This Women’s History Month, we center the leadership of Black women in the movement for health equity because their history, their bodies, and their lives are at the heart of our most urgent work. 

That work begins with truth-telling. History credits Dr. J. Marion Sims as the “father of gynecology,” but that narrative erases the Black adolescent girls whose bodies were used, without anesthesia or consent, as the foundation of his work. Their pain built a field that has largely failed them ever since. 

Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, regardless of income. That is a direct result of implicit bias and anti-Blackness embedded in medical education and practice. EJS is fighting to change that by educating medical students and physicians on the persistence of anti-Blackness and implicit bias in medicine to improve health outcomes for Black Women – and ultimately to save lives. Read more in chapter 12 of the California Reparations Report on the state’s existing disparities in maternal health, reproductive health, life expectancy, and racism in healthcare. 

And in the courtroom, Black women are already fighting back against health inequities in the hair care industry. For decades, chemical hair relaxer companies marketed and sold to Black women and girls products containing ingredients now linked to uterine and ovarian cancers without adequate safety testing or disclosure. In a historic lawsuit against hair relaxer companies including Avlon, Beauty Bell, House of Cheatham, L’Oreal, Luster, Namaste, Revlon, Sally Beauty, and Strength of Nature, more than 13,000 Black women with uterine/endometrian/ovarian Cancer are demanding accountability from an industry that profited from their harm. EJS and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP represent 268 of the plaintiffs.

When Black women are safe, protected, seen, and heard in medicine and in law, everyone benefits. This Women’s History Month, we call on supporters, medical professionals, and advocates to join us in transforming the nation’s consciousness on race and health.