Favoritism vs. Discrimination
Favoritism isn’t always discrimination - but discrimination often hides behind favoritism, which makes it hard to recognize when you’re in it. This post will help you sort out which is which.
At first, it may just feel like your boss doesn't like you. You may ask yourself:“Why me?”
It’s common for individuals experiencing this to feel frustrated and confused, especially if you're a top performer who is used to your bosses appreciating your hard work.
And the truth is, favoritism could be happening and there may be nothing you can do about it. For example: a manager might dislike you because you went to a rival college of their own or they may just favor others who share a similar interest in a hobby like painting. That kind of bias may still be toxic and demoralizing, but it’s not discrimination in the legal sense.
So in this post, we’ll cover the difference between favoritism and discrimination and real-world examples for how you can recognize discrimination in:
Unequal Access to Opportunity
Targeted, Repeated Criticism
Favoritism vs Discrimination
For favoritism to be discrimination, it must be tied to your membership in a protected class - like race, gender, age, disability, religion, or sexual orientation.
For example:
A manager who always gives the best assignments to male employees
A team lead who micromanages Black employees but not white employees
A supervisor who tolerates mistakes from younger employees but disciplines older employees for doing the same thing
In these cases, favoritism is no longer just favoritism - it’s also discrimination.
Why It's Hard To Tell the Difference
Most people won’t have a single moment of favoritism that they can point to, because discrimination is often a series of subtle decisions that favor one group while putting another at a disadvantage.
That’s why documenting what’s happening - even if you’re not certain yet - is so important.
Individually these decisions will have some explanation for why they were made and those reasons will often be accepted even when they're subjective or vague. But together, they become much harder to ignore - or dismiss - as they begin to form a pattern that clearly shows there is a difference in how employees are treated.
Unequal Access to Opportunity
No matter how talented or hard working you are, your career success depends not just on your performance, but on your access to the right opportunities. This access is often what separates those who get promoted from those who are overlooked.
In theory, these high-impact opportunities are earned through merit, but in reality, they’re often distributed unevenly based on who a manager favors, who they feel most comfortable with, or who fits their idea of a “leader.” And when that favoritism is rooted in bias - conscious or not - it becomes discrimination.
However, unlike pay disparities or demotions, unfair access to opportunity is harder to name and even harder to prove. You won’t always find a clear policy violation. Instead, you’ll experience a pattern: being passed over for meaningful work, getting vague or shifting explanations, and watching others with less qualifications than you get opportunities that you’ve never received.
Because these missed opportunities aren’t tied directly to compensation, complaints about them are often dismissed as emotional or petty. However, over time, the impact can have long-term consequences for your career such as being denied a promotion or even being terminated.
What Unequal Access to Opportunity Looks Like
Imagine you're one of only two women on your team. Over time, you start to notice a pattern: the most high-impact, career-building projects always go to your male colleagues. At first, you give your boss the benefit of the doubt. Maybe your manager assumes you’re not interested, or maybe it’s just coincidence.
So, you take action - you tell your manager directly that you’re eager to take on more challenging work. But still nothing changes and you continue to be passed over.
Determined to be more explicit, you begin asking why you weren’t considered for specific projects only to learn the reasons are vague and inconsistent:
You’re told another teammate was a “better personality fit,” though your manager can’t explain what that means.
You’re told someone else had “more relevant experience,” even though that’s factually untrue. When you point it out, you're dismissed with a vague promise to consider you “next time.”
So you begin expressing your concern and frustration more directly, but instead of being heard, your manager starts describing you as emotional and difficult while accusing you of “making a big deal out of nothing.”
You worry these decisions may impact your chances for promotion, but your manager dismisses it every time you bring it up. However, when the promotion cycle comes around, your worst fear is realized and you’re passed over. When you ask why, your manager tells you he “really tried to advocate for you,” but due to limited slots, the promotion went to those who “had a bigger impact this year.”
You try going to HR and telling them you're concerned your promotion denial was discrimination, but after talking to your manager they inform you that they found no evidence of discrimination.
