difference is, black women push ahead in their careers regardless of concerns about balancing all responsibilities. They’re clear-eyed about the burdens; they’re just not conflicted about wanting power. Whereas white women, having assessed the burdens, grow ambivalent—and rein in their ambition.
Such ambivalence toward power seems likewise rooted in history. White women today struggle to shed the burden of gender-role expectations attendant on their socioeconomic privilege—privilege that for centuries situated white women outside the paid labor force as homemakers and helpmates. The domestic roles that Friedan found so oppressive in 1968 continue to constrict them: acquiring new roles in the workforce hasn’t relieved them of the roles assigned at birth, but rather pitched them into an impossible bind where excelling at one means perforce failing at the other. The work-life conflict hasn’t abated for white women, despite declining birthrates and mounting wage-earning pressures. A stunning 35 percent of white women age forty and over in our sample do not have children. Fully 61 percent of white women in our sample that are married or living with a partner earn at least as much as their partners or spouses do. And yet white professional women, despite their fierce ambition (some 81 percent consider themselves ambitious), appear ambitious for something other than power. Despite the fact that we see young women starting out their careers intent on attaining positions of upper management, this intent is not matched by their older counterparts. White women between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-four are twice as likely as white women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty to say they aspire to a powerful position with a prestigious title.
And thus we see, half a century after women marched on Washington demanding equal rights, men and women with equal leadership potential arriving at starkly different destinations mid- to late-career. Men arrive in the executive suite, while qualified women continue to tour middle management. The numbers tell the story: women in the US hold less than 15 percent of Fortune 500 executive positions.45
This skewed outcome, as talent specialists well know, exacts an insupportable toll on both women and the companies that employ them. Women who have invested in their education and professional development—such as the 36 percent of US women and 32 percent of UK women on course to acquire an MBA or industry-relevant tertiary degree—fail to reap the dividends in terms of fulfilled potential or lucrative position.46 Employers that have invested considerable sums developing women for leadership roles are in danger of seeing their investment go out the door, possibly never to return, or failing to deliver anticipated returns in the form of a more diversified C-suite or boardroom. Companies whose leadership remains homogeneous, as the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI)’s 2013 innovation research shows, lose a critical competitive edge: they’re less likely to elicit market-worthy ideas, less likely to green-light them, and less likely to increase market share or grow their global footprint.47
Thus we find ourselves at an impasse unimaginable to our feminist forebears: exceptional women stand at the threshold to power either because they’re not invited to cross it or because they’re afraid to. What is to be done? How might white women come to embrace leadership as the means to liberation? How might black women shrug off the mantle of invisibility that keeps them from claiming the roles they’re prepared to fill?
In the next section, we’ll explore what exactly is holding women back and, having exposed those tripwires, map ways for women to leap over them.
PART TWO: THE BATTLE BEFORE US
White women and black confront different challenges as they strive to advance in the white-collar workplace—challenges that derive from their different histories and conceptions of workplace equality. For black women, invisibility denies them the advocacy and backing they need to break out of middle management. For white women, ambivalence toward power acts as a brake. For all women, however, forward progress depends on cultivating sponsors: leaders who will create opportunities for them to shine and keep them on track to fulfill their leadership potential.
2
Black Women Are Invisible
At the close of 2014, Lorraine,* a regional director at a medical device manufacturer with twenty years of experience supervising her firm’s top accounts, approached her boss to talk about the opportunities he saw for her in 2015. It wasn’t that she was unhappy, she explained: she took pride in her work, in the relationships she’d built, and in the value she delivered. But she’d been in her current role for six years, and hungered for new opportunities to grow and learn. She’d watched as her peers took on assignments that put them on track for profit-and-loss positions with strategic oversight. She wanted that responsibility; her track record, she pointed out, was impeccable in terms of leading teams to exceed revenue targets. She wanted to be put in charge of a business unit and report directly to the CEO. And if that was not in the cards, she wanted to know what the firm had in mind for her—which succession plan she fit into.
Her boss heard her out, and then said, “Lorraine, you’ve reached a milestone you probably never imagined. You’re among the top two percent of people here who make over two hundred thousand dollars a year. Do we really need to talk about what you haven’t yet achieved? The milestones you haven’t met?”
The meeting was clearly over. Lorraine forced a smile to her lips, thanked him for his time, and retreated to her desk shaking with suppressed fury. “I was beside myself,” she admits, recollecting the exchange. “Would he have said such a thing to a man? Why is it, when you ask for things as a black woman, you’re made to feel you should apologize for asking?”
Lorraine has given herself a time frame: if in six months she hasn’t been given a stretch assignment or other growth opportunity, she’s going to leave the firm. “I would be interested in running a small company,” she confides. “I’ve got the track record; I just need to get over my doubts.”
At the same time, however, she’s dismayed at the prospect of having to leave a company where she’s built a significant book of business and proven her leadership skills. “I’ve seen this company take a risk on certain people—some white women, some black men—because maybe they will work out,” she reflects. “So why not me? I know they’re comfortable with what I do and how I do it. Why not give me a chance? What have I been proving for the last twenty years, if not that I can be relied on to help grow this company?”
Stuck and Stalled
In corporate America, black women hammer at the glass ceiling, but rarely break through. Despite their fierce ambition (91 percent consider themselves ambitious), black women are more likely than white to say they feel stalled in their careers (44 percent vs. 30 percent). Less than half (45 percent) are satisfied with their rate of advancement. They stick firmly in the marzipan layer right below top management—if they even reach it—in sight of the C-suite but seemingly not in the sights of those who occupy it.
Why? Why, as Lorraine asks, aren’t qualified black women given a chance to run the company?
Conscious and Unconscious Bias
We cannot overlook, among the myriad reasons our research uncovers, the role that bias plays. Unconscious bias—or even conscious bias—tortures the career path of both black and white women, from the very first step. A job opening may not be shared with them; their application may receive less attention based on their gender alone; their qualifications may be assessed absent objective guidelines; their skills may be deemed appropriate for only limited job functions; their performance may be assessed on an unlevel playing field, where they’ve been given the most difficult clients or least likely sales prospects. While multinationals proclaim and enforce rigorous antidiscrimination policies, bias persists at all levels, because rarely is it overt enough to be deemed outright discrimination.
That’s
