• Black female leaders continue to face the same challenges for 200 years
• New research from Durham University Business School reveals how intersectional biases have shaped the experiences of black female leaders throughout history
• Organisations must do more to create an inclusive and uplifting environment for black female leaders

Black women have always shown a strong drive for leadership – so much so that they are three times more likely than white women to aspire for leadership roles, according to a report from the Center of Talent and Innovation.

Yet despite this, black women remain in the minority when it comes to taking on senior-level and management roles. An investigation from female-focused global non-profit Catalyst in 2021 found that white women held 32.6% of managerial roles in the US as opposed to the 4.3% of black women who held the same positions.

More recently, according to McKinsey’s Women in Workplace Report 2023, for every 100 men appointed into their first managerial role, only 87 women are afforded the opportunity to take on a similar role. And for black women? Only 54 manage to take a step up the ladder.

It’s a barrier to progression that McKinsey calls a “broken rung”.

Broken Rungs

Industry is not unaware of the need to bring about systemic change to ensure greater levels of diversity and inclusion across the board, and many organisations have been active in putting various SEI-focused initiatives in place. But have such actions had any impact?

Research shows that, many DEI initiatives are ineffective and can even result in further excluding those they are designed to support.

As a result, black women are forced to shout louder and push harder to make us listen and take action. They’re forced to stand taller.

As Michelle Obama put it in a speech to Tuskegee graduates, “The truth is that those age-old problems are stubborn and they haven’t fully gone away. So there will be times … when you feel like folks look right past you.”

Intersectional biases have shaped the experiences of black females, and black female leaders throughout history, facing both the challenges that come with being black and being a woman.

Despite coming a long way since the days of segregation, stats like McKinsey’s make it seem as if  society has made little progress when it comes to empowering and uplifting black women.

To find out how to help black female leaders shine today, researchers from Durham University Business School delved deeper into such intersectional biases and challenges, to understand how black women in history overcame them to become globally recognised leaders.

Black women haven’t been allowed to win

Conducted by Durham’s Dr Spyros Angelopoulos, alongside colleagues from Cambridge University Judge Business School, Cranfield School of Management, the University of Sydney Business School, and Charles Sturt University, the study analysed more than 200 years of data on female leaders.

The study encompassed 608 female leaders from all races between 1828 to the end of 2019, mapping their career paths as well as analysing the content of their speeches. Included in this list were famous names such as Rosa Parks and Michelle Obama, but of the 608 women featured in the research, only 87 of them were black.

Soberingly, the results revealed that there has been very little change in the challenges that black women have faced for these 200 years.

Black female leaders were found to have a stronger and more consistent focus on specific topics such as politics, and diversity during their lifetime whereas white female leaders were more likely to focus on a variety of areas.

Dr Angelopoulos and his colleagues say this is because white women have seen more positive societal change and, therefore can move their focus to new issues, whereas black women haven’t had this luxury and have been stuck fighting the same battles they’ve been fighting for centuries.

Those battles and challenges were revealed to be the same at every stage of their careers.

Furthermore, in their drive to break through barriers and get ahead, the study found that Black female leaders end up taking more career-focused risks than any other leaders. Whilst white women’s career paths stayed fairly consistent, with the study showing they typically worked in an average of 1.59 sectors, for black women that number was higher, averaging 2.13 sectors, indicating a greater need to change track to get ahead.

This finding is supported by a report from the Washington Area Women’s Foundation which revealed that many black female leaders leave their roles. The reasons, the report states, are “unsupportive work environments, overwhelming workloads, and experiences of micro-aggressions—circumstances uniquely created at the intersection of racism, patriarchy, and anti-Blackness in the workplace.” 

What can businesses and organisations do to help black female leaders?

Greater action must be taken. Not only is there a moral, ethical motivation for organisations to remove the heavy burden Black women carry when navigating leadership and the workplace, there is also the advantage to be gained of retaining and further developing their talent.

“Despite modest progress in the representation of women in senior leadership positions, black women continue to face unique challenges, being promoted at a slower pace and significantly underrepresented in top leadership roles,” says Dr Angelopoulos. “It’s clear that we need to create a more inclusive environment for black women to flourish in their career, not constantly having to overcome hurdles.”

But how can this be done? The Growth Company hosted a virtual round table to address the unique challenges that Black women face in the workplace. They spoke about how organisations should look to broaden their diversity focus further than just employing or promoting more staff from minority groups.

This can involve:

• Inclusivity, diversity and unconscious bias training for the workplace
• Implementing an anti-racism strategy
• Taking reports or feedback from black female leaders seriously
• Making sure that black female leaders play a key role in the decision-making in organisations to promote cultural change.

As well working to avoid bias on a human-level, research has also suggested technologies such as AI can be used to make hiring decisions, assess ability and even ensure language used in job ads is inclusive.

Today’s black daughters still face the same discrimination and barriers implemented by society that their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers had to face.

Until we stand with them and do something, their daughters’ daughters will also find themselves stuck in this same cycle of limited opportunities, unfair job expectations, hostility, and discriminatory stereotypes.

By, Sharmin Ahmed

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