Why Aren’t Black Women Being Promoted at Work?

She has to work while being a woman and Black. Black women are massively underrepresented in the workplace, underpaid, underappreciated, and under-recognized.

The pay gap between men and women is known to be an issue since White women are paid better than Black women. White women are not likely to recognize their own privilege over Black women, and that creates even bigger issues.

Therefore, being the Black woman in the office can sometimes be a very lonely place to be.

They’re an “Only”

Black women are quite often the only Black woman in their workplace. At times, they’re the only woman, period. This is a place of complete isolation.

Being an “only” makes the Black woman open to intense scrutiny and judgment more than any of the “others.” Even White women are included in the “others,” receiving better treatment than Black women.

When a Black woman is an “only” on the job, she tends to have a strong disbelief and point of view of pessimism when it comes to her employer’s diversity policy.

They Aren’t Being Included

The necessity of interaction between management and employees should not be underestimated or undermined, yet it consistently is for Black women.

The question at hand is whether or not Black women are being consciously left out by upper management, or if this is an unconscious bias of which they may need bias training to help them recognize the areas where they are excluding employees based on racist and/or sexist biases. 

Hiring Managers Look at Competencies Rather Than Potential

According to Instructure, 6 percent of S&P 500 CEOs are women. That is a stark picture of just how crucial the problem of women, more specifically Black women, being passed over for a promotion is within the workplace.

Competency-based interview questions are the norm in interviews and have been for quite some time. Most places require a competency-based question and answer portion as a part of the hiring process.

The problem with this process is if these questions eliminate a Black woman from hire or promotion, she is unable to verbally speak her potential because these questions may eliminate her.

How can a Black woman speak about her competency as a CEO if no one has given her the opportunity to be one?

They Are Targets of Micro-Aggression

Black women are more likely than their female co-workers of any other race to have their professional decisions subjected to doubt and scrutiny.

Black women are asked to provide more proof than White women of their competencies. Men, especially White men, are rarely asked to provide proof. They are rarely questioned.

Management may need to have training in recognizing these microaggressions that they were taught growing up, such as this informative packet from the University of Minnesota.

Essentially, the unconscious racist and sexist brain sometimes needs to be retrained in order to reverse these micro-aggressions. 

Secret Pay Gaps

In the past few years, several celebrity women have been spotlighting the gaps in pay between men and women. The media pays extra attention to White women who are using their voices to speak about this disparity.

What is not a part of the spotlight is the fact that Black women make less than White women. The lack of transparency in the workplace regarding pay ranges for each position can create distrust on behalf of the Black woman who is at the bottom of the pay scale ladder.

When a potential employer asks a Black woman for her current or most recent pay grade during an interview, that employer is essentially giving himself power to create a gap in pay because he does not feel obligated to pay this woman according to what others within the company are starting at, he feels only obligated to meet or slightly beat what the most recent pay grade is. 

They Aren’t Getting Honest Feedback

Training comes into play as well. According to Dr. Kathy Obear, managers sometimes will not be honest with their feedback on the work submitted by a Black female employee because they are afraid of being viewed as either racist or sexist or both.

Training can help management recognize where their unconscious biases exist so that they can deliver feedback to employees in a manner that shows care and motivation without fear. 

Communication is Key

It is a stark reality that White superiors may be blatantly racist. The majority of White people do not recognize their privilege in all walks of life.

The White woman at the desk next to the Black woman doesn’t realize that she has the privilege of her superior coming to her to instruct her about how to do a project when her neighboring Black co-worker has done the same project in the past and could perform the task again with zero instruction and the finished result would be of superior quality.

That superior did not take the time to talk to the Black woman to gauge her capability. This is just one example of how communication could have resulted in that Black woman having the opportunity to prove her potential.

It is a sad but true fact that some White people simply do not know how to communicate with Black people. They think that they have to speak differently to a Black woman than a White woman, and some superiors actually coddle women as a whole.

This is not complimentary. Unconsciously, some management makes decisions based on the outrageous basis of men being more competent than women.

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Racial inequity in the workplace has been a reality since women have been working jobs. Black women don’t have to be told these unbalanced skills exist. They live it.

It is the White members of upper-management in a corporation that need to be made aware and instructed to make the conscious effort to cease and desist any activity that forces any Black woman into a position of subordination.

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