1.5 EDI and intersectionality

Individuals have many different characteristics and how these may interrelate and affect us to create interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage is considered as an issue of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). The disadvantages that a Black neurodivergent woman may face may be different from those of a white neurodivergent woman and also different from those of a neuro-typical Black man. The whole story of discrimination may not simply be understood by ‘unpacking’ the individual protected characteristics in isolation of the others. Intersectionality underscores how discrimination is amplified through the crossing over and meshing of the experience of those characteristics.

It is not enough to understand the discrimination faced by a neurodivergent Black woman by considering her as a woman, or as neurodivergent, or as Black, or as a neurodivergent woman, or as a Black woman, or as a neurodivergent Black person. For intersectionality, the important issue is how gender, neurodiversity and race and ethnicity, for instance, combine to discriminate against the life chances of a neurodivergent Black woman in ways that are different from a neuro-typical Black woman, or a neurodivergent Black man, or a neurodivergent white man, and so on. Those disadvantages are dynamic and affected by social, cultural and historical contexts. The concepts of diversity and intersectionality put into sharp relief that EDI is an issue of power at work and in society more broadly. Those who are better able to exercise power are more able to determine what work is, who performs it, and where and how.