Achieving equity in the tech industry must be intersectional: race, class, gender, sexuality, and other key factors of identity shape experiences differently; and understanding those differences is critical to promoting diversity, inclusion, and change for women, girls, and other underrepresented groups in IT.
Over the past decade, many institutions and organizations are becoming more aware of how unconscious and overt bias leads to uneven access, recruitment, and retention of individuals in computing along race and gender lines. Building on this awareness, it is important to call attention to a lesser known, but equally challenging, form of bias that can be an added barrier for women and girls of color to achieving equity in computing: color bias or “colorism.”
