Drilling Holes in the Concrete Ceiling: Three Workplace Strategies for Racialized Women

You have likely heard the term "glass ceiling" before. This is a metaphor commonly used to describe a barrier that prevents women from rising above a certain level in a workplace hierarchy.

But have you heard of the "concrete ceiling", "bamboo ceiling", "celluloid ceiling", "glass escalator", or "stained-glass ceiling"? These terms have emerged in conversations about equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the workplace because Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality has extended the discussion beyond merely gender. The ascension of intersectional approaches to EDI have created space for more nuanced considerations of how ethnicity, race, and the specific constraints of certain professions impact our career progression.

In this article, I will focus on the concept of the concrete ceiling, a term that extends the glass ceiling metaphor to better represent the experiences of many racialized women in the workplace. While glass is breakable - albeit with some force and much discomfort - and see-through, concrete, on the other hand, is practically impossible to break through alone and impossible to see through. To a person who is viewing a concrete ceiling from below, it seems like a dead end with no visible path of how to ascend beyond the level they are currently on.

This is what many racialized women feel in their workplaces, in addition to having to cope with the intersecting burdens of race and gender in the form of microaggressions, harassment, and stereotyping. Unfortunately, many racialized women end up leaving their workplaces because of a lack of advancement opportunities and structural barriers related to their identities, leading to (yet another metaphor!) the "leaky pipeline" effect.

In the process of striving to reach our work goals and to satiate our professional ambitions, racialized women often feel overwhelmed when faced with the multitude of issues that must be addressed to overcome these systemic barriers. Many of the actions that need to be taken are the responsibility of those already in power, who typically belong to one or more of the following categories: white, male, wealthy.

It is important to note that not all women are racialized in the same way, and different challenges exist depending on how we are racialized. For example, Asian Canadians and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have to deal with the model minority myth, which pits them against other racialized people to uphold white supremacy; Black women have to cope with harmful stereotypes about outwards displays of strong emotions; and Indigenous women have even fewer role models compared with other racialized women because of the myriad of issues related to on-going settler colonialism.

I want to share three strategies that we can adopt to make progress towards demolishing the concrete ceiling that holds us all back from reaching our full potential at work. These tactics can - and should - extend beyond our own ethnic groups to create solidarity among all racialized women who share similar workplace challenges.

Build a community of role models

We have all looked up to role models throughout our training and career, but let's step it up and build a community of them. This community does not have to be IRL either, they can be an online community of people who inspire you and uplift your aspirations.

Read the biographies and autobiographies of impressive women of colour, listen to podcasts by us or where we are being interviewed, follow hashtags like #GirlBoss and #BossBabe on your socials, and create empowering playlist of music by women of colour of all ages.

Basically, look for role models everywhere. Surround yourself with empowering examples of racialized women who are leading the way, even if you do not have this community of role models in your life or workplace (yet).

Abundant transparency, instead of competition

As the graphic above by COCo showed (and explained in this article), people of colour are often pitted against each other in the workplace. This can lead to a heightened sense of competition and could even lead to toxicity between racialized co-workers.

Instead of falling into this scarcity mindset, we can cultivate an abundance mindset instead. Ways of living the abundance mindset include being transparent about our salary, sharing the story of "how we got here", and being honest about negative work place experiences with other racialized women. We can volunteer (or get paid) to speak to students at our alma mater and share templates, practical tips, and advice for young graduates who are entering the job market or exploring graduate school options.

Sponsor and advocate, and start now

We all know that racialized women have to work harder to reach our goals and to make ourselves indispensable to our organizations. But once you have a foothold in the organization and gain more influence, start sponsoring someone "below" you in the hierarchy and then continue to advocate for others throughout your career.

We can all be a sponsor, even if we are still early on in our careers. For example, if you are a graduate student teaching an undergraduate course and spot a promising student who is a woman of colour, you can sponsor her to join your research lab when you meet with the lab manager or senior researchers. If you are a junior analyst in a company supervising a superb co-op student or intern, you could be a sponsor to them by putting in a good word when their performance is discussed at a team meeting to recruit new hires.

In my experience as someone who has been both a sponsor and someone who has been sponsored, sponsorship makes a really big difference in hearing about opportunities, getting promoted, and feeling like a valued member of the team.

Although meaningful leadership from our workplaces' upper echelons is desperately needed to demolish the concrete ceiling, we can start by drilling holes in the ceiling so that we can get a glimpse of a different future.

And one day, when racialized women are more equitably represented in leadership, let's not forget to continually apply a critical lens to ourselves and to the systems we work in so that people who are still missing from the table are not forgotten. Because we all know that in addition to gender, ethnicity, and race, there are many qualified people who face workplace barriers because of their sexual orientation and gender presentation, visible and invisible (dis)abilities, religious and spiritual beliefs, and other aspects that enrich our identities.

Lastly, when you pick up the proverbial drill to crack through the concrete ceiling, please take good care of yourself and each other by keeping this quote in mind:

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”

— Maya Angelou