By Lulit Shewan

At a moment when workplace protections are under political attack, enforcement agencies are under-resourced, and conversations about diversity and equity are being rolled back, the question of who is safe at work feels especially urgent. For Black women, safety has never been guaranteed. It has had to be demanded, defended, and organized for. While workplace violence is often framed as a matter of individual misconduct or internal compliance, the reality is more structural. Sexual harassment, racialized hostility, retaliation, and toxic management practices do not emerge in a vacuum. They flourish in labor systems shaped by unequal power, economic precarity, and long-standing racial and gender hierarchies. To understand workplace safety in the United States, we must understand how Black women experience work.

Who feels safe at work shapes who can keep a job, earn a living wage, and build long-term economic security. When safety is uneven, opportunity is uneven. The history of Black women’s labor makes this clear.

From enslavement to domestic servitude to the modern service economy, Black women have labored in environments where proximity to power rarely came with protection from it. Racialized sexual coercion, economic vulnerability, and systemic disbelief were embedded features of the labor system. Today’s patterns of workplace gender-based violence and harassment reflect that history.

Historical Exclusion Shapes Present-Day Risk
Black women were disproportionately concentrated in domestic and agricultural work, two sectors excluded from foundational labor protections under the New Deal, namely wage and hour standards provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act and pension protections under the Social Security Act. These significant exclusions were political compromises designed to preserve racial hierarchy in the labor market. The result was predictable. About 90 percent of Black working women, reflecting millions, worked without basic safeguards, collective bargaining rights, or meaningful recourse against abuse.

That legacy continues. Black women are overrepresented in home health care, hospitality, retail, food service, and education support roles. These jobs often involve close physical proximity to supervisors, patients, or customers. They rely on at-will employment structures and are frequently understaffed. Many earn tipped wages or work on a contingent basis. All these conditions increase vulnerability to harassment and retaliation.

National research consistently shows high rates of sexual harassment in hospitality, health care, and food service. Customer-perpetrated harassment is common. So is retaliation when workers speak up. For Black women, these risks are shaped by misogynoir, the intersection of racism and sexism that defines how harm is experienced and how complaints are received.

Misogynoir Shapes Harm and Response
Black women face heightened risks in male-dominated industries such as construction, manufacturing, utilities, and transportation. When women are isolated or vastly outnumbered, research shows harassment rates increase, and reporting becomes more difficult. For Black women who may be the only woman of color on a jobsite, isolation can compound vulnerability to both racist and sexist hostility. Advocacy groups like Heartland Women in Trades have uplifted cases such as the heartbreaking and preventable death of Outi Hicks, a tradeswoman killed in 2017 by a coworker after experiencing workplace harassment. Her story is a stark reminder that gendered discrimination, harassment, and violence in these environments can be an issue of life or death without the intervention of employers. Misogynoir can lead to tragedy when worker safety is shaped by power dynamics, racial hierarchy, and the gender composition of entire industries.

In the workplace, Black women who assert boundaries are more likely to be labeled aggressive. Research has found that Black women are less likely to be believed when reporting discrimination and more likely to experience retaliation – in fact, retaliation remains the most frequently filed category of complaint with the EEOC. Black women who challenge unsafe conditions have faced higher rates of retaliation, including reduced hours, negative evaluations, or isolation from colleagues.

Bias distorts reporting systems at every stage. Such systems often treat race and gender as separate categories. But Black women’s experiences rarely fit neatly into one or the other. When harassment is both racialized and gendered, reporting mechanisms can fail to recognize the full scope of harm. Bias can distort investigations, credibility assessments, and outcomes.

The burden of proof becomes heavier. The cost of speaking up becomes higher. And in low-wage sectors where economic precarity is already acute, retaliation can mean immediate income loss. At-will employment allows employers to terminate workers without cause in 49 states, a common occurrence that places disproportionate burden on workers of color. In fact, research shows that one in two U.S. workers has experienced an unfair or arbitrary termination at some point in their lives. Enforcement agencies such as the EEOC and OSHA face resource constraints relative to the scale of violations, and the use of arbitration clauses can further limit transparency and public accountability.

For workers navigating wage gaps and caregiving responsibilities, leaving an unsafe job is rarely simple.

Disempowerment Upholds Inequality
Workplace violence is not only about individual incidents; it’s also about systems of power. Internal reporting systems often prioritize institutional risk management over worker safety. Even in mission-driven sectors, reports have documented organizational cultures where complaints are minimized or workers of color face retaliation.

This, in turn, shapes long-term economic trajectories. When workers are pushed out of jobs due to harassment or retaliation, they lose income, benefits, and advancement opportunities. Over time, these losses compound and reinforce racial and gender wage and wealth gaps.

Safety cannot be separated from power and systemic marginalization. Without enforceable rights and collective leverage, formal policies provide limited protection.

Black Women Have Led the Fight for Safer Workplaces
Black women have long been central to labor organizing, from public-sector union leadership to contemporary worker center movements. Today, Black women workers often lead union drives in education, health care, hospitality, and nonprofit sectors. Collective bargaining agreements increasingly include anti-harassment provisions, just-cause protections, transparent grievance procedures, and language addressing customer-perpetrated harassment. Organizing spaces and worker centers with Black women at the helm, such as the LA Black Worker Center and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, have fought to shape reform, strengthen standards, and expand the definition of workplace violence to include unjust employer practices. The voices of Black women allow ‘safety’ to be inclusive of mental, emotional, and economic stability.

Building Standards to Reflect Reality
Effective gender-based violence and harassment policies must reflect the realities Black women face. Promising approaches include:

• Broader definitions of workplace violence
• Strong anti-retaliation protections
• Safety planning and flexible leave for survivors of domestic violence
• Coverage for excluded workers
• Transparent incident tracking
• Embedding protections in union contracts

Policy design alone is not enough. Decisionmakers must adequately fund enforcement, and workers must have collective power to hold employers accountable. When Black women’s workplace experiences are centered, the conversation shifts from compliance to power. Harassment is understood as a structural labor issue tied to economic inequality. Safety becomes foundational to job quality.

Protecting Black women at work strengthens protections for everyone. The standard should not be survival. It should be dignity, stability, and respect.