Making Room at the Top

Companies on Working Mother’s 2018 25 Best Companies for Multicultural Women list have more women of color in the workforce and senior positions than national averages. Their progress is noteworthy, but it isn’t good enough. What can we learn from the best practices they use to find, retain and promote women of color? How do diversity experts advocate they break the logjam?

There are some differences in which initiatives are most effective for which groups of multicultural women. We know this because for the first time in its 16-year history, the survey asked companies for data by Census Bureau categories of race/ethnicity. In the future, we hope to cover multicultural women by racial/ethnic groups in more detail. Here we chose to discuss the three largest groups—Hispanic, African-American and Asian. The other three census designations—Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaska Native, and two or more races—are less than 2 percent of the population.