Intersectionality:
Definition, Implementation, Related Terms & Benefits

Intersectionality in the workplace is a framework for understanding how multiple aspects of an employee's identity, such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and disability, interact to create unique experiences of discrimination or privilege. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality recognizes that people have more than one identity, and these identities are inherently combined and mutually constitutive, overlapping, and interdependent within interlocked systems of oppression.

In the workplace context, intersectionality acknowledges that discrimination often stems from the compounded effects of multiple protected characteristics rather than a single factor. For example, a Black woman with a disability experiences the workplace differently than women as a group, Black workers as a group, or people with disabilities as a group, her experience is shaped by the intersection of all three identities simultaneously.

Related terms: multiple identities, compounded discrimination, overlapping identities, intersecting systems of oppression

Intersectionality matters in the workplace because it reveals how traditional diversity and inclusion approaches that focus on one type of discrimination at a time often miss the nuanced experiences of employees with multiple marginalized identities. Without an intersectional lens, organizations risk building inclusion programs that are counterproductive or even harmful.

Research demonstrates the concrete impact of intersecting identities on workplace outcomes. In the United States, Black women earn substantially less on average than their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts for doing the same jobs, specifically, the pay gap stands at 63 cents for every dollar paid to white men. This represents a "double gap" that exceeds both the gender pay gap for women as a group (84 cents) and the racial pay gap for Black workers as a group (80 cents).

Beyond pay equity, intersectionality affects representation and opportunity. Black women are 8.3% of the workforce represented in EEO-1 data, but only 4.0% of managers and 1.8% of executives. Latina women are 7.5% of the workforce but 3.8% of managers and 1.7% of executives. These opportunity gaps demonstrate how intersecting identities create compounded barriers to professional advancement.

As Kimberlé Crenshaw emphasized, the discrimination faced by people with intersecting marginalized identities is "greater than the sum of racism and sexism." This means that having separate inclusion programs for each identity, on its own, is not enough to address the unique challenges faced by employees at these intersections.

Intersectionality affects different groups in the workplace through compounded discrimination that creates distinct barriers across multiple dimensions. The impact varies based on which identities intersect and the specific workplace context.

Women of color face particularly acute challenges. Latina women experience a pay gap of 55 cents on the dollar compared to white men, while Native American women face a 57 cents gap. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black and Latina women left the labor force at higher rates than any other group, primarily due to caregiving responsibilities, demonstrating how gender and race intersect with caregiving expectations.

LGBTQ+ people of color encounter compounded discrimination related to both sexual orientation and race. Black LGBTQ+ workers are more than twice as likely as white LGBTQ+ workers to report discrimination when applying for jobs. Black transgender people have an unemployment rate two times higher than the overall rate for transgender people and four times higher than the rate of the general population.

People with disabilities experience lower employment rates regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, or LGBTQ+ status. However, due to intersections of inequity, people with at least one disability who are also part of another marginalized group face more acute employment gaps. Black workers with disabilities have the lowest employment rate among all racial and ethnic groups, showing that disability compounds every other labor market inequality.

Workers with disabilities have the worst employment outcomes within each demographic group. Additionally, structural barriers to employment experienced by people with disabilities are compounded by the gender pay gap when considering women with a disability.

The term "intersectionality" was coined by civil rights scholar and advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, though discussions of the concept preceded the formal terminology. Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University and UCLA, introduced the term almost 30 years ago in the context of social justice.

Crenshaw's seminal 1989 work emerged from a 1976 legal case which alleged discrimination against Black women workers specifically, in ways that did not apply to women or Black workers as broader groups. She was critical of the court's outcome, which denied that Black women could make a claim as Black women rather than on the basis of being a woman or a Black worker separately. The court decided that the intersection of two protected classes did not create a new class.

Crenshaw argued that anti-racist movements were framed around Black men, while feminist movements centered around white women. Both movements overlooked the unique challenges faced by Black women. She pointed out that the discrimination faced by Black women is "greater than the sum of racism and sexism," emphasizing that intersectional experiences cannot be understood simply by adding up separate forms of discrimination.

Intersectionality has roots in the Black feminist movement of the late 20th century, particularly articulated by scholars like Crenshaw and others. It emerged as a response to the limitations of single-axis frameworks in understanding the experiences of marginalized groups. The concept gained prominence in legal and academic discourse, emphasizing the need to consider multiple dimensions of identity and power dynamics simultaneously.

Intersectional harassment in the workplace occurs when people face unfair treatment based on the overlap of different parts of their identity, making discrimination harder to identify and address. When different parts of who someone is, like their race, gender, or sexual orientation, overlap and compound, the resulting harassment becomes more complex and severe.

Transgender people of color often deal with substantially more harassment because of these overlapping parts of their identity. The discrimination they experience cannot be attributed solely to being transgender or solely to their race, it emerges specifically from the intersection of both identities.

Workplaces need to recognize how different identity components come together to create unique experiences of harassment. For example, a Black woman might experience workplace hostility that differs from what white women or Black men encounter, rooted in stereotypes and biases specific to Black women.

Understanding intersectional harassment requires moving beyond viewing discrimination through a single lens. Organizations must acknowledge that employees at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities face distinct challenges that cannot be fully addressed by programs focused on only one aspect of identity.

