“A striking 80% of women describe constant learning in their careers over time. WoC stay consistent in upskilling to advance their careers, reskilling to meet the demands of a fickle job market, and cross-skilling to work across sectors and industries.”
This excerpt is part of the broader report on the experiences of Women of Color (WoC) in STEM, which PositiveHire is scheduled to release in Summer 2026. However, it is neither a novel revelation nor a groundbreaking discovery. This statistic and the subsequent details in the report are indicative of the decades-worth of barriers women of color have faced in corporate America. The corporate playbook has always relied on the faulty premise of WoC needing more training, better skills, and the like to advance in their careers. Whenever a high-performing Black, Brown, Latinx, Hispanic, or Indigenous woman hits a concrete ceiling, the managers and HR departments prescribe upskilling, professional development, and more certifications. It is always one more thing they need to add to their arsenal to hit the next level they deserved quite a few years ago already. Hence, for WoC, career stagnation becomes a skill issue rather than a structural barrier that has been pervasive since time immemorial.
As corporate America prepares to navigate the looming crisis of the shortage of engineering professionals and an uncertain future of work, the circumstances raise questions about whether it is a corporate myth of individual capacity problems or a well-hidden structural architecture issue.
The Cognitive Tax of ‘Fix Myself’ Narrative
WoC, especially Black women, have to work at least twice as hard to get half of what other people in the same position have or, at the least, what they deserve. This includes extensive professional skill enhancement and capacity building, leading to discrepancies in securing roles that match their education, merit, and work experience. WoC constantly upskill and reskill to remain relevant and competitive in their careers, but institutional investment, corporate sponsorships, and confidence in their talent and skills remain opaque. The concrete ceiling also blocks their pathway to mid-level and, eventually, senior-level positions.
WoC, representing the PositiveHire dataset spanning six years, exhibited a strong growth mindset, the right skills to get the job done, and professional degrees and certifications. However, they struggled to internalize systemic failure, attributing the lack of growth to either skill gaps or the need for upskilling, especially in the pre-COVID years. This internalization of barriers perceived by WoC is what we call a skill trap, where these women find themselves stuck in a cycle of earning more certifications and training, hoping it will help them get the big shot at a higher-level position they deserved quite a few years ago. But when political, structural, and systemic barriers such as lack of visibility, inadequate representation, no opportunities for sponsorship, and inherent biases exist, the problem is not upskilling.
The Myth of Meritocracy in Hiring and Retention
Based on sentiment and textual analysis, nearly 65% of women, in a dataset of 1000 women working in STEM professions, including engineering, science, tech, and data, across the United States, reported structural barriers to their career goals and failures. The narrative and textual analysis indicated the prevailing belief that if WoC remained in a role long enough, or just knew how to articulate a bit better, this phantom advancement in the company would follow. While the structural and systemic issues were acknowledged and described as difficult, the implicit sensibilities suggest they are navigable with the right skills.
Analyzing the data through a structural, objective, and systemic lens indicates the opposite: a higher-level corporate misdiagnosis of the problem. Workplace equity cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, and empty promises of meritocracy. The idea that everyone is treated according to their skills and hard work does not hold when it comes to Black women. These faulty evaluative criteria need to take into account the systemic biases that WoC have suffered from. The problem is not a lack of leadership acumen, technical skills, or strategic foresight, but rather the invisible network of structural barriers that is choking their progress.
WoC are routinely under-sponsored, lacking enough advocates with institutional power willing to use their social capital to help them advance through the levels. The promotion criteria are also opaque and keep shifting. While for most employees, promotion is based on potential. For WoC, it is conditional on unattainable, exhaustive goalposts that keep shifting under a risk-averse leadership. In short:
Corporate America loves to treat the systemic problems faced by Women of Color as an individual rather than a structural problem. Something that needs fixing by working more on oneself or through temporary mentorships. Our data supports the uncomfortable truth WoC have been advocating against for decades now. The bottleneck is structural failure caused by, but not limited to, a deficit in measurable sponsorship, inadequate mentorship opportunities, and opaque DEI support, among others.
What’s the Way Forward?
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself” – Leo Tolstoy.
True change requires accepting responsibility for the much-needed, long-awaited structural upheaval in the hiring and retention practices of corporate America. A radical shift in organizations today requires a structural upheaval. True equity means shifting the burden of responsibility away from the WoC and away from performative, optics-driven diversity metrics. We discuss this in depth in the upcoming PositiveHire report, which lists various ways to dismantle structural politics in STEM, based on the lived experiences of WoC across the US.
Stay tuned for the official release of our full research study, which dives deep into the raw data, tactics around promotion velocities, and actionable tools to future-proof your talent pipeline.
