Latina and Black women lost jobs in record numbers. Policies designed for all women don’t necessarily help.

Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report on January employment included more bad news about Black and Latina women in the workforce, writes Jamila Michener, associate professor of government and co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, in a Washington Post op-ed.

“In January, the unemployment rate was 8.5 percent for Black women, 8.8 percent for Latina women and 5.1 percent for White women. Even as a pandemic economy challenges women from all racial groups, these unemployment rates underscore important racial inequities,” Michener writes in the piece with co-author Margaret Teresa Brower. “The U.S. government can alleviate that acute economic distress, our research suggests, if it advances policies that explicitly account for Latina and Black women’s specific vulnerabilities.”

Read the story in the Washington Post.