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.
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.
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.