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Multicultural makeover: 6 ways to make your women’s initiative (or group) multiculturally-friendly
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Multicultural women comprise 30% of the U.S. female population, but their concerns and needs are often invisible in the world of women’s diversity initiatives. Below are 6 ideas you can use to help your women’s initiative or group become more inclusive of the concerns and issues faced by multicultural women—women of African, Asian, Hispanic, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American descent.
1. Forget the “One-Size-Fits-All” Approach. There is a tendency among women’s groups to treat women’s issues singularly, with little attention to the impact that race and other aspects of identity have on being a woman. Even where a group has all women members, dimensions of difference exist in their experiences and perspectives. Rather than reducing those differences to the lowest common denominator when developing programs, try creating events that reflect the diversity that already exists among women. This will make your initiative attractive to different groups of women.
2. Start a Multicultural Women’s Committee. Communicate your group’s support for multicultural women by creating a multicultural women’s concerns council or committee. This creates a space for multicultural women to express their concerns and perspectives in the context of the larger women’s initiative. If a separate resource group for multicultural women already exists at your company, consider holding joint events with the two groups to draw attention to the common challenges faced by women in the workplace.
3. Check Your Speaker Roster. Including multicultural women as speakers and panelists for your events underscores your commitment to the professional advancement of women of color. With relatively few speakers having knowledge of multicultural women’s issues, a speaker who does is likely to draw their attendance. Having trouble sourcing such speakers? Groups such as the Executive Leadership Council, Asian Women Leadership Network, or Madrinas may be able to provide you with leads on potential speakers. Also, check out the annual women or women of color issues of DiversityInc (March), Profiles in Diversity (May/June and Sep/Oct) and Working Mother (June/July), all of which prominently feature professional multicultural women.
4. Increase Your Cultural Capital. Adding a cultural component to your programs will pique the interest of multicultural women, many of whom have a strong interest in the well-being of their communities. Your group may consider hosting an event to benefit various community groups, or partnering with a community organization for a service project. By doing this, your group helps the local community while also demonstrating that you take the cultural concerns of multicultural women seriously. This is an excellent way to increase your initiative’s cultural capital.
5. Create Connection Opportunities. Multicultural women often find themselves on the outside of informal networks at the office, especially those in which white men are central figures. As a result, women of color often find themselves without opportunities to connect with white men (and sometimes white women) outside of the office in meaningful ways. When your group hosts events, include networking activities and “ice breakers” to help facilitate less formal interaction between the participants—and use the networking activities as a selling point for the event.
6. Development, Development, Development. Professional development opportunities are of central importance to multicultural women, who tend to be pragmatic in their approaches to career development. By sponsoring workshops that provide information and practical career advice, you communicate to potentially interested women of color that your group is serious about helping them to advance their careers.
© 2009 Jessica Faye Carter. All Rights Reserved.
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