How to make your inclusion intersectional
Intersectionality describes the way systems of oppression intersect.
In other words: people don’t experience just one form of oppression at a time.
Legal theorist and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term in 1989, initially using it to explain the particular experiences of African American women, who experience both racism and sexism.
It’s now used more widely to talk about other intersecting identities, like class, sexual orientation, migration status, disability or nationality.
As Crenshaw puts it:
“Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there.”
Why we need intersectionality
As Crenshaw’s research shows, Black women don’t experience racism separately from sexism. They experience the intersection of both, which is sometimes called misogynoir (coined by Moya Bailey).
Programmes intended to support women often end up serving only a small subsection of women.
Research in the US finds that White women benefit more from affirmative action policies than any other group.
Unless we adopt an intersectional lens, it’s likely that our efforts at tackling ableism, classism, sexism, heterosexism (homophobia), other -isms will end up serving the most privileged people, and neglecting the most marginalised.
Inclusion must be intersectional, or it is not inclusion.
Let’s explore some practical actions you can take, to embed an intersectional approach to inclusion.
Make intersectionality the standard
Signal to staff that intersectional inclusion is a core element of your organisational culture.
It’s not an add-on, or a nice to have, and it applies to everyone.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re building a strategy , or rethinking recruitment.
SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) around diversity, equity and inclusion should be baked into everything you do.
Design robust policies
Audit existing policies and rewrite them as needed.
Whether you’re designing promotion eligibility policies or complaints procedures, refuse to treat forms of discrimination as separate. A
sk yourself: can this policy account for the particular, compounding forms of discrimination experienced by a Black, trans woman, or a gay, working class, Muslim man?
Create regular opportunities for reviewing and revisiting your policies, adjusting them based on learning from internal and external inclusion reviews.
Train staff on intersectionality
Invest in high-quality professional training about oppression, and make sure it takes an intersectional lens. If you don’t have the budget for training, see if you can set up a reading group or action-learning sets to help boost everyone’s knowledge.
Don’t rely on marginalised people to educate the rest of the team. Instead, encourage more privileged team members to lead on informing and rallying the others.
Audit existing systems
Block out time to look at your systems and processes. Data is essential to help figure who they are serving and who they may be excluding.
You can ask questions like: who is being promoted? And who is stuck in more junior roles? Who is concentrated in freelance, precarious or lower-paid roles, and who enjoys the most job security? How have issues like race and gender pay gaps changed over time?
Consider your funding sources
If you’re trying to tackle racism, classism and other intersecting issues within your organisation, you’ll probably start by looking at internal policies, like how you hire, fire, train and retain staff.
If you’re a charity, start-up, or another type of organisation that receives funding, don’t forget to look at your funding sources.
Are you supported by foundations with a historical link to enslavement, for example, or corporates with a business model that exploits marginalised people?
Consider your next steps and if the issue is historical, think about how you will address and communicate around that.
I’m not saying you can’t receive money from questionable sources! I actually think the opposite.
Frida Fund released a statement after they took funding from McKenzie Scott, saying:
“We recognize that philanthropic giving exists because of inequality and exploitation. This makes our role as grantmakers and fundraisers a radically political act because we try to be intentional about who we receive money from and who we redirect it towards.”
You can take the money! But give careful thought to the power dynamics around receiving and circulating money.
Audit your communications
Marketing materials full of white faces?
Storytelling about just one kind of experience?
Don’t let your communications and marketing materials perpetuate harmful ideas about marginalised communities, even if it raises funds for your charity or makes your company look good.
Audit your communications materials, removing any inaccurate or disrespectful depictions immediately.
Make plans to replace it as quickly as possible with accurate, inclusive storytelling content.
Build trust
Even well-intentioned policies often end up perpetuating racism and other -isms. Your team needs to feel safe speaking out and pointing out discrimination when it occurs. Try some of these practical tips for building psychological safety in your team.
Learn in the open
Publicly commit to addressing intersectionality in your charity, and report on your progress.
Consider how Wellcome (one of my wonderful clients!) talked about their work to become an anti-racist funder.
They shared that a recent evaluation “has found that Wellcome is still an institutionally racist organisation, and that we have yet to act on this with the urgency required.”
You can’t move beyond tokenism if you’re not willing to be honest and open about your journey, including the failures. If you can, seek out scrutiny from professional evaluators. If that’s not feasible, be as candid as possible about what you are trying to tackle. Don’t just name the problems and say they’re for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) staff members to address.
Truly commit to creating a culture of shared ownership over anti-oppression, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion objectives, so all your staff feel they have some power to drive action, and hold others to account.
Set up DEI work for success
Diversity, equity and inclusion work is highly skilled and demanding work. For people with lived experience of oppression, it can be incredibly traumatic.
You can’t expect marginalised people to do DEI work for you, for free, on top of their jobs. That’s exhausting and unsustainable.
So make sure DEI work is adequately resourced. Don’t deputise all of DEI work to a single staff member with DEI in their job title. And whilst it sounds good to say “we’ve hired a DEI person who reports to the CEO”, you need to go further.
Make sure DEI staff members have meaningful support from senior leadership, including sponsorship, visibility, status, and resources that match the scale of the challenge.
Track progress
Whether you’re tracking pay gaps or changes in hiring and firing, it’s vital to gather quality, disaggregated data. Make sure your data can be separated out across multiple variables, like disability status, race, orientation and gender. You don’t need fancy technology for this; you can use standard survey software.
Work closely with your team to develop the survey options, so they don’t have to choose between boxes that simplify or misrepresent who they are. Of course, many staff still won’t feel safe disclosing identities, so always have a “prefer not to say” option.
Design inclusive working practices
Working from home can be a win for inclusion. For example, if it helps women of colour manage their disproportionate caring responsibilities or gender non-conforming people to explore their identities safely.
But remote and hybrid work means some people are less visible.
To create inclusive hybrid working systems, you’ll need to make sure that people who work away from the office are not forgotten about when it comes to promotion.
Check out some of these tools you can use to make remote and hybrid work more inclusive.
Get clear on intersectionality
Still struggling to describe to your team what “intersectional inclusion” means?
Try explaining it like this: it’s about designing your systems so they work for the most marginalised.
Because when we design with the most excluded people in mind, our workplaces can work for everyone.