By S.E. Williams
The Voice
https://theievoice.com/
Overview: Black women in America face significant challenges due to political, social, and economic manipulations, with the most recent federal actions causing devastation in the community. A report from the U.S. Census Bureau found that only 27% of Black households were married-couple families, and unmarried families are economically disadvantaged compared to married couples. Black women have also been forced out of the labor force, with nearly 300,000 primarily forced out in 2025, and are significantly underrepresented in the tech sector, holding only about 2% of computing jobs compared to 27% held by women overall. The current administration is reinforcing structures that sustain racism and misogyny, and Black women want laws, social programs, education, employment, and economic opportunities to reflect the rights and needs of women and children in the nation.
S. E. Williams
As we transition from Black History Month to Women’s History Month, I see this as a perfect time to combine the two occasions and uplift up the current challenges facing Black women in America.
Last year’s political, social and economic manipulations ripped through America’s Black community like high velocity tornados have been known to tear through the South. Although the full impacts of last year’s federal actions are yet to be determined, the devastation is already visible in a community historically at risk.
In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report America’s Families and Living Arrangements that provided a demographic profile of households and living arrangements in the nation over the previous 50 years. The report found that only 27% of Black households were married-couple families compared to nearly 50% of white households. In addition, about 25 percent of all Black households were most likely headed by women without a spouse.
These findings were considered significant because the study also determined “unmarried families are significantly, economically disadvantaged compared to married couples.” This, of course, is a blinding flash of the obvious as married couples—typically white married couples—enjoy higher levels of household income, home ownership, and health insurance coverage.
And then, while members of the Black community were already threading water going into 2025, came the Trump initiated executive orders coupled with other aspects of Project 2025, many deliberately targeting Black and other at risk communities. These initiatives combined to produce the equivalent impact of a full blown category 5 hurricane for Black women.
“All too often, when we see injustices, both great and small, we think, That’s terrible, but we do nothing. We say nothing. We let other people fight their own battles. We remain silent because silence is easier… When we say nothing, when we do nothing, we are consenting to these trespasses against us.”
Maya Angelou
Reports indicate nearly 300,000 Black women were primarily forced out of the labor force in 2025. When we combine the impacts of federal jobs cuts with the destruction of DEIA programs and then layer on top issues like tariffs and inflation, the impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and underrepresentation in the tech sector–the numbers tell the story.
A report published by the EEOC last year showed “Black women are significantly underrepresented in the tech sector. They hold only about 2% of computing jobs compared to 27% held by women overall.” With all of this combined, it would be governmental malpractice not to assess and help mitigate the impacts to this community. But, in Trump’s America, malpractice appears to be the order of the day.
In addition, according to the report, although women make up nearly half of the total U.S. workforce, they were just “22.6% of the high-tech workforce in all industries, and only 4% of the high-tech workforce in the high-tech sector.”
As much as the Black community and its supporters have worked to dismantle the edifice of structural and institutional racism and women in general have fought for equity, the current administration is determined to reinforce the structures that have helped sustain racism and misogyny for nearly 250 years.
As we enter Women’s History Month 2026, there is a lot about the roles and freedom of all women in America that is worthy of examination from abortion rights to health care, from education to housing, and from full employment to the cost of childcare and beyond.
This year during Women’s History Month, Black women, all women, want more than lip service about our value and contributions. We want the nation’s laws, social programs, education, employment and economic opportunities to reflect the rights and needs of women and children in this nation.
As the EEOC report noted, “Sixty years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there is a high degree of underrepresentation and a disturbing lack of career advancement for female, Black, and Hispanic workers in the high tech workforce, despite the recent period of growth in high tech occupations.”
The report further stated that as America crafts the technologies of the future, it “should not have a workforce that looks like the past.” Just as America must not recreate its past, instead we must use contructive lessons from the past to build a better tomorrow. But not a tomorrow that is just for the benefit of white men; but instead, for women and children of all colors and for men of melanin as well as white men.
In the end, the EEOC raised serious questions that warrant serious consideration. Women’s History Month provides a good time not only to reflect on what is happening but to also stop the transgressions against Black women and children, against all women and children. I make this plea not only on behalf of women and children in America, but as this nation has just entered another unjust war, I must expand this plea to include grace for the lives of innocent children, women and men being slaughtered today across the world at the behest of Donald J. Trump and in the name of the United States of America.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.
Stephanie Williams is executive editor of the IE Voice and Black Voice News. A longtime champion for civil rights and social justice in all its forms, she is also an advocate for government transparency and committed to ferreting out and exposing government corruption. Over the years Stephanie has reported for other publications in the inland region and Los Angeles and received awards from the California News Publishers Association for her investigative reporting and Ethnic Media Services for her weekly column, Keeping it Real. She also served as a Health Journalism Fellow with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. Contact Stephanie with tips, comments. or concerns at myopinion@ievoice.com.
