DEI's Dirty Secret: Why White Women Win While Intersectional Women Wait
- Dr Audrey-Flore Ngomsik
- Aug 14
- 10 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
What I learned climbing to the C-suite while everyone questioned if I belonged there.
The question that made everyone uncomfortable
I still remember the exact moment I decided to burn bridges on LinkedIn.
It was 2 AM, and I was reviewing yet another "diversity achievement" report from a Fortune 500 company. The photos showed the same faces I'd been seeing for years, smiling white women in blazers, congratulating themselves on "breaking barriers."
Something snapped.
I typed:
"Who actually holds diversity leadership roles worldwide?"
Hit post. Went to bed.
Woke up to chaos.
People called me harsh. Too aggressive. Too much.
The comments that hurt most?
The ones suggesting I only got to the C-suite because I'm a Black woman, not because I earned it. Just... Black.
Here's what stung: these weren't DEI opponents. These were supposed allies. People who'd been liking my posts about environmental and social sustainaiblity for years.
But when this Black woman asked uncomfortable questions?
Suddenly I was "divisive."
The data, though? The data doesn't care about anyone's feelings.
The mirror I held up to diversity
You want to know what I found when I dug into who's really running diversity?
76% of chief diversity officers are white
63% of diversity leadership positions belong to white women
Less than 4% are Black and I guess that an even smaller number are Black women! [1]
Women with a disaility are nearly invisible.
I've sat in those rooms. I've been the only Black face at the "environmental sustainability, innovation, social sustainability (DEI), operation, change management" (name it) leadership tables, more times than I can count.
While we talked about "lifting up women," I watched white women get promoted to head diversity initiatives they'd never lived.
They meant well. They always mean well.
But meaning well and understanding the struggle? Two different things entirely.
We are measuring the wrong thing
Let me tell you about the meeting that changed everything for me.
I was on a corporate jury, fancy title, fancy room, fancy coffee.
We were celebrating this company's "historic achievement" in closing their gender pay gap.
The applause was deafening. Everyone felt so proud.
I raised my hand. You know that feeling when you're about to be that person? Yeah, I felt it.
"Congratulations,"
I said
"But I'm curious. Which women are we talking about?
All women? Just white women?
Because if we're only measuring white women against white men..."
The room went silent. Not the good kind of silent.
The "oh-God-she's-doing-it-again" silent.
The presenter shuffled through his slides.
"Well, we looked at... overall gender gaps..."
"So white women."
I interjected.
"We can't solve everything at once."
I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Instead, I asked,
"Since when aren't Black women... women?"
That's when it hit me. We've been celebrating half-victories and calling them progress.
This is why I fight for disaggregated data.
Why Trianon Scientific Communication focuses on intersectional climate solutions.
Why intersectionality matters in governance.
When you design solutions for the most invisibilised, you create systems that serve everyone, and these solutions are often innovative!
But intersectional women aren't making decisions.
DEI promoted white straight educated women from day one, maintaining traditional hierarchies.
What you probably miss
The global pattern nobody talks about
Twenty-three years in corporate spaces has taught me to spot patterns. Here's one that keeps me up at night:
India, Nigeria, Kenya. Three different continents. Same story.
Women dominate entry-level positions. Then... poof. Gone by senior leadership.
but
Which women disappear?
A look at the legal profession offers instructive lessons.
In Nigeria and Kenya, the women who enter strong tend to stay strong.
In India? Women start at 55% but crash to 32% at senior levels.[2]
The difference lies not merely in gender barriers, but in intersecting systems of class, caste, and economic access that determine which women can sustain the climb.
This is exactly why we need intersectional thinking.
A solution that works for an educated Kenyan woman might fail completely for a rural Indian woman. And both might fail for women who face racism on top of sexism
I've lived this.
From early in my career, till this day, I have been watching brilliant women of color leave not because they couldn't handle the work, but because they couldn't handle being the only one in every room, fighting for every opportunity, constantly having their competence questioned.
Europe's beautiful lie
Let's take the European legal profession, as an example. It tells the most elegant lie I've ever seen.
For twenty years, women have dominated law school admissions, over 52%. The headlines celebrate this "progress."[3]
Yet, at partnership level women hold merely 24% of positions.
In prestigious "magic circle" firms, this figure drops further down to 19%.
Only Sweden approaches gender parity at senior levels.
Elsewhere, the summit remains male territory.[4]
Which women make it?
The ones who went to the right schools, had family money, knew the right people. The ones who look like the people already there.
