Have a Seat with the C-Suite, Vol. 12 - A Brief Introduction to Intersectionality
This week, my goal in the C-Suite is to define and demystify a term that appears increasingly in educational equity literature and practice: intersectionality. We’ve referenced intersectionality a few times in AEC blogs, but this week’s deep dive is useful for two reasons: 1) We are committed to bringing cutting-edge knowledge to education leaders and 2) we believe that equipping leaders for education equity includes the exploration and application of useful theoretical frameworks. The blog that follows, then, is structured differently than previous C-Suite roundups. Instead, I offer a brief introduction to the history of intersectionality and then use the roundup portion to demonstrate how critical intersectional work is to all gender equity efforts in education leadership.
In 1989, critical race theorist and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined and used the term intersectionality to express the idea that individuals experience oppression or discrimination in multiple or layered ways. Importantly, discrimination may take many forms, including but not limited to othering, neglect, exclusion, and invisibility. That is, since individuals comprise more than one identity – gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, skin color, geography, ability, age, and education level to name just a few – they may also experience discrimination for each marginalized identity and those oppressive experiences are compounded rather than mitigated. Take for example, the experience of a person who identifies as female and works as a school leader. That person may experience exclusion as a result of assumptions that others make about her gender. We know the kinds of assumptions that may be made about her. Individuals may assume that she is not tough enough to be a leader, that she should spend more time with her own children, or that she lacks the technical knowledge necessary for the intricacies of data leadership. Imagine, then, that this leader also happens to be Latinx. She now faces another set of assumptions associated not only with her gender but with her ethnic identity. Individuals may assume that she achieved her position as a result of affirmative action rather than through her own merit or effort. Alternately, she may be subject to the dehumanization and oversexualization of minoritized people that is associated with white-dominated spaces. The point is that she does not experience one form of oppression less because she is both a woman and Latinx. On the contrary, her experiences of discrimination are layered and compounded: she experiences more than one marginalized identity and so she experiences more than one mode of oppression. Imagine that she may also be differently abled, a Muslim, a single mother, attend graduate classes at night, or work in a rural area. How might these additional identities result in additional experiences of exclusion, discrimination, or oppression? Discrimination, like identity, is made up of the intersection of multiple experiences and ways of being. Thus, any equity-oriented leader must recognize that individuals experience oppression along several dimensions related to identities they possess which may be marginalized or minoritized.
Try: Tech alumni speak on challenges of being women in tech, higher education
In this article, several women recount their pathways to faculty positions at Texas Tech University. The women featured in the article include Marilyn Phelan, a professor of law: Elizabeth Haley, a former interim president and dean of Human Sciences; and Sunanda Mitra, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In most cases, they overcame a number of difficulties rooted not only in their gender, but also in their chosen (typically male-dominated) fields and often in other differences such as nation of origin, race, or socioeconomic status. Neither of Haley’s parents were college graduates and her mother was opposed to her choice to go to college. During the time Phelan was in law school, only 3% of law students were women and she says, “The professors would not call on us and none of the firms would interview us.” When Mitra received her BS in Physics in Calcutta in 1955, she was the only woman in a class of 70 to do so. Haley, Phelan, and Mitra have nearly concluded their exemplary academic careers and their stories are relevant to this post because they are intersectional. In each case, being a woman was just one of the reasons each faced obstacles to success in her chosen career. Other factors – country of origin, poverty, religion – resulted in additional professional challenges. Try to imagine how the leaders in your educational context might experience a range of challenges due to the intersections of their identities (start with, for example: race, gender, class, education, income, and ability). Does your organization tend to compound or mitigate experiences of discrimination? Can you think of ways in which you can encourage your colleagues to recognize one another’s intersectional identities, along with the advantages and disadvantages they engender?
Read: Inside the Double-Bind: A Synthesis of Empirical Research on Undergraduate and Graduate Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
I’ve included an article from the Harvard Educational Review here. It is long but it is an excellent synthesis of more than one hundred studies aimed at answering an intersectional question. Specifically, what factors “influence the retention, persistence and achievement of women in STEM fields”? If you are pressed for time, I encourage you (as I encourage my students) to focus your reading on the introduction, conclusion, and recommendations. While the article is not explicit about the presence of intersectional identities and systems of exclusion, consider the following as you read:
How do factors outside of individual control (family of origin, race, ethnicity, etc.) create difficulties for women of color who want to pursue STEM careers?
How might unique institutional environments or mechanisms (such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, mentoring programs, or automatic admissions programs) mitigate the ways in which women of color experience intersectional discrimination or exclusion?
How might privilege also be intersectional? How do your intersected identities result in situations of privilege or marginalization for you?
Share: Building a different form of power: young people’s voices from California’s Central Valley
The people featured in this article represent the power of organizing in order to support intersectionality. Alicia Olivarez and Crissy Gallardo are two leaders of 99Rootz, which is an advocacy organization in California’s central valley designed to “harness the energy of California’s diverse majority to create a state that is fair, inclusive, and just for everyone who calls California home.” Both Olivarez and Gallardo were born and raised near Route 99 in the central valley, left for prestigious university educations, and returned to “build a movement of young people of color who are transforming their communities.” One of the goals of 99Rootz is to engage and mobilize individuals who are typically excluded from decision-making processes like elections. Those people are most often youth and women of color, queer, and differently abled. 99Rootz will continue to educate through programs like Freedom School (a summer academic program for school-aged students that combines academic rigor with democratic education based on similar programs started in the Civil Rights movement) as well as through voter and engagement campaigns that are designed to redistribute power to people who are likely to be marginalized by traditional systems of power. Olivarez and Gallardo recognize that intersectionality is not a liability but in fact a source of strength: “Young people in the Central Valley are powerful. We are proud to be Black and Brown, we are proud to be immigrants and refugees, and we are thriving.”
Lead: ‘Move at the speed of trust’: Wisdom in the Circle talks racial, gender-based violence
In Juneau, Alaska, several affiliate advocacy groups centered on women and Native peoples came together to discuss strategies for racial and social equity. Groups from Alaska and around the US share effective strategies for reducing or eliminating race- and gender-based violence in their respective regions. These meetings are titled Wisdom in the Circle and Ati Nasiah, of Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies (AWARE) is one of the group’s facilitators. She summarizes the goals of the gathering: “deepen connections with one another” and “achieve…shared vision and concrete steps toward coordinating our effort.” Amidst a broad range of individual and group foci, participants capitalize on the strength of multiple identities – women, Native people groups, educationally and economically diverse individuals – in order to solve common problems. What can education leaders learn about intersectionality in problem-solving efforts? First, interest groups that usually focus on one area of need may have ideas or strategies that are relevant to broader group interests. Secondly, trust is paramount for cooperation and collaboration among groups with different interests or identities. Nasiah says, “I have learned that if we are striving to promote social and gender equity, we can only move at the speed of trust.”