Women Are Not Hitting a Glass Ceiling, They Are Climbing Through Concrete While Being Asked to Smile.
For years, leadership conversations told women to lean in, build confidence and become more resilient. Yet what happens when the real problem is not ambition, capability or work ethic, but systems that were never designed for Black and women of colour to thrive inside them in the first place?
Researchers now describe this reality not as a “glass ceiling,” but as a “concrete ceiling” barriers so deeply embedded into workplace culture that advancement becomes exhausting, isolating and psychologically draining.
The contradiction is impossible to ignore. Organisations publicly celebrate empathy, authenticity and emotional intelligence as leadership strengths, yet Black women are consistently penalised when displaying those same qualities.
The 2024 McKinsey Women in the Workplace report revealed that Black women remain significantly under-promoted, under-sponsored and over-scrutinised despite being among the most educated groups in the workforce.
Then came the backlash.
After the surge in DEI commitments following George Floyd’s murder, many organisations hired diversity leaders and elevated conversations around racial equity.
Yet across the United States and increasingly in the UK, DEI-related jobs, programmes and leadership roles are quietly disappearing under the language of “restructuring” and “redundancy.”
Political hostility fuelled by figures such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk has helped weaponise DEI itself, reframing inclusion work as something excessive rather than essential.
The impact on women in leadership is profound. Many Black women were invited into leadership during moments of organisational crisis, only to later find themselves isolated, unsupported and blamed when systemic problems remained unresolved.
This is not simply a career issue it is a mental health issue. A leadership issue. An economic issue.
Black feminist academics such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins and Minda Harts have repeatedly warned that visibility without structural change creates performance, not progress.
Many women are not burnt out because they lack resilience. They are burnt out because they are carrying the emotional weight of constantly adapting to systems that still reward proximity to whiteness while calling it professionalism.
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Far too many women still believe they are failing, when in reality they have been navigating systems that were never built with them in mind.
