Creating Psychological Safety for Black Women at Your Company

With Black unemployment reaching an all-time high, it’s no surprise that more than 300,000 Black women were unemployed over the span of three months this year. While much of this might attributed to the DEI backlash and mass layoffs in industries such as federal government, education and healthcare where Black women make up a significant percentage of employee population, it has been noted that some Black women have left voluntarily due to feeling a lack of physical or psychological safety.

It’s important to note that when Black women lose, we all lose. The nation’s GDP significantly drops. When “every one-point drop in women’s labor force participation costs the U.S. economy an estimated $146 billion in lost GDP,” a 300,000 employment drop for one demographic group alone isn’t something we can ignore. Combined with the current inflation rate and the ever-present “pink tax” (the gender-specific premium tax put on products marketed toward women, a much lower tax rate than those marketed towards men), it is inevitable that this will lead to less consumer participation for this population.

A few years ago, we wrote about one of the reasons that Black women leave certain team or workplace environments — lack of psychological safety. We had hoped that articles like these and many others would raise awareness and move many towards action. Today, we hope this article fuels those for whom the work of inclusion, belonging and accessibility for all individuals in the workplace never stops. This work has never been more important.

Read the full article here.