The Impact of Colorism on the Career Aspirations and Career Opportunities of Women in India

Abstract

The Problem Colorism is a preference for light skin tones and devaluing of dark skin. It is a genderized phenomenon, mostly affecting women, that creates social and workplace inequities and negatively affects women of color. In India, colorism is a customary practice perpetuated by cultural beliefs and values, social institutions, and the media. Although studies explore colorism among women of color within workplaces in the United States, qualitative research on the impact of colorism on career aspirations and opportunities of women of color abroad appears to be non-existent. The Solution Providing education about the impact of colorism on Indian women to HRD professionals can assist with the empowerment of women and address workplace inequalities based on skin tone. The Stakeholders As today’s global workforce is composed of people of color from various countries, and their cultural values affect their career aspirations and opportunities, human resource development professionals must understand the implications of colorism, particularly in countries where women are less empowered to challenge cultural beliefs and develop skills to address and prevent related workplace issues. The purpose of this article is to discuss how six India-born women experience colorism to increase awareness, fill the gap in the literature, and provide suggestions for engendering Indian women’s career empowerment.

Self-Deprecation or Self-Sufficient? Discrimination and Income Aspirations in Urban Labour Market Sustainable Development

“…All the negative emotions mentioned above, such as lower self-efficacy beliefs, lower positive outcome expectations, lower aspiration or ambitions and unreasonable goals will influence migrants' enthusiasm and motivation for work, which has been shown in Figure 1. Thus, these migrants are more likely to take fewer positive actions to organise their abilities and skills efficiently in order to realise these goals [6]. Correspondingly, they may attain fewer successes and achievements in comparison with their similarly talented counterparts with higher self-efficacy beliefs and more positive outcome expectations.…”

“…Therefore, even if some migrants hold urban hukou status, they may be treated unequally because of their non-local hukou status, while looking for a job in a non-local urban city. Such unfair treatment, alone with the rural-urban migrant discrimination, is likely to create a sense of passivity and apathy [5,6], which in turn reduces the devalued group's passion and motivation for work [7]. Following the human capital model, an individual's motivation, aspiration, ambition and efforts as unobserved elements have a close association with their performance and achievements.…”

“…Following the human capital model, an individual's motivation, aspiration, ambition and efforts as unobserved elements have a close association with their performance and achievements. The passive attitudes and activity derived from discrimination may decrease workers' contributions to social productivity and economic sustainable development [6,7].…”

“…Based on SCCT, investigations regarding racial discrimination and career aspirations have been especially popular in the North American context [5,6,8,12,13]. This strand of literature claims that individuals who are vulnerable to discrimination suffer from possibly unobserved obstacles in setting their career goals.…”

“…Specifically, such lower ambitions and aspirations derived from being discriminated against restrict these devalued individuals' desire for further job training and continuous education which can provide more opportunities for better career choice and job promotion [14]. Therefore, such passive psychology and behaviour will in turn restrain these disadvantage people's performance, achievement and their prospective career development [6]. The gap between the vulnerable group (disadvantaged group) and their counterpart (advantaged group) will increase correspondingly, which negatively influences the economic sustainable development of whole society [7,15].…”