Photo: britnidanielle.com
Happy Thursday!
As ambitious, career-savvy corporate women, many, if not most of us, have not only heard of, but subscribed to the “Lean In” movement authored by Sheryl Sandberg. And seriously, you’ve got to be living under a rock not to have heard of it, with all the media buzz and general debate, even controversy around it…
And talking about controversy,one of the comments I’ve repeatedly heard discussed about in professional Black and minority women circles, is around how much, in all objectivity, the whole “Lean In” movement applies to us, Black and minority women. As Sandberg points it out herself in one of the first chapters of her book, the corporate statistics in very many different aspects for Black and minority women are way worse than that of Caucasian women. And if we can add to that, our history, realities and struggles also happen to be drastically different, thus pre-disposing us to even lower levels of corporate presence, engagement and consequently, success.
As biased as this may sound, many a Caucasian woman’s, if not most, first encounter with discrimination occurs in the corporate world; while Black and minority women count discrimination as an everyday reality and occurrence throughout their lives, and are mentally, psychologically and spiritually worn out by the time they even make their first step up the corporate ladder. And while Caucasian women have their gender and demographics as a barrier to their career advancement, we have History, gender, socio-economic, political and demographic realities, among so many others, to thank for an already late start in our corporate careers, not to mention the crawling progress we’ve made so far.
So dear Ms. Sandberg, as you’ve recognized the need for, and actually just published a new “Lean In” book for new graduates, wouldn’t you also agree that Black and minority women also face a unique set of circumstances that deserves to be explored, discussed and dealt with too?
Sincerely,
The Corporate Sister.
The Corporate Sister
