An introduction to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion... and how you can be an effective ally!
Intersectionality
Summary
This teaching session for medical professionals is about the concept of intersectionality – the overlap of different social identities and how it affects real-world situations. It will include looking at an example from US discrimination law and examining aspects such as privilege, gender, and race, in the context of power and oppression. Through recognizing their own identities and the consequences of them, attendees will gain a better understanding of the advantages they may have had in their social and professional life, as well as explore how to combat stereotypes.
Description
Learning objectives
Learning Objectives:
- Explain what the term “intersectionality” means,
- Recognize how one’s intersectional identity can impact their life experience,
- Identify how intersectionality manifests itself in different systems of power,
- Understand the potential impact and consequences of stereotyping and oversimplifying, and
- Recognize one’s own privileges, advantages and disadvantages and how it is interconnected with the those of others.
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The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.
It is a real pleasure to be asked to talk this afternoon, and there's been some really good talks already. And hopefully this one leads on very nicely from Karen's talk. Um, you're right, K is. It is difficult to talk about some of these things, and I'll be totally honest as well as when When I was asked to talk about this, uh, I didn't really know what the term meant to start with, but as I've read into it, it's certainly something that I suppose have been aware of. But not perhaps to the degree Um uh, that I'd like to have been. So it's been a very educational experience for me as well. So with this what? What? What I'm aiming to do is essentially explain what the term intersectionality is. Explain why it matters to us, uh, and then basically use the knowledge that we've gained today, um, for the good of others. Really? Because it's something that we can all participate in and help to help to realize. Um, I think really, The realization, as Karen said, is that thing of recognizing your own privileges. And when I was reading up to prepare this talk I had that realization that that I am a privileged person. You know, I am white, middle class. I'm heterosexual and mail and educated. Um, you know, so all of these characteristics are part of who I am. Um, and I suppose having those characteristics as Karen said, you know, that is a privilege I've always had and it and it does put me in a powerful position. Um, but it's, you know, the my lived experience of that is that, uh, you know, it's not something I've always been at the forefront of my mind or been been aware of, perhaps as being something that's that's been important. That's quite difficult Realization, I think if you if you take even just one of those characteristics as cameras talking about the fact that I am white, you know it, it puts me in advantage, even if I don't realize it because I don't. I don't have have a darker skin tone, so I can't understand what, what, what? That the experience of someone with a darker skin tone is, um, So the very fact that I have these characteristics means that I'm not even aware sometimes of the disadvantage that may exist for others. So, um, you know, it's quite an interesting thing to realize. Um, so intersectionality, uh, sorry to interrupt you. I think you might need to just press play slideshow, because at the moment, we can just see the first landing screen of Power Point. It was playing on my side. Let me try again. Is that working? No. Have you done share slides or share screen, share screen? I did. Oh, you might just want to click through your individual sliding because I can see it. Just not in the you see that you're on a Yeah. Yeah, Alright. Can see privilege that. Okay, Sorry about that. So, in sexuality Sorry, Kate. Good flow as well. Never mind. So the in sexuality is basically it's looking rather than looking at an individual characteristic, it's essentially looking at the way in which systems have been inequality which are based on characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, how these essentially all all interact, uh, and how they can compound each other and and reinforce inequality rather than, you know, serving to to to reduce it. The concept itself was actually sort of kind of in the eighties by personal Kimball Crenshaw. He was essentially looking at the experiences of African American women. Um, now, people obviously have a number of different characteristics. We're not We're not just defined by one thing. Um, and essentially, what we're looking at here is, um, looking at these things as a whole rather than looking at, uh, as an individual characteristic. And And the difficult concept here is it's not. It's not a summation of all of these different different things. It is not, You know, that you've got certain characteristics or in an addition of all of these things. It's It's basically how these things overlap within systems of power that exist. Um, by looking at that, we can we can work out how how oppression exists within within the kind of systems that we're talking about. So as an example, the one that Crenshaw originally looked at was a discrimination case in in the US, which was a factory that essentially was, um, not not employing black women now, amazingly, when they took that as a discrimination case, the judge ruled in favor of the factory, and the reason they lost the case was essentially because the factory said. Well, we employed black men in our workshop, and we have white women as secretaries. Um, so essentially, there was taking the two characteristics as individual, um, individual issues and saying, Well, we do employ black people, and we do employ women. Um, but essentially, that didn't help. If you're white, if you were a black woman. So it's a combined characteristics of being a woman in black in that in that environment that that led to the compounding impression in that scenario. It was quite amazing, really, That that that kind of thing got free. So basically, we like to use the concept of intersectional analysis, um, looking at things for an intersectional lens, as it were. Um, if I take my own example, which I'm very happy to do it if I look at myself, the characteristics that make up my identity, um do put me in a privileged position. So, you know, I'm in a reasonable socioeconomic class. Um, if we think about it in terms of medical training, a male not only in a what is a predominant, patriarchal society, but also within what I would say, it's probably a patriarchal specialty, you know, drawn orthopedics from heterosexual. And as I said of, um, white say all of these things that you know and it's not not term like to use, But, you know, these terms in some of these systems are considered to be the normal characteristics of someone who would be