Now you’re afraid you've only made things worse for yourself by speaking up.
How to Protect Yourself and Your Career
To be certain this is discrimination and protect yourself, you'll need to get as many of the facts in writing as possible including:
Who was assigned what opportunities over a period of time
Any requests you made for additional, more-challenging work
The reasons you were given for being denied opportunities
At this point we don't know if it's discrimination, so the goal is to collect this information without confrontation. The opportunity assignments can be tracked independently, but the rest should be captured in some form of written communication with your manager. You can do this by putting your requests for more challenging work in an email and following up any 1:1 discussions about assignments with a summary email to 'confirm you're on the same page' about what your manager needs or expects of you in order for you to receive more challenging work in the future.
Targeted, Repeated Criticism
In many corporate environments, how you're perceived can matter more than how you actually perform. That’s why being subjected to excessive or unfair criticism - even when you’re doing good work - can seriously harm both your career and your confidence.
At first, you might wonder if your boss just doesn’t like you. But over time and with repeated criticism, you'll likely begin to question your own abilities even if you've never received negative feedback before. This self-doubt can make it harder to push back, especially when your manager’s word is taken at face value and rarely challenged by others.
If this is happening you’ll want to recognize it early so that you can proactively document your contributions and engage with leaders outside of your manager’s feedback loop to ensure you don’t find yourself isolated and unprotected.
What Unfair Criticism Looks Like
You’re the only woman on your team when a new manager steps in after your previous one is promoted.
Under your former manager, you were rated as a strong performer. But almost immediately, something feels off with your new manager. They seem to be unusually critical - scrutinizing your work more than anyone else’s. And when you make mistakes, the consequences feel far more severe than they are for your male peers.
For example, you and a male colleague both give a customer incorrect information that needs to be corrected. When you speak with your manager, you're told the mistake raises serious concerns about whether this role is the right fit for you. You initially assume this manager is simply stricter than your last one, but are then surprised to learn that your colleague's same mistake was brushed off as “no big deal” and “an easy fix.”
On another occasion, you have to complete an internal evaluation led by your manager. The questions you're asked are significantly more challenging than the ones you've been asked in previous evaluation and as a result you end up failing. You're embarrassed when you learn you are the only one on the team who failed until you compare notes with your peers and realize the questions they were asked were far easier. Still you have to take the evaluation again before passing.
You spend the next year working hard to meet your manager’s expectations, but it feels like the goalposts are constantly moving. No matter what you do it never seems to be enough. Then - exactly one year after you received an excellent performance review - you learn you're being placed on a performance plan.
Now, with termination looming, you're left questioning what changed, what you could have done differently and what you can do now to protect yourself.
How to Protect Yourself
If you’re being targeted with unfair criticism, it’s not enough to say, “My boss is being harder on me than my peers.” To protect yourself and challenge this kind of discrimination, you need to show that the feedback is biased, doesn’t reflect your actual performance, and is applied inconsistently compared to your peers.
To do this, document in writing:
Differences in evaluations between you and your peers
Examples of the work completed and feedback from others
Goals your manager set and later shifted
You'll want to get your boss to put their concerns and their expectations in writing as much as possible. This can be done by them or if they refuse, you can offer to do it as a precautionary step to confirm you understand their expectations and what needs to change.
You can also capture screenshots of your peers praising your work or describing their experience with your manager to show it contradicts your manager and differs from how you're treated.
Why Documentation Matters
Imagine this: after six months of documenting, you're denied a promotion or suddenly terminated and the reason you're given is "performance." But your evidence tells a different story.
Now you’re not just making a claim - you’re showing a pattern. A well-documented timeline of repeated favoritism or shifting expectations can directly challenge your manager’s excuse and make it much harder to dismiss your concerns.
This is the power of documentation.
It turns your word into proof and protects you when discrimination is disguised as something else.
Want help documenting or additional support? Visit JustiProof’s Website
See the other posts in this series:
Series Intro: Is This Workplace Discrimination
Favoritism vs. Discrimination (This Post)