Paper Summary:

This paper examines how African-American women often face special problems when it comes to finding jobs that offer decent salaries, benefits and opportunities for growth and advancement. It looks at how traditional prejudices against women in the workforce combine with prejudice against African-Americans and minorities, in general. It also discusses how many of these women are less educated and less well-trained than White American women and how cultural factors, too, may enter into the equation, adding up to misunderstandings between employers and their female African-American employees.

From the Paper:

"The recognition that Black Women are living and working in two different cultures is of great significance both to their own efforts at success, and also to the attitudes of the majority White society toward them and their careers. White managers and employees must not treat cultural differences as disabilities, or even worse, as abhorrent factors that render success and advancement impossible for African-American women. For instance, a willingness to work very hard must not be taken as some sort of confirmation of the idea the idea that Black Women are "born" to do all of the hard work; that they are not "cut out" for the more refined intellectual and managerial responsibilities. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Alfred, Mary V. "Reconceptualizing Marginality from the Margins: Perspectives of African American Tenured Female Faculty at a White Research University." The Western Journal of Black Studies 25.1 (2001): 1+.
• Bradford, Lisa, Jessica Lee Buck, and Renee A. Meyers. "Cultural and Parental Communicative Influences on the Career Success of White and Black Women." Women's Studies in Communication 24.2 (2001): 194+.
• Brown, Michael K., et al. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
• Cleveland, Jeanette N., Margaret Stockdale, and Kevin R. Murphy. Women and Men in Organizations Sex and Gender Issues at Work. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
• Higginbotham, Elizabeth. Too Much to Ask: Black Women in the Era of Integration. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

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