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Abstract

Details

Stem-Professional Women’s Exclusion in the Canadian Space Industry
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-570-2

Article
Publication date: 21 November 2023

Angela Martinez Dy and Heatherjean MacNeil

This paper intervenes in existing literature on entrepreneurship and inequalities by proposing a novel reframing of intersectionality as a threshold concept, an important idea…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper intervenes in existing literature on entrepreneurship and inequalities by proposing a novel reframing of intersectionality as a threshold concept, an important idea that enables us to deepen and progress the understanding of complex subjectivities.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing from education studies, intersectionality is explored through the five key features of threshold concepts: (1) transformative, (2) irreversible, (3) integrative, (4) bounded and (5) troublesome. We offer a set of reflection questions for what we call “doing intersectionality.”

Findings

We develop a metacritique of the way in which the concept of intersectionality has thus far been treated in feminist theory and applied in entrepreneurship studies – namely, as the culmination of thinking about difference and inequality, decoupled from its roots in collectivist analysis and Black and anti-racist feminism. The paper invites scholars of entrepreneurial inequalities to both engage and look beyond an intersectional lens to better elucidate the range of historically emergent social hierarchies and systems of power that shape their phenomena of interest.

Originality/value

Through reframing intersectionality as a threshold concept, this paper challenges entrepreneurship researchers to view intersectionality as a foundational starting point for the conceptualisation of complex interactions of social structures, and the structural inequality and power relationships present within their research, rather than a destination.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 7 September 2023

Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch, Matthew B. Perrigino, Jeffrey H. Greenhaus and Tarani J. Merriweather

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being…

Abstract

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

Details

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-389-3

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 June 2009

Rachel E. Luft and Jane Ward

Purpose – This chapter reflects on the interpretation and effects of the term intersectionality within the academy and across a broad spectrum of institutional and grassroots…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter reflects on the interpretation and effects of the term intersectionality within the academy and across a broad spectrum of institutional and grassroots environments in which it is operationalized and deployed.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on the authors’ experiences within the academy and their respective participation as researchers and organizers within feminist, queer, and racial and economic justice movements, the chapter surveys the rhetorical, political, and organizational uses of intersectionality across these realms.

Findings – Five general challenges to intersectional practice are identified and described: misidentification, appropriation, institutionalization, reification, and operationalization. The authors trace these challenges across the academy, grassroots movements, and nonprofit organizations.

Originality/value – Offers a new articulation of intersectional practice as the application of scholarly or social movement methodologies aimed at intersectional and sustainable social justice outcomes.

Details

Perceiving Gender Locally, Globally, and Intersectionally
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-753-6

Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2014

Intersectionality research is normative; rooted in a desire to improve society as inspired by Sojourner Truth’s 19th century writings and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s ongoing contemporary…

Abstract

Intersectionality research is normative; rooted in a desire to improve society as inspired by Sojourner Truth’s 19th century writings and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s ongoing contemporary legal crusade. Overlapping social identity dimensions which constitute every human individual must be recognized and multidimensionality of lived experiences among people embraced. These dimensions intersect such that no one is just a gender or an ethnicity or a (dis)ability or a sexual orientation or a social class or a religion, and so on. Furthermore, intersectionalities are not some collection of layers that are piled or added on. Humans possess many distinctive social identity qualities simultaneously and they interplay in unique ways.

Those who embrace multiplicity of social identity dimensions and explore how they intersect also posit that uneven power distribution in a society complicates situated identities by more firmly entrenching some people at the center and others in the margins. Researchers dedicated to dismantling infrastructures supporting inequality and desirous of elevating multi-textured voices of the disenfranchised are drawn to intersectional analyses. Overall, intersectionality scholars question perceived group homogeneity, essentialist categories, and argue that there are substantial intra-group differences.

Intersectionalities of social identity dimensions play a significant role in organizational work environments. Critiqued in this chapter are ways that organizations use the business case to gain advantages when thinking of social identity intersectionality in terms of “double dipping” and recruiting the “two-fer” in order to satisfy government-imposed policies. In particular, occupying a liminal space due to social identity intersectionality, stereotypes, and othering effects are explored. Chapter 3 examines these issues and more according to themes of: defining intersectionality, “unbending” social identity intersectionalities, applying intersectionality in organizations, and advancing intersectionalities scholarship.

