Co -founders of the company that produces lip products for darker shades of the skin, they now not hope to get the line to the goal. Brother and sister, who make puzzles with Jigsawa have a good time black topics, wonder in the event that they have to offer “neutral” images similar to landscapes to develop.

A pound cake and color puzzles belong to small corporations whose owners wonder because the most important American corporations weaken their diversity, own capital and inclusion programs. The initiatives are mainly from the end The first term of office of President Donald Trump And he entered the latest era from the dawn of his second.

Some black brands suspected of large retail chains will fall The partnership they carried out After the police killed a black man in 2020, Reigned Mass protests against racial injustice. In today’s anti-dei climate, other entrepreneurs are apprehensive about personal repercussions or feel pressure to cancel contracts Retreating retailers.

“It becomes a matter, will there be large stores there? Are we trying to talk to these people at all?” Ericka Chambers, one of the siblings behind the puzzles of colours. “We really have to assess our strategy in terms of development and how we want to get to new customers.”

A probability to fight black brands

Chambers and her brother, William Jones, began to turn the work of colourful artists into puzzles in the same 12 months during which the film was recorded by a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeling George Floyd’s neck. Among Black Lives Matter Protests During the death of Floyd, the clothier called on large retail sellers to devote 15% space to the shelf and shopping strength to black corporations.

Fifteen percent of pledge helped introduce Color creation puzzles to Macy and Nordstrom’s pages in 2022. Last 12 months they reached chosen Barnes and Noble stores. Chambers said that there was some corporations’ obligations, but she remembered the response after information points covering the brand based in Texas.

“It makes us think about how we imagine when it comes to safety that you don’t want to attack, because some people are very loud,” said Chambers.

Live performances of black women are many of them and Jones puzzles. The couple got here to the conclusion that they need to provide more abstract projects for some Barnes and Noble locations to give the riddles of colours “some chances to fight”.

Dissatisfaction due to corporate diversity

The first known names in American retail or Retool Their diversity programs He appeared last summer amongst the threat of legal challenges and negative publicity of dei critics, who claim that establishing the objectives of employment, promotion and diversity of suppliers for insufficiently represented groups is the reverse discrimination.

After Trump won the second term in November, Walmart joined the corporate withdrawal. The suspension by the goal of its comparable DEI goals in January hindered Black and LGBTQ+ customers more natural ally.

The company said that it could proceed to cooperate with various corporations. Co -founders of Pound Cake from Philadelphia, Camille Bell and Johnny Velazquez, said that they didn’t think that at that moment they might agree if the retailer offered to replenish with lipsticks and lip oils.

“Target would be a great increase in the development of our company,” said Velazquez. “We’ll just find him elsewhere.”

To boycott or not?

The Target position created a dilemma for the founders of the brand with existing distribution transactions. One of them is playgrounds, a natural deodorant for youngsters, which resident Maryland Chantel Powell released in 2021. The product is situated in about 360 goal stores.

The Dei retail program “allowed us to employ amazing people, give our community and put out black perfection on the shelves and outside”, Powell wrote on LinkedIn when residents’ leaders talked about boycotting the goal.

She and another product creators emphasized what hit can have on their corporations. They encouraged nervous customers to deliberately limit their purchases Items from black enterprises. Some activists understood; Others forced the brands to join the protest, limiting the bonds from Target.

“A conversation around black brands that they should withdraw from sellers in which they are, is unreal,” said Powell this month as 40-day organized in the church The goal boycott was pending. “We signed up for business. I understand why people have this conversation about boycotts. As a black founder, I also understand the site of how it can be harmful.”

Running the landscape after Dei

The owner of the black sexual biological renewal industry together with his own condom line has a rather different shot. Target began to wear condoms B in 2020, and the founder of Jason Panda said that the company told him at the end of last 12 months, that he didn’t intend to stop prevention in 304 stores that supplied them.

Panda says he just isn’t apprehensive. He said that the product is out there via Amazon and over 7,000 CVS stores. What’s more, contracts with non-profit organizations and local governments, which distribute condoms at no cost, are the foundation stone of activity, which he founded in 2011, said Panda.

“My money never really comes from the mainstream,” he said. “We will be protected as long as I can maintain my relationship with my community.”

Brianna ARPS, who founded the Moodeaux fragrance brand in 2021, is currently noticing less subsidies available to the creators of black brands. Applied by 10 to 15 every week or two; ARPS said that this number fell to five to seven.

