Black women executives in US face challenges climbing corporate ladder

Despite achieving professional success, Black women executives like Regina Lawless grapple with isolation, microaggressions, and a lack of true inclusion, prompting them to create support networks and question traditional career paths.

Black women executives face unique challenges in the corporate world, including isolation and microaggressions. / Photo: AP
AP

Black women executives face unique challenges in the corporate world, including isolation and microaggressions. / Photo: AP

Regina Lawless hit a professional high at 40, becoming the first director of diversity and inclusion for Instagram.

But after her husband died suddenly in 2021, she pondered whether she had neglected her personal life and what it means for Black women to succeed in the corporate world. While she felt supported in the role, “there wasn’t the willingness for the leaders to take it all the way,” Lawless said.

“Really, it’s the leaders and every employee that creates the culture of inclusion.”

This inspired her venture, Bossy and Blissful, a collective for Black female executives to commiserate and coach each other on how to deal with misogynoir, a specific type of misogyny experienced by Black women, or being the only person of colour in the C-suite.

“I’m now determined to help other women, particularly women of colour and Black women, to see that we don’t have to sacrifice ourselves for success. We can find spaces or create our own spaces where we can be successful and thrive,” said Lawless, who is based in Oakland, California.

Many women in Lawless' group have no workplace peers, making them the “Onlys” — the only Black person or woman of colour — which can lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation.

“Getting together helps us when we go back and we’re the ‘only lonelies’ in a lot of our organisations," Lawless said.

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Attack on Harvard president

With attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives raging, Black women looking to climb the corporate ladder face a more hostile landscape than ever.

Aside from having to constantly prove themselves and talk in a manner that can’t be labelled as angry or emotional, obtaining top managerial positions doesn’t stop the double dilemma of racial and gender pay gaps.

All this adds up to a disproportionate representation of Black female senior leadership. Dr. Claudine Gay's resignation in January as Harvard's first Black president following accusations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism was just the latest in a revolving door of Black women who have been aggressively questioned or abandoned after achieving a career pinnacle.

Black female professionals also were hit hard when an administrator at a historically Black college in Missouri accused the school's white president of bullying and racism and then took her own life.

This led some to build networking groups and mentorships. For others, it triggered an exodus to entrepreneurship and re-invention.

In Boston, Charity Wallace, 37, a biotech professional, and Chassity Coston, 35, a middle school principal, reflected on their own career struggles in light of Gay's ordeal.

Wallace said she was being more cognisant of her mental health, and that's where their young Black professionals group, sorority sisters and family come in.

“It’s a constant fight of belonging and really having your girlfriends or your homegirls or my mom and my sister. I complain to them every day about something that’s going on at work,” Wallace said.

“So having that circle of Black women that you can really vent to is important because, again, you cannot let the things like this sit. We’ve been silenced for too long.”

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Coston said she mourned Gay's resignation and, fearing something similar could happen to her, she reconsidered her future in education. But she didn't want to give up. “Yes, we’re going to continue to be scorned as Black people, as Black women. It’s going to continue to happen. But we can’t allow that," Coston said. “I’m speaking from my strength right now because that wasn’t always how I felt in my stages of grief. We have to continue to fight just like Rosa (Parks), just like Harriet (Tubman)." Gay struggled despite her resume full of accomplishments, Wallace said. “I can’t imagine how she felt trying to do that and getting all these accolades, her degrees that she has, the credentials, and it just seemed like even that was not enough for her to stay," Wallace said.

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'Real tensions'

The backlash to DEI efforts is only amplified with clashes over identity politics.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones' tenure bid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stalled in 2021 because of her work with the 1619 Project, a collection of essays on race.

The 2022 confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, drew criticism for their harsh and race-based questioning.

President Joe Biden emphatically stating he only would consider a Black woman for the high court deepened resentment toward DEI, said Johnny Taylor, CEO of The Society for Human Resource Management.

“Contrast and compare a CEO standing in front of his workplace or her workplace saying, ‘I’m only gonna consider, the next candidates will only be this,’" Taylor said.

"That created some real tension.” Black women are questioning whether it's even worth trying for top positions, said Portia Allen-Kyle, chief advisor at the social justice organisation Color of Change.

Extreme scrutiny and online vitriol are high prices to pay.

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