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The 'Black Glass Ceiling' Is Real & Here's How To Smash It

In over 30 years of my working life, I have hardly ever come across a black woman in an organisation in a position of influence and major decision making. Admittedly, there are a few more now than before and, thank God, the number is starting to grow. I am encouraged and inspired particularly by the younger black women who are showing determination, ambition and a decidedness that gives hope for the future. 

The black glass ceiling, however, is still there. It is present, it is hard, it is visible – yet not acknowledged. It is the endemic system of work, the infrastructure that guards decision making, the dominant logic that pervades all aspects of business up and down the supply chain that preserves the status quo. It is “the way we’ve always done things around here”. It is the system that was designed, developed, implemented and practiced over and over again by the dominant race and gender and is so ingrained in the way business is conducted that on a dark day, I wonder if it would take only a miracle from God to break. This is the reason why, despite the furore of the world of Equal Opportunities (that is what Inclusion and Diversity was called in the 90s) very little has changed.