If you are a Black woman or Black person of another marginalized gender who left the paid labor force since January 2025—whether you quit, were pushed out, laid off, stepped back, or retired early—the Exit Project wants your account, in your own words.
Quantitative studies can count how many Black women are leaving the labor force. They cannot tell us how it happens, or where the line falls between what is taken from them and what they choose. This research exists to allow Black women to answer that question for ourselves.
Your response becomes part of a growing body of testimony large enough to challenge the data that treats Black women's exit as a single, flat statistic.
hey, i'm bethany nicole
I'm a thirty-something native New Yorker, an independent scholar, and the founder of Soulwork. I live with chronic illness and ADHD, both of which are load-bearing in a framework built around what depletion costs a person and what it takes to refuse it.
Before Soulwork, I spent fifteen years in project management and workplace experience, and later ran my own consulting agency, providing organizations with programming and operational coaching to ERGs and People Operations, Workplace and Culture teams.
My independent scholarship rests on the conviction that Black women's labor, under conditions this country has never fully reckoned with, is where the real analysis of work begins.
—
Bethany Nicole
Independent Scholar & Founder of Soulwork & The Exit Project