doing my job or have my place in society. Uh, you know, it's unfortunate. I think when you when you look at it and you think about the orthopedic training environment, you know things are improving, definitely. But traditionally these sort of mirror the characteristics, um, that that exist within that system. Uh, and I think obviously having those characteristics has given me privileges during my training that I said, I have perhaps not even been aware of. Now I think if he's a Sri Lankan, you know s a s doctor, Say, as an example, if we compare that to someone who has those characteristics and is coming to the NHS and their first job, you can quite clearly see how the system itself, uh, leads to oppression just based on the characteristics that they present. So we don't know anything else about this person apart from their characteristics. Um, I think, if you think that you know, the her ethnicity and skin color would mark her out as being, you know, abnormal in inverted commas. Unfortunate assumptions and stereotypes about race do exist. Um, and some of these stereotypes might, uh, make us feel that they're perhaps not entitled to the same rights to training as UK doctors. Perhaps they're not entitled to, you know, the same resources that are available to help with training, perhaps be in terms of supporting, you know, professional development. So there's a lot of things inherently just from that which can lead to further oppression. I think if you think as well about gender, we've already talked about that in current talk. You know that that, in itself is is it can be oppressive, particularly within, you know, something like orthopedics were based on the characteristics that I've described earlier. Um, and all of these sort of summited things add up really to hurt, you know, in a way, becoming more vulnerable because the more oppressed you are with these combination of characteristics that you can see, you know, cross over. Um, the more difficult it is, if you're a vulnerable person to then speak up about the injustices that you're experiencing for fear of, you know, an impact on the career progression. So I found that quite an interesting thing to do, just to think you know how how privileged I was really just based on characteristics have always been part of me. And then it was a real just using that simple example. It's real kind of eye opening into into thinking about this and and how it's not just a single characteristic that that can lead to disadvantage. But you know this combination, how they all interlink to to compound a disadvantage, potentially so, viewing things feared in inter sexual length. So taking things and looking at them in this way, it basically gives you a chance to simultaneously consider a number of different forces, uh, that exist, and how power and privilege and oppression interact, uh, and are mutually interdependent. They're not. They're not independent of each other. They all interact together. So you know you can be privileged and oppressed. You can. You know there's a lot of based on different characteristics you have. So it's not as simple as just taking a single issue, uh, and trying to correct that, uh, it's a very sort of one dimensional way of viewing, viewing, oppression if you if you or disadvantage. If you just take a single issue and try and address that you're you're not thinking about the bigger picture. And actually, by correcting 11 injustice you might be might be creating more disadvantage based on other characteristics. So I guess the question comes down to what? What can we do about about that? And this kind of mirrors a lot of what Karen was saying, actually, Um, I think, um, you know, recognizing our own identities and consequence, See, recognizing our privileges and disadvantages, um, we can realize how these impact on our own lived experiences Um, you know, as I said earlier with my own example, um, it's given me a better understanding. I think going through this of of the advantages I I've probably had in my social and professional life. Now, obviously, as I said, my my lived experience is going to be very different from someone say, with a different skin tone, a different gender, different sexual orientations. So so all of these things, just being aware of your own identities, put you in a much better place of of realizing what what advantage you may have, what disadvantage you may have. So I think, as Karen said earlier, really examining yourself and and and looking at the characteristics that you possess and and how those interacting in systems of you know, kind of power is a really, really good thing to do. Um, I think one thing all guilty of is stereotyping. Um, you know, uh, you can see how stereotypes, you know, essentially a stereotype is really oversimplifying One particular group. It kind of goes against the concept and reality that we're all made up of of complex characteristics. We're not We're not. You know, simple, simple beings were very complicated people with complicated characteristics. So accepting stereotypes, making assumptions is not really appreciating characteristics that people might have. And these these characteristics are not always immediately evident to us. So So really trying to trying to understand people you know, in rejecting these these these simplified versions of of what people are what groups are, um, is something that can really make a difference. Um, if we don't reject stereotypes and, you know by by oversimplifying things you you can actually put people on more harm and disadvantage and, uh, you know, worsen the experience for that personal group again. Very similar to to what Karen said earlier, I think seeking out new perspectives. So So when you experience a point of view, you know, that might be confusing or unusual. Um, as Karen said earlier, it's really about trying to trying to explore it and gain an understanding of that point of view. So really trying to think of things from others point of views based, you know, before you make any judgments about things, so so that that's sort of educating yourself really to to, to understanding points of views of others. And hopefully, by doing all of these things, we can all be agents for change. And, you know, as I said, I've hopefully tried to explain today just you know what? What a fascinating kind of concept. This is that. And when you when you do think about it, everyone is complex and made up of so many different things, and it's how these things interacted. Basically, uh, make us who we are. So if we can educate ourselves and help to to drive, change, it helps to and understand the concept of intersectionality. It really does help us when we're thinking about addressing issues where people are disadvantaged. Because, you know, we're thinking about about the whole whole person, all of the characteristics, rather than focusing on one particular issue that that might end up, you know, making the situation worse for worse. For those those those minority groups. Um, that's essentially it. Thanks, Mike. I just stopped recording again.