Exploring History to Support Equity in Early Care and Education Workforce Compensation, Preparation, and Stability

• In Event: Compensation for the Workforce: The History, the Policies, Attempts at Increase, and the Teacher's Point of View

Abstract

Purpose

This presentation will provide an overview of two documents written in September 2021—a landscape scan and policy white paper—that map the ways in which systemic racism, sexism, and class have influenced, and continue to influence the compensation, preparation, and stability of the early care and education workforce in the United States (Author, et al., 2021).

Theoretical framework

This presentation uses historical, womanist, feminist, equity, and intersectional lenses to provide a common source of understanding for examining issues related to the compensation, preparation, and stability of the early care and education workforce.

Methods

Targeted landscape and policy scans were the key methods of inquiry for this work.

Data Sources

Over 200 documents (e.g., peer reviewed, academic, and gray literature such as book chapters, policy briefs and reports, blog posts, magazine and newspaper articles, op-eds, podcasts, and videos) were reviewed, categorized, and summarized to create the papers. As mentioned, resources that had an intersectional focus, written from either a racial equity lens or feminist/womanist lens were of key interest. Documents covered the history of the U.S. from the ~1400’s to present, highlighting key events such as the genocide and relocation of American Indians and the period of enslavement of Black individuals with African heritage and its aftereffects (i.e., policies of de facto and de jure racism/oppression).

Results

The data from this research shows that the compensation of early care and education professionals is inextricably bound in the history of our country, particularly the institution of chattel slavery. The labor of Black people has been used to jumpstart, bolster, and maintain the economic advancement of the country for centuries. For Black women in particular, forced relegation to domestic work, caretaking, and child care (both during and after slavery), strengthened the country’s economy, advanced the lives of White people (including White women), and severely constrained the economic positioning of Black people. It has also resulted in a long standing and intractable phenomenon of child care being associated with Black women. As such, domestic and care work, including early care and education, has been and continues to be a profession that like Black women, is viewed negatively and disrespected. As a result, the field is rife with racialized and gendered economic discrimination and exploitation.

Significance

Understanding and addressing the root causes of discrimination and racism that women, women who are minoritized, and women of color face in the early care and education labor market is core to moving forward and developing policies that address the field as a whole. While there is no silver bullet to resolve the root causes of colonization, racism, sexism, and discrimination that are so deeply embedded in U.S. society, this work does provide policy recommendations that are multifaceted and directed at different levels of early care and education systems to address these deeply entrenched issues. Importantly, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a critical window of opportunity to build on government action, funding, and shifts in public sentiment regarding the need for and value of early care and education as an essential sector and component of our nation’s infrastructure.

Author

• Chrishana Lloyd, Child Trends
  Presenting Author