Women of Color Initiative
Georgia's women of color are ready to lead. The question is who holds the table.
A project of Our Turn
Between 2019 and 2022, the Women of Color Initiative conducted two of the only statewide studies that place women of color's own words at the center of Georgia policy. More than 2,000 women took part through surveys and listening sessions, with research partner Creative Research Solutions. This was first-of-its-kind work. Before it, there was almost no original, disaggregated data on what women of color in Georgia actually need from the people who govern them.
What women told us held steady across both waves.
They named the same priorities every time. Healthcare, economic opportunity and employment, education, and equality ranked at the top in both surveys. In 2019, healthcare cost and access led the list at 17 percent of all responses, followed by economic and employment practices at 15 percent and education at 13 percent. In 2022, the sharpest barriers women reported were the cost of care in healthcare (51 percent), lack of experience in employment (36 percent), and racism in the fight for equality (63 percent).
The economic reality is hard. In 2019, 36 percent of respondents earned under $12,000 a year, and only about a third earned more than $36,000. One in five had no health insurance at all. On average, a Black woman earns roughly 59 cents for every dollar a white man earns. These are not women on the edges of the economy. They are working, raising children, and holding up households while shut out of wealth.
And they are ready to lead. In 2022, 69 percent of respondents were already leading in their communities or wanted to. Yet 44 percent said they do not feel heard in government. The barriers they named were not a lack of ability. They were family and financial responsibility, racism, and sexism. The capacity is already here. The access to power is not.
“We don’t need one person, one leader. If we unite, we become one.”
This is the gap the Women of Color Initiative exists to close. Women of color in Georgia carry their communities, hold clear priorities, and want to govern. What they lack is a seat at the tables where decisions get made. The Initiative turns this research into leadership pipelines, policy agendas set by women of color themselves, and the collective power to act on them.
The Initiative is a project of Our Turn, the global home for the leadership and power of Black women across the diaspora. Georgia is where that commitment meets the ground, in coalition with all women of color.
Your investment funds the next phase: keeping this research current, preparing the next generation of leaders, and building the statewide infrastructure that moves women of color's priorities into policy. Georgia changes when the people most affected by its decisions are the ones making them.