Economic Empowerment for Bisexual Women Can't Wait for a Hashtag

Bisexual Awareness Week will run from September 16 to 23, ending in a "Celebrate Bisexuality Day" on September 23. Most of what gets posted during it is about visibility: flags, hashtags, and coming-out stories. That matters. But bisexual women's economic empowerment barely gets mentioned, even though the little data that exists says it should be the headline, not a footnote.

What the U.S. Data Shows about Economic Empowerment for Bisexual Women

In the United States, where LGBT economic research is most developed, cisgender bisexual women consistently show some of the highest poverty rates of any group tracked—nearly 30% in one national study, dropping to 20% only after pandemic-era relief funding. In rural areas, that rate climbed to 37%, higher than lesbians, higher than bisexual men, and higher than almost anyone else measured. Having children was a strong predictor of poverty specifically for bisexual women; in a way it wasn't for lesbians—meaning the two groups are facing different economic pressures, not the same fight with a different label.

That's the clearest picture available anywhere in the world. And it stops at the U.S. border.

The Data Gap Is the Biggest Obstacle for Economic Empowerment for Bisexual Women

Once you look at the Global South and East—where LesbianGlobal actually works—bisexual-specific numbers mostly disappear. What exists instead is broader LBQ+ research that doesn't separate bisexual women out at all. Outright International's own review of funding proposals found real regional patterns: in Sub-Saharan Africa, where most proposals originated, organizations had to weigh livelihood support against genuine safety risk, often working through trusted community networks just to operate. In Latin America and the Caribbean, proposals pointed to overlapping marginalization tied to race, class, migration status, and rural location. In East and Southeast Asia, family pressure and social conservatism were pushing women toward quieter, more discreet income sources like remote work rather than visible entrepreneurship.

None of that data separates out what's specific to bisexual women versus lesbian or queer women more broadly. And that absence isn't neutral—it's a form of the same erasure Bisexual Awareness Week exists to push back against. If bisexual women's economic empowerment isn't measured, it's very easy for it to also not get funded.

Cory and Leila, bisexual women living in Nepal

Why Economic Empowerment for Bisexual Women Needs Its Own Attention

The U.S. data at least tells us bisexual women can face different economic pressures than lesbians even within the same broad LGBTQ+ category. There's no reason to assume that pattern disappears elsewhere—it more likely just goes unrecorded. Treating "LBQ+ women's economic empowerment" as one uniform problem risks building programs that quietly work better for one group than another, without anyone noticing which group is being underserved.

Our Economic Empowerment Fund exists for LBQ+ women across the Global South and East—and that includes bisexual women, explicitly, not folded silently into a broader label. This month, we're using the visibility Bisexual Awareness Week creates to say plainly: economic empowerment for bisexual women is part of our fund, and the fact that so little data exists to prove it matters is exactly why we're saying it out loud.

If you want your donation to reach a group that U.S. research already flags as economically at risk and that most of the world hasn't even measured yet, this is the moment to give. Support LesbianGlobal's Economic Empowerment Fund, and help make sure bisexual women aren't the ones left out of the count again this year.