Amy Ropp’s Post

💼 It's time to expand our vocabulary and deepen our understanding of Black women's experiences in the workplace. I'm about to school you on some important terms every leader, manager, HR, DEI, and Wellbeing pro should know: 📚 Essential Glossary: Understanding Black Women's Workplace Challenges 📖 Intersectionality Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality highlights how social identities like race and gender overlap, creating intertwined systems of discrimination. For Black women, it's not just about gender OR race separately - it's both amplified together, resulting in unique, compounded forms of disadvantage that can't be fully captured by looking at either identity alone. 🔄 🧱 Concrete CeilingUnlike the glass ceiling, which women generally face, Black women encounter the concrete ceiling—an even tougher, nearly impenetrable barrier to career advancement. Breaking through requires extraordinary effort and resilience, making it a harsher reality in corporate spaces. 🚨 Glass Cliff When Black women finally ascend to leadership roles, it’s often during a crisis. They’re handed roles with high risk and low support; if things go wrong, they are blamed. This is the glass cliff, where failure is almost built into the role. 👁️ Intersectional Invisibility Black women often feel both hyper-visible(constantly under scrutiny) and invisible (their contributions overlooked). They don’t fit the stereotypical image of a “leader” or “professional,” leading to them being ignored or undermined while their every move is still intensely scrutinised. 💡 These terms represent real obstacles faced by Black women in the workplace. Now that you're familiar, how will you dismantle these barriers? It’s time to take action and create a space where Black women can thrive.

💼 It's time to expand our vocabulary and deepen our understanding of Black women's experiences in the workplace. I'm about to school you on some important terms every leader, manager, HR, DEI, and Wellbeing pro should know: 📚 Essential Glossary: Understanding Black Women's Workplace Challenges 📖 Intersectionality Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality highlights how social identities like race and gender overlap, creating intertwined systems of discrimination. For Black women, it's not just about gender OR race separately - it's both amplified together, resulting in unique, compounded forms of disadvantage that can't be fully captured by looking at either identity alone. 🔄 🧱 Concrete CeilingUnlike the glass ceiling, which women generally face, Black women encounter the concrete ceiling—an even tougher, nearly impenetrable barrier to career advancement. Breaking through requires extraordinary effort and resilience, making it a harsher reality in corporate spaces. 🚨 Glass Cliff When Black women finally ascend to leadership roles, it’s often during a crisis. They’re handed roles with high risk and low support; if things go wrong, they are blamed. This is the glass cliff, where failure is almost built into the role. 👁️ Intersectional Invisibility Black women often feel both hyper-visible(constantly under scrutiny) and invisible (their contributions overlooked). They don’t fit the stereotypical image of a “leader” or “professional,” leading to them being ignored or undermined while their every move is still intensely scrutinised. 💡 These terms represent real obstacles faced by Black women in the workplace. Now that you're familiar, how will you dismantle these barriers? It’s time to take action and create a space where Black women can thrive.

💼 It's time to expand our vocabulary and deepen our understanding of Black women's experiences in the workplace. I'm about to school you on some important terms every leader, manager, HR, DEI, and Wellbeing pro should know: 📚 Essential Glossary: Understanding Black Women's Workplace Challenges 📖 Intersectionality Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality highlights how social identities like race and gender overlap, creating intertwined systems of discrimination. For Black women, it's not just about gender OR race separately - it's both amplified together, resulting in unique, compounded forms of disadvantage that can't be fully captured by looking at either identity alone. 🔄 🧱 Concrete CeilingUnlike the glass ceiling, which women generally face, Black women encounter the concrete ceiling—an even tougher, nearly impenetrable barrier to career advancement. Breaking through requires extraordinary effort and resilience, making it a harsher reality in corporate spaces. 🚨 Glass Cliff When Black women finally ascend to leadership roles, it’s often during a crisis. They’re handed roles with high risk and low support; if things go wrong, they are blamed. This is the glass cliff, where failure is almost built into the role. 👁️ Intersectional Invisibility Black women often feel both hyper-visible(constantly under scrutiny) and invisible (their contributions overlooked). They don’t fit the stereotypical image of a “leader” or “professional,” leading to them being ignored or undermined while their every move is still intensely scrutinised. 💡 These terms represent real obstacles faced by Black women in the workplace. Now that you're familiar, how will you dismantle these barriers? It’s time to take action and create a space where Black women can thrive.

The current news cycle in the UK may be triggering for many Black women across various stages of their careers. I won't re-share the headlines/front pages - they are very much available for those who are interested in seeing them. I have probably shared this piece before but I think it is worth sharing again particularly given how intense the framing & messaging has been. I don't think it is for Black women to "solve" a problem that they did not create. I do think that Black women deserve safety though and protection where it matters. Black women are undermined, ridiculed, erased, disrespected, minimised, insulted and abused so often that society sees it as normal. They expect us to take it and move on. The hatred permeates all areas of the spaces that we navigate. And it does not matter how hard you work or what social ranking you have. None of that matters, in fact our value should not even be tied to those factors but capitalist thought made us believe that the harder we worked the more respect we would earn. That is false. We are living in a society that does not respect us. Black women continue to create safe spaces for themselves outside of the realms of a society that quite literally wishes death upon us and seeks many ways to ensure that death comes sooner rather than later. And although we are not safe in this society we must continue to create our own nurturing communities and sooth ourselves as best we can. 💌 Creating Psychological Safety for Black Women at Your Company "Lean In’s report, The State of Black Women in Corporate America, released in 2020, sheds more light on the disconnect between self-proclaimed allyship and Black women’s true experience at work: “More than 80% of white women and men say they see themselves as allies to people of color at work. But less than half of Black women feel that they personally have strong allies at work — and barely a quarter think it’s mostly accurate that Black women have strong allies in their workplace.” An important piece by Agatha Agbanobi, M.Ed, CDP and T. Viva Asmelash for Harvard Business Review

The current news cycle in the UK may be triggering for many Black women across various stages of their careers. I won't re-share the headlines/front pages - they are very much available for those who are interested in seeing them. I have probably shared this piece before but I think it is worth sharing again particularly given how intense the framing & messaging has been. I don't think it is for Black women to "solve" a problem that they did not create. I do think that Black women deserve safety though and protection where it matters. Black women are undermined, ridiculed, erased, disrespected, minimised, insulted and abused so often that society sees it as normal. They expect us to take it and move on. The hatred permeates all areas of the spaces that we navigate. And it does not matter how hard you work or what social ranking you have. None of that matters, in fact our value should not even be tied to those factors but capitalist thought made us believe that the harder we worked the more respect we would earn. That is false. We are living in a society that does not respect us. Black women continue to create safe spaces for themselves outside of the realms of a society that quite literally wishes death upon us and seeks many ways to ensure that death comes sooner rather than later. And although we are not safe in this society we must continue to create our own nurturing communities and sooth ourselves as best we can. 💌 Creating Psychological Safety for Black Women at Your Company "Lean In’s report, The State of Black Women in Corporate America, released in 2020, sheds more light on the disconnect between self-proclaimed allyship and Black women’s true experience at work: “More than 80% of white women and men say they see themselves as allies to people of color at work. But less than half of Black women feel that they personally have strong allies at work — and barely a quarter think it’s mostly accurate that Black women have strong allies in their workplace.” An important piece by Agatha Agbanobi, M.Ed, CDP and T. Viva Asmelash for Harvard Business Review