The Internal and External Factors Contributing to the Underrepresentation of Women and Ethnic Minorities in the Workplace: Intersections, Interventions, and Implications

This paper is prompted by this question: What are the factors that contribute to the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in senior or executive level positions? As a person of color, I felt personally motivated to study these factors and to identify gaps in existing scholarship about underrepresentation in the workplace. By looking at studies, I quantified the representation of women and ethnic minorities in senior or executive level positions in leading companies and indicated the disparity between the population of different people groups in the workplace and the population of their respective group in the available workforce. I also focused on the diversity and inclusion initiatives of a specific company and conducted an interview with its Segmentation Sales and Services Manager. Through my research, I explored the external and internal biases that contribute to the lack of female and ethnic representation and the intersection that demonstrates how the former perpetuates the latter. I also dissected the institutional injustices that disadvantage various subsets of minorities and assessed the effectiveness of current implementations of diversity and inclusion initiatives. As a result, I drew implications for the importance of diversity in the workplace.