This article on hbr.org written by Deepa Purushothaman covers how women of color had been taught to outwork everyone around them in order to take their seat at the table.
Graduation season is both stressful and exciting for any student. It’s a time of transitions, celebration, and possibility. It’s also the season of well-meaning but unsolicited advice. Family members, mentors, and even thought leaders dole out nuggets of wisdom meant to help graduates navigate the opportunities and challenges they’ll face as they make the leap from university to the work world. While much of the advice is time tested and prudent (don’t burn bridges, cultivate transferable skills, exercise grit, etc.), and most is harmless, some is not only outdated, but downright harmful.
One such well-meaning but problematic piece of advice is what we give to young women of color, when we urge them to “succeed by outworking their competition.”
As a former executive who now studies leadership, race, and gender in the workplace, and the author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, I’ve heard story after story of women of color who shared they had been taught to outwork everyone around them in order to take their seat at the table. We think we’re being helpful and pragmatic when we tell young women of color that though they may face “challenges” (aka discrimination), they can triumph if they do more, work longer hours, sacrifice more of their personal lives, and raise their hands to accept the toughest, least glamorous tasks.
But we’re teaching them to accept a broken system and to adapt to it at great personal cost. As a woman of color, the truth I learned through my own experience and that of the more than 500 women of color leaders I interviewed is that by the time many of us make it to positions of power, we don’t feel more empowered, we feel powerless. After a lifetime of over functioning, and overperforming, we end up disconnected, hypercritical of ourselves, and unable to lead from a place of authenticity and vision. We don’t feel triumphant; instead, we feel stifled, isolated, and under extreme pressure.
For the entire article visit: Stop Telling Young Women of Color to Accept a Broken System
