‘Mirrortocracy’ at work is disadvantaging black women, study shows

Mediocre managers are stifling the careers of black professional women by hiring candidates based on their own image. This is the conclusion of a report published by the LSE which finds evidence that managers’ adopting a biased approach to recruitment is disadvantaging black women in what has been dubbed as ‘mirrortocracy’. The report calls for greater transparency on pay and promotions for black women working in big tech, financial and professional services to counteract managers’ negative biases.

The research was commissioned to better understand the barriers black women face in the workplace and involved in-depth interviews with 38 black women in those sectors. They found that 7 in 10 believed they were being paid less than their comparable peers, with more than 10% reporting pay gaps as high as 30%. Almost two-thirds reported difficulties being their authentic selves at work, and felt forced to change their persona to fit in with their company’s culture. 45% said that despite attempts to conform to their firm’s standards of dress and hair, they still experienced negative encounters with colleagues. Almost all of the women, 92%, said they wanted to see systemic change within their workplaces.

This has been picked up by the CIPD’s People Management with that headline ‘Mediocre’ managers stifling black professional women's careers’. They make the point that businesses need to embrace inclusive leadership style at all levels. They quote Grace Lordan, co-author of the study, who says: ‘until inclusive leadership is embraced by managers at all levels, we are stuck in a compliance phase where audits and monitoring can help ensure that black women aren’t left behind because of mirrortocracy’. 

So let’s get some reaction to that. Kate Dodd is a diversity and inclusion specialist who joined me by video-link from Manchester to discuss the issues. I started by asking Kate what she made of People Management’s article: 

Kate Dodd: “Yes, I think it's a really interesting article. I have to say, it didn't come as a surprise and I also have to say that I thought it was really well written. This is really an article about intersectionality, more than anything else. We've talked about the glass ceiling for a long time. We know that women have struggled to reach the heights of men in traditional businesses and, in fact, even in new businesses the same types of things tend to manifest themselves and, of course, what we know is, where there are women are men of colour, that can also be an additional obstacle to overcome. So when we're talking about black women in particular, there's a phrase called the ‘double glazed glass ceiling’ and I think that's absolutely right here. I think it is a real issue and that we are seeing across society and these findings in the report, Joe, were no surprise to me. I particularly love the phrase ‘mirrortocracy’. I have been a long and passionate advocate of the fact that I don't believe meritocracy exists. I think people who say well, I promote, I recruit on meritocracy, don't have a real understanding of what that means because I think that for anybody to say, look, I apply the same test to everybody and the best person will therefore come to the surface, will succeed, fails to take into account different challenges, different experiences, etcetera, of the people who are going in for that. We cannot apply the same test to everybody and expect just the best people to succeed. Mirrortocracy reflects the fact that we've talked about for a long time that many of us recruit and promote people in our own images and that's a real danger, I think, and continues to be a real danger through to 2022.”

Joe Glavina: “One of the key themes they map out in the report is Team Culture. They say managers need to create a team environment that is inclusive of everyone, including black women.”

Kate Dodd: “Yes, I thought this was really interesting point around team culture because there are two things that need to be in place for a team to have an inclusive and effective culture. The first thing is awareness. All of us want to say that we're good people and that we treat everybody the same and that we create a welcoming environment but it is very important that we do hold up a mirror to ourselves, we look at our team, we consider whether or not we have diversity within our team, and I don't just mean diversity of traditional things such as gender or race or sexual orientation. It's also diversity and its truest form of kind of different types of thinkers, different types of personalities because, of course, for a team culture to be effective it's about having an environment where everybody gets their say, the quietest voices are heard, everybody has an equal seat at the table. Of course, in with that goes training. We cannot expect teams to have strong, inclusive cultures to attract and retain the best talent if people are not trained, if people don't know how to recognise bias in themselves and in others, and also if there isn't a regular process of listening, understanding what people's experiences are within that team. So with things like exit interviews, it’s so important exit interviews take place because it allows you, as a business, to understand why people are leaving and if there are particular issues within a team or within team culture.”

Joe Glavina: “Another of the central themes is Role Models. So they say you need role models to inspire the next generation and circumvent the problem of ‘cognitive bias and closed mindedness’.”

Kate Dodd: “Yes, really important and one of the most crucial things I would say. The clients that we've worked with on their own diversity and inclusion journeys, and also ourselves at Pinsent, Masons, have recognised the importance of role models. I was having this conversation the other day actually with somebody and I was saying, you know, when I came into the, the legal profession in 2000 there was a big emphasis as I became a junior lawyer on role models. So lots and lots of female role models but were they relatable? No they were not. Lots of these women were extremely impressive but they felt like a million miles away from me. They felt like they had the kind of life that either I couldn't aspire to or, frankly, I didn't want to aspire to because I was maybe looking for more of a work life balance and there were lots of things in their life that seemed incredibly impressive and that was almost a bit intimidating. So real focus, I think, has to be on real role models and that is about having role models at every level of your business. It's great if you've got an inspirational CEO, inspirational managing director or senior partner, but it's about making sure that everybody has access, and those people will be able to inspire the level below them, or even below that, but you need to have these relatable role models at all sorts of different levels in your business. It’s particularly important now because we've got real skills problems, skills shortages in the UK, massively exacerbated by COVID and Brexit and everything else that's going on at the moment and it's about finding role models for people so they feel they've got someone to aspire to, they've got somebody to talk to, they’ve got somebody who will essentially create that stickability so that somebody then wants to stay with you and stay in your business and it's really important that that is done in a targeted way. I'm sure, Joe, we can share in the bio from this, the Pinsent Masons Real Role Model document that we've produced recently that's really inspiring.”

That report by the LSE is called ‘Transparent: Creating Organisations Inclusive of Black Women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology’. From an HR perspective, it is actually very useful because it is packed with a number of well-thought-out Action Points – steps employers can take which can be measured. We have put a link to the report in the transcript of this programme. We have also put a link to the Pinsent Masons’ Real Role Model document which Kate mentioned in that interview.

LINKS
- Link to LSE’s report: Transparent: Creating Organisations Inclusive of Black Women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology
Inclusivity-of-Black-Women.pdf (lse.ac.uk)
- Link to Pinsent Masons’ Real Role Model document