An Overview Of A Conference On Women of Color in 2020 - Our Lived Experiences with Inequality

With Martin Luther King Week coming to an end here at George Washington University, I decided to attend one last school-sponsored event that would challenge my viewpoint about the world as well as expose me to various other perspectives. The running theme of this meeting was about inequality: first in the workplace for women, particularly women of color, but then widened its scope to any inequality experienced by anyone. The hosts of this presentation, then interactive round table discussion were Zoe King, who works with the Human Resource Management and Development department, as well as Shaista E. Khilji, a professor for Human and Organizational Learning & International Affairs.

Zoe King gave the opening section of the event, which was all about presenting cold hard statistics when it comes to inequality for females. These facts ranged from findings that "[b]lack women made just 65.3%...of the weekly pay of white men" in 2018, to the "[n]umber of C-suite executives [which refers to titles like CEO or CFO] that [are occupied by] a woman of color in 2019" is 1 in 25, to even that "the Gender Pay Gap is expected to close" in over a hundred years: 2152, to be precise.

Once Ms. King finished her piece, Professor Khilji took the stage to put forward her own, yet to published, research that has to do with assessing the effects of inequality in a way that would retain the "human experience," as she called it. The professor elaborated that she achieved this goal by interviewing countless women, and men, of various organizations as well as levels in those workplaces on their experiences with inequality. The main takeaways were that women of color and or the lone women in their workspace felt like "outsiders" who had to "assimilate" to white male standards, ultimately losing their "authenticity" as well as always needing to "defend their competence." Ms. Khilji noted that this was an extremely emotional endeavor to undertake due to the bonds she created with her interviewees and the heartbreaking stories she had heard throughout her research.

Next, the hosts of the event challenged the audience to express their own experiences with those sitting around them, and my table had many anecdotes to share, but here are just a few. One older gentleman of Jewish affiliation told us of how once he was beaten up by antisemitic kids back in his childhood. And an African American woman spoke on the time when she was simply getting groceries only to be demanded by a child, no older than eight, to leave the store because she was an "N-word." I believe these disturbing stories are necessary to hear and this activity should be replicated with every human as they shed some more light on the idea of intersectionality and how we can start to mend these injustices. That being that the first course of action should always be to open up dialogue, learn each other's perspective, and reach common ground. As Professor Khilji put it, "If you want to address inequality, start focusing on humanity."