Women of Color Now an Impoverished

Majority in New York City 

The Cost of Poverty

New York City spends about $64,000 a year to incarcerate a woman--it could pay full tuition for

four women to complete undergraduate degrees at the City University of New York.

The 2nd Annual Report on The Status of Women of Color in NYC

Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Asian and Native American women together constitute 64 percent of New York City's female population. Their social hardships are due to a lack of adequate policies and their lack of a fair share of budgetary resources

Poverty Stands as Major Barrier to Health

Women of color have the highest mortality rates of all women and those diseases are the primary cause of death. In 2000, black and Puerto Rican women accounted for an alarming 80 percent of HIV-related deaths in New York, climbing from 60 percent in 1990. Diabetes is also a major cause of death in these communities. In 2000, 65 percent of New York women who died from the disease were women of color.

Poverty, Unemployment, & Healthcare

Black women have the highest unemployment rate (9.5 percent), followed by Hispanic women (8.6 percent)--both well above white women's (5.3 percent) and the city average of 6.3 percent. For single mothers, those rates are even higher, reaching 10.9 percent for black women and 12 percent for Latinas.

Who Is Getting Paid?

When they do have jobs, women of color often remain confined in low-wage industries, while white women have moved up to higher-paying managerial and professional occupations. Those wide disparities are reflected in income. For instance, the 2000 median family income for white households in Manhattan was $119,000; it was $37,605 for Asian families, $27,939 for black families and $25,939 for Hispanic families living in that same borough. For single mothers, the situation is even worse. The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996--which limited welfare entitlements to five years over a lifetime--has left many of them stranded. These women live in terribly depressed conditions.

Women Living In Poverty

The report found that 34 percent of Hispanic women, 32 percent of Native American women, 27 percent of black women and 20 percent of Asian women live in poverty. As New York's poorest, they are more likely to receive a lower standard of care and be denied access to drugs that might prevent or treat diseases.

Violence Major Cause of Death

The report shows that women of color accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of all female homicide victims, with an especially high rate for black women, who made up almost 50 percent of the total, although they represented only one-quarter of the female population aged 10 years and older.

Prostitution Leading Cause of Arrest

Majority of women incarcerated are mothers who lived with and cared for their children before their imprisonment. Black and Hispanic women made up 85 percent of all women arrested in 2001. Although controlled substances, assault, and larceny remain the leading causes of arrest, prostitution has significantly increased. Between 1995 and 2001, the proportion of women aged 16 to 24 incarcerated for prostitution jumped from 25 to 42 percent.

Jailing of Women of Color

In 2001, the incarceration rate for black women (730.7 per every 100,000) was not only the highest for all women in the city, but even exceeded that of white men (488.3 per 100,000.) Those numbers were substantially lower for Latinas (341.8 per 100,000) and drastically different for white women (114.9 per 100,000.) Black men had an incarceration rate of 5,468.3 for the same year and Hispanic men had about half of that proportion (2551 per every 100,000.)

Low Levels of Educational Attainment

Young women of color are 76 percent of all women under age 15. In 2000, almost half of the female Hispanic population over 25 in New York City had not completed high school. Comparable high school graduation rates for black women are 29 percent and for Native Americans, 43 percent.

Even Asian women, represented well in higher education--35 percent of the group completed at least four years of college--had an equal proportion (35 percent) of high school dropouts in 2000.

Access to higher education is still mainly dominated by white women who make up 65 percent of all the women with professional or graduate degrees in the city, while they are only 36 percent the city's female population. Comparatively, only 17 percent of black women, 14 percent of Native American women and 8 percent of Hispanic women had completed four or more years of college.

Source: "Women of Color Now a Majority in New York City" By Marieme Daff - WEnews correspondent -- Marieme Daff is a free-lance writer based in New York.