Another day and yet more reminders of women of colour struggling to get ahead in corporate structures.
This time, it’s another piece referencing McKinsey & Company research, which found just one in 20 C-Suite leaders in the United States are women of colour, in its 2022 The Women in The Workplace report.
And in other news, water is wet.
Women of colour know that we are being discriminated against. How? Because very few of us climb the corporate ladder and guess what? We talk to each other. We literally compare notes on daily microaggressions and how the (white) women we have coached and employed get promoted ahead of us. We also compare notes on Frequently Provided Excuses (FPEs) which includes but isn’t limited to things such as:
- They interviewed better
- We just didn’t think you were ready
- But you are really doing well in your current role – we didn’t want to change anything
- Would you like some mentoring?
- You missing the promotion – that wasn’t structural racism! I mean if we discriminated against you it was because of unconscious bias – and we can’t be held responsible for things we do unconsciously.
Number five was something a white (male) boss once told me when I queried why I didn’t get a role. I hadn’t brought up racism (because I don’t talk to white people about racism anymore), but he knew it was writ large because he had been to ‘Unconscious Bias ’ training that week and he now had an amazing set of linguistic terms to skirt around the issue.
It was after this interaction that I became convinced that ‘Unconscious Bias ’ training in workplaces was a complete waste of time. Nothing changed. White women benefited the most from diversity and inclusion training while women of colour are still stuck at the analyst level. And don’t get me started on Shemara Wikramanayaka – CEO of Mac Bank. The exception does not prove that women of colour have shattered the glass ceiling.
So what can we do? How can we change the outcomes for women of colour?
Here are a couple of handy tips (because I love lists and tangible outcomes are what I am all about):
- Recognise that women of colour are held to a different standard
- Support women of colour against daily microaggressions – and if someone complains about them – usually it is a projection, rather than a valid complaint
- Protect women of colour during corporate restructures. Pursue affirmative action, because nothing else has worked
And last but not least – know this: Women of colour experience on average at least 5 to 10 acts of daily microaggressions before they even get to the office. They are already stretched thin and the resilience they show on a day-to-day basis is beyond what most people can understand.
Enabling women of colour to succeed is a good thing, because we bring diversity and pragmatic thinking.