In early January, the Executive Leadership Council® and Harris Interactive®  polled senior corporate executives about the challenges facing and opportunities available to Black women in executive roles at major U.S. corporations.  According to the poll, senior executives identify the top 3 challenges facing Black professional women as:

• “Weaker or less strategic networks available (31%)
• Inaccurate perceptions of African-American women’s capabilities (24%), and
• Work/life balance demands (23%)”

These findings dovetail with ELC’s 2008 research, Black Women Executives Research Initiative, which focused on challenges and critical success factors for executive-level Black women.  This is really important research, especially considering the lack of available data on professional African-American women.

You can read the executive summary of the research here, and of the poll here.

Recognizing the significant contributions made by Latinas to the business world is the order of the day.

Today, we will focus on an important group of businesswomen, who call themselves Madrinas (Spanish for “godmother”). Their mission has been to “[support] the career advancement of Latinas in today’s corporate/business environment” since 2002. Their tag line is “Latinas Empowering Latinas” and to me, it signifies something powerful: the notion of women helping women. We certainly need more of that in business. If you haven’t visited their website, check out the link above.

More on Hispanic Heritage Month throughout September and into October.

JFC

For the business-minded, another milestone appears even earlier: among the working age population, multicultural people are anticipated to be the majority in 2039!

Of course these dates seem like a long way off, but it is essential that companies have strategies in place to handle this already-occurring demographic shift. Many of our nation’s largest companies do not yet have a meaningful diversity strategy. I think it is important that diversity be understood within the context of human capital strategy. As companies continue to see major waves of retirement and an increasingly multicultural workforce, diversity strategies may prove to be an important source of talent.

Read the Census press release here.

Interesting, huh? This adds yet another lens to the multicultural women’s discussion.

According to a press release sent out yesterday, the Anita Borg Institute will host TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color on September 10-11, 2008 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. The purpose of the event is to help entry to mid-level women of color develop their influencing skills, refine their technical vision, and network with other women of color in the High Tech industry.

Recent research from the National Science Foundation found that women of color earn fewer than 9.4% computer science and 7.1% engineering bachelors degrees, and–as is often the case–are virtually invisible at the senior levels of both fields. The Institute is hoping to address these and other related issues. An interesting idea, to say the least.

You can check out the conference here.

To find out, I went to the recent statistics released by the Women’s Data Center of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Here’s what I found:

Participation Rates
African-American women have the highest participation in the labor force at 63.1%. This rate is 4-6% higher than any other group of women. White women and Native American women participate in the labor force at around 58% (58.8% and 58.2%, respectively), followed by Asian-American (57.5%) and Hispanic/Latinas (56.6%).

I am now reminded of the welfare queen stereotype, generally used against African-American and Latinas/Hispanic women. Oh, right, we can see from these statistics that the women in these groups participate in the labor force at almost an equal rate (Latinas) or a greater rate (African-Americans) than White women. So much for stereotypes.

Mind the Gap!
And there are more nuggets of information: in order to compare the rates at which men and women in these groups are working, the gap (or difference) in their labor participation rates was measured:

African-Americans – 5.6% difference between the men and women’s participation rates. This is the smallest gap across all ethnic groups.

Asian-Americans – 15.8% difference between the men and women’s participation rates.

Caucasian/Whites – 13.7% difference between the men and women’s participation rates.

Latinos/Hispanics – 22.7% difference between the men and women’s participation rates.

Native Americans – 10.6% difference between the men and women’s participation rates.

These numbers remind us that large percentages of multicultural women are participating in the labor force, and underscore the need for programs and initiatives related to their professional development and career advancement.

JFC

Indus Women Leaders (IWL) is a non-profit organization geared toward the professional and personal development of South Asian women.

Cool idea, huh?

They have quite a bit of information on their website, including information about their chapters, 2008 Board of Directors, and other organizational information.

Now look at their member demographics:

• Over 80% have a Master’s Degree or higher
• Over 95% have at least 5-7 years of experience
• Over 56% make purchase decisions for a household
• Over 50% work in an organization with 500+ employees

I really hope companies and other professionals will take this organization seriously. It’s a great example of the types of groups that multicultural women are forming.

I only have one question for the women of IWL: what about a New York City chapter?

JFC

The site now has registration information and provides an agenda. More information is available on the Conference Homepage.

The conference will be held in New York City on June 24, 2008 at Bayard’s in Hanover Square.

I encourage everyone to attend; it promises to be an excellent event!

JFC

One recent study was released in mid-May by Catalyst on Women of Color in Accounting. This research is is part of their Women of Color in Professional Services series and was sponsored by Ernst & Young (lead sponsor), Deloitte & Touche LLP, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (contributing sponsors). Katherine Giscombe, who has been at the helm of quite a bit of Catalyst research on women of color led this project.

The study found that the experiences of women of color overlapped with men of color and with their Caucasian female counterparts, but that they ultimately faced barriers similar to those groups but to a greater degree. Below is a list of significant challenges faced by women of color in accounting:

• challenges navigating a client based environment
• lack of similar role models
• exclusion from networks
• lack of high-visibility assignments and business development opportunities

I am looking forward to reading this report and think it’s great that Catalyst has continued this line of research.

For more information, read the press release or the full report.

JFC