EXPERIENCING EVERYDAY SEXISMS
The word 'intersectionality' has become part of everyday language. It is increasingly used by Equity & Diversity units, including in Higher Education. The term was coined in 1989 by African-American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, to account for the ways that multiple minority statuses that can make up a person's identity can compound everyday and systemic oppressions.
In terms of everyday sexisms, this means, for example, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and white women may both experience sexisms at work, but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women may experience both sexisms and racisms, and therefore are doubly disadvantaged within Australian higher education.
This is why the project uses the term 'sexisms', because it acknowledges the plurality of experience within and beyond the category of woman in relation to gender-based discrimination (Gray et al., 2018).
CONSIDER THIS…
Quantitative analyses showed that there is a cumulative effect of everyday sexisms and intersecting identity characteristics for women and gender diverse academics. This means that there is a correlation between the frequency of experiences of everyday sexisms and the number of characteristics that participants selected to identify themselves.
See previous lesson for full list of included characteristics.