Invisible Women

The use of statistical evidence was reserved for class action discrimination cases but now statsitics  are even used in single employee situations.   This surprising fact begs the question why and for me throws the entire premise as to why we ever used statistics into question.     Sure, when you have a large number of employees and you are trying to show the historical and systemic effect of discrimination statistics are useful and downright illuminating.   However, the usefulness of statistics in single employee situations by the employer is usually an attempt to skew the evidence in a manner that is more favorable to the employer and probably not at all relevant to the case at bar.  For instance,  recently, I read an article in More magazine about the invisible woman in corporate America — black women.   Statistics were used to show how white women have outpaced black women in their ascent up the corporate ladder, despite the fact that black women in the workforce are not a new phenomena.  Black women have always worked whether it was the fields, the big house, someone’s kitchen, minding children, the classroom and yes finally the board and courtrooms. Black women have always worked.

The author said she was prompted to write this article because of the “large”  number of black women that the Obama administration has chosen to employ.    The writer in More questioned if black women were enough of a corporate presence and whether this new phenomena evinced by the Obama adminstration would catch on with the rest of corporate america.   The More magazine article went on to quote some grim statistics, for example [a]ccording to Catalyst, a New York–based research firm that studies women in business, that while African-American women hold only five percent of all managerial, professional and related positions in corporate america ; white women hold 41 percent.”. Grim indeed. Women of color are similarly scarce on corporate boards. And until Ursula Burns was tapped earlier this year to head Xerox, there were no black female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.  Yet, in the decade between 1996 and 2007, the number of black women getting master’s degrees increased 130 percent, while the increase for white women was only a paltry 38 percent.  More Magazine, October 2009, Wiltz, T.

On the other hand, Essence, the leading magazine for women of color lauded the appointment of these women and presented them as if were they norm for corporate America.   While both articles have some truth, it was the negative statistics that I could not get out of my head and I as pondered it I thought about Sonia Sotomayor who I cheered for and wanted to see confirmed as Supreme Court Justice, but at the same time felt a great sense of sadness and injustice that black women were still not represented on the great judicial body of the Supreme Court. What made this appointment particularly bittersweet was that it came from Barack Obama, our first black president, himself a black lawyer and married to a black lawyer. If anyone knows the struggle of blacks in the law – to get the same shot a plum schools, judicial clerkships, internships and first time job opportunities, it is Barack and Michelle. Ivy League graduates but neither stayed and made the cut at white shoe law firms.

The statistics quoted clearly show that the number of black women graduating from college and achieving professional and graduate degrees and their current place in the corporate, academic and even in the government hierarchy is unbalanced.  Certainly, in employment statitstics speak reflecting  a higher than a two standard deviation point range.  While this information is sobering it is not surprising.  Further, it clearly elucidates who the major benefactors of affirmation action have been   –  white women.  Yet, we have white men and white women who spit venom and become vitrolic at the mention of affirmative action as if it has somehow benefitted some group other than them.  Yes, affirmative action has benefited white males for all of the Newt Gingrichs and Rush Limbaughs who rail against it.  Just think who do white women marry most often – white men.  And if white women are receiving  higher paying jobs and ascending the corporate ladder more – their spouses and children are also benefitting.    Affirmative action has had very little affect in the African-American community.  Affirmative action continues to remain a concept that the community could benefit from but much like integrating the schools it has never happened and remains in dire need.   I suppose I have to change the name of this article to the “True Benefirciaries of Affirmative Action”.

“The Obama administration has given us an image that’s very new today but 20 years from now will be extraordinarily normal,” says Ella LJ Edmondson Bell, associate professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and author of Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity. “This is the first time in our history that we have been able to get a glimpse of what a multiracial workforce looks like, particularly in the White House.

We shall see.