Women's History Month - Black female leaders

Leadership, particular at senior levels, is still a male-dominated space, with western, white, male leaders traditionally occupying the most strategic positions.

There is a paucity or total invisibility of Black women within the senior ranks of organisations and the experience of individuals from this social identity group remains underexplored, overlooked or from the lens of others.

My research passion is to give voice to Black female leaders in the UK about their unique experience within their leadership and career progression journey.

With my study, I shed light on this journey by looking through the lens of Black female leaders in mid- and senior management positions in the UK private sector.

These women provide some very important as well as disturbing insights into how growing up in the UK as first or second-generation migrants or coming to the UK from countries in Africa and the Caribbean, shaped their Black female Identity in the UK and subsequent identity tensions. Individuals speak about becoming and being Black AND female in the UK society and the tensions between their individual, professional and collective Black female identity while trying to navigate hindering perceptions and behavioural manifestations at the workplace.

Part of this experience is often having to work ten times harder than everyone else to be recognised professionally and pave the way for as well as empower more junior Black female leaders, while at the same time wanting to be recognised as individuals in their own right.

“But with the race, I only started to think as a matter of fact, it was when I came into this country that I realized that I was what they call Black. Yeah, because it never occurred to me. And it's not just black as the color of the skin, but it's certain social baggage that is attached to that tag being black that completely, I think in a way dehumanizes you because it fails to recognize everything that you bring to the table in terms of skill set, it completely erodes that. And it just tags you, gives you this label and the baggage that comes along with it. It was when I came here that I started to see that.”

“I can forget sometimes that there are other, especially younger black people who need support from me, who've already walked a path that they are beginning to walk themselves and that they need my support. But I hate labels. The black, the female, the Christian, I hate all these labels. Can I not just be someone that cares that happens to want to support anybody?”

Black female leaders share how important it is for key others, such as line-managers and peers, to understand their collective Black female experience and struggle as well as get to know them as individuals beyond race and gender, to be able to provide empowering sponsorship which actively pushes against racial and gender hurdles.

Written by Dr Obiageli Heidelberger-Nkenke, Lecturer in Personal Development and Organisational Behaviour for international