The immigrant women? The working-class women? The women of color? We're still fighting for scraps.
This isn't about gender anymore. It's about class warfare disguised as progress.
Numbers do not lie
Europe is failing
I spend a lot of time in European boardrooms.
Beautiful offices, progressive rhetoric, terrible results.
European companies score 5.69 out of 10 on diversity.[5]
That's failing by any measure.
Germany, the economic powerhouse, scores 5.44. Switzerland barely scrapes 6.0.
Only 7% have built genuinely inclusive cultures.[5]
Let that sink in. Ninety-three percent are failing while patting themselves on the back.
The leadership gap that explains everything
Here's the stat that makes my job so hard:
While 61% of non-managerial employees come from underrepresented groups, only 40% of managers do.
Exclude women from that calculation, and manager representation drops to a shocking 16%.[6]
This creates what I call "diversity blindness", leaders who literally cannot see the barriers because they've never faced them. When you exclude the oppressed from decision-making, you get policies that serve the privileged.
This is why every diversity initiative feels like pushing water uphill. The people making decisions have never lived the problems we're trying to solve.
They create "flexible work" policies that help women with nannies, not women working two jobs. They design "mentorship programs" that connect people who already look alike.
When you exclude the oppressed from decision-making, you get solutions that serve the privileged.
The result?
Roughly 3 out of 10 non-managerial employees face discrimination or bullying at work. Nearly one in five witness colleagues being harassed. This isn't progress, it's systematic exclusion with a diversity label.[7]
The Universal pattern
Every industry. Every continent. Same story.
Women occupy nearly 50% of entry-level positions globally yet hold only 32% of leadership roles.
Even in female-dominated sectors like events (77% women employees), merely 16% reach leadership positions.[8]
The pattern cuts across all boundaries. But it hits hardest on women carrying multiple burdens.
The intersectional reality everyone ignores
The EY data exposes the brutal truth about who gets left behind:
55% of LGBTQIA+ employees can't be their authentic selves at work
Only 35% of women feel belonging, compared to 40% of men
43% of ethnic minorities feel pessimistic about career opportunities
Only 25% of disabled employees feel they belong, compared to 39% of others
Yet European companies pretend these groups don't exist.
One quarter haven't taken any steps to improve cultural diversity.
Thirty-six percent ignore LGBTQIA+ employees entirely.
Nearly two-thirds (60%) completely neglect disability diversity.[5]
The education paradox
The most qualified, the least welcome
Let me share something that might surprise you.
Black women are the most educated demographic in America.
They hold 38% of bachelor's degrees among Black students.
They lead in master's and doctoral degrees.
They show up prepared, credentialed, ready.[9]
And still... still they earn less than white men without degrees.[10]
And it is the same for us in Europe. We face the Same Wall
When I speak in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, I meet black women everywhere.
Black women with PhDs working entry-level jobs.
Brilliant minds passed over for promotion.
Credentials questioned, competence doubted.
We're pursuing education at record rates, overcoming barriers just to get to the starting line.
Then we hit what sociologists call the "concrete ceiling", harder than glass, impossible to break through.
It's not about what we lack. It's about what the system refuses to see.
I have three degrees and two decades of C-suite experience. I still get asked if I'm "qualified" for rooms I've been running for years.
The diplomas on my wall don't matter when people see my face first.
A Call for evidence-based accountability
Where data exists, particularly in the UK with its more comprehensive ethnic monitoring, the patterns are striking: Black women demonstrate exceptional educational drive, achieving among the highest university enrollment rates of any demographic group. They pursue advanced degrees, enter competitive academic programs, and often overcome significant structural barriers just to access higher education opportunities.
Yet this educational success translates poorly into professional advancement across European contexts. The available evidence, limited though it is by inconsistent data collection, reveals severe underrepresentation in senior leadership positions, from corporate boardrooms to university departments.
The continued underrepresentation of highly qualified Black women in European leadership positions represents a massive waste of human capital that demands serious investigation. But addressing it requires moving beyond both denial and oversimplified explanations.
Europe needs comprehensive, standardized ethnic monitoring that can identify specific intervention points, whether in networking access, mentorship programs, recruitment practices, or institutional culture change.
The absence of such data isn't neutrality; it's a choice that perpetuates the status quo.
Black women's absence from European leadership positions "does not make sense" given their educational achievements. But understanding why requires the kind of rigorous, intersectional data collection that much of Europe has been unwilling to undertake. Until that changes, talented individuals will continue hitting invisible barriers that societies refuse to acknowledge, let alone address.
