Many companies that want to develop a diversity strategy always set themselves a goal first. This usually means: we would like to see more women, for example in boardrooms, management positions and tech and IT areas. But that’s not enough. Intersectionality is needed. Read here to find out what this is and how it works on the job.
Studies, such as that conducted by the Swedish Allbright Foundation, reflect every year how many women sit on the boards of German companies. (Spoiler: few). The creators of @wievielefrauen count how many women can be seen in event photos on Twitter (spoiler: also few). And many companies have already had women’s networks for several years or decades.
And it should be clear: there are no uniform women. So who belongs to this category? Who feels addressed by it and who doesn’t? It’s time to take a look at some little-noticed identities.
The concept of many companies: “First, let’s focus our diversity strategy on women” is far too one-dimensional and only leads to further exclusions. I’ll explain why here.
Diversity strategies break down structural barriers
But first a brief recap: Diversity & Inclusion aims to value the diversity of all people in the company. D&I should enable equal opportunities and a sense of belonging for everyone in the company, while breaking down structural barriers. This is because structurally existing social walls continue to have an impact in companies. This was demonstrated by the Twitter hashtag #metoo, under which women worldwide drew attention to sexism and sexualized violence, #metwo, under which people tweeted primarily about racism in Germany, as well as #unten, which showed that social background also causes many exclusions in the workplace and beyond.
Why women are not all the same
A study by the Bonn Institute for the Future of Work has shown that Muslim women wearing headscarves have to send four times as many applications for an invitation to a job interview with identical qualifications. For more highly qualified positions, Muslim applicants are at an even greater disadvantage compared to applicants without a migration background. However, the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) guarantees religious freedom.
One group in particular benefits from the focus on gender
This shows that a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf is of course a woman. But she is discriminated against specifically for her own identity as a Muslim woman. Only one group demonstrably benefits from the focus solely on gender: namely white cisgender women(i.e. women who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) without disabilities, heterosexual and from academic families. This is also shown by a study conducted by Lean.In in 2018, in which researchers examined the categories “white women in senior management” and “women of color in senior management” in US companies.
The example can be played out at will: Women with disabilities, trans women, women who are overweight…: They are all discriminated against in the labor market. The diversity strategy should reflect this.
Diversity strategy: intersectionality first
Categories of discrimination are interwoven with each other. The technical term for this is intersectionality. The American lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the term intersectionality to describe these social inequalities: With an image of a crossroads (intersection) where forms of discrimination meet and overlap. Crenshaw is referring to the specific discrimination of Black women in the US labor market:
“Let’s take the example of a road junction where traffic comes from all four directions. Like this traffic, discrimination can also take place in several directions. If there is an accident at an intersection, it may have been caused by traffic coming from any direction – sometimes even traffic coming from all directions at the same time. Similarly, if a Black woman is injured at an ‘intersection’, the cause could be both sexist and racial discrimination.” (Crenshaw 2010).
However, the problem has been identified for much longer – by the women’s rights activist Sojorner Truth back in 1851, who wrote that although women collectively experience oppression because of their gender, the experience of black women against the backdrop of racist exclusion represents a further oppression. The movements of white women at the time did not take this into account.
In Germany, too, important initiators introduced intersectionality into the discourse of women’s movements from the 1980s onwards. In Germany, for example, migrant women, Black Germans, Jewish women and women with disabilities have drawn attention to their own identities, such as Grada Kilomba and Peggy Piesche.
Consider multiple discrimination in the diversity strategy
Another example of the interaction of forms of discrimination: A recently published study by Amnesty International shows that Black women are exposed to 84 percent more hate and experience more verbal violence on Twitter than white women.
In addition, it has long been known in the US and the UK, for example, that the gender pay gap is significantly larger for black women and women of color. There are no figures on this in Germany. This is a data gap that absolutely must be investigated. The first attempts to collect data on discrimination beyond the gender category have already been made in Germany.
Naika Foroutan, Deputy Director of the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research, said in connection with a study by the Berlin organization Diversity in Leadership: “The collection of equality data has already proven itself for the category of gender. In the post-migrant society, it is important to develop survey instruments that also capture social diversity beyond the migration background. This study is the first time that this has been successfully achieved.”
Why is intersectionality so important in companies?
In the English-speaking world, D&I specialists talk about the so-called “emotional tax”. There is no literal German translation for this – which also shows that the discourse in this country is not yet as advanced. But it means something like: the emotional price that some people in the company have to pay because they are part of a non-dominant and marginalized social group and therefore experience racism, for example. And they always have to plan emotionally for experiencing racism. It is therefore also logical that people who are affected by the “emotional tax” people who are affected by discrimination have to exert more effort in the workplace and beyond than people who are not. Therefore, the goal must be to create a less discriminatory work environment for all diverse identities. So #inclusion and #intersectionality should be the building blocks of your diversity strategy.
What you can do for more intersectionality
Let’s be honest with each other. What makes the whole thing so uncomfortable is dealing with complex forms of discrimination and privilege. Yes, it’s not easy. But it’s part of any honest diversity strategy. B egin with yourself:
- Where does my own behavior lead to other people being excluded? Keyword: check biases.
- In which areas should I expand my knowledge of forms of discrimination?
- Who could I listen to more? Where have I prejudged someone in the past because of their own identity?
And then also to investigate within the company with the help of D&I consulting, for example through a D&I audit. A D&I audit is often a starting point for a D&I strategy. Using quantitative and qualitative data analysis, it shows which challenges exist and which programs may already be working very well.
Women’s quotas are only meaningful to a limited extent
Effective D&I strategies should therefore be intersectional. They would have to go further than pure number crunching, which will not help all women in the long term with its “so-and-so-many-percent-women”.
Women before, yes, absolutely, but only if the diverse identities of all people who identify as women and all people who are non-binary are taken into account in our diversity strategies. This is also what successful diversity strategies achieve: they also enable difficult conversations and face up to the unique challenges of the people and structures in the company.
Are you ready to take the next step and want to get started with your diversity strategy – for more fairness and equal opportunities in your teams? We’ll take the next steps with you. You can request our diversity strategy advice here.
