Black women: a panorama of exclusion

Black women have the worst social indexes in Brazil. At work, they receive the lowest salaries and have the highest rates of unemployment. At home, they are the ones that suffer the most from violence and the ones that have the largest responsibility in sustaining the family. In health care, they are the preferential victims of obstetric violence, from the neglect in the public health care system and criminalization of abortion.

Despite the advances, such as the rise in the amount of people in higher education, the inequalities persist and demand a keen awareness of the lived oppressions of black women. According to the research “Statistics of gender” from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the percentage of white women with a completed higher education is 2.3 times larger than black women, which is 10.4%.

The difficulty in access to education reflects itself in the work market. Left with positions of less prestige and compensation are black women. According to “Dossier Black Women: depiction of the conditions of life for black women in Brazil” from the Institute of Applied Economic Research, they are overrepresented in the area of domestic labor – accounting for 57.6% of the workers in this field – and have the lowest presence in positions with more social protection, such as those with a work permit4, and they suffer the most during economic crises.

Between 2014 and 2017, the rate of unemployment among black women went from 9.2% to 15.9%. Amongst white women, unemployment also rose, going from 4.6% to 8.5% but the levels are still very different. The data is from the economist and professor of Unicamp Marilane Teixeira, with the groundwork from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Black women represent 27% of the Brazilian population but in 2016 only 0.5% of the elected officials were black women. “The presence of black women in decision making positions in public and private organizations corresponds to 3% in the office of Minister of State (2016), 1% in the Parliament (Senate and House of Representatives) and 0.5% in executive positions of the 500 largest businesses in Brazil (2010). There is not any black woman presiding as Federal Supreme Court Minister of Brazil” affirms the dossier. “The situation of human rights for black women in Brazil: violences and violations”, produced by the Geledés Institute and by the NGO Criola. In the entire period of democracy, only five black women have been ministers.

Between 2012 and 2016 the number of Brazilian that self-identified as black rose by 14.9% in the country. According to the National Household Sample Survey, revealed at the end of last year by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the quantity of those that consider themselves mixed race rose, while the percentage of white people decreased in the population.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics estimates that this rise is due just as much to the rise in fertility amongst black people as well as the rise in the number of people that began to consider themselves black. This being one of the achievements of the years of fighting from the black movements. According to the survey, in 2012, white people were the majority (46.6%) in Brazil, mixed race people represented 45.3% of the total, and black people 7.4%. Whereas in 2016, mixed race people composed the largest group (46.7%) and black people are now 8.2% of the 205 million Brazilians.

However, this numeric majority runs the risk of remaining outside of the changes that happen in the economy and society. In a world that is becoming increasingly more digital, this absence can result in the rise of inequality. Black women need to be included in the technological transformation processes that happen in the global economy.

A study by Accenture Strategy estimates that the digital economy represented 22.5% of the global economy in 2015, which represents a total of $19,591 billion (USD). The prediction is that this percentage may rise to 25% by 2020, which means an economy of $ 24,615 billion (USD). It is urgent to work so that the technological applications that society consumes may be, increasingly, produced by diverse groups. In the United States only 2% of the workforce, in all of the science and engineering community, consists of black women. In Brazil, no such data exists. To change this scenario it is essential that we think about the democratization of the access to the production of technology.

Technology is not neutral

More and more present in our lives, technology has become natural in our everyday lives which gives the impression that it is neutral. “But technology is loaded with the political, economic and cultural views of those that create it – and this power today is centralized in the hands of men, white people, heterosexuals and the middle and upper class. This already maximizes a large inequality, in a world that is increasingly more digital”, explains Silvana Bahia, Project Director of Olabi and co-ordinator of PretaLab.

A study done in 2017 by the Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, at the center of privacy and technology from the school of Law at the University of Georgetown, estimates that information of  117 million citizens of the United States may already be in police data bases. “Facial recognition is going to affect African Americans disporportionately”, says the study.

Initiatives such as the Algorithmic Justice League seeks to denounce and to end implicit racism in artificial intelligence programs. Founder of the initiative, Joy Buolamwini perceived that artificial recognition programs are not always able to detect black faces, a problem caused by the lack of diversity in the teams that create these programs and of the images that the machines receive to learn how to “see” these faces. “The computer's vision uses artificial intelligence to perform facial recognition. You create a series of images with the examples of faces. However, if these series are not diverse enough any face that deviates from the “norm” will be difficult to recognize”, she said in a Ted Talk.‍

While the statistics, studies and public policies for black women ignore the importance of technology, black women are going to be at the margins of decisions that are increasingly more centralized in society. “If black women are not in this process, if there are no policies for them, we are going to totally lose our integration power in the world”, affirms Silvana.

Another factor relevant in the debate is the fact that technology also represents a important possibility of economic freedom. In the United States, data compiled by the economic research Glassdoor shows that the jobs in the area of technology, engineering and science were the most well paid in 2017. However, the unequal access to education, as well as stereotypes and prejudice, distance black women from the courses and jobs in these areas.

Inequality and barriers already emerge when gender data is observed in technology. A study that analyzed women's presence in science, technology and engineering in Brazil, China, the United States and India concluded that women abandon the technology industry because they are treated unjustly, receive lower salaries and less chances to be promoted than their male colleagues. In Brazil, 29% of the women interviewed feel stagnated at their job and 22% think that they can give up their careers next year.

Despite all of the barriers, studies show that women's work in this area can be just as well or better evaluated than that of their male colleagues. Researchers discovered that the users of the software repository GitHub approved the codes written by women at a larger rate than those written by men, but only when their gender was not identified.

Why so few?

