Concrete data #2
For this project, when thinking of borders I was thinking of invisible border of unconscious bias of being black and specifically being a black woman entering the tech industry. I began by reading articles and came across articles by Ellen McGirt, a journalist who covers race, culture and leadership, through her articles she presents matters with the hope of change but the realisation of people having to oppress their ‘blackness’ in order to succeed. In her article – The Black Ceiling: Why African-American Women Aren’t Making It to the Top in Corporate America, she calls the barrier for African – American women the Black Ceiling demonstrated by the picture above. Reading articles about this made me realise how right now in university I’m protected in a bubble but when once I leave it will burst into this reality. I wanted to see for myself statistics related to black women, only to find none and ones related to lack of employment and birth rates quite derogatory. It made me question why is it this hard to find:
Image source: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/black_women_in_england_statistic
In looking for more statistical data I kept finding out data sourced from America but not UK. Eventually I found data related to women in technology but in the US but the information is shocking.
Reference: McAlear, F., Scott, A., Scott, K. & Weiss, S. (2018). Data Brief: Women of Color in Computing. United States: Kapor Center/ASU CGEST. Available at: https://www.wocincomputing.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/WOCinComputingDataBrief.pdf
I decided to do search myself for data in the UK. I looked up on LinkedIn for top tech companies in London and counted the number of black people in the company based on search results. Despite my results representing what I had found out, they were still inaccurate for a couple of reasons: not every employee of these companies is registered on LinkedIn and since I was counting based off profile pictures there were accounts without them. Therefore, I Google searched design agencies in London, looked at the ones showing their teams and counted the total number of staff, black staff specifically female black staff. Below are my results:
The results really shocked me and I came to a point where every-time I opened a new agencies’ website I would become hopeful that the results would change but I had enough from disappointment and stopped my search and let it sink in. This was very hard for me. It made me question why? why are black women not getting hired? what skills are we lacking? what skills do I have to gain or improve to get hired? do I have to disguise my true identity to find a job? I thought the equality act was meant to prevent this from happening? My project has to make an impact and unfold the invisible border of black women navigating their way into this industry and reshape culture in companies.