Lifts and Ladders: Resolving ethnic minority women's exclusion from power

The Fawcett Society has published a new report on why ethnic minority women are excluded from power in the UK. Written by zohra moosa, Fawcett’s Senior Policy & Campaigns Officer, Lifts and Ladders: resolving ethnic minority women's exclusion from power brings together all of Fawcett’s previous research on women and power to prepare the ground for a fresh analysis on why ethnic minority women are excluded from power in the UK.

It then pools and builds on Fawcett’s most recent work on ethnic minority women and power, including findings from the high profile Routes to Power research study, the expert Accessing Power roundtable series, and the agenda setting Gender Equality Forum on race and gender that all form part of Seeing Double, Fawcett’s flagship national campaign on ethnic minority women in Britain.

Joella Hazel, Outreach Officer at the Fawcett Society, said:

"Despite decades of much needed equality legislation, ethnic minority women continue to experience a power vacuum when it comes to senior leadership. This report exposes the formal and informal barriers which are shaping the ‘rules of the game’ and excluding these women from accessing positions of power. We need to act now if we are going to harness the wealth of talent and skills that is held amongst ethnic minority women."

The report features a foreword by The Baroness Prashar of Runnymede CBE and looks at:

• Challenging the usual story: focusing on demand instead of supply
• The formal rules in employment: interrogating the dominant work paradigm
• The informal rules in employment: exclusive organisational cultures
• Ethnic minority women in politics
• Business, legal and ethical imperatives
• Recommendations

You can download the report by following the link below. To find out more about Seeing Double and the projects and research that informed this report, please follow the links on the right.