—Kerry Hill, B1Daily

When Americans hear the words affirmative action, the political debate often immediately turns to Black Americans, college admissions and claims that racial minorities received preferential treatment. But that picture leaves out an enormous part of affirmative action’s history: women were also protected by affirmative-action policies, and white women gained substantial access to employment and professional opportunities during the affirmative-action era.

President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11375 expanded federal affirmative-action requirements in 1967 to include discrimination based on sex. From that point forward, women were explicitly included alongside racial minorities in federal contractor requirements.

Because white women constituted a much larger share of the population than Black women and other minority women, policies expanding opportunities for women had the potential to benefit an enormous number of white women.

Research cited in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology notes that some scholarship has concluded that, in terms of gaining previously inaccessible opportunities, white women benefited more from affirmative action than any other group.

Employment provides some of the strongest evidence.

Research summarized by TIME found that women’s employment increased substantially more at companies subject to federal affirmative-action requirements than elsewhere, with female employment rising 15.2% among federal contractors compared with 2.2% at other firms in the study being discussed. Women at federal contractors also advanced into better-paying and higher-ranking positions.

Another employment study noted earlier research finding that employers with affirmative-action policies were 15% more likely to have hired white women, even after controlling for other factors affecting hiring. However, that same study of 167 businesses in six Florida cities found no statistically significant relationship between employer support for affirmative action and white women’s employment in its own sample. That is an important reminder that the sweeping claim that white women were the primary beneficiaries is debated and difficult to prove across every sector.

The Public Narrative Became Almost Entirely About Race

Despite women being beneficiaries, affirmative action eventually became politically synonymous with racial preferences.

That framing produced an extraordinary contradiction: a policy frequently portrayed as transferring opportunities from white people to Black Americans also helped dismantle barriers that had historically prevented white women from entering professions and workplaces dominated by white men.

This does not mean Black Americans failed to benefit. Research reviews have found affirmative action redistributed employment, university admissions and government contracting opportunities from white men toward both minorities and women.

More recent research also demonstrates that race-conscious college affirmative action produced meaningful benefits for underrepresented minorities. One study of state bans found declines in college completion, employment and earnings among underrepresented minority women relative to non-Hispanic white women.

So the accurate historical lesson is not that affirmative action secretly benefited white women instead of Black Americans.

It is that affirmative action was broader than its political caricature.

Affirmative Action Was Also a Gender Revolution

Affirmative action helped create pressure on institutions to examine who was being hired, promoted and admitted when overwhelmingly male workplaces claimed their existing practices were simply based on “merit.”

White women were positioned to take substantial advantage of those newly opened doors because many already possessed racial and socioeconomic advantages that Black women did not share.

That history complicates today’s affirmative-action debate.

The program that became one of America’s most controversial symbols of supposed advantages for racial minorities was simultaneously helping women enter jobs and institutions from which they had historically been excluded.

And among those women were millions of white Americans.

Affirmative action’s history was never simply Black versus white. Gender was sitting in the room the entire time.

—Kerry Hill, B1Daily