Justice Doesn’t Trickle Down: How Racialized and Gender Rules are Holding Women Back

Among all social groups in the United States, women of color experience some of the starkest disparities, inequities, and injustices across nearly every social and economic indicator. Compared with white women, women of color have higher levels of unemployment and poverty; they have significantly less wealth; they are more likely to be targeted by and come in contact with the criminal justice system; they are at a much higher risk, regardless of their income or education, of dying as a result of pregnancy and of losing their children in infancy; they are less likely to own a home and more likely to have high-risk mortgages when they do own a home; they are less likely to attend college and, when they do, tend to carry heavier student debt burdens.