Why Racial and Gender Discrimination Still Goes Unpunished in the Corporate World
- Jun 9
- 8 min read
Sharn Somasiri is a nervous system and boundary-setting coach specialising in helping high-functioning women break free from toxic family dynamics. She is the founder of Breathe Again Coaching and a specialist in body-first, embodied coaching methods.
Every year, millions of workers experience racial and gender discrimination in the corporate world. Yet the systems designed to protect them repeatedly fail to deliver justice and accountability. The question is why these outcomes continue to persist despite decades of awareness, reform efforts and public commitments. At what point do repeated failures stop looking accidental and start demanding deeper scrutiny?
Racial and gender discrimination in the corporate world is one of the most documented, most discussed, yet least resolved issues in modern professional life. Organisations publish diversity policies. They set representation targets. They run diversity and inclusion training. They issue statements of commitment. Yet the data, the lived experiences of millions of workers, and the state of the systems designed to deliver justice tell a strikingly different story. The gap between what organisations say about discrimination and what employees actually experience within them is not closing. In many respects, it is widening. The people paying the price for that gap are the ones least able to afford it.
This is the first article in a series titled “The Glass Cage.” Through these articles, I will be examining racial and gender discrimination in the corporate world from multiple angles: the scale of the problem, the structural barriers that prevent people from progressing or even entering workplaces, the culture of silence that protects institutions, the psychological cost that no settlement figure accounts for, and what it means to choose your voice rather than exchange it. I will draw on evidence, research, and my own direct experience. I will not be staying quiet.
How widespread is workplace discrimination?
Before examining why the systems fail, we need to be honest about what they are supposed to address. Racial and gender discrimination in the corporate world is not the result of a handful of poorly managed organisations or a few bad managers. It is widespread. It is systemic. It affects far more people than official figures capture, because those figures only represent what people felt safe enough, resourced enough, and well enough to report when they felt able to speak up in the first place.
On gender discrimination alone, 30% of women and 25% of men in the UK report experiencing it at work.[1] Gender discrimination is not only a women’s issue. It is a workplace issue affecting people across genders. When you look beyond the headline figures, nearly 10% of the entire UK workforce describes their experience of gender discrimination as severe.[2] That is not a marginal problem. That is a crisis hiding in plain sight.
30% Of women in the UK experience gender discrimination at work | 25% Men in the UK experience gender discrimination at work | ~10% Of the entire UK workforce experiences severe gender discrimination |
61% Many ethnic minority workers in the UK have experienced workplace discrimination | 72% Many Black British, Caribbean, and African workers have experienced workplace discrimination | 2 in 3 Workers from marginalised racial groups across six countries have encountered racism at work |
The racial discrimination picture is equally stark. Forty-five percent of UK adults have experienced workplace discrimination. For ethnic minority workers, that figure rises to 61%, and for Black British, Caribbean, and African workers, it reaches 72%.[3] Cross-country research covering Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom reveals that two in three workers from marginalised racial groups have encountered racism in the workplace.[4] This is not a UK problem. It is a global one.
There is also a generational story in this data. Younger workers report experiencing discrimination at the highest rates. Gen Z workers report it at 44%, millennials at 34%, Gen X at 22%, and baby boomers at 17%. At first glance, these statistics suggest that discrimination is worsening as younger generations enter the workforce. That reading is wrong. What it actually reflects is that younger generations are more aware of what discrimination looks like, more able to name it, and less conditioned to accept it as a normal part of working life. The discrimination itself has not increased. The willingness and ability to identify it have. That is not a problem. That is progress. It is deeply uncomfortable for organisations that have relied on silence and acceptance to protect their reputations.
"Discrimination in the corporate world is not hidden because it is rare. It is hidden because of the cost of speaking up. Your career. Your financial stability. Your professional reputation. Your next job."
There is one further dimension to this data that is rarely discussed openly. Based solely on the data available, men appear to report higher rates of discrimination across most categories. However, that reading misses something important. More men are in work than women. Not because women are less capable or less willing to work, but because the barriers preventing women from accessing the workplace at all, cultural expectations, the default assumption that women will carry childcare responsibilities, and the absence of structural support for working mothers, are themselves a form of systemic discrimination. The system does not just fail women inside organisations. It prevents many women from getting there in the first place. The statistics are shaped by this exclusion before a single workplace experience is even recorded.
What this looks like from the inside
I eventually left the corporate world because of the racial and gender discrimination I experienced within it, and the victimisation and retaliation I faced as a direct result of raising concerns.
