African-American women are increasingly surpassing their male counterparts in education and taking on many leadership roles in the workplace.
Katherine Phillips, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management says that Black women are excelling in education and business, due at least in part to the ways that we are publicly portrayed in popular culture and the media:
Black women are viewed as “independent, competent, and demanding of respect in the workplace” — and that these are all considered “classic leadership traits”. It is these impressions of black women that help explain (and contribute to) some of their recent success in education and business: Two-thirds of African-American college undergrads are female. And, between 2002 and 2008, the number of businesses owned by black women rose by 19 percent — twice as fast as all other firms and generating $29 billion in sales nationwide.
