The Ugly Truth About Work for Women of Colour – And Why HR Keeps Failing Them
Your diversity initiatives aren't working. Here's the hard truth about the biggest barriers women of colour still face
For years, companies have applauded themselves for hiring more women and a few more people from different backgrounds. They run workshops, post statements, and call it progress. But the numbers tell a different story – a story that most HR departments don’t want to look at too closely.
A new survey of over 2,000 UK workers, reported in People Management, spells it out: women of colour face the worst treatment at work, by a long way.
If you care about fairness, or even just about keeping good people, you need to pay attention.
The Numbers Are Brutal
Let’s start with the headline: 79% of women of colour said they had faced problems at work in the past year. Compare that to 63% of white women and 65% of white men. That gap is massive. And it’s not because women of colour are more sensitive. It’s because they are treated differently.
Here are some of the specific things they reported:
29% said their ideas were ignored, dismissed, or rejected – until someone else repeated the same idea and got credit. If your workplace does that, you are literally shutting down good ideas. In a business world where innovation is everything, that’s like deliberately breaking your own engine.
One in five said they experienced microaggressions or outright discrimination. That’s more than double the rate for white women and white men.
23% said they carry the mental weight of “representing” their ethnicity. Translation: they feel like they always have to be the voice for their whole group, on top of doing their actual job. That’s exhausting, and it means they have less energy for the work they were hired to do.
58% discovered a colleague of a different ethnic background was paid more for the same work. Let that sink in. More than half found out they were being paid less than someone else doing the same job.
47% said they were behind where they expected to be in their careers. That’s not about laziness. It’s about being held back.
The Usual Excuses Don’t Hold Up
If you work in HR or management, you’ve probably heard – or even used, some of these excuses:
“We hire based on merit.” Then why are women of colour paid less for the same work?
“We treat everyone the same.” Then why are their ideas ignored until a white man says them?
“We have a diversity programme.” Then why are 79% of them reporting problems?
The truth is, treating everyone the same doesn’t work when the system was built by and for one group. Women of colour face a double dose of bias – for being women and for being from an ethnic minority. That’s what academics call “intersectionality,” but plain English calls it “getting hit from both sides.”
The Manager Problem
The report quotes Mandy Rico, who calls line managers the “ultimate gatekeeper.” She’s right.
Most managers get promoted because they were good at their old job, not because they know how to manage people fairly. Then we give them a one‑day course on bias and expect them to get it right.
When a manager doesn’t know how to talk about race or doesn’t notice when a woman of colour gets left out of important meetings, that manager is actively hurting the business.
21% of women of colour said they had been overlooked for projects that would have helped their careers. That’s not a small problem. That’s how talent leaves.
Why Most “Solutions” Are Just Window Dressing
When asked what would help, women of colour gave some clear answers:
41% said clearer promotion criteria. In simple English: they want to know exactly what it takes to get ahead, instead of vague “fit” or “potential” judgments that often hide bias.
30% wanted to see more senior leaders who look like them. Not surprising. If you never see anyone like you at the top, it’s hard to believe you can get there.
26% said add salary bands to job adverts. That’s basic transparency. If a job has a set pay range, everyone knows what to expect. Without it, negotiation favours people who were taught to ask for more – often not women of colour.
20% said voluntary ethnicity pay gap reporting. This one is actually too weak. “Voluntary” means most companies won’t do it unless forced. If you’re serious, you don’t wait for volunteers.
What Needs to Change
Let’s stop with the euphemisms. Here’s what can actually work:
1. Make promotion rules crystal clear. If you can’t write down exactly why someone got promoted – using specific, measurable reasons, then your promotion system is broken. Vague criteria let bias slip in. Write the rules down. Share them. Stick to them.
2. Make managers accountable. Right now, most managers are judged on whether their team hits targets. Add another target: whether people from underrepresented groups actually advance. If a manager has no women of colour moving up, ask why. If they can’t answer, that’s a problem.
3. Publish pay ranges. Put the salary on every job advert. That’s not radical; it’s just fair. When you do that, you stop the game where some people get paid less simply because they didn’t negotiate hard enough.
4. Publicly report ethnicity pay gaps – by gender. If you only report the overall ethnicity pay gap, you miss the fact that women of colour often face the biggest gap. Break the numbers down. Publish them. Let everyone see. Then fix them.
5. Move from mentorship to sponsorship. Mentorship is advice. Sponsorship is someone using their power to put you forward for opportunities. Every senior leader should be able to name at least one woman of colour they have actively sponsored into a better role. If they can’t, they aren’t leading.
A Reality Check for Leaders
Sandra Kerr from Business in the Community said something that should be obvious but isn’t: employers must make sure women of colour get access to “good work and key projects” so they can show what they can do.
That sounds simple, but right now it’s not happening. Women of colour are being left out, paid less, and ignored. Then we wonder why they leave.
The Bottom Line
You can keep running diversity workshops and posting nice statements. That’s the easy part.
The hard part is looking at your own promotion data, pay data, and retention data – broken down by race and gender, and admitting there’s a problem.
This isn’t about being “nice” or “inclusive.” It’s about business. If you’re ignoring a third of your workforce’s ideas, paying them less, and burning them out with microaggressions, you’re not just being unfair. You’re being stupid. You’re losing talent, losing innovation, and opening yourself up to lawsuits.
The data is clear. The solutions are known. The only question is whether leaders have the backbone to do something about it.