I am seeking to understand.
The studies help me answer my curiosity. The essays and the art are where I put how I feel about the answer.
Writing
Two registers for each study. The journal is written while the work is open, dated and unresolved. The essays come later, once I know what I actually think.
Data Art
Some pieces are stills, some are live sketches that redraw on every load. Open one to see the rough versions.
Occupations, 1900 to 1920
Ten occupations, each ring sized by the number of Black women who held it and textured with a glyph of the work itself.
Each occupation has its own mark: wash water, stalks, a roof, a pot, a needle, an open book, a bell. Laborers with no named occupation get a cross, because the record itself is indistinct there.
Marks are scattered rather than arranged, so no order is implied beyond size. Every reload finds a different valid arrangement of the same numbers.
The plate needs its source line: which census years, which occupation coding scheme, and the universe the percentages are drawn from.
Generative Sculpture
A century of occupations, built.
Nothing finished yet. The first form from the century project will appear here.
One practice, two places to put it.
I am Alice Warren, a researcher and data analyst. A. Sterling LLC is my research business and how I learn.
This studio allows me to explore not only the research but how I feel about what I found.
This is how I experience and relate to the world.
Studies
A Century of Black Women’s Occupations
The Cohort That Did Not Return
A century of the same work
Recovery is not a rate
Occupations, 1900 to 1920
Flat Line
A century of occupations, built
What work have Black women done over the past hundred years, and what has changed about it?
After the job losses of the last several years, which Black women returned to work, and which did not?
Following occupation rather than outcome. Which categories Black women worked in decade by decade, how the mix shifted, and where it held still.
Tracking long-term unemployment among Black women against a national topline widely described as recovered.
The list of jobs Black women could hold got longer. The list most of them held did not change much.
A topline can recover while the people counted inside it do not.
Ten occupations, each ring sized by the number of Black women who held it and textured with a glyph of the work itself.
The recovering topline and the cohort underneath it, drawn on a single axis.
The same study taken off the screen. The counts that size the marks can size a form instead. Not made yet.
Findings so far
- In the 1900 to 1920 series, three occupations account for roughly 30 percent of all work: laundresses, wage farm laborers, and household workers.
- Domestic and agricultural labor together dominate the top of the distribution.
- Teachers are 0.8 percent. The professional category exists and is almost empty.
- A named category for unnamed labor holds 126,820 women, more than dressmakers and teachers combined.
- The cohort separated in the initial wave shows no measurable return to employment.
- Long-term unemployment persists through a period reported as recovery.
- The topline rate moved. This cohort did not move with it.
Occupations, 1900 to 1920 (Series I)
Black women’s occupations, 1900 to 1920. One glyph in the artwork equals one thousand women.| Occupation | Share | Count |
|---|
| Laundresses | 10.1% | 797,825 |
| Farm laborers, wage | 10.1% | 796,743 |
| Household workers | 9.9% | 780,789 |
| Farm laborers, unpaid | 6.4% | 507,918 |
| Farmers | 2.9% | 229,144 |
| Cooks | 2.1% | 170,310 |
| Laborers, unnamed | 1.6% | 126,820 |
| Dressmakers | 1.1% | 84,372 |
| Teachers | 0.8% | 61,823 |
| Service workers | 0.6% | 50,492 |
Journal
The temptation is to tell this as a story of doors opening, because the new categories support one. The more honest structure is two lines: what became possible, and what most women were still doing.
Occupation classification changed several times across the century. Definitions have to be reconciled before any decade comparison holds, or the scheme itself manufactures the trend.
Pin the definition before this line goes anywhere public. Long-term unemployed is counted at 27 weeks and over, and the exact series and vintage need citing so the 100 percent figure cannot be waved away as an artifact.
The word recovery is doing a great deal of work in the coverage. The aggregate moved. The question is which cohort moved with it, and this one did not.
Do not let this become a story about barriers alone. The finding is stranger and more specific: the range widened and the concentration stayed.
This only works with the series cited in full inside the piece. The claim is strong enough that the sourcing has to be visible, not linked.
One line returns and one does not. The whole piece is the gap between them, so nothing else should compete for attention.
Today I finished the full 1900 to 2020 series for Black women, and it left me wanting more. How does this differ from what it looks like for white women, white men, Black men, and other groups in the US. Are the patterns the same or vastly different for women of color. In so many instances we feel isolated, that our stories are unique and separate from the American experience. But this look at the data will hopefully help tell me otherwise. Or will it confirm my suspicions, that we remain grossly underrepresented in certain professions, and remain so even in the current century.
Getting back in the rhythm of thinking about this project. Every day I work on completely unrelated things, and it takes a while for me to center and think about design and art again. I decided yesterday that I would not return to become an architect. A scary move but a necessary one, since it is not my calling. But today, manipulating code, thinking formally about my creation, adding a structure to the generative design, brought me a tremendous sense of peace. However, looking at the data, it reminds me of where we have come but also our limitations as women of color, the limitations set for us over so many years of toil and trauma. We exist now on the backs of women responsible for back breaking work: labor, domestics, teachers. And in 40 years there was little change in those roles. From 1900 to 1940 we remained in service and support of others.
From the essays
Expansion is the easy story and it is partly true. New categories opened and Black women entered them. But entry is not the same as movement, and a wider range of available work is not the same as a different distribution of actual work. A hundred years of new doors, with most people still in the same rooms, is worth a more careful word than progress.
An aggregate is a compression, and this one compressed away an entire cohort. When the headline rate returns to where it started, the coverage treats the episode as closed. The series underneath shows a group separated early that has not returned, which means the recovery was real for some people and a description of nothing for others.
A. Sterling Studio. Research, journal, essays, data art, and generative sculpture by Alice Warren. Washington, DC.
A. Sterling LLC, research practice