5 Things All Women of Colour Leaders Should Do

By: Yasmin Razack 

As a woman who is very much into fashion I decided to click on a link that the Toronto Star featured called, Top 10 Most Stylish Canadian Women . I was curious to look to the diverse styles and female fashionista’s that reflect our cultural mosaic. 

Instead I clicked through pictures of all white women in western-styled clothes. Infuriated I decided to do my own Google search and write a blog that would represent diverse women on my own but became frustrated as even the Internet failed to answer my query. 

Recently, the Huffington Post did some research on magazine covers and found from September 2012 to September 2013, 82% of the women on the covers of these magazines were white.

You might be thinking, get OVER it – it is only fashion and fashion magazines. Why does it matter for a brown-skinned woman who is striving to be a leader?

I am not about to write a thesis on the representation of women of colour but what I do want to say is extremely important for all women, especially women of colour who are striving to become leaders in their personal and/or professional lives. 

In the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell he coins a phrase called ‘thin-slicing’ that resonated with me so much that I educated everyone that I could about it.  He writes: 

“Thin-slicing” refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patters in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience. When our unconscious engages in thin-slicing, what we are doing is an automated, accelerated unconscious version… “

In other words our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values. 

TRANSLATION:

“You don’t choose to make positive associations with the dominant group…you are required to. All around you , that group is being paired with good things. You open the newspaper and you turn on the television and you can’t escape it.” (p.85) 

You can’t escape it. 
You can’t escape it. 
You can’t escape it. 

I am STARVING for positive representations for women of colour ANYWHERE  in the mainstream.   As a Caribbean woman of colour in the media I am virtually invisible in the mainstream...so what does this mean?  

Fortunately I had my family that was filled with strong, independent, smart and inspiriting women that motivated me to do my best. 

However in those moments when I am required to make my OWN decisions in education, relationships, career choices in addition to building my OWN self-confidence I have to do the work that I found at times challenging not being from the dominant culture. 

Recently I did a poll of women of colour who I thought to be leaders or are yearning to become ‘better’ leaders in their given industry and what struck me most was the lack of confidence in comparison to their white counterparts…

What can we do about this? 

Back to Gladwell, he wrote that in order to ‘reverse’ or ‘combat’ the negative messages about groups outside the mainstream you must actively search, connect and learn about those who are demonstrate excellence in all aspects of life. 

So I did. 

5 Things All Women of Colour Leaders Should Do

1. Find success stories of women of colour in your own industry.

Learning about other women of colour that have achieved success and share their story with your network. If you don’t talk about it and what is inspiring about their story with others it will not manifest in your brain as something worthy or memorable. Taking a step further would be to write in your personal journal about it. 

2. Subscribe to blogs that will send your confidence THROUGH THE ROOF. 

Here is a list of - 23 Fierce Female Bloggers to follow published by one of my favourite blogs: Coloured Girl Confidential. Trust me it can change your life. 

3. 40% of what we do DAILY is habit.

What is a habit that you do which contributes to a negative self-image/concept about who you are? For me it was gossip sites that detailed stories that were extremely condensing to women in particular women of colour SO I CUT IT OUT (except for Rihanna’s Twitter feed;) and replaced my 'free-time' reading with the FIERCE female bloggers listed above!

4. Become GOOD friends with the people from the MAINSTREAM. 

Recently, according to an ongoing Reuters 2013 poll only 40 per cent of white Americans and about 25 per cent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race – there are a lot of valuable things to learn from befriending others that are from a different background of your own- noting that your exposure and understanding of valuable ideas, tools or strategies be limited simply due to ‘access’. I have LOADS of examples on this. 

5.   Control your dialogue and self-talk about race and racism.

Try to limit the negative talk about race and racism to a minimum or else it can become a self-limiting belief. This is extremely challenging because in my mind ‘everything has to do with race’. We can discuss race in a constructive way – but overly indulging in conversations that allude to race as an issue can be preventing YOU from achieving the success you are worth of. Been there. SOOO been there. 

As a woman of colour what some things you do to become and/or maintain a leader in your personal and professional life? How do you build your self-confidence to achieve your personal and professional goals?

Comment below!

