This blog post is crafted to serve as a guidepost, offering our readers a starting point or entryway into an endeavor that, for many, has felt overwhelming, impenetrable, and/or impossible to navigate.

Welcome to the third and final installment of the “dirty-girl effect” series. Two weeks ago, I introduced the idea of the dirty-girl effect. In short, I defined it as a process of “dirtying” that women experience in their private and public lives…

“A black woman with a PhD is worse than a woman with HIV.” I didn’t respond. Instead, I looked over at his wife. I wondered about how she felt hearing him say that. She put her head down. I wondered what it meant for her to be married to a man who held that belief. How far could she rise and grow with a partner who felt that way? And then I wondered what it meant for me, a black woman who was, at the time, earning a PhD.

Through conducting dozens of interviews (formal and casual) with high-powered women, reading countless articles and books and reflecting on my own experiences, I learned a lot. And those lessons can be summed up as what I call the “dirty-girl effect.”

“Never accept ‘no’ from someone not authorized to tell you ‘no.’”