Black women are often underrepresented and marginalized in the workplace. Black women often deal with the double edged sword of both their race and gender, which can impact their work and their ability to move up the corporate ladder. There are currently no black women CEOs among the Fortune 500 companies, while there are four black men and thirty white women who hold these titles. There has only been one black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and she did not hold that title until 2009. I will present a literature review about the hardships that black women face in the workplace, as well as different coping mechanisms that they use to deal with their daily workplace struggles. I seek to answer the question "Why are black women marginalized and underrepresented in the corporate arena, and what must be done to bring abut change?"
