Overview
In a groundbreaking 2021 report, The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation (GCF) partnered with the Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati to specifically understand the economic mobility of Black women in the region. The impetus for this project was a regional jobs outlook report finding that Black women faced the greatest barriers to economic opportunity. The findings were stark and daunting: nearly half of Black working women in the Cincinnati metro area make less than $15 per hour, compared to 27 percent of White women. Median earnings for Black women were approximately $24,100 or 36 percent lower than the median earnings for all workers.
For Meghan Cummings, the Vice President of Civic Advancement at GCF, these findings served as a call to action: “Everything we looked at from employment to income showed us that these disparities for Black women existed. How can we have a thriving community unless all parts are thriving? We did a lot of work understanding what that data told us and we were unapologetic about centering [Black women] in our grantmaking.” This included a $75,000 grant to the Women’s Business Center of the Economic and Community Development Institute, an Ohio-based microlender which primarily supports businesses owned by Black women. Through this grant, GCF supported over 600 businesses employing more than 1,600 people. GCF also funded the Corporation for Findlay Market, the nonprofit operator of a historic food market in Cincinnati, to support a residency program benefiting women, Black and Indigenous people, and immigrants interested in the food and restaurant business. In the policy arena, the GCF Women’s Fund worked to support the passage of the city’s salary history ban, a policy designed to help address race and gender-based pay disparities by prohibiting employers from inquiring about the salary history of an applicant. These are just some of the ways in which a focus on Black women has become a cornerstone of GCF’s work.
This story is emblematic of GCF’s broader equity journey: an honest and data-driven reckoning with inequities in the Cincinnati region, a bold and straightforward naming of the problem, and a swift and strategic response.