🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Campaigns will raise and spend millions of dollars to engage Black, Latina/x, and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women voters ahead of this November's elections. And they should. Women of color are part of the fastest-growing voting constituency in the American electorate. In an era when elections are won by tight margins, women of color wield the power to decide races up and down the ballot.
New research from Intersections of Our Lives—a collective of three leading women of color-led reproductive justice organizations—suggests that while majorities of women of color say they are very motivated to vote in this year's elections, motivation can increase when policymakers prioritize the issues that most impact our daily lives. And right now, we don't see that happening. In fact, the poll shows over 70 percent of all women of color—especially Black women—solidly agree that they want their elected officials to understand how their experiences and needs differ from those of white women and make commitments to directly improving our lives.
Inaction on our communities' priority issues has wide-reaching effect. Our data found that women of color think things in the country are getting worse and are split between things getting worse or stagnating in their own communities. For a constituency who already believes voting is important, leaders' failure to speak to our issues is lost potential to engage and mobilize a powerful voting bloc.
So, what matters to us? Across AAPI, Black, and Latina/x women, our poll confirmed just how united our communities are when it comes to the most important issue—something we as leaders in the AAPI, Black, and Latina/x communities have known for a long time. The poll found deep and broad agreement that racism has gone on for too long and women of color want leaders who will address it, with almost 8 in 10 women of color polled agreeing or strongly agreeing with the question. As a collaborative, we want to see leaders who take meaningful action on our core mission of dismantling systemic racism.
Our data also shows women of color want Congress to make progress on creating good-paying jobs and ensuring everyone has access to affordable health care. In fact, over 70 percent of all women of color, including 91 percent of Black women, believe it is important for Congress to address the high rates of maternal death among us in the United States.
And despite what's been reported, AAPI, Black, and Latina/x women are also unified in strong support of access to abortion care. Over 7 in 10 women of color believe abortion should be legal. Abortion is one of the many intersectional issues that impacts reproductive justice and our communities' ability to access essential health care. Recent and ongoing attacks on abortion rights disproportionately impact women of color and immigrants and negatively impact our health outcomes. For us, this is not just an issue of legality and rights—it is an inherent belief that abortion care should be accessible and affordable to all communities. In other words, the right to abortion only exists in theory unless we can afford and access it.
The power of our communities cannot remain ignored by policymakers and politicians. In a year where data has shown low voter enthusiasm across the entire electorate, women of color voters show high potential to break this trend and vote in higher numbers if leaders speak to and address the issues we care about. Our poll showed that the majority of women of color see voting as extremely effective in creating the change they want.
Year after year we see similar data, yet we continue to suffer the inaction of elected officials. The facts are clear—look at maternal death numbers among our communities, the barriers to health care our communities face, stalled economic mobility, and more to understand why we are frustrated. Policymakers who want to harness the power of our communities must take real steps to act on our concerns, instead of simply expecting us to turn out when they need us.
It's past time for policymakers and politicians to catch up to what women of color have been focused on and make real change. We want to see tangible, specific change on the issues that matter to us.
As three organizations that collectively represent AAPI, Black, and Latina/x women, we experience this lack of engagement first-hand and see the impact in the communities we represent. Every year, we register voters and organize our communities to advance policies that help women of color at the local, state, and national level.
Politicians, as women of color we want to share our concerns and thoughts with you. We have ideas about how to uplift our communities. Engage with us. Listen to us. Don't continue to take us for granted.
Sung Yeon Choimorrow is executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.
Regina Davis Moss, PhD, MPH, MCHES, is president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda.
Lupe M. Rodríguez is executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice.
Intersections of Our Lives (Intersections) is a collaboration of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda (In Our Own Voice), the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (Latina Institute), three women of color-led national reproductive justice organizations with both a federal and statewide presence. For more information about Intersections of Our Lives visit: IntersectionsofOurLives.org.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