Details

Practical and Theoretical Implications of Successfully Doing Difference in Organizations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-678-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 October 2022

Morley Gunderson

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on intersectionality and ascertain its potential for application to human resources (HR) research and practice. Particular…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on intersectionality and ascertain its potential for application to human resources (HR) research and practice. Particular attention is paid to its methodological issues involving how best to incorporate intersectionality into research designs, and its data issues involving the “curse of dimensionality” where there are too few observations in most datasets to deal with multiple intersecting categories.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology involves reviewing the literature on intersectionality in its various dimensions: its conceptual underpinnings and meanings; its evolution as a concept; its application in various areas; its relationship to gender-based analysis plus (GBA+); its methodological issues and data requirements; its relationship to theory and qualitative as well as quantitative lines of research; and its potential applicability to research and practice in HR.

Findings

Intersectionality deals with how interdependent categories such as race, gender and disability intersect to affect outcomes. It is not how each of these factors has an independent or additive effect; rather, it is how they combine together in an interlocking fashion to have an interactive effect that is different from the sum of their individual effects. This gives rise to methodological and data complications that are outlined. Ways in which these complications have been dealt with in the literature are outlined, including interaction effects, separate equations for key groups, reducing data requirements, qualitative analysis and machine learning with Big Data.

Research limitations/implications

Intersectionality has not been dealt with in HR research or practice. In other fields, it tends to be dealt with only in a conceptual/theoretical fashion or qualitatively, likely reflecting the difficulties of applying it to quantitative research.

Practical implications

The wide gap between the theoretical concept of intersectionality and its practical application for purposes of prediction as well as causal analysis is outlined. Trade-offs are invariably involved in applying intersectionality to HR issues. Practical steps for dealing with those trade-offs in the quantitative analyses of HR issues are outlined.

Social implications

Intersectionality draws attention to the intersecting nature of multiple disadvantages or vulnerability. It highlights how they interact in a multiplicative and not simply additive fashion to affect various outcomes of individual and social importance.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first analysis of the potential applicability of the concept of intersectionality to research and practice in HR. It has obvious relevance for ascertaining intersectional categories as predictors and causal determinants of important outcomes in HR, especially given the growing availability of large personnel and digital datasets.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 44 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2016

Mikkel Mouritz Marfelt

– The purpose of this paper is to build on contemporary intersectional literature to develop a grounded methodological framework for the study of social differences.

2836

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to build on contemporary intersectional literature to develop a grounded methodological framework for the study of social differences.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review serves as the foundation for a discussion of the challenges associated with intersectional research. The findings assist in positioning the proposed methodological framework within recent intersectional debates.

Findings

The review shows a rise in intersectional publications since the birth of the “intersectionality” term in 1989. Moreover, the paper points to four tensions within the field: a tension between looking at or beyond oppression; a tension between structural-oriented and process-oriented perspectives; an apparent incommensurability among the macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis; and a lack of coherent methodology.

Research limitations/implications

On the basis of the highlighted tensions in contemporary research as well as the limitations of that research, the present presents a methodological framework and a discussion of the implications of that framework for the wider diversity literature.

Practical implications

The paper suggests an empirically grounded approach to studying differences. This provides an opportunity, for scholars and practitioners, to reassess possible a priori given assumptions, and open up to new explorations beyond conventional identity theorization.

Social implications

The paper suggests a need for an empirically grounded approach to studying social differences, which would not only create an opportunity to reassess common assumptions but also open up for explorations beyond conventional identity theorizations.

Originality/value

The framework departs from traditional (critical) diversity scholarship, as it is process oriented but still emphasizes stable concepts. Moreover, it does not give primacy to oppression. Finally, it adopts a critical stance on the nature of the macro, meso, and micro levels as dominant analytical perspectives. As a result, this paper focusses on the importance of intersectionality as a conceptual tool for exploring social differences.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 35 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 July 2014

Sandra Corlett and Sharon Mavin

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Special Issue developed from a joint research seminar of the Gender in Management and Identity Special Interest Groups of the British…

4872

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Special Issue developed from a joint research seminar of the Gender in Management and Identity Special Interest Groups of the British Academy of Management, entitled “Exploring the Intersectionality of Gender and Identity”. It also presents an introductory literature review of intersectionality for gender in management and identity/identity work researchers. The authors highlight the similarities and differences of intersectionality and identity approaches and introduce critiques of intersectional research. They then introduce the three papers in this Special Issue.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors review the intersectionality literature within and outside management and organisation studies and focus their attention on three intersectionality Special Issues (Sex Roles, 2008, 2013 and the European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2006).

