White Allyship of Afro-Diasporic Women in the Workplace: A Transformative Strategy for Organizational Change

Abstract

Given the underrepresentation of Afro-Diasporic women in senior leadership roles, this conceptual article points to the transformative potential of antiracist, feminist White allyship to serve as a missing piece in organizations that may propel the career development and leadership advancement of Afro-Diasporic women. We define White allyship as a continuous, reflexive practice of proactively interrogating Whiteness from an intersectionality framework, leveraging one’s position of power and privilege and courageously interrupting the status quo by engaging in prosocial behaviors that foster growth-in-connection and have both the intention and impact of creating mutuality, solidarity, and support of Afro-Diasporic women’s career development and leadership advancement. We describe the behaviors, outcomes, motivations, and detractors of White allyship and offer suggestions for future research. White allyship of Afro-Diasporic women holds important opportunities for meaningful relationships to develop in organizations, for which would-be allies need support, coaching, and training to increase their allyship competence and self-efficacy.