Understanding “All snakes and no ladders” and the cumulative effects of discrimination

Snakes and Ladders

This image below shows the idea of subtle discrimination and how they accumulate over time. The cumulative problems are shown here using a “Snakes and Ladders” analagy to show the “degree of difficulty” and the lack of opportunities of a person from a marginalised group, that may not be apparent to an outsider.

ie. If you only measure someone’s experience and not take into account their “degree of difficulty”, you could miss out on talent.

Picture of a white man and a black woman playing snakes and ladders with different boards. The black woman has many more snakes than the white man and less ladders. In one instance for the white man, there is a snake that ends on the bottom of a ladder to represent someone doing badly but still getting a promottion - this is called 'failing up' eg. Donald Trump. It also shows that the white man is just ahead of the black woman in his career, but who has done the best to get to that position based on the degree of difficult of their board?
Imaging showing how it is not a level playing field with different numbers of snakes and ladders for different people. Want to share this? Use DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10929133

The black woman has many more snakes than the white man and less ladders. It also shows that the white man is just ahead of the black woman in his career, but who has done the best to get to that position based on the “degree of difficulty” of their board?

In one instance for the white man, there is a snake that ends on the bottView Postom of a ladder to represent someone doing badly but still getting a promottion – this is called “failing up” eg. Donald Trump.

The so-called “glass cliff” (Ryan and Haslam, 2005) is shown where the black woman has a ladder that ends right onto the start of a snake – which is the opposite of “failing up” – getting promoted only to be dragged down. eg. Claudine Gay.

Discrimination accumulates over time

So for every “snake” a person from a marginalised group has, it slows down their career and this accumulates over time. Some even talk about this as a hostile obstacle course for their career. This is shown in the image below of how careers can be slowed down due to discrimination.

The left figure (bar graph) shows the career progression of a privileged person who is promoted on their potential ie. forgiven for their lack of experience, and has not had to deal with discrimination. This shows y-axis as career progression and x-axis as time. The bar graph starts at level 6 and continues to grow steadily til it gets to level 14 in career progression. The right figure (bar graph) shows the career progression of a marginalised person who has to prove their experience ie. punished for their lack of experience, and has had to leave roles due to discrimination. This shows y-axis as career progression and x-axis as time. The bar graph starts at level 6 but due to discrimination the person is forced to leave (signified by a snake) and then drops to level 5 on the next unit of time. In this unit of time the person is forced out due to discrimination (again signified by a snake) and has to find a sideways move. Their career then grows until it hits another "snake" that forces it back from level 7 to level 6. It then grows back to level 8. This shows how experience can be slowed when you are faced with discrimination and that expereince can be highly correlated with opportunity or lack of discrmiination and not on ability.
Figure showing how discrimination can slow down career progression. Want to share this? Use DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10929664

 

You can go to Not the Only One to see even more articles about how careers are affected by subtle discrimination. You can also search on “promotion” at Not the Only One to see more examples.

Redefine Merit

This is why we need to redefine merit by reducing the weight of experience and looking at taking into account someone’s “degree of difficulty” via techniques like “Achievement Relative to Opportunity”.

We can also increase the focus on “continuous improvement skills” to help make our organisations more future-proof.

 

RM