Recently I started to look at organisations and to try and summarise diversity in senior management.
One of the problems was that it was difficult to do so due to being an external party, and some people may not easily be distinguised as being from marginalised groups.
So I decided to make some changes. Here is my updated idea on summarising diversity in senior leadership for an organisation. I still overlay the Visible Spectrum (external view) of the leadership in this organisation onto the Intersectionality Spectrum (see Figure 1 below).
But I highlight that there are things that are deeper than the visual contribution (hence the dotted line). The other side is the Invisible Spectrum.
The blue bars that are shown show the “Degree of Difficulty” that shows the more marginalised groups you belong to, the more difficult your journey is.
So the concept is that we need to help people who are on the far right of the Intersectionality Spectrum and give them more opportunities to make up for the ones that they have lost. Like how nurses triage patients in the emergency department of a hospital – we look after ones who need the most help first and we give them the most help (in theory).
It should be noted that the risk in using the Intersectionality Spectrum is that is based on numbers that inherently dehumanise and this needs to be kept in mind. But as George P Box stated:
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
It is hoped that this is useful.
The Intersectionality Spectrum is part of the workshop on Improving Diversity and Inclusion in Senior Management.
