THIS WEEK
While many may be familar with the glass ceiling holding back white women, Black women face a second, ‘concrete ceiling’ that often curtails their career progression at large companies
News Analysis The concrete ceiling
It’s time to break the concrete ceiling
Theophina Gabri @lilaphina
I
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t’s hard to imagine, but early last year I was crammed into a bustling room of young
editorial assistants and agents’ assistants, swapping industry stories in a tastefully dimly lit room in Chinatown. It’s harder still to reflect on the fact that I ended up there by chance. I had decided to apply for an internship scheme on a whim before my last universit exam in 2019. Amid stressful revisions, I hadn’t put much time into my application and so was pleasantly surprised when I received an invitation to interview. Only aſter entering the building (carefully decorated with much-loved titles) and listening to the stories of other prospective interns did I become aware of just how concrete the door into publishing can be, let alone the ceiling. I began to feel woefully unpre- pared, and kicked myself at the irony of only realising how much of an opportunit this was as I was stepping into a room for my interview. I decided to give it my best shot, and was elated when I received a call later to confirm that I had been selected. I wanted
24 9th April 2021
to enter the industry because, at heart, I was a lover of good writ- ing. As an avid champion of Black creatives and as a writer myself, I also saw entering the industry as the perfect opportunit to see and study the internal mechanics that operate behind the stories on our shelves, and why Black ones weren’t making it through at a proportionate rate.
The concrete ceiling numbers According to a 2000 academic article on Black working women in the US, the concrete ceiling denotes “artificial barriers based on atitudinal or organisational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organisation into management-level positions”. This phenomenon refers to Black, Asian and ethnically marginalised women, rather than white women, who are the key subjects of “glass ceiling” discussions; the multiple intersections of bias that non-white women face form a tougher barrier than the glass
ceiling of gender alone, as research from
Leanin.org illustrates. Its research reported 48% of Black women wanting to be top executives, compared to 37% of white women. I fell in love with publish- ing, and had a wonderful time meeting brilliant
Black authors and working in a team where I felt culturally understood. I was lucky enough to have a placement in which I felt overwhelmingly supported and welcomed. However, gossip over industry drinks revealed that ending up with an experience like mine was simply luck of the draw. Horror stories of icy line managers, departments where “edgy” racist humour was thrown around casually over email, and tales where nobody spoke to the intern unless it was for a “race
book” were common. Statistics from a survey by social enterprise Creative Access conducted in 2019 backs up these anecdotes; when it comes to feeling welcome within the industry, 55% of interns from underrepresented backgrounds (ethnically, socioeconomically and in terms of disabilit) stated that they “did not feel the industry was open to change and welcom- ing towards people from different backgrounds”. My internship wasn’t without its challenges, but I was lucky enough to have a wonderful Black woman from HR as my mentor. She checked in on me regularly, and was always on hand with great advice whenever I felt myself struggling to navigate my workspace. Recently, there has been an uptick in books geared towards addressing the specific challenges of Black professionals: Living While Black by Guilaine Kinouani (Ebury), Black Girl Finance by Selina Flavius (Quercus) and Millennial Black by Sophie Williams (HQ). There
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