Women and Women of Color in Leadership: Complexity, Identity, and Intersectionality

This article describes the challenges that women and women of color face in their quest to achieve and perform in leadership roles in work settings. It discusses the barriers that women encounter and specifically address the dimensions of gender and race and their impact on leadership, identifies factors associated with gender evaluations of leaders and the stereotypes and other challenges faced by white women and women of color, and draws from ideas concerning identity and the intersection of multiple identities to understand the way in which gender mediates and shapes the experience of women in the workplace.