Organizations can promote intersectionality in the workplace through 4 key strategies that integrate intersectional thinking into culture, policies, and practices:

1. Ensure intersectional diversity amongst senior leadership: Having a diverse senior leadership team from an intersectional perspective solidifies an organization's commitment to addressing discrimination in a holistic and inclusive way. Senior leadership provides essential representation and sets the tone for embedding intersectionality into organizational culture.
2. Educate the workforce: Encouraging learning and conversation around intersectionality embeds a greater understanding of people's differences in organizational culture. This equips the workforce with the language to address different forms of discrimination and design initiatives that promote inclusion.
3. Integrate into internal policies: Include reporting that discusses how race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class interact within the workforce. This intersectional data can inform decision-making around pay gaps, recruitment practices, promotion cycles, flexible working policies, and parental leave.
4. Consider intersectionality when interacting with customers: Use intersectionality as a lens through which teams conduct their work. This improves how teams interact with each other and how businesses serve their customers, accounting for diverse perspectives and experiences.

Organizations should also establish solid anti-discrimination policies, offer regular training and educational sessions to all employees, conduct training sessions for managers on how to handle unfair treatment and implicit bias, and cultivate a culture where openness and accountability are the norm.

Implementing intersectionality in workplace equity analyses presents 2 primary challenges that organizations must navigate carefully:

1. Reduced sample sizes: By slicing data more finely to examine intersectional groups, sample sizes drop significantly. This may mean that certain statistical tests are no longer possible. Even when tests can be performed, their statistical power drops with falling sample sizes, potentially causing organizations to "lose sight of the forest for the trees."
2. Determining the appropriate level of analysis: If disadvantage is spread across multiple communities, analyzing and remediating at the broader level may be the right approach. There is no way to know ahead of time the level at which disadvantage may be playing out in an organization.

The key to addressing these potential downsides is to conduct analyses at multiple levels simultaneously, examining both broad categories and specific intersections. This multi-level approach allows organizations to identify patterns of disadvantage wherever they occur while maintaining statistical rigor.

Despite these challenges, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of intersectional analyses. Research shows that 52% of organizations' pay equity analyses now include intersections of gender and race, and 38% of companies are conducting intersectional analyses for some form of workplace equity analyses.

California's Senate Bill 1137, signed into law on September 27, 2024, made California the first state to explicitly adopt intersectionality into its anti-discrimination laws. This groundbreaking legislation integrates intersectionality into the state's anti-discrimination framework by amending the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the Education Code, and the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

SB 1137 explicitly acknowledges that discrimination often stems from the compounded effects of multiple protected characteristics rather than being limited to a single factor. For years, California law prohibited workplace bias based on individual attributes like race, gender, or disability, but the new legislation expands these protections by emphasizing that discrimination based on a combination of factors warrants legal attention.

The legislation builds on precedents like the Ninth Circuit Court's decision in Lam v. University of Hawai'i, which recognized that discrimination based on a combination of factors warrants attention. For employees filing discrimination claims, the adoption of intersectionality provides critical new protections. Previously, individuals who were discriminated against based on overlapping identities may have struggled to illustrate how their experiences differed from others in either single category.

SB 1137 makes it clear that compounded issues warrant recognition under the law. For example, an Asian-American female employee who receives negative performance reviews shortly after taking maternity leave can argue that her race, gender, and pregnancy status created a layered perception of bias from her employer, and the law affirms her right to challenge this combined form of unfair treatment.

Intersectionality benefits all workers by creating systems that include the most marginalized groups, which represents the fastest way to include everyone. When companies take action to correct inequities and remove barriers for the most marginalized, vulnerable, and underrepresented intersectional groups of employees, they improve equitable outcomes and accessibility for entire cross-sections of their workforce.

This principle of "inclusion from the margin" means that designing workplace policies and practices to accommodate those with the most complex intersections of marginalized identities creates more flexible, inclusive, and equitable systems that benefit everyone. For example, workplace accommodations designed for employees with disabilities often benefit all employees by creating more accessible and user-friendly environments.

While intersectionality is a lens for understanding a system of compounding disadvantages, it also provides solutions that benefit the entire workforce. Organizations that adopt intersectional approaches to workplace initiatives develop more comprehensive and effective diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies that address the full spectrum of employee experiences.

Intersectionality is often compared to 3 related concepts in workplace diversity discussions:

Intersectionality vs. Identity

Identity refers to the various social categories or characteristics that define who a person is, such as their race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Intersectionality, on the other hand, is a framework that examines how these identities intersect to shape unique experiences of privilege or oppression. While identity is about the individual aspects of who we are, intersectionality looks at how these aspects combine within larger systems of power and inequality.

Intersectionality vs. Diversity

Diversity initiatives often focus on ensuring representation across different identity groups, treating each category separately. Intersectionality goes beyond this by recognizing that people at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities face distinct challenges that cannot be addressed by programs focused on only one aspect of identity. Traditional diversity approaches may split the race agenda from the gender agenda, potentially missing the interaction between these identities.

Intersectionality vs. Multi-dimensional Identity

Multi-dimensional identity (also called intersecting social identities) describes the overlap of an individual's various social characteristics. Intersectionality uses this recognition of multiple overlapping identities as a starting point but adds a critical analysis of how these intersections create unique experiences within systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Intersectionality is both a descriptive framework and an analytical tool for understanding and addressing systemic inequalities.