Unseen inequality: How BIPOC women are shortchanged in American workplaces

"At the end of the day it doesn't matter if I do everything right,” says Racquel Joseph, “This system was not built for me.” Joseph is a Black employee who discovered that her salary was less than that of a white subordinate employee she was managing (reported by Emma Hinchliffe in Fortune). The system she describes is an intersectional web of discrimination and microagressions that creates a hostile work environment for most women of colour in the United States. “Intersectionality,” a word first used by Kimberlé Crenshaw in a little-known feminist academic paper in 1989, is now a term for how factors of race, sexuality, socioeconomic class, gender, and other factors of discrimination intersect and complicate each other. For example, a Black woman generally experiences more discrimination than a white woman, and a disabled Black woman likely experiences more prejudice than an able-bodied Black woman. This word may have been coined to describe the struggles of a woman of colour decades ago, but sadly it is still apt today.

Discrimination begins in the hiring process. More women than men in America earn university degrees, yet it is still harder for women of colour to get the jobs they apply for. A 2020 study found that women of colour were “dramatically underrepresented” in workplaces because of employers’ gender and racial bias—they represent less than a fifth of the average American office. In the same study, women of colour applying for scientific work at a university were rated by faculty as being “less competent” than their equally qualified white female peers and men of colour. University degrees and other qualifications made no difference in the employers’ rating—women of colour were still subjected to bias. They say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and hiring prejudice is a broken link in the careers of BIPOC women in the United States.

Even when a woman of colour is accepted for a job, she is more likely to face microaggressions, prejudice, and lack of support in the office at a rate higher than men or white women. A recent research analysis found that forty percent of American Black women reported having been baselessly doubted in their field of work, while only twenty-seven percent of men did . A 2006 study by the Journal of Applied Psychology reported that women of colour were “disproportionately likely to be the targets of prejudice” in workspaces. This increased level of unfair bias can impact these women’s stress levels and mental health. They are constantly under pressure to perform at a higher level than their white or male colleagues in order to be seen as equals to them. Inappropriate attitudes and behaviour by colleagues and employers creates a daily struggle for women of colour in their workplaces.

Microaggressions and prejudice in offices and workspaces coupled with the direct prejudice of employers cause bias in promotion. Companies with women in decision-making positions are thirty percent more likely to do well financially in comparison to their competitors; according to a McKinsey study, “Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are fifteen percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians,” yet women of colour continue to be subjected to prejudice in promotion. BIPOC women in the U.S. occupy only four percent of all C-suite (highest-level) positions, trailing their white male and white female counterparts, who are in sixty-eight and nineteen percent respectively. In addition to this concerning figure, just thirteen percent of the Black women who hold Harvard law degrees are currently company executives, while nineteen percent of Black male and forty percent of white Harvard law graduates are. This approach comes from employers’ bias towards the toxic status-quo: white male-dominated companies. Despite the business advantage that putting driven women of colour in the C-suite gives companies (and the obvious moral arguments for equity), the majority of corporations are resisting positive promotional change. Promotion discrimination prevents opportunities for women of colour to be decision-makers in their companies. In doing so, it perpetuates racism and sexism in the American workforce, lessens businesses’ competitive potentials, and bars BIPOC women from achieving the jobs they want and deserve.

Regardless of level of career success, working women of colour are subject to pay disparities that affect their lives and livelihoods. The disparities in pay between men and women in North America are well-known, but fewer people are aware of the large pay gap for women of colour specifically. For each dollar paid to a white man in America, Black women get sixty-one cents, Native American women get fifty-eight cents, and Latinx women are paid only fifty-three cents. Americans of all races were equally likely to request a pay raise in 2018, but women of colour were nineteen percent less likely than white men to receive one. American women of colour are paid, on average, half the amount that American white men are for similar work. Race- and gender-based pay disparities have real consequences on lives. Women of colour affected by the pay gap have to work harder than their colleagues for much less recognition and salary, while remaining at lower rungs of the career ladder through no fault of their own. Black households in the United States are twice as likely as white ones to experience chronic hunger, and fifty-six percent of Latinx families are burdened by overwhelming housing costs. Women of colour doing the same work as white men but affected by pay disparities find it harder to support their families, or even afford basics like healthy food and housing. If pay discrimination against women of colour was addressed and eliminated, it is almost certain that these depressing hunger and housing insecurity statistics would drop.

Intersectional job discrimination in North America expresses itself in four main ways; hiring, promotion, and pay discrimination, as well as microagressions, aggressions, and discrimination within workplaces all play a part in the unjust barriers that women of colour face in their daily work lives. This issue is nuanced and complex, but we have the tools and platforms to change it. Pushing for the assessment of job candidates for potential rather than employment history is a starting point. Funding and donating to anti-discrimination research and education is also important, as up-to-date data and information is essential to an effective movement. On a grassroots level, reporting and discouraging racism, sexism, and intersectional discrimination in the workplace is the responsibility of every employee. Occupational discrimination, whether on the basis of race, gender, or both, has no place in any workforce.