Understanding social identities and intersectionality

In this facilitated DEI workshop, you will have an opportunity to uncover specific dimensions of diversity that may have been overlooked in your DEI work to date that have an impact on decision making, trust building, and how you might navigate different environments.  Additionally, you will explore the intersection of multiple social identities that add to the complexity to how we understand workplace experiences.

Why Social Identity AND Intersectionality? 

Building awareness around our social identities help determine pin-pointed ways we can form more psychologically safe spaces for people to feel included and valued that extend beyond the surface level acknowledgements of bias and inequity in the workplace to reveal exactly how and where we might let our bias seep into our organizations. 

We all have multiple social identities that shape how we navigate our environments, which is why we will also spend time exploring the topic of intersectionality. Intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, is a framework for understanding different people’s varying experiences in the world. Intersectionality is not about adding one aspect of identity to another. It is about how people with overlapping identities experience systems of power.

It is important to consider intersectionality in the workplace because our various identities impact our daily lives, affecting how we perceive the world and how the world perceives us. When we look at how our identities intersect, we see the unique lived experiences—of ourselves and others—through the lens of privilege, oppression, power, and marginalization. Who has power? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who doesn’t? Who is automatically included in groups? Who isn’t? How do you “show up” to other people? What do you do to control how others perceive you? What parts of your identity help you fit in? What parts of your identity make you stand out? The answers to all these questions are rooted in intersectionality.

During this workshop, we will:

• Increase awareness of own social identity and how individual identities impact decision making
• Identify ways to adopt an intersectional approach in the workplace

After the workshop, you will:

• Identify one focus area within their organization to apply their learnings
• Design your own Social Identity Map (which each participant would create during one of the activities in the session)