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Not all favoritism is workplace discrimination, but all discrimination initially presents itself as favoritism.
Favoritism vs. Workplace Discrimination
The line between favoritism and discrimination is often blurred. Favoritism occurs when a supervisor gives one or more employees unfair advantages such as better projects, mentorship, or leniency. Or on the other side, it can also mean unfairly targeting an employee with excessive criticism or harsher scrutiny compared to their peers.
And with either form, the challenge with recognizing discrimination in these cases is that favoritism, while frustrating and demoralizing, is not illegal.
However, favoritism can and does cross over into illegal discrimination when the pattern of unfair treatment aligns with a protected characteristic. This means that only employees who share a particular trait -- such as race, gender, or age -- are consistently excluded from opportunities or held to a different standard. For example, if a supervisor reserves the best assignments for employees of their own race or subjects only women to extra scrutiny, it’s no longer just favoritism, it is discrimination.
Inconsistent Opportunities for Success
Workplace success often depends on access to high-impact opportunities, yet these opportunities are not always distributed fairly. When an employee with equal or lesser qualifications consistently receives desirable responsibilities, while equally or more qualified colleagues are overlooked, it creates an uneven playing field.
These high-visibility assignments help employees build influence, demonstrate leadership, and advance their careers. However, because they aren’t directly tied to compensation, discrimination concerns regarding unfair distribution of opportunities is often dismissed as insignificant or as the disadvantaged employee simply complaining they didn't get their way, even when it reflects systemic bias.
As a result, each missed opportunity compounds over time, placing overlooked employees, often those in protected classes, at a disadvantage.
For example, if a team has only one or two women, but the most visible and career-advancing projects are always assigned to men, the women will struggle to progress. Later, when promotions are denied, the justification may be a "lack of impactful contributions."
Now, in order to fight the discrimination behind this promotion denial, the employee will need to document and build a compelling timeline showing how opportunities were distributed unfairly over a period of time and how this limited their ability to make an impactful contribution despite many requests for more work.
Unfair Criticism
Unfair criticism occurs when an employee or group of employees receive a disproportionate level of criticism or scrutiny for their work compared to their peers.
This criticism and scrutiny will be defended by the supervisor delivering it as necessary and specific to the employee who is on the receiving end. However, each incident of disproportionate criticism further damages the employee's potential for success. The criticism will not only be reflected in documents like performance reviews, but it also serves to make the employee feel inadequate in their role even if they're performing at or above the level of their peers who receive less criticism.
Using the same example as above, if the two women on a team are held to a higher standard than the men they may be disproportionately punished for making the same exact mistake as one of their male counterparts. For the male who made the mistake, the incident is dismissed as out of character and as a result it has no impact on his career moving forward. However, for the female the mistake serves as confirmation of a lower-level performance already expected of her and as a result, the mistake is remembered, appearing on their performance review and serving as an excuse to deny them additional responsibility.
If you are experiencing this early warning of discrimination it is important to be proactive in capturing evidence and documenting each incident as this can and likely will lead to your termination.
Many, many employees suffer discriminatory terminations and find themselves without any path to recovery, because they have no evidence to prove their claims. It doesn't mean their claims aren't valid, but fighting discrimination legally is less about what happened and more about what you can prove.
What to do if you think favoritism is workplace discrimination?
Start documenting incidents, capturing evidence and building a timeline. When you do this the pattern of discrimination will become obvious as you see it as a series of collective events in one place.
If you build your timeline with JustiProof you'll not only have the confidence to take action, you'll have a formatted, organized report that you can share with HR, lawyers or the EEOC that clearly outlines the pattern of discrimination and how it led to the harm you experienced.
See the other posts in this series:
Series Intro: Is This Workplace Discrimination
Favoritism vs. Discrimination (This Post)
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