CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
Foundational Study
The cross-cultural doctoral research that gave rise to BWMG and established the first psychological study of its kind on Black women's workplace and career experiences across power, identity, and structural conditions in two of the world's leading music industry ecosystems.
Overview
BWMG's foundational study is the first investigation in the psychological sciences to examine the career experiences of Black women working across the global music industry through a cross-cultural Industrial, Work, and Organizational psychology lens. Developed between 2017 and 2022, the research was conducted across the United States and the United Kingdom, two major music markets with significant populations of professional Black women.
The study examined how trailblazing and leading Black women navigate power, identity, and structural bias across music industry ecosystems spanning more than fifteen business sectors. It examined career experiences at the industrial, organizational, and societal levels, producing insights that are both analytically rigorous and practically relevant to organizations, policymakers, funders, and the scholarly community.
Why This Study Matters
For too long, Black women's workplace and career experiences across the music industry have remained underexamined within both industry discourse and the psychological and behavioral sciences. This study was developed to address that gap through a rigorous cross-cultural investigation into how structural conditions, workplace dynamics, and identity-based realities shape professional life across the music ecosystem.
Situating Black women's experiences from the 1960s to the present, the study also examines how career life has unfolded alongside major social, legal, and political shifts in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Its significance lies not only in its originality, but in its ability to connect scholarly rigor with real-world institutional relevance. The study speaks to urgent questions of power, exclusion, labor, well-being, and professional survival in one of the world's most influential cultural industries.
Scope
The research examined Black women's professional experiences across more than fifteen business sectors of the music industry ecosystem. This cross-sector scope ensures that the findings reflect the breadth of where Black women work, lead, and create across the industry.
The investigation spans multiple decades and career stages, from early-career navigation to senior executive leadership, and examines how these experiences converge and diverge across the US and UK markets, across generations, and across the occupational spectrum.
What the Research Found
The research produced findings of significant concern for both the music industry and the psychological and behavioral sciences. Among the high-level insights:
On Socialization and Early Career Formation
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The study found evidence that Black women's career experiences in the music industry are shaped by socializing processes that begin well before workforce entry. These processes influence how professional possibility is imagined, how organizational cultures are interpreted, and how structural barriers are navigated across the course of a career.
On Structural Exclusion and Workforce Dynamics
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Across both studies and both regions, Black women reported patterns of systematic exclusion from positions of influence despite their demonstrated expertise, seniority, and contributions. The research identified reinforcing dynamics operating across multiple levels of experience, helping explain how exclusion persists across sectors and career stages.
On Exploitation and Undervaluation
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The study documented how Black women's intellectual, creative, and organizational contributions are routinely undervalued across the music ecosystem. This undervaluation appeared not as an occasional oversight, but as a recurring structural pattern embedded in labor expectations, compensation practices, crediting conventions, and organizational hierarchies.
On Health, Harm, and Human Cost
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The findings revealed that the conditions Black women described were not merely professional inconveniences, but experiences with serious emotional, psychological, physical, and career-related consequences. The research points to patterns of harm that require urgent institutional attention.
On Resilience, Resistance, and the Reimagining of Power
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Despite the conditions documented, Black women across the study demonstrated extraordinary agency in navigating, resisting, and reshaping the environments they inhabit. The research examines how this resilience operates, including its costs, and what it reveals about the structural interventions that remain urgently needed.
On Cross-Cultural Convergence and Divergence
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The cross-cultural design revealed both striking convergences and meaningful divergences in Black women's experiences across the US and UK music markets. These patterns carry important implications for how organizations, policymakers, and the scholarly community understand the interplay of race, gender, nationality, and industry structure.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Brittany Blackwell, Ph.D., is an international scholar-practitioner, founder of Black Women in Music Global, and Principal Investigator of the foundational study.
Her groundbreaking doctoral research is the first investigation of its kind in the psychological sciences to examine Black women's multisectoral career experiences across the global music industry through a cross-cultural Industrial, Work, and Organizational psychology lens.
The findings form the basis of her forthcoming book.
Research Contribution
This foundational study established a new area of research within the psychological and behavioral sciences by bringing Black women's music industry experiences into formal scholarly examination. In doing so, it generated new theoretical and methodological frameworks for understanding how power, identity, and structural conditions shape professional life across the global music ecosystem.
The study also laid the intellectual and institutional groundwork for BWMG's broader research agenda, public scholarship, and future investigations across the African Diaspora and the African continent.
From Study to Book
The findings from the foundational study are currently being developed into a forthcoming book by BWMG's founder. The publication will offer the most comprehensive treatment of this subject in the field to date, extending the study's reach to scholars, practitioners, institutions, and broader public audiences.
METHODOLOGICAL NOTE
BWMG's research engages both dominant Western research contexts and historically underexamined cultural and geographic settings. This cross-cultural orientation is central to the institute's commitment to producing scholarship that more accurately reflects the breadth and complexity of Black women's professional experiences across the global music ecosystem.