If you’re black or Asian and a woman, what are your chances of progressing in the world of work? Is the UK as fair as it likes to think?

At the last census in 1991 around 5% of women described themselves as being from an ethnic minority background – ten years on the figure is bound to be much higher. Historically, equal opportunities strategies have focused on race or gender as single issues, often missing the complexity of discrimination that can affect ethnic minority women at work.

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act came into force in April 2000. Its aim is to transform the public sector into a model equal opportunities employer, which is a far cry from its current state. The Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC), which recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Sex Discrimination Act, admits that equality between the sexes continues to be an uphill struggle – and bottom of the statistics pile in British society are ethnic minority women.

‘I think being black in a white country is hard, being a black woman in a white country is harder still. You get sexism coming at you from men, it doesn’t matter what their colour is, and then you’ve got racism from the whites. I wouldn’t want to change being black or a woman, what I would want to change is the ignorance among some whites and men at large,’ says administrator, Sarah Pascal, 28.

Good beginnings
In the 1960s over 200,000 West Indians, Indians and Pakistanis arrived in Britain to meet the skill shortages that the country was experiencing. Many came in the hope of a brighter future, to develop their careers and gain an education. EOC statistics are therefore disheartening. In spring 2000, the unemployment rate for women from ethnic minorities was about 12% (rising to 24% for Bangladeshi and Pakistani women) compared to about 5% for white women. These vast differences are due to several different factors, some of them cultural. But the experiences of black and Asian women provide some insight.

Next page: what do they say?

‘Racism has many faces: working class racism is very different to the middle class racism I’ve experienced at work. Some of my middle class colleagues are totally sound, but there are others who treat you in a way that makes you feel totally unwanted. They don’t make eye contact or address you directly. It’s a lot of things. Things that only a black person notices, things that on their own don’t seem much but, put together, make you feel very angry and isolated,’ says Irene Shah, a 25-year old consultant.

Factory worker, Bindiya Trivedi has noticed that men, who joined the firm after her and know less about the job, have been promoted ahead of her and to higher posts. As to why this happens, she says, ‘I don’t know, maybe it is because I wear a sari to work or don’t talk loudly enough.’ She continues to wear saris, not as a point of principle, but because her husband forbids western clothes. The prospect of taking up an assertiveness course interests her, though she confesses that she did not know such training existed.

Back to basics
The original ambitions that inspired families to leave their home countries have not been forgotten. Education remains a prestigious asset to gain. ‘The idea always was to get a good education, make some money and then go home, but things didn’t go according to plan,’ says Mrs Bedi, 61. Women’s business campaign group, Opportunity Now, reports that females of African origin are twice as likely as white women to possess qualifications above A-level standard, while, as a whole, women from ethnic minorities hold more qualifications than their white counterparts. Enrolment rates for black women onto further and higher education courses currently range from about 40% to nearly 80%. For white women the figure stands at 25%.

Next page: But here’s the but

However, despite their high degree of education, ethnic minority women in the workforce remain severely under-represented in management positions, and over-represented in junior, often unskilled jobs. They are more likely to do shift work, more likely to be employed in temporary or casual work and to be found in poor working conditions. The TUC are pushing for all employers to be subject to the new race relations act and to monitor recruitment and promotion in their organisations for racism.

Despite the statistics, there are many black and Asian women who have climbed the career ladder. Producer Praveen Shah, for instance, has a successful career in television documentaries. But even she feels that she’s had to ‘slog her guts out’ to get to where she is today. ‘The media still works as a club – it’s infested with the Oxbridge crowd, most of them middle-aged, white men. I don’t have the right accent and I don’t have the education they do. But I can work just as hard as any one,’ she says.

Shah is doing well, but her story shows both sides of the coin. ‘I have worked for a number of very high profile corporations, where the majority of black people in the company still work as cleaners, cooks or in the post-room. For me it’s important that once you get your foot in the door you guide and help others along with you,’ she says.

Shah admits that the McPherson Report, triggered by the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence, has been very important in changing attitudes of the British public to race. ‘But at the end of the day, McPherson was a white guy telling the nation that Britain suffers from institutional racism. Do you think there was a black person in the country who didn’t know that already?’ she asks.

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