Yasmin Razack is a Personal + Professional Life Coach who works with women in transition to unlock their limitless potential in all aspects of life. For more information please visit limitlesswomen.ca  or email her at yasmin@limitlesswomen.ca

“You know my name, but that doesn’t mean you know my story”

By:Yasmin Razack

It was a cold fall night when I was underneath my cozy blankets so excited I had time to veg on the couch when my phone started BLOWING UP.

“Turn it on PBS!!!!”, “You have to watch this documentary ‘Half the Sky’”.

Texts, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter were all updating with gut wrenching stories documented in the film “Half the Sky”  from women and girls worldwide on the fight for the rights many of us take for granted.  

So I watched it, holding my heart in my hand the entire time as a woman, daughter, sister but most of all: MOTHER.

It was so inspiring I rushed straight to the website halfthesky.org seconds after the film to donate but I wanted to do more.

A lot more.

I couldn’t sleep for most of the night, images of these women and girls from all over the world who shared their horrific stories we know exists were racing though my mind….How could we do more to address them?

I thought of Centennial College immediately, and their commitment to global citizenship.  YES! I can pitch an idea to my supervisor and run with it. Right?

But these were issues of sex slavery, child prostitution, maternal mortality, human trafficking….would students be motivated and engaged with such heavy topics?

The idea was to engage every school through the curriculum to create an assignment requesting students to develop a social action strategy that works to empower women and girls worldwide.

How could we get students to care about this?

In order to get the students motivated I thought of the idea of a competition between each Academic School. The winners would be awarded $1000 in the name of a Global Citizenship and Equity Innovation Fellowship that will allow the students to actualize their goals and make the proposed social action strategy sustainable.

YES!!!!

We just needed to get the students from each school excited, enthusiastic and committed to developing a presentation that would detail their proposed social action strategy.

What happened after this vision I could of never imagined in my wildest of dreams.

Our amazing GCE team secured ALL schools to include Half the Sky in their curriculum  by co-developing an assignment that was industry specific and addressed the oppression of women and girls.

We called it Global Citizenship and Equity Co-Curricular Week with the theme from Half the Sky:  Turning Oppression into Opportunity of Women and Girls Worldwide. Each school had their own mini-competitions in order to select a WINNER for the final competition on March 25^th, 2013 (poster above).

The students were beyond engaged!

In the opening of one presentation a student talked about her own cousin who was murdered by her husband and her body parts were only found this past February. Another group highlighted female infanticide in India and to date over 10 million babies have been murdered on the sole basis that they are born a girl.

Groups developed videos, PSAs, songs, poems, t-shirts that read “ 5 years old, sold for $10.00”. Students created and registered their own organizations, Facebook pages, charitable pledges, and contacted organizations around the globe that are currently working on these very issues.

By far the most amazing thing that has come out of this week was the passion, dedication and commitment of these students.  Many students were personally motivated because of their own story growing up as a girl. It was so hard to choose ONLY one winning team from each school. 

One women was so frustrated how she was treated as a single mother of 3 so decided to work with this community to break down barriers that prevent these woman from achieving success. She wanted to do more, and had an idea brewing for 6 years and it was THIS initiative that motivated her actualize her goal of the Don’t Label Me Project (pictured left).

Another student who has demonstrated an exemplary level of leadership for the March 25th event,  told me she was put in crown ward (A crown ward is someone, in this case a child, placed under protection of a legal guardian and are the legal responsibility of the government) at the age of 12. She went on to become a mother of 3 and is currently raising them on her own while completing her Social Service Worker diploma at Centennial.

She told me she “has to do this.” After watching the film she has so many actionable ideas she is already doing on her own accord. Her story and many others has opened the door for other students to share their own story to further develop their passion with a purpose. Executing this initiative with students and staff has allowed students to see the power of their own voice and to be an active agent of social change. 

I am beyond thrilled of how this initiative has evolved to the level of engagement it currently at. I cannot WAIT for the event on Monday to see all these students shine and inspire a call to action for the single most important issue of our time: the empowerment of girls and women.

What are you doing about it?

Halfthesky.org

Yasmin Razack is currently the Manager of Global Citizenship and Equity Education at Centennial College. She is also Personal + Professional Life Coach who works with women in transition to unlock their limitless potential in all aspects of life. For more information please visit limitlesswomen.ca or email her at yasmin@limitlesswomen.ca.