Melinda Marshall
Tai Wingfield
Featuring profiles of Sylvia Ann Hewlett,
Mellody Hobson, and Charlene Drew Jarvis
This is a Center for Talent Innovation Publication
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books
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Copyright © 2016 by Center for Talent Innovation
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Set in Minion
ePub ISBN: 978-1-942600-93-0
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Marshall, Melinda, author | Wingfield, Tai, author.
Title: Ambition in black and white : the feminist narrative revised / by Melinda Marshall and Tai Wingfield.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. | First Trade Paperback Original Edition. | A Vireo Book. | New York [New York] ; Los Angeles [California] : Rare Bird Books, 2016.
Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-942600-79-4
Subjects: LCSH Feminism. | Feminists. | African American feminists. | African Americans—Race identity. | Sex role—United States. | Women’s studies—United States. |Racism—United States. | Identity politics—United States. | African Americans—Economic conditions. | Women—Employment—United States. | BISAC SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women’s Studies | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Women in Business.
Classification: LCC HD6095 .M29 2016 | DDC 331.4/0973—dc23
To all the women, black and white, who fought fearlessly to ensure we could have a voice.
Project Team
Project Lead
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Founder and CEO
Quantitative Research
Laura Sherbin, CFO and Director of Research
Pooja Jain-Link, Senior Research Associate
Charlene Thrope, Research Associate
Qualitative Research
Anna Weerasinghe, Fellow
Production
Isis Fabian, Research Associate
Catherine Chapman, Research Associate
Communications
Silvia Marte, Communications Associate
Contents
Prologue: Different Pasts, Different Starting Gates
Chapter 1: Power in Black and White
PART TWO: THE BATTLE BEFORE US
Chapter 2: Black Women Are Invisible
Chapter 3: Ambition and Ambivalence
Chapter 4: Arm All Women to Win Sponsorship
PART THREE: WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
Chapter 5: Flourishing
Chapter 7: Reaching for Meaning and Purpose
Chapter 8: Empowered, and Empowering Others
Chapter 9: Earning Well
Epilogue: Where We Go From Here
Index
Prologue
Different Pasts, Different Starting Gates
“We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’”1
These words, written by Betty Friedan in 1963, galvanized the movement that reshaped female aspirations, launched women into the workforce, and changed the course of history.2 The “problem that has no name,” as she described women’s malaise, branded the ensuing movement as feminism.
Yet from the get-go, Friedan’s vision of feminism was not universal. While white, middle-class women framed access to work outside the home as a form of liberation, black women yearned to be liberated from work—from low-paying jobs with poor working conditions where they had little to no opportunity for advancement. As black feminist author and activist bell hooks challenged, “[Friedan] did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.”3 For the vast majority of black women in 1963, the work available to them was a source of oppression, not liberation; a necessity, not a luxury; a constraint on their fulfillment, not an avenue toward it.
This is not to say that black women had no part in the feminist movement of the 1960s. On the contrary, black women were, in fact, on the frontlines of not one, but two fights for equal rights in the mid-twentieth century.