Findings

The authors outline the ongoing debates relating to intersectionality research, including a framework and/or theory for identity/identity work, and explore the shared tenets of theories of intersectionality and identity. They highlight critiques of intersectionality research in practice and consider areas for future research for gender in management and identity researchers.

Research limitations/implications

The authors provide an architecture for researchers to explore intersectionality and to consider issues before embarking on intersectional research. They also highlight areas for future research, including social-identities of disability, class and religion.

Originality/value

Gender in Management: An International Journal invited this Special Issue to make a significant contribution to an under-researched area by reviewing the shared and different languages and importantly the shared key tenets, of intersectionality, gender, identity and identity work from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Details

Gender in Management: An International Journal, vol. 29 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2413

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 March 2012

Ahu Tatli and Mustafa Özbilgin

This paper seeks to explore the difficult territory of intersectionality as it relates to inequality and disadvantage in the labour market of the arts and cultural sector. It aims…

3193

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to explore the difficult territory of intersectionality as it relates to inequality and disadvantage in the labour market of the arts and cultural sector. It aims to first examine the way Acker's concept of inequality regimes is located in the extant literature. Then, it aims to study the dynamics of intersectionality in the arts and cultural sector, which offers an ideal setting with interesting and counter‐intuitive outcomes of intersectionality.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on a qualitative study which generated interviews with students, employers and higher education institutions which are involved in industrial placements (internships) in the arts and cultural sector in Britain.

Findings

In line with Acker, the paper also disputes a‐contextual and cumulative formulations of intersecting inequalities that rely on multiplying the unequal outcomes on the basis of traditional categories of disadvantage. Instead, it argues that multiplicity of identities and forms of disadvantage introduce complexity and contextual depth into the analysis of inequality if we are to understand interplay between different forms of disadvantage. In addition, the paper maintains that intersectionality produces surprising outcomes which vary across industrial contexts, in particular across different sectors of employment. It uses the case of work undergraduate and postgraduate placement practices in the arts and cultural sector, in order to demonstrate the unexpected nature of intersectionality in producing disadvantage.

Research limitations/implications

The study draws on a selection of students, employers and higher education staff from London. A larger selection of institutions outside London could reveal differences between London and other cities and regions in Britain.

Practical implications

Intersectionality is an important concern for diversity and human resources management professionals. This paper provides an assessment of it in an unusual sectoral context.

Social implications

There is need to develop an emic understanding of intersectionality in each sector.

Originality/value

In the literature, intersectionality is problematised at workplace and individual levels. This paper's view of intersectionality is original in the sense that it explores how intersectionality operates at a sectoral level. In doing so, it demonstrates that salience of a strand of inequality in terms of producing intersectional disadvantage depends on the context.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 December 2013

Míriam Arenas Conejo

The text explores the feminist concept of intersectionality and its adoption within disability studies. The aim is to analyze how feminist and disability movements and theories…

Abstract

Purpose

The text explores the feminist concept of intersectionality and its adoption within disability studies. The aim is to analyze how feminist and disability movements and theories have managed the issue of struggling against oppression and for equality while acknowledging internal diversity.

Methodology/approach

Literature review based on the concepts of intersectionality, disabled women, and disability and diversity seeking for explicit and implicit confluences and emerging implications at different levels: social movements, theoretical developments, and policymaking.

Findings

Intersectionality is a minor field within disability studies. However, diversity and multiple oppression issues have been addressed by the disability rights movement, after disabled women introduced feminist principles. This intersection of disability and feminist studies has transformed both fields, and at the same time fostered a new paradigm. It situates the claims on the similarities between disabled and nondisabled people, instead of focusing on identity politics.

Social implications

The chapter acknowledges social movements as key actors in generating and developing significant debates, both in feminist and disability studies. Moreover, it seeks for conceptual tools that promote alliance-building strategies between oppressed groups in the struggle for social justice.

Originality/value

The chapter presents overall perspective of what intersectionality is and how the disability rights movement has addressed it, while seeking broader implications of the analysis of multiple inequalities.

Details

Disability and Intersecting Statuses
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-157-1

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 3000