When we talk about discrimination in the workplace, conversations tend to center on race, gender, and pay equity. But there's another form of bias quietly shaping women's careers — one that operates even within racial and ethnic communities. It's called colorism, and its impact on women at work is both pervasive and deeply underexamined.
What Is Colorism?
Scholar Dr. Sarah L. Webb defines colorism as "the social marginalization and systemic oppression of people with darker skin tones and the privileging of people with lighter skin tones." It's a bias that cuts across racial lines — and, critically, it doesn't just show up in Hollywood casting decisions or dating preferences. It shows up in hiring rooms, performance reviews, and the sections of a restaurant where Black women are assigned to work.
The Data Is Clear
According to 2024 data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), charges related to skin tone discrimination have increased every year since 2020. A 2022 Catalyst study of over 2,700 women across different racial and ethnic groups found that skin tone bias was a pervasive issue at work — not an outlier, not anecdotal. A pattern.
Research backs this up across decades and geographies. A 2002 study found that lighter skin functioned as a form of social capital for women of color, correlating with higher educational attainment and earnings. A 2020 Brazilian study found that darker skin was associated with worse hiring outcomes for female applicants — but not for male applicants. The gender dimension matters.
What It Looks Like in Practice
For women in leadership, the effects can be particularly pronounced. A 2021 dissertation study of non-white women leaders in higher education found that more than half believed their skin tone had played a role in their career success. More than half also reported moderate to strong experiences with colorism at work. Perhaps most troubling: when women tried to report these experiences to HR, many were met with resistance — or retaliation.
The experiences aren't always dramatic. Sometimes it's where you're placed in a restaurant — literally. One employee named Jillian Melton observed that lighter-skinned and white coworkers were assigned to busy, high-tip sections, while darker-skinned Black coworkers were relegated to quieter, less lucrative areas. In a higher-profile case, Hooters faced allegations that it had selectively rehired lighter-skinned women after pandemic-era layoffs and that darker-skinned employees experienced racial hostility. The company ultimately settled the EEOC lawsuit for $250,000.
Why It Goes Unaddressed
One of the biggest barriers to addressing colorism is awareness. A 2023 dissertation study found that many Black women in leadership roles didn't recognize colorism as a form of discrimination — and didn't think it was significant enough to address. If the people most affected by it have been conditioned to minimize it, organizations certainly aren't rushing to name it.
There's also a false equivalence problem. Colorism is sometimes dismissed with "it goes both ways," — but the weight of research consistently shows it operates directionally, disadvantaging darker-skinned individuals within a group, not the reverse.
What Organizations Can Do
Awareness is the starting point. Employees and managers alike need baseline education about what colorism is, how it manifests, and how it gets baked into workplace systems. Without that foundation, nothing else sticks.
Beyond education, structure matters. Unconscious bias doesn't disappear because we want it to — it needs to be interrupted by process. Structured interviews, standardized rubrics, and consistent scoring can reduce the discretionary moments where bias sneaks in. And organizations should think carefully about AI tools in hiring: research shows these tools are often biased against Black women and tend to perform less accurately for darker-skinned individuals, meaning AI can amplify the very inequities organizations are trying to address.
Colorism won't be solved by a single training session or a policy update. But it can be named, studied, and systematically dismantled — and workplaces that take it seriously will be better, and fairer, for everyone.