looking at the numbers,
things are fine for right now. But there's something called
a vibe session. This has been coined by Kyla Scanalon,
(45:55):
and it's this idea that yes, the numbers are reflecting
a strong economy, but people are feeling economically pressured and
I would say that if we're going off of what
black economists have long said is a recession indicator, what's
happening with black and brown communities economically oftentimes is that's
(46:17):
so raven. You know, we're looking to the future, what's
about to happen, right, And so I'm looking at black
women leaving the labor force in droves, And I don't know,
folks know what the labor force means. The labor force
means that you're unemployed or you're looking for work. So
you really want a robust labor force because that means
that you know there's job opportunities in the job market.
(46:39):
If people stop looking for work and you know they're
also unemployed, that means that people don't even think that
they don't even think that the job market has a chance, right, Like,
they're not even looking for jobs to begin with. And
that's not good. And we kind of saw this reflected
in the most recent jobs report that resulted in the
(47:00):
firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which by the way,
releases these job numbers every month. They're firing, where we
saw a decline in the number of jobs added that month.
I believe it was like seventy three thousand jobs were added.
Usually the break even point is like closer to eighty
six thousand. That's like lower than it's been in the past.
(47:21):
But the break even point is a suggestion that you know,
anything above that that or above means that we got
a strong economy. We're good to go, as you Let's
just do math. Which number is bigger, right, seventy three
or eighty six. And that's why that man was a
little upset, right, because it's like, wait a minute, this
is indicating that the economy is not strong, et cetera,
(47:44):
et cetera. And so I would say that if you've
been paying attention to black women back in March, you
could have anticipated what the July jobs report was gonna say. Now,
there's still economists out there saying like there's nothing to
worry about. Unemployment is still low. But once again, I
think that even if you have a low unemployment rate,
(48:04):
a decline in labor force participation, which is what we
were talking about before with black women leaving the labor force,
is not good. And so I would say that a
recession indicator to pay attention to is what's happening with
black women in the job market. Are the black women
in your community being fired from their job? Are they
being laid off? Are they looking for jobs still? Because
(48:27):
if they're not, that means that even the recovery from
like losing your job is taking some time. If it's
taking time for black women, you better believe that that
is coming down the line for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Thank you. I appreciate this, no problem. So where can
we stay connected with you, Ana? Where can we find
the copy of the book or stay connected to you
on your website or on social media?
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Well, hopefully you'll tune into this podcast. Therapy for Black
Girls is a wonderful, wonderful platform, and I really encourage
that everybody continues to stay subscribed and tuned in to
this podcast and what the platform offers. So thanks again,
doctor Joy for having me on. I would say, I
am on the interwebs, so I'm in Blue Sky, which
is kind of like the tamer version of Twitter these days.
(49:14):
At its afronomics. But I'm also on Instagram as well,
at its afronomics. Its afronomics. But folks who want to
check out the book, just visit annagifty dot com or
go to your local bookseller. One thing I've been telling
folks to do is make sure you request this book
at your local library. Make sure you support a black
owned bookstore or one own bookstore. These are the ways
(49:34):
to ensure that the book reaches folks who might not
get exposure through other means. And so just ensuring that
the book is freely available and available at your local
bookstore will make sure that as many people get their
hands on it.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Perfect. And I heard you mentioned dissertation, So it sounds
like that's the stage of you of grad school you're in.
Is there anything else you want to let us know
about anything happening next for you that you'd like us
to support.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Oh, I really appreciate that. Yeah. So, as I mentioned before,
I'm a PhD student. I'm dissertating right now. For those
who don't know, a PhD is like a terminal degree,
and so the point of the degree is to essentially
do your own research and then maybe become an academic
or something else. So I actually am interested in becoming
an academic. I think that, you know, the next generation
(50:21):
needs some good educators, and I feel very called to
that work. So I think that might be what's next
for me. But also I feel like public scholarship in
general is really the ethos of my calling. It's like
what I believe I've been called to do, and what
that means is, I'm really really interested in democratizing knowledge.
I just want as many people to know as much
(50:42):
information that is accurate and reliable as possible so that
you can make informed decisions about your life and hopefully
improve your life along their way. So I feel like
that's kind of what's next for me, making sure this
book hopefully becomes a success. I know that black women
always show up for black women, so I'm really looking
forward to seeing a lot of you share that you've
(51:03):
ordered the book and that this book has touched your
life and also touched the lives of folks in your community.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Thank you, Anna, and thank you for spending some time
with us today. We'll make sure to include all of
your information in the show notes so that people can
grab their copies and stay connected.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Thanks so much, Doctor Joy. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
I'm so glad Anna was able to join me for
today's conversation. To learn more about her or to grab
a copy of her new book, The Double Text, be
sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com slash Session four twenty nine, and don't forget
to text this episodes to two of your girls right
now and tell them to check it out. Did you
know you could leave us a voicemail with your questions
(51:43):
or suggestions for the podcast. If you have books or
movies you'd like us to review, our thoughts about topics
you'd like to hear discussed. Drop us a message at
Memo dot fm slash Therapy for Black Girls and let
us know what's on your mind. We just might feature
it on the podcast. Looking for a therapist in your area,
visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com
(52:05):
slash directory. Don't forget to follow us over on Instagram
at Therapy for Black Girls and come on over and
join us in our Patreon community at community dot Therapy
for Blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Elisa Ellis,
Indechubu and Tyree Rush. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford.
Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week.
(52:27):
I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all
real soon. Take good care,
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