The Challenge for Minority Aspiring Executives
Most executives "know" that diversity is good for business. However, in the past 10 years, we’ve made only incremental progress toward truly diverse teams. Why?
(Teddy the Corgi; Fort Bragg, California)
Diverse teams spend more time discussing the facts, discover unforeseen pitfalls, and come up with more innovative solutions.[i] Research shows that companies with more than 30 percent women executives are more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30. In turn, these companies are more likely to outperform those with less than 10 percent of women executives.[ii] A substantial difference in outperformance—48 percent—separates the most gender-diverse companies from the least gender-diverse companies.[iii] Ethnic diversity leads to similar improvements in business performance and innovation.
However, in the United States, white males still account for 70 percent of C-level and 86 percent of CEOs in Fortune 100 companies. Women account for roughly 48 percent of entry-level employees, but only 33 percent of the VP and C-suite.[iv] In the technology industry specifically, women account for 25 percent of the technical workforce,[v] but only 5 percent of the executive roles overall.[vi]
In diversity by race, Asian women have the lowest Executive Parity Index (percentage of executives as a percentage of total professionals) at 0.3 percent[vii] . White men are six-fold higher at 1.83 percent. White women and Asian men are at roughly 0.6 percent.[viii] Less than 1.5 percent of Fortune 1000 board directors are Asian women, and 72 percent have no Asian directors at all.[ix] The story is similar for other underrepresented ethnic groups like Hispanics and Blacks.
As an Asian woman, a double minority by gender and race, I’ve had to overcome more challenges than my white male colleagues to become chief product and technology officer. While higher education institutions and some entry-level jobs are meritocracies, the further up on the career ladder, the more the biases we face as a minority lead to an outsize impact on our chances of success.
While the statistics are discouraging in aggregate, they can also be viewed as an exciting opportunity to make a difference (I’m a type 7 enneagram - always optimistic and seeing the silver lining). If it’s easy, someone would have already done it.
Tackling difficult problems requires the right mindset and persistence. Pessimists rarely make generational changes. Here’s a few tactics that will help you reframe your mindset and beat the odds:
Focus on identifying, defining, and broadcasting your unique value proposition to the team, company, or community. You are not a statistic. You are a unique individual who has a unique perspective and skillset to bring to the table.
Focus your energy on finding a single opportunity that gets you closer to your objective. Rather than looking at the big picture and feeling intimidated, take it one step at a time.
Remind yourself that there are people like you who have made it despite the odds, and even more people well on their way that you simply haven’t heard of yet. While perhaps not the majority, it is also far quite probable. If they can do it, so can you!
Build community: find and surround yourself with like minded people who are not satisfied with status quo, love to give and support each other, and lean on them to be your strength through the difficult moments.
[i] David Rock and Heidi Grant, “Why Diverse Teams are Smarter” Harvard Business Review, November 4, 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter.
[ii] Sundiatu Dixon-Fyle et al., “Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters,” McKinsey and Company, May 19, 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters.
[iii] Dixon-Fyle et al., “Diversity Wins.”
[iv] Emily Field et al., “Women in the Workplace 2023,” McKinsey and Company, October 5, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace.
[v] Sara Harrison, “Five Years of Tech Diversity Reports, and Little Progress,” Wired, October 1, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/five-years-tech-diversity-reports-little-progress.
[vi] Baires Technology Team, “Women in Technology: Key Statistics for 2023,” BairesDev, accessed November 10, 2023, https://www.bairesdev.com/blog/women-in-technology-key-statistics.
[vii] Tina Kim, Denise Peck, and Buck Gee, “Race, Gender & the Double Glass Ceiling: An Analysis of EEOC National Workforce Data,” December 2020, Ascent Pan-Asian Leaders, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e8bce29f730fc7358d4bc35/t/5ff66a62cc85ca2d29e2d858/1609984611034/Race-Gender-And-The-Double-Glass-Ceiling.pdf.
[viii] Kim, Peck, and Gee, “Race, Gender & the Double Glass Ceiling.”
[ix] “Women CEOs in America 2021 Report,” Women Business Collaborative, October 13, 2021, https://www.wbcollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Women-CEOS-in-America_2021_1013-2.pdf.