Women in the Workplace

Despite increasing numbers, women of color in the workforce, especially in high level positions, are still underrepresented in comparison to other demographic groups. They constantly face discrimination and prejudices that make success in their careers difficult. We interviewed our mothers, Kim Cheung and Anna Barry, who are both women of color in the workforce, to see how being a minority affected their journey and affected how they are treated on a daily basis. These two women have very different stories: they came to the US at different times and work in completely different fields. They grew up in distinct worlds, but we soon learned that they shared many commonalities in their experiences.

It’s important to note that both our moms are Asian, so their stories do not reflect those of every woman of color within the workforce. Rather, these are just some of their personal thoughts of their struggle moving up the corporate and social ladder. Growing up and still today our mothers have been our inspirations and idols, which is why sharing their stories was so important to us. Their strength was the ability to get through a demanding journey to be where they are now, fighting through an environment that didn’t believe in them.

The first ten years of Kim’s life were spent in a village in Mainland China, where there was no electricity, no running water, it was very rural. She was living on my own there because when my mother moved to Hong Kong, the travel document only had my brothers in it. When she was 11, she finally got the documents she needed to move to Hong Kong, where she went to college and got a job. She traveled alone again to Michigan, where she got a graduate degree in computer information systems. In following years she worked in aerospace and defence with Elbit Systems. In 2009, she moved her family to Massachusetts, and she is now a senior systems analyst for General Dynamics.

Anna also came from an immigrant family, moving to South Carolina from South Korea when she was ten years old. She moved in the 80s, and at the time the South did not have a large number of asians. She graduated high school as the salutatorian then moved on to get her PhD in chemistry and a law degree. She worked for a large international law firm, a large pharmaceutical company, and is now the senior vice president in legal department at a biotechnology company called Jounce Therapeutics.  

Throughout their journey they were faced with challenges and obstacles as women and people of color. Being a woman alone is already a difficulty, in general women are given less positions of power and leadership in nearly any industry. Within Kim’s company there are “favorite projects” that gain more attention from higher-ups in the company. She noted that, “when those visible projects come up, you’ll see that the company is more eager to assign those to a guy, just because of the stereotype or the image, that he is more capable. I can gain power--I feel that I have a lot of power, just I have to earn it from my peers and work my way up”.

Anna found that although there are as many women in law school itself and the pharmaceutical industry, it is incredible noticeable to see that there are very few women in leadership, and even less women of color. As a women of color she found herself having to fight stereotypes and assumptions, “they might look at women of color as too passive, too aggressive, not having enough confidence, or not a good leader”. Another struggle she found was that she did not have another of women of color to serve as mentors, because of the fact that there is few of them. She explained that how overtime she needed to develop a thick skin.

With all these obstacles of just being women, being women of color is even more challenging. and Anna says that “as woman of color you have to work harder to prove yourself to your colleagues and society as a whole. I felt like I had to excel in school, produce high quality work products, be an excellent communicator, and be social. You need to be sociable and “likeable” to succeed in a work space especially in a male dominated industry”.

As a systems analyst, Kim must work with the technology department a lot in order to solve problems with data. She says that “out of the entire team I am the only Chinese woman. When I am negotiating with them and trying to show them my point of view, they’ll completely ignore me”. As a result, she’s grown to assert her authority in order to be heard in the conversation. She says that, “Earlier on, I was too scared to do that, but I realized that if I wanted my voice and opinions to be noticed by the other people, I had to just do it”.

For Anna, growing up in the South during the 80s was already a struggle in of itself, and there was definitely strong prejudices. She says how “they all assumed Asians were good at math and science, and were very obedient”, and that it was very difficult to be a Asian kid who did not fit into this mold and stereotype. She faced mockery because of how she looked, the language she spoke, foods she ate, and the “Korean culture that the other kids did not understand”.

Making the move to the United States was extremely difficult for Kim, because of all the discrimination, and the differences in culture. Being alone in a whole new environment was incredibly intimidating. She explained that “Back in my college years, the students I met could probably count on one hand the number of Chinese people they’ve met in their entire lives, the population was so small”. In addition, “My English was not the best, and still isn’t, which made them make fun of me. I had to rely on myself and just ignore all the comments that were said behind my back”.

There are more indirect ways that stereotypes can affect the lives of women of color as well. Both our moms felt pressured within their work to not have kids in order to stay ahead. Kim says that “in such a competitive industry like technology, you always have to be available in order to keep up”. Working in the field, she had seen that for other women, “Picking up the kids, doing groceries, cooking the meals, all those things look tiny but it does take up time to do them. So when women have so much responsibility, and extra tasks to do, they’re already disadvantaged. It doesn’t mean that people intend to ignore or mistreat you, but it is true that if you aren’t available, it’s going to be harder to move up through the ranks”.

In Anna’s early career she worked at a large firm, which was right after she had gotten married. She wanted to start a family, however the law firm made it very difficult to have a family in reasonable working hours, thus forcing many other women to leave before they could become partners. “ I had two kids while I was working at the law firm and I felt ostracized and not excepted. There was no other Asian female partners with small children that I could look up to as my mentor”. She decided to leave to join a large pharmaceutical company where she had her kid, “and yet again felt judged that I wasn’t fully committed to work”.

We then asked both moms if they had advice for any young women of color to better prepare for a professionally careers. Both recognized the importance of standing up for yourself and fighting for what you want. Kim says that, “Oftentimes, when younger women enter the company, I will see other people try to take advantage of her inexperience. They like to try to assign her more work than she has to take on, and she will be too afraid to say no, for fear of being unliked by her colleagues”. Anna added that, “being an Asian female I think you have to fight against what your culture has taught you. Asian females are taught not to speak up, not challenge authority, and not to bring attention”. In general she says that you in order to be successful you need to speak up, show confidence, and be visible.

by CAROLINE BARRY, KRISTINA WONG