On the intersectional discrimination female entrepreneurs of color face

The other night I found myself at an “Entrepreneurs, Empowerment, and Networking” event created by women, for women, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event’s goal was to bring together South African women who are already entrepreneurs or who aspire to become them. The event was held at the organizer’s offices in the heart of the wealthy suburb of Brynston, and it aimed to encourage attendees to share their knowledge and practical advice about succeeding in an industry that is still dominated by men. 

The event started with the organizer, a white entrepreneur, explaining to the group that she created this event because she had spent years struggling to find a space in which female entrepreneurs could speak openly about their vulnerabilities and challenges away from the glaring eyes of men, who expected her to lead like a patriarch. She then turned it over to Thina Zibi, a self-taught photographer, award-winning short film maker, and award-winning art director, whose experience captivated me.

Zibi spoke of how, growing up, she went to a predominantly white school in the predominantly white Western Cape in the early 1990s. As a Black girl, she had to work extra hard to be better than her white peers in order to prove she deserved to be there, since she was part of the post-apartheid generation of Black kids who were the first even allowed to go to those schools. 

Many Black kids have had the experience of realizing that they have to be twice as good as their white counterparts to have half the chance to succeed just because of racism. We are often forced to be shape-shifting beings; we occupy the irony of having to make ourselves small enough to fit into the social roles, defined by a legacy of racism, made for us so that we don’t intimidate those around us, but big enough to stand out and prove our worth and credibility. We play small by self-policing, making sure we aren't too loud or come off as “too assertive.” Our discontent is often read as being ungrateful for an opportunity granted to us.

Then, Zibi spoke with brutal honesty about emotionally abusive experiences she had previously had with some white women in leadership positions when she was a young art director in advertising and about how she used to go to the bathroom to cry after she had demeaning interactions with them. Like many of us, she learned by being thrown into the deep end and left to swim or drown. She was forced to grow a thick skin and acquiesce to the sometimes brutal treatment she received when all she wanted to do was create inspiring work. 

The speaker who went after Zibi was in many ways a jarring departure. Lisa, a white woman, told us about moving back home to South Africa from South America as a single parent after getting a divorce. She worked as a teacher before starting a business that teaches young kids how to be entrepreneurs. She shared that she almost lost everything a few years earlier when an employee lost the company a deal with a big bank. She bounced back, though, and has since continued to thrive. 

I couldn’t help but wonder how her race played into her ability to rebound — not to mention start her business in the first place. When this incident happened, she had a lawyer friend to call for help. Despite her business’ financial loss, her reputation didn’t take a hit and her business continued to thrive. She didn’t have an MBA or previous experiences with startups before she landed the opportunity to have access to a sizable amount of money — only to lose it. Her failure didn’t have the same devastating effect it would likely have on a Black female entrepreneur. 

As a young Black woman, I’ve already experienced this disparity. At the company I used to work at, the white woman who managed the finance team didn’t have any higher education and the CFO had a degree in interior design. The young Black people who worked under them, however, had degrees in finance, did most of the work, and were paid far less money. 

We talk a lot about sexism in entrepreneurship, but it’s important to recognize the intersection of race and gender privilege in the space as well. Lisa may get fewer opportunities than men because she’s a woman, but her whiteness has also afforded her privileges that Black women don’t have access to. Studies back this up, too. According to Project Diane, a report by DigitalUndivided, of the $424.7 billion in total tech venture capital funding awarded since 2009, a minuscule .0006 percent was given to Black female founders. The same report found that the average investment in Black female entrepreneurs is only $42,000, whereas the overall average investment is $1.3 million. 

So while we gathered in that space to kumbaya on the struggles of womanhood within a patriarchal system, there was a failure to acknowledge that some of us in the room experience more intense discrimination than others. Nobody acknowledged that Black women can’t just be good at what we do; we have to be incredible, at the top of our game and then some, just to prove that we deserve to be in the room at all. We have to jump through all the hoops and tick all the boxes just to be measured against white mediocrity. 

Black women’s professional credibility is very fragile, and to build it we often have to be all things to all people — to have modest personalities, not be too loud or too funny, to be relatable, agreeable, and lighthearted enough to laugh along with and brush away offensive Black jokes delivered in white spaces by mediocre white people. I would love to live and work in a space where we all have fair and equal opportunities, despite our gender, ethnicity, or race. Where others aren’t privileged by virtue of their skin color. Where we are all on a level playing field. But we’re not there yet. And the first step toward fixing that is finally acknowledging it.