The Ripple Effect: How a Single Bias Denies Us All | Lita Goddess of Growth
One biased comment can alter a life. Explore how invisible constraints like sexism & low pay ripple out, creating care gaps, displaced families & a fractured society. A powerful personal story.
The Ripple Effect: How a Single Bias Denies Us All
There’s a deeper, more personal layer to the concept of artificial constraints. Beyond the clumsy algorithms and inefficient corporate policies are the unspoken, invisible constraints built on prejudice and bias. These are the rules that are never written down but are enforced relentlessly, shaping careers and lives long before you even get a chance to prove your worth.
I am 51 in a few weeks, and one of the “best” jobs I had also taught me the most painful lesson about these constraints.
I was working on a contract, having proven my value. My manager was building his “empire,” and the agency had a buzz of being forward-thinking. I saw a project manager role I was perfectly suited for and made my ambitions known. The response was a lesson in how invisible constraints work.
He encouraged me to apply, not for the role I wanted, but for a dressed-up personal assistant position. And then, in a passing, “friendly” comment, he revealed the real barrier: he believed if he gave me the project manager role, I would simply take it and then get pregnant.
Let that sit for a moment. My potential, my ambition, my entire career path in that organisation was instantly reduced to a sexist stereotype. My future was not mine to design; it was his to fear.
I didn’t apply for either role in his team. I applied for a similar role in another department. That same manager told me, even before my interview, that I wouldn’t get it. He was right.
The Lifelong Ripple of a Single Decision
Now, at 51, I look back and wonder. How many other roles did I miss out on due to being a woman? A Black woman? But the impact of that constrained opportunity didn’t stop at the office door; it filtered into every aspect of my life.
I am single, and I have never tried for a child. I always wanted to be in a position of financial comfort and stability before starting a family. In truth, it was the lack of job opportunities that paid well—the very constraints I faced in my career—that ultimately prevented that chapter of my life from ever beginning.
These decisions, forced by circumstance, ripple through a lifetime. Today, I live in a little village. It’s a beautiful place, but it was what I could afford on my salary, another practical decision made within a defined set of financial limits.
The Societal Fracture: When We Are All Uprooted
This is not just my story. We are now seeing the devastating ripple effects of these invisible constraints on a societal scale, often rooted in institutionalised racism and systemic economic issues that affect people of all colours and sexes.
People simply aren’t earning enough to house themselves in the communities they were born in. A stark, and often unspoken, consequence of this displacement is the care gap it creates. An entire generation, forced to move away for affordable housing or any work at all, is now geographically and financially unable to care for their ageing parents. The aged are left isolated, and the children are burdened with guilt.
Simultaneously, at the other end of life, parents are housing their adult children into late ages, as those children find it impossible to gain a financial foothold. The natural cycle of families supporting one another through life’s stages is breaking down. The disparities that were manageable in good times are now canyons.
The Ant and the Un-sprouted Tree
We are witnessing a societal version of a natural law: the death of a single ant in the wrong place can alter the path of a whole colony; the crushing of a single seed means a tree that will never sprout, offering no future shade, no roots to hold the soil, no habitat for other life.
That manager’s biased comment was the foot that crushed a seed. The denied opportunity meant a lower lifetime of earnings. That meant I couldn’t afford to live near my family, to be a present daughter or a potential mother. It meant I couldn’t build the financial stability that allows for caregiving, for community investment, for thriving rather than surviving.
My story is one seed. Multiply this by millions. Millions of seeds never sprouting. Millions of trees that should form a forest of support, of community, of intergenerational care, that simply aren’t there. We are all living in the barren landscape that results.
This reflection is not about dwelling in the injustice, as real as it is. It is about understanding the interconnectedness of our lives. Acknowledging these invisible constraints is the first step in dismantling their power. It allows us to see that when a path was blocked, it was often due to someone else’s limited vision, and the cost is borne by us all.
This is why the work of building a sovereign identity and your own ecosystem is not a selfish act. It is a radical one. It is about planting your own seeds, in your own soil, and committing to growing a forest where one was destroyed. It is about creating a space where our value is defined by our contribution and integrity—not by biases, fears, or a system that fails to see how deeply we are all connected.
Lita, Goddess of Growth