Discrimination in the workplace occurs when an employee is treated unfavourably due to different identity characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, or religion. While all individuals may face certain prejudices, it’s common for women, especially those from ethnic minorities, to be at the forefront of these disparities and face various barriers throughout their employment. This has led to a growing consensus that an intersectional approach is vital when addressing these inequalities. In light of this, this research project investigates the discrimination that many ethnic minority women have faced in the workplace using both primary and secondary data. Based on a review of the existing literature surrounding this topic, an online questionnaire was distributed to working ethnic minority women in the UK. Respondents were asked a series of multiple choice and openended questions to allow for results that could provide both statistical data, and data that could be further analysed. Results indicated that while on the surface there seems to be a growing effort to prevent workplace discrimination, these efforts are inadequate and need to be more strictly enforced in order to be successful. Additionally, research found that many ethnic minority women have experienced discrimination that they believe was due to their ethnicity and gender and have subsequently limited their potential career progression due to this. Interestingly however, while many reported that the discrimination they have faced has had a negative impact on their self-esteem, a proportion of participants commented on the positives that they drew from this and the newfound strength that it instilled. From this, recommendations to organisations on how they can become more diverse and inclusive and made, leading to a call for further research to be carried out in order to identity new patterns and trends.
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