August is Intersectionality Awareness Month
WHY AUGUST?
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In 2019, we designated August as Intersectionality Awareness Month. In 2019, August was the beginning of Equal Pay Day for women of color. Equal Pay Day is the biggest indicator of equality between men and women. Equal Pay Day represents the number of days into the new year a woman must work in order to make the same amount of money a white man made in the previous 12 months.
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Often times, what's not discussed is the pay gap between white women and women of color. It's not until the 2nd half of the year that the pay for women of color catches up to white men. In 2017, Equal Pay Day for black women was in July. In 2025, it is back in July!
Intersectionality occurs when a person identifies with two or more marginalized, oppressed, or underrepresented groups. Intersectionality also describes the impact various systems have on people at the intersection of multiple identities.
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The word Intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, but the concept of Intersectionality has been around for a while.
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Are you familiar with Sojourner Truth's Ain't I A Woman speech?
Intersectionality, Chemistry, and the Table of Diversity
​Early researchers of Intersectionality believed that you could combine the experiences of a black man with the experiences of a white woman to better understand the experiences of black women. Ummm! WRONG!!
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Instead of thinking about Intersectionality like math, where 1 + 1 = 2, we should think about it more like chemistry! Think back to your school days where you learned about chemistry. You probably started off by learning about the individual chemical elements, like oxygen and hydrogen, from the Periodic Table of Elements. If you took a more advanced chemistry class, you might have learned how the individual elements came together to create compounds, like H2O. This is exactly how we should think about diversity!
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It's important for us to understand the individual elements. It's important for us to understand the experiences of black people, women, people with disabilities, and so on. It's even more important to understand how diversity elements combine and create unique experiences. People at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities are falling through the cracks at many organizations. This is unacceptable!
WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?
Exploring Identity Compounds!
In chemistry, elements of ​​all kinds are combined to create compounds. With the Table of Diversity, we take the same approach.
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Identity Compounds are the combination of both marginalized and privileged identities. The goal is to better understand the nuance of identity and experiences. For example, how does the experience change when we consider the identity and experience of someone who is a woman, lesbian, and upper class? How does her experience differ from someone who is a woman, heterosexual, and lower class? How do their privileged identities influence their experience? That's the next step in the conversation!
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This introduces a whole new mindset for how we think about ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
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