Ellen McGirt* says the problem for women of colour climbing the corporate ladder begins when they first try to seek leadership roles.
When Indra Nooyi (pictured) announced she was leaving the top spot at PepsiCo, it triggered a painful and necessary look at the plight of women in executive leadership.
There are now only 22 women Chief Executives in the Fortune 500 index. None are of colour.
While we continue to celebrate some overdue firsts, the pipeline of Chief Executive -ready women is thin.
Recently, Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup Company; Margo Georgiadis of Mattel; and Irene Rosenfeld of Mondelez have all left the top spot.
All, like Ms Nooyi, were replaced by a man.
According to data compiled by Catalyst, since 2009 only three female Chief Executives were followed by another woman.
The glass ceiling is entrenched, particularly for women who aren’t white.
The problems start early.
The biggest gender gap strikes at the first leadership level.
Women hired in as individual contributors are 18 per cent less likely to be promoted into management than their male peers.
The data makes clear that representation goes downhill from there, particularly for women of colour.
Ms Nooyi says ‘high profile’ women are often poached earlier in their careers to lead smaller firms.
The traditional model of “bread-winning-husband-uproots-family-to-be-groomed-overseas” doesn’t work for everyone, she says
“How do we give them the international experiences? We have to develop those women differently,” Ms Nooyi says.
Part of what she seems to be saying is that everyone needs to be developed differently.
There simply can’t be a single, 35-year-long path to the top.
A Women in the Workplace study examined a laundry list of barriers that women experience.
These included the wage gap, lack of sponsorship, the burden of parenting and so on.
All of which are amplified for women of colour in very real ways.
All of these insights provide fodder for best practices and remedies that could work across industries.
Of course, more data is needed and I expect there will be new ways to measure the impact of systemic contempt for professional women in the workplace.
* Ellen McGirt covers race and culture @fortunemagazine. She tweets at @ellmcgirt
The full version of this article appeared at http://fortune.com.
