E ects from the pandemic have set back many workers.

For women of colour, these factors have

compounded to hurt their growth poten al even more.

The pandemic’s e ects on working women have been well documented by researchers and workers
alike.
Throughout the past three years, women around the world have dispropor onately su ered due to
economic shutdowns. Their earnings, in many cases, have stalled or fallen rela ve to men’s, and in
many pockets of the labour market, women s ll struggle to climb to cri cal leadership posi ons.
More women than men are leaving their jobs, incapable of naviga ng corporate structures while
balancing commitments outside of paid work.
But buried in the narra ve of women’s recent struggles overall is another cri cal and o en even
more troubling storyline: the experiences of the women of colour.
Although much gender-based data and research is reported in binary terms – men versus women –
women’s lived experiences are formed at the intersec on of gender and race, or ethnicity. Simply,
looking at women as a monolith can lose nuance: the struggles of a white woman in the workforce
may not necessarily be comparable – or even at all similar – to those of a black working woman; and,
in turn, a black working woman may tend to face en rely di erent barriers to those experienced by
women of the Middle Eastern, Hispanic or Asian descent.
Now, as the e ects of the past several years begin to crystallise, researchers stress it’s important to
acknowledge that women of colour in the paid labour market have been dispropor onately a ected
by a perfect storm of economic and societal factors that have played havoc with their pay and
earnings poten al.
Not only were women of colour more likely to be laid o during the pandemic, for example, but
evidence has also emerged that during the most recent wave of job cuts, they were more likely than
their white peers to have been made redundant. To make ma ers worse, companies have been
cu ng and shelving diversity ini a ves and programmes designed to support women of colour in
the workforce.
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