“Many organizations that really voted loudly for support (black companies), either quietly or outside have gone back,” she said.

Moodeaux was the first black brand of perfume that introduced its perfume in Urban Outfitters and Credo Beauty, which focus on natural vegan products. IN current environmentARPS wants to expand the independent stores of its brand and support other black fragrance lovers.

“The resistance of brands like ours and founders like me will continue to exist,” she said.

Emphasizing the positive

Aurora James, founder of fifteen percent of liabilities, said that just about 30 large corporations that joined the initiative remain involved on this, including Bloomingdale, retail sellers of Sephora, J. Crew and Gap.

Ulta Beauty, one other signatories to the obligations and credo beauty wear Pound products. Velazquez and Belle want to use social media to direct their followers to support sellers similar to ulta and strengthening online sales.

“It will support the community we have and develop,” said Velazquez.

By making a strategic decision “appealing to a wider audience” when selecting puzzles for Barnes and Noble, Chambers said that she was planning to introduce black faces and experiences with network bookstores in time, in boxes 500, 750 and 1000 pieces.

In the meantime, the color puzzles prolonged their collection of “Duma” in response to Luz Dei. The topics are Harriet Tubman, mother and daughter nurturing the garden and slightly girl in a cosmetics supply store, taking a look at hair accessories.

“Are we leaning all the way?” Chambers asks himself. “Part of what we started was that we didn’t see enough black people in puzzles.”

Payscale, Inc. published his report in the field of sex remuneration in 2025 and The results show little progress in several industries Despite the provisions regarding the transparency of wages. The second 12 months in a row women earn only 83 cents for every dollar of men

As an industry leader in the field of injury management, Payscale is to assist people in search of work, employees and corporations in achieving fair remuneration inside sex. In the 2025 report, Crowdsourcal analysts have been given from over 369,000 people in the United States, which took a free Paysale online remuneration survey between January 2024 and January 2025.

Some key results from the report show that motherhood is still harmful to capital salary for working parents. Fathers receive a raise, but women with children earn only 75 cents for everybody, what dollar fathers do, unchanged in comparison with last 12 months’s report.

Unfortunately, the maternity gap is even wider for girls in color, which earn 64 cents for every earnings for dollars, in response to the report.

In general, paternity advantages men who earn 2% greater than men without children. On the other hand, moms are in stagnation or reduced salary in comparison with women without children.

How higher education affects the gap in gender salaries

Despite obtaining advanced degrees, reminiscent of MBA, legal degrees and doctorates of health care staff, women are still facing a big gap in salaries. Education itself doesn’t guarantee capital salary.

Women from MBA are facing the most significant uncontrolled pay gap, earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men with the same degree. Doctorates of healthcare staff have the smallest uncontrolled gap in salaries of 89 cents. Women with the law earn 87 cents for every dollar with the same degree, which is a small decrease from 2024.

The difference in gender salaries is the amount earning for each dollar, which the man earns, settling the position and compensation aspects. Uncontrolled gender refers to the difference in differences in the median of remuneration for men and ladies in total.

Difference in genital salaries under leadership

According to the report, women often reach leadership roles, and once they do that, they earn less as their profession progresses.

White men occupy managerial positions, and 45% serves as managers or higher roles. Women are insufficiently represented in leadership roles, and only 5% of white women change into managers in comparison with 7% of white men. The numbers are even lower for girls in color: 4% for black or African -American women, 3% for Latin women and three% for Asian women.

Women who rise to a company ladder earn lower than their male counterparts, and the gap expands at higher levels. Women at the executive level earn 93 cents for every dollar that men do, even when controlling work characteristics, and only 72 cents, once they don’t control these aspects.

In the entire industry, the largest gaps in wages are found in deeply rooted in genital standards. In a legal place, women earn 63 cents for every dollar. In the agricultural and fishing industry, women produce 77 cents for every dollar, and in managing women earn 79 cents for every dollar.

The difference in gender salaries is also the widest in terms of finance and insurance. Women earn 78 cents for every dollar, despite the fact that women constitute 53% of the workforce.

Even in industries dominated by women, the differences in salaries persist. In health care, women earn 89 cents for every dollar. Women in education produce 91 cents for every dollar, and in non -profit, women earn 88 cents for every dollar.