When I finally felt well enough to seek accountability, I was told tribunal waiting times for discrimination cases now routinely exceed two years, with some complex discrimination cases in London, in the UK, listed as far ahead as 2028 and 2029.[5] [6] What I found was not simply a system with flaws. I found a system whose outcomes repeatedly place the burden on individuals while institutions remain largely protected.
The silence that protects institutions
ACAS, the organisation that supports employees navigating workplace disputes in the UK, is so under-resourced that it can take a minimum of six months before a conciliator is even assigned to a case. Tribunal waiting times for discrimination cases now routinely exceed two years. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which handles complaints about how employers manage personal data and subject access requests, has a minimum six-month wait before a complaint will even be looked at.
Tribunals themselves are structured on the assumption that employees will represent themselves because legal representation is financially out of reach for most individuals. Yet corporations arrive at those same hearings with full legal teams whose entire purpose is to manage the claim, protect the organisation and its reputation, achieve the most cost-effective outcome possible, and silence the employee.
There are currently close to 60,000 unresolved single employment tribunal claims in England and Wales.[7] The backlog has doubled in just over two years.[8] Claims are being filed faster than they are being resolved. The people waiting in that queue are not abstractions. They are human beings who were harmed, who found the courage to come forward, and who are now suspended indefinitely in a process that was supposed to protect them.
The specific bodies and waiting times referenced here are based on data in the UK. But the pattern they represent, systems designed to protect institutions rather than individuals, will be familiar to anyone who has faced this in any country.
Most people do not make it to the end of the process. They run out of time. They run out of money. They run out of energy. Eventually, many run out of hope that they will ever see justice or accountability. This does not appear to be a flaw in the system. If it were a genuine flaw, more would be done to correct it. Yet the backlog grows. The waiting times lengthen. The burden remains with the individual. At some point, it becomes difficult to view these outcomes as unintended. At some point, we have to ask whether these outcomes are being tolerated because they serve the interests of the institutions they were supposed to regulate.
The psychological toll of that waiting is significant and consistently underestimated. Trauma does not pause while a case works its way through a backlogged system. It compounds. The people most in need of justice are almost always the least resourced to sustain a two-year pursuit of it.
Payouts and non-disclosure agreements do not deliver justice. They do not bring change. They do not hold anyone personally accountable. They serve one primary function in these contexts. They protect the institution. They do not change the culture that enabled the harm. Instead, they ensure that the person who was wronged cannot speak and that the organisation continues operating without consequence.
The consequences do not end when someone leaves the workplace. Discrimination, retaliation, and prolonged battles for accountability leave psychological and physiological scars. The workplace may be where the harm occurred, but it does not stay there. It affects confidence, trust, relationships, self-worth, and a person’s sense of safety in the world. The cost is not just professional. It is human.
Why I am choosing to speak out
I am in a more privileged position than most. I have left. My silence has not been bought. My voice has not been surrendered through a non-disclosure agreement. I am instead choosing to speak out.
Most people who experience racial or gender discrimination at work do not have that position. They are still employed. They rely on being employed for financial stability. They still depend on a reference. They cannot afford to be seen as a troublemaker. They do not stay silent because nothing happened. They stay silent because the cost of speaking out is high. Organisations know this, and they rely on it.
This series is for the men and women sitting at their desks right now, wondering if they are imagining it. It is for the person who raised a concern and then watched what happened to their career as a result. It is for everyone who settled, signed, and now carries the weight of what they experienced, alongside the weight of no accountability being taken and no justice being served. Your experience is real. You are not imagining it. Your story deserves to be heard.
If you have experienced racial or gender discrimination in the workplace and feel too afraid, too exhausted, or too alone to speak up, I see you.
Please reach out. I will listen. I will advocate for you. You do not have to carry this alone. Visit my website to find out more.
Read more from Sharn Somasiri
Sharn Somasiri, Confidence & Assertiveness Coach
Sharn Somasiri is a certified psychology-based Life Coach and Master Practitioner of NLP specialising in nervous system healing and boundary setting for high-functioning women navigating toxic family dynamics. Her body-first approach is rooted in NLP, breathwork and somatic techniques. She enables women to set boundaries whilst building the capacity to stay regulated, speak clearly, and hold their ground, even when they experience pushback. Sharn's coaching sessions are structured in alignment with the ICF framework and practical, enabling clients to unblock stuck states and take actions that achieve lasting change. Drawing on her own lived experience, she brings both professional expertise and genuine personal understanding to her work.
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