Gender Gap in Education and Employment

I'm back posting on issues of gender and intimacy in all aspects of relationships between men and women. Romance is an important one and there are so many ways we can practice SUCCESS with the OPPOSITE SEX(TM) and GET RELATED not DATED(TM).

This post is about the gender gap relative to education and employment particularly among black men and women. I was wondering what to write about today. I've been on the rollercoaster relative to romantic relationships. Met a marvelous man who just disappeared after two remarkable dates without a word. Why we do this to one another is something I've been looking at since I did it with a little more finesse earlier this year to a wonderful brother. Gonna clean that up with him. I owe him a call. But it still seems this mission I have about bridging the gap between the sexes, races and generations still calls me into action no matter what.

So to the topic for the day: education and employment. Check out this 2 min video:



There is a gender disparity in economic achievement in all races but it is especially striking among black men and women, they say in the NBC report from 2007. Black women control 62% of 850 billion dollars in spending power in the Black community. Here are some other data about gender disparity around education and employment from a blog on race, gender and sociology <http://www.rachelstavern.com/?p=35>.









I wonder if the Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman that my colleague Professor Michelle Wallace wrote about back in 1979 is still plaguing the conversations between black men and women that live at the level of how this disparity shows up.

The disparity between black women and men (and thereby black children even the bi-racial or multi-racial ones) lives in the outcomes of our behaviors not so much in what we say to each other. But how our interactions show up in the world of comparisons. Who are black women being in the world and who are black men being in the world? We are definitely seeing that the separation is growing between us on so many levels.

INQUIRY: What do you all think that's about? I'd love to hear both men's and women's thoughts on the matter.

Reference:
Block quote above from: "Beyond Black Macho: An Interview with Michele Wallace" by Karen Boorstein

Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 163-167.