“It is disappointing that there is still no progress in the direction of closing the difference in gender salaries. In addition to being the right thing, ensuring a fair remuneration without discrimination is required by law. This fact itself should support the closing of genda gap,” said Lulu Seikay, a senior lawyer of corporate employment in Payskale. “The transparency of remuneration has an important role here. When the employee understands their trajectory of compensation, increases trust and loyalty.”

Lula “Mae” Reeves, one among the primary black women in Philly have your individual companyHe created unique hats and non -standard hats for celebrities, comrades, professionals and a church in the middle of Philadelphia for Over 50 years.

She made hats for on a regular basis wearing, hats for special occasions and Wonderful “Showstoppers“, As she called them. Her celebrities were Earth Kitt, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and members of the family of Du Pont and Annenberg.

I’m Museum specialist At the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Smithsonian Institution and an authority in the sphere of costumes, textiles and mill fashion.

In 2009 I used to be called to visit Mae’s Milliner, her former store at 41 N. sixtieth St. Permanent exhibition In Smithsonian, which plays the Reeves store and presents a few of its stunning projects.

For the primary time I met Reeves personally on the Darby Nursing Home, Pennsylvania that day. She was 96 years old.

Just a few years later I returned to Philadelphia to participate within the a hundredth birthday of Reeves. To the surprise and intriguing, I learned that in this visit Reeves also used her Milliner store as an election station.

Black Velvet Turban on the exhibition

During my first meeting with Reeves, she shared the memory of the primary hat, which she created after opening her sixtieth Street store, a beautifully decorated store in 1941. Her original Milliner store was at 1630 South St., and a lot of her famous customers followed her to a brand new location in West Philadelphia.

Reeves remembered that he created a black velvet turban she placed within the window. The young woman went home from work and was fascinated. The woman got here back to try him out and, Reeves told me, visualized a powerful fashion statement. She bought a turban for around $ 20 – about USD 430 in today’s dollars.

To open its West Philly Millinery store, Reeves secured a business loan of USD 500 in 1940 Citizens and southern bank and trust. The bank that has a black bank satisfied the African -American community in Philadelphia, because a lot of the Banks belonging to the White, refused to loans to black customers.

Reeves was pleased with how she herself secured a signed loan herself-maintaining the repute of “good opinion” and having solid business plans. She was also very proud that “she repaid the entire loan.”

From the miller’s store to the election station

To move her Milliner store to the election station, Reeves told me that she and her second husband, Joel Reeves, who sold advertisements in newspapers, remove beautiful furniture and decorative items to accommodate voting machines.

To discover concerning the designated election station, the couple spread manual manual and hung posters throughout the realm. Reeves offered food plate politicians who stopped and the cake. She wanted to create a protected and hospitable place to pick from, at the identical time emphasizing the importance that black philadelphics perform their right to vote.

Reeves was also an extended -time member Freedom Day AssociationA bunch created in 1941 in Philadelphia to ensure Younger African Americans Understand the importance of the thirteenth amendment that has lifted slavery; 14. Amendment that gives citizenship to all people born or naturalized within the USA; and 15. Amendment that prohibits the refusal of residents’ right to vote due to race, color or previous easement.

The association was founded by Major Richard Robert Wright Sr., a former American army payer, pedagogue, politician, citizenship lawyer and founding father of residents and southern bank – a bank who offered a May loan of USD 500. Reeves admired Wright, who was born in slavery, and considered him an in depth friend and business colleague. In her Milliner store she kept a replica of his portrait photo.

Grilling and beach tours

In March 2025 I talked by phone with Reeves, Donna Limerick. She told me that Reeves was a member and president of sixtieth Street Business Association, who promoted good business practices, divided marketing strategies and encouraged to support other corporations within the association.

Reeves was also energetic in National Association of fashion designers and accessoriesA black industrial group sponsored by the National Council of Negroes. The group’s goal was to promote black women in the style industry by developing their business skills and support cooperation and access to mainstream fashion. . The philadelphia chapter was founded in 1950.

Despite many skilled and civic obligations, Reeves also took care of his family members. Limerick shared with me when her parents took children from the neighborhood to the summer home in Mizpah, New Jersey. They would lean children with delicious homemade meals and desserts, organize regular barbecue and trips on the beach and teach children fishing.

Reeves He died in 2016 At the age of 104. I hope that her story encourages others – just as she encouraged me – to be brave enough to dream; be conscientious enough to make your dreams come true; Be careful to support your community; be an individual of grace; And watch out to all the time expect, look and give joy.