The accountability gap: Europe's willful blindness
You know what makes me laugh? In a bitter way?
Only 58% of companies track their DEI progress. Just 15% hold boards accountable for the results.[5]
Translation: We celebrate intentions, but ignore results.
I've never worked for a company that didn't obsess over quarterly revenue. Market share gets tracked to the decimal point. Customer satisfaction gets measured monthly.
But Diversity? " We just don't count."
Only 16% of DEI leaders report directly to boards. When diversity doesn't reach the C-suite, it doesn't get prioritized. Diversity becomes charity work, not business strategy.
At Trianon we work directly with CEOs.
Because when sustainability social (DEI) or environmental doesn't reach the C-suite, it doesn't matter.
The solution that does not solve anything
I laugh when companies brag about flexible work policies. Flexible for whom?
The policies I see help women who can afford nannies, who have partners to share responsibilities, who don't need two jobs to survive.
Single mothers juggling shifts? Immigrants sending money home? Women caring for aging parents? They get nothing.
We design corporate policies differently.
We ask: What do the women struggling most need?
Childcare stipends during important networking activities.
Transportation vouchers.
Healthcare coverage that actually covers things.
Help to care fir a sick parent
When you solve for the bottom, everybody wins.
The European evidence backs this up: Only 54% of top-performing companies have transparent performance and salary processes, compared to 34% of others. Without transparency, bias thrives.
This is exactly why we need intersectional thinking.
A solution that works for a white women does not work for an intersectional women who face racism on top of sexism; or ableism on top of racism and sexism etc.
If policies were designed for them, the solutions would work for everyone.
What real progress looks like
The 7% of European companies that actually succeed at inclusion share specific characteristics:
They diversify leadership (87% have diverse leadership vs. 49% of failures)
They invest real money (€5.45 million annually vs. €4.35 million)
They enforce accountability (68% empower employees to call out bias vs. 43%)
They measure everything transparently
They listen to diverse voices (54% engage employee networks vs. 25%) [5]
Real DEI would ask harder questions
Which women of color are rising, which ones aren't, and why?
What barriers exist beyond gender?
How do race, class, sexuality, and disability intersect with gender?
What happens when we design policies for the women struggling most?
Real DEI would track everything
Hiring by race AND gender
Promotion rates across all identities
Pay gaps that don't hide behind "gender" alone
Exit interviews that dig into why intersectional women leave
Authentic DEI would center intersectional women in leadership. Because we understand what it means to be pushed out, to be told we don't belong. To fight for every opportunity.
The data demolishes every excus
DEI leaders report higher employee satisfaction, productivity, financial growth, innovation, and customer satisfaction.
They have half the turnover (6% vs. 13% actively job hunting) and quarter the short-term departures (6% vs. 24% planning to leave within a year).
Inclusion isn't charity, it's competitive advantage.
My challenge to you
I've been in C-suites for over two decades. I've seen what works and what doesn't.
The companies succeeding at inclusion have one thing in common: they stopped asking "How do we help women?" and started asking "How do we help ALL women?"
Here's my challenge: Look around your organization.
Who's missing from leadership? Not just women, which women?
The answer will tell you everything you need to know about whether you're building inclusive cultures or just rearranging deck chairs.
The Path Forward
I'm not saying white women don't deserve opportunities. I'm saying the current system gives opportunities only to them while calling it diversity.
That's not diversity. That's selective inclusion.
True diversity means looking at who's still locked out. Who's still fighting to get in. Who's still being told they only got there because of their race or gender.
When we center the most marginalized, everyone wins.
When we only center some women, we recreate the same exclusions we claim to fight.
The data is clear. The patterns are obvious. The question now is simple:
Will we keep pretending that helping some women means helping all women?
Or will we finally build systems that work for everyone?
The choice is ours. But the clock is ticking.
And the women at the bottom of every intersectional ladder are still waiting.
Continue the conversation
This piece is part of my ongoing exploration of how intersectional barriers impact women across industries and continents. If you want to dive deeper into these patterns and their real-world implications in innovation, science and sustainability, I invite you to read my series "Intersectional Women in Science".
There, I examine how these same dynamics play out in STEM fields, climate solutions, and scientific leadership, sectors where we desperately need diverse perspectives but consistently exclude the voices that could drive innovation.
Because the patterns are everywhere. And understanding them is the first step to breaking them.
Dr Audrey-Flore Ngomsik
This article was triggered by McKinsey's latest "Women in the Workplace 2025: India, Nigeria, and Kenya" report [2].
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