Intersectionality for DEI initiatives in recruitment.Swedish Job Market +Toolkit to start
This article has 4 sections:
First, we cover 💭 Intersectionality, what is it, and how we can apply this to think, plan, design, and execute DEI strategies in recruitment.
Second, we analyze the 🇸🇪 Swedish Job Market for young people, taking into account this perspective we find some worrying issues to start to act on it.
Third, we propose some 🧰 Toolkits we can use to start to tackle this as individuals and also in recruitment.
Forth we will have some 💡final takes and reflections.
💭 I. Let's talk about Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how multiple aspects of identity (such as gender, race, and class, ethnicity, and such) interact and create complex systems of oppression and power.
This concept was first introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American law professor, in 1989. In a recent Time interview, she describes it as
“a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other”
With this in mind, Diversity stands alone more of a descriptive concept that tries to acknowledge and bring into light that we humans are complex beings, from different backgrounds, races, gender, and so on. Of course, acknowledging the lack of diversity, meaning the lack of “real world” representation in a workplace, is a constitutive and important step to move forward. But we can't just stay there.
The same happens with Equity and Inclusion when they are treated as mere slogans or futile marketing strategies. If we stay on the surface we will be patching up those gaps, filling those “diversity hires”, and following trends with keywords and inspirational talks without truly digging into the why´s and how´s that could actually drive change.
This is what we will try to do in this article.
The understanding that social inequalities are interdependent and indivisible from one another: ‘race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena’ (Collins A, 2015. “Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas.” Annual Review of Sociology 41: 1–20.)
Introducing Intersectionality allows us to not just acknowledge and assess each one of these complex aspects of identity, but also invite us to think about privileges, inequalities, discrimination, structural and symbolic violence (among others). Deconstructing how each one of these aspects performs, relates, and interacts together will give us a broad picture of where are we located in this intertwined framework of social inequalities and injustice.
This graph is very illustrative of what we are discussing:
🇸🇪II. Swedish job market situation for young people.
I was recently checking the results from the last report from Myndigheten för ungdoms- och civilsamhällesfrågor (MUCF) Swedish Agency for Young and Civil Society, and its results are worrying and a perfect example for what I have been discussing.
I took 2 resources from the repost to discuss here, but you can check the full report here (in Swedish)
I will start to decode the above table by raws, exemplifying how through Intersectionality we quickly see that there is not an A or B problem, instead it's a complex one that gets worsened each time we add a new layer to it.
In this table, we have 4 aspects: gender, background (country of origin), and education.
Gender: young women are at more disadvantage than men to have employment. Taking the average that tends to smooth extreme numbers: a bit more than half of the women have a job at this age (around 60%) while for men is almost 8 out of 10 ( 76%).
BACKGROUND: The original difference starts to deepen even more where on average half of young women (51%) born outside Sweden have a job while 72% of men have one.
EDUCATION: As expected, the disadvantage keeps getting worse, and young women born outside Sweden with low education (less than secondary school) only have a third of chance to be employed (33%), while 6 out of 10 men are successful within this (64%).
What will happen if we would keep adding layers as: single motherhood, number of kids, war scene in their countries of origin, disabilities and so on? How many more chances they will keep on loosing because of aspects of their life history?
In this second table, we can add more complexity about the COUNTRY of ORIGIN and check the differences between Women/Women and Women/Men.
We can clearly see that BACKGROUND is not a homogeneous place to add “disadvantages” for women.
In fact, if you are young women born in Asia and Africa you will have between 25% to 30% fewer chances than men from the same continent to get into the Swedish labor market.
Also comparing women from European Union and Nordics with Asian and African ones, the chances will be also between 22 to 26% less. That differences deepen even more if we compare those women with Men from European Union and Nordics (between 23 to 32% less).
Therefore in Sweden, we are seeing that the employment situation for migrant young women with low education and from specific continents is very disadvantageous in comparison with other women and with men.
We have to think of comprehensive strategies to tackle this. I will propose some in the next section.
III. 🧰 Toolkits
🫂 for individuals
The first step would be to recognize as individuals (and within the organization) all the aspects in which we are privileged. This will allow us to have a better understanding of our own social position in this and also visualize how others become marginalized.
- Privilege Walk: I facilitated this exercise when I was doing my Ph.D. with secondary students from Buenos Aire's peripheries and it's a powerful tool to quickly visualize these interconnected inequalities. Here is an example in the video and some other resources to do think on building a questionnaire that is relevant for you or your organization. This can be made online in a Miro Board and will be very interesting (and shocking) to see the results.
- Social Justice Toolbox
- Intersectionality toolkit with workshops
- The list is long, but if you are interested in this, you can contact me for more ideas and materials on this subject.
🧰 for Recruitment.
Mantra to repeat in any stage of the process:
👏The 👏perfect👏 fit 👏DOESNT👏 EXIST👏
- The way job ads are written, who we have in mind when we write them, is for people just like I or we are truly trying to attract a broad and complex kind of real people? There is a lot of research now decoding how the words we use are associated with different genders and background (also think on accessibility and neurodiversity) This free tool is very helpful for that: http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/
- Intersectional and Comprehensive Sourcing strategy: As I written before (read link for more info) research and think creatively in other ways of sourcing where more people are hanging out. (depending on the profile) Be more open to including new people in the talent pool. Sadly we can't do this if we don't partner with the Hiring Manager to sponsor this approach as well. This has to be a group effort and be committed to doing it.
- Open, inclusive, and people-oriented recruitment process: it doesn't matter how much effort we put into having broader job ads and attract real and interesting diverse people, if we don't treat them with respect and have an open and transparent process all has done for nothing. For this one we have to put more effort into our side: ask them about accessibility, adapt our process to different necessities, be less of a “star company” and more an ally. Communication is also key, setting expectations, having a wiki/blog/videos to share resources, information, and materials with candidates to get invested with this organization. (in the link you will find another article I wrote with much more ideas for this one)
- Reduce bias in candidates assessments: Anonymized screening candidates, Standardized test (with the possibility to adapt as well), charts to score candidates in the same way, and hiring panels to decide not just on “gut feeling” but on actual facts/data from different people involved.
IV. 💡Final takes:
✅ DEI is not a “A to B” problem, has to be taken care of their complexity and Intersectionality allow us to not just acknowledge and assess each one of complex aspects of identity, but also invite us to think about privileges, inequalities, discrimination, structural and symbolic violence (among others).
✅ In Sweden, the employment situation for migrant young women with low education and from specific continents (Africa and Asia) is very disadvantageous in comparison with other women and with men.
✅ To drive any change, we have to be aware of our privileges first and do some internal and external research, to plan, design and execute any DEI strategies.
✅ The 👏perfect👏 candidate👏 doesn't👏 exist👏. It's just a matter of changing the angle from the organization demanding a certain type of “alike” people, to organizations that focus on people and their complexities.
✅ Recruit real people with various and interesting life experiences, drive, curiosity, passion, and integrity.
✅ Give candidates and employees space for development and to fail instead of looking for android-perfect robots. We are people and we are constantly evolving (good and bad seasons). Organizations should accompany those stages instead of suppressing them.
✅ Heterogenic people working together will just allow an organization to grow, challenge, adapt quickly, and evolve.
Let's discuss this, What do you think?
