Why it should matter to you
By Shahzia Noorally
A five minute read
Just as women have been fighting for centuries to be seen for their smarts, expertise and all that they bring to the table, the intersectional layers of experiences that are unique to you as a women of colour also deserve the same level of recognition. For you to be truly seen for who and what you are - all of you. For all the things that make you different, the seen and the unseen, from the colour of your skin to the ways in which you were raised to use or not use your voice, those deserve to have the opportunity to come with you when you walk into the door each and everyday at work.
When we started this journey exactly one year ago, one of the most heartbreaking things we saw over and over again is women of colour around us, perhaps out of a pattern of consistent assimilation into the norm or even just ignorance (blissful or not), being unable to recognize that their unique and personal experiences actually deserved attention and the opportunity to come to the surface, and that those things that made them different were often being overlooked, ignored and at times used against them in the workplaces where they spent so much of their days. We had to ask ourselves if we were the crazy ones? Two women so deep in our own brains and our journey of reflection that maybe we were seeing things, making up stories in our head. Stories around the lack of role models surrounding us, around the differences in opportunity and privilege that came so much easier to our white female counterparts. We, like many (not all) of our fellow women of colour could never point to outright discrimination, but we knew in our core something was still disconnected. Sure, the occasional off the cuff remark dredging up race and culture related stereotypes, those experiences of walking into the boardrooms and leadership tables at our workplaces and seeing only white faces in decision making roles, the multiple times we’ve had our names butchered without regard, the experiences of being reduced to cultural markers as the only way to connect, but never outright racism. And it’s almost like some of the women around us needed something blatant, gut wrenching and core shaking to realize they weren’t really being seen or accepted, and that it really wasn’t ok.
The moment for me was getting into my first leadership role and being the only women of colour in an HR leadership team that was meant to represent the diversity of our team member population, but that clearly did not. It wasn’t the last and it wasn’t the worst, but it was enough to get me to wake up to the ways in which I had been denying myself the opportunity to show up fully at work. It started me down the path that you’re witnessing today, the creation of the Colour Gap podcast, the deeper connection to my co-host and co-founder, Susy Ko, and the unleashing of my now more refined voice that calls it like I see it and asks to be seen for all that I am, but never reduced to just the things that make me a first generation Canadian, Pakistani Muslim woman. My hope for you is that your moment will come long before you even realize the things that have been robbed of you. That you wake up to understand why it should matter to you today, not when you’re knee deep in imposter syndrome blaming yourself for your lack of confidence, rather than looking to the years of conditioning you’ve been working against to get to a place of worth. Not when you’re so paralyzed by self doubt that you don’t go after that dream job or negotiate the heck out of that salary because you’ve never had role models outside of the Lean In mantra and ones that don’t come from a place of privilege. Let's be real, your path as a woman of colour, no matter how idyllic or picture perfect your upbringing may have been, is still riddled with more obstacles, more barriers and with people who won’t always get past reducing you to your visible differences than your white female colleagues. Your journey is different as are your access to opportunities and circles of influence. You deserve to be defined by all the things that make you who you are, not just by what you are not. You deserve to be fully seen.
For me, as a first generation Canadian and Pakistani woman, I have my mother, my aunts, my cousins and my grandmothers to do better for. I have the honour of carving a path that they never had the opportunity or even the audacity to imagine could be theirs. I have freedom of choice and with that comes a responsibility to lean into my voice, to shout it from the rooftops (or politely write about it in my true introverted nature), to make it so that no woman coming after me has to ever wonder if she’s enough, to ever feel like she can’t see herself in the faces of decision makers, change makers and leaders around her. As Rupi Kapur has said, I, like all the women of colour around me, and like you, have generations of bellies to eat for and it truly is wild to be living so boldly. It should matter to you to be fully seen so you can feel what those who came before you were never allowed to feel and make way for a new generation of women who can live even more boldly and outloud, perhaps even having the audacity to ask for that little thing called equal representation beyond gender.