A study conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that 62% of men and women in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics suffered discrimination because of their race or ethnicity in the work environment. Adding to this study is data from the Center of Innovation and Talent that points out that 77% of the black women in high-tech businesses say they need to prove their competency more than their peers. The result is clear; for black women, the barrieirs are double – both sexism and racism work against their insertion into sectors increasingly more strategic for society.

This pressure to perform above the average is counter-productive in work environments in which creativity is necessary, besides the fact that it generates anxiety and brings health complications.

According to the study “Why so few women? African American women in Science, Technology and Engineering” in 2010, 27,576 black women obtained diplomas in Engineering or Science, which represented 10.7% of the diplomas given in the United States. But they represented less than 1% of the total amount of women employed in this industry, with 75 thousand engineers and scientists working in some level or position in their areas.

Even in countries in which black women's access to higher education is significantly better than in Brazil, racism and sexism impede their access to the work market.

“To democratize the access to technology is not about increasing consumption, but about the possibility of creating applications. And this discussion needs to have not only a gender analysis but also a racial one”, explains Silvana. According to the survey from the Group of Gender at the Polytechnical School at USP (Poligen), in 120 years the University of São Paulo graduated only ten black women. Until now, on the list of the pioneers of science in Brazil, created by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research, none of the cited women are black.

In the United States, diverse initiatives have already understood the importance of this political agenda and have been taking stances in this debate, proving, moreover that the rise in diversity is beneficial for businesses. Some of these initiatives are: Hire More Women In Tech, Black Girls Code, Black Tech Women.

In the case of Brazil, there is no such data referring to black women in technology, which shows that the problem, although real, is invisible. According to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anisio Teixeira (Inep), of the 1,683 computing engineers that graduated in 2010, only 161, or 9.5% were women. In the same year, only 14.8% of 7,339 graduates in computing sciences were programmers.

For Silvana, the absence of black and indigenous women in the fields of technology and innovation is connected to two factors. “One of them is access. Almost everything related to this camp is expensive and is in English. And the policies (public and private) which are directed towards our admission and subsistence in these spaces are rare. The lack of references is another determinant factor: if being a woman in technology is already a challenge, imagine for us black women. The absence of positive references of black and indigenous women is a social question that passes through not only the world of technology but also the more varied power and professional fields”, she says.

About PretaLab

PretaLab is an initiative of Olabi launched in March of 2017 with the focus of encouraging the inclusion of black girls and women and indigenous women in the field of new technology. Made feasible from the support of the Ford Foundation, the initiative emerged as a campaign in search of mapping and understanding who are the black girls and women and indigenous women that work in this area.

From a survey on the internet, stories, impressions, and data were collected about this public. Afterwards, as part of the campaign, videos were recorded to give visibility to the story of the protagonists that exemplify the challenges of these Brazilian women who are already working as developers, business women, producers of content and activists in the digital realm.

The objective of the project is, on one hand, to show how the lack of representation is one problem not only for the fields of technology and innovation, but for human rights and freedom of expression. And, on the other hand, to stimulate positive references in search that more black girls and women look at innovation, technology and science as possible and interesting fields of work.

Where are they?

“Are there black and indigenous women producing and/or utilizing technology?”. “Where are they?” These were the questions that brought PretaLab to this point. The lack of mapping is one of the basic difficulties of constructing any public policy for inclusion – and one of our objectives was to fill this gap.

In the case of indigenous women, there are other stereotypes, and the one that this survey is most concerned with is that they are represented as being of a culture opposed to modernity, and therefore opposed to technology.

A complex reality, multi-faceted and full of potencial emerged during the survey. One of these aspects is the participants pride in relation to their origins: diverse stories that were sent mention the profession of their mothers – domestic workers, in the country that has the largest contingent of this type of profession in the world (7 million people). For Pretalab, the problem that lies here is to identify black women automatically and exclusively with the profession, be it rationally or unconsciously.

For black and indigenous women, extremely varied experiences are compacted into fixed and one dimensional images. And what we saw in the results of this pool was exactly the strength in the multiplicity of black and indigenous female experiences in Brazil. And notice that we approached only one area.

In the case of indigenous women, the stereotypes are different, and the one that says more, in respect to this survey, is that they represent cultures opposed to modernity and to technology.

Just as much for black women as for indigenous women, these extremely varied experiences are compressed into fixed and onedimensional images. And what this survey point to is exactly the opposite: the potencial of multiplicity of black and indigenous experiences in Brazil.

There were 570 women between the ages of 17 and 67, with various inputs and interests, the majority concentrated in innovation (29.1%) and social transformation (14.6%). These women come from all of the five regions of the country, of almost all of the states and more than half are interested in developing initiatives in the area – however only 20% of them are familiar with projects that bring black and indigenous women together in technology.

The lack of stimulation has an important cultural element and is reflected in the little expressiveness of the two groups in engineering and the exact sciences. In technology this gap gets worse, firstly because it is thought of as a “man's thing” a place for white people.

With little incentive so that black and indigenous women involve themselves with technology and innovation, the survey shows that the main entry for them in the area is informal learning (option selected by 52% of the interviewed), followed by Digital entrepeneurialship – the second position among the 18 options of involvement modalities with the technological field.

The data gives us assistance in reflecting on the importance of the stimulus (programs as well as public and private policies) so that black and indigenous women occupy more and more of this type of space, that is beyond a place of power, or a cultural space. A space that seeks to shake up the solidity of racism rooted in our country's culture.

Pretalab's survey was answered by almost 600 women between the ages of 17 and 67 years old from the five regions of Brazil.

Some identified points

What do we intend to do?

How can you contribute to this cause?