How Intersectionality Affects Leadership

In Peggy McIntosh's piece White Privilege and Male Privilege, the author discusses the ways in which one's privilege have "blinded" them to the lifestyles of other races and the other gender. McIntosh discusses how one person's privilege not only puts some at a disadvantage but also puts those that are higher up on the social hierarchy at an advantage (95). Those on this higher end are taught to not recognize the advantage and utilize this "unearned asset" to keep a leg up on those who are lower on the social hierarchy.



This article was followed with our discussion on intersectionality, which is the theory that states that people live multiple, layered identities based on their gender, race, and social class which stems from this aforementioned social hierarchy, history, and the operations of structured power (Richardon 142). The class discussed how the way one views the world (Alcoff piece) is very much effected by their surroundings and their upbringing (see the Doctor analogy). Those individuals who were born into privilege, however, do not want to see that they're advantaged.

I wanted to look at how this intersection of race, gender, and socioeconomic status affected leadership, an idea stemming from some discussions for my Management Fellow capstone course. I was able to find that while women represent fifty-one percent of the workforce, they are only being promoted to middle management roles in their respective companies and are marginally represented in company executive positions. People of color are also underrepresented in leadership and also experience some of the negative effects of "tokenism" in the workplace (sometimes due to Affirmative Action).

The authors from the International Journal of Leadership Studies researched the leadership persona of several managers and found that an effective leader "brings their whole being to an organization" not just their psychological and social factors but also their prior work experience, education, personal values and their experiences with diversity (Richardson 155). The authors encouraged future researchers to look at the whole being of each leader to make judgements.

Intersectionality and Leadership

I found this article to be very fascinating and I tried to relate it to the leaders that we have at DePauw. For example, looking at President Brian Casey (a male with an economics degree from Notre Dame and a law degree from Stanford who has previous working experience on Wall Street) whose approach has been much more proactive than his predecessor's (Robert Bottoms). Casey has also concentrated on such initiatives  as putting forth a positive image of the school, raising standards of campus aesthetics, and communicating his vision of the future of DePauw (often seen as female outcomes, actions, and decisions). He has done so by delegating authority, upgrading facilities, and bringing in a diverse set of colleagues.

The final video that I found to be pertaining to this topic is Pantene's "A Man's a Boss, A Woman's Bossy" commercial that displayed the double-standard between male and female leaders. The video shows the man as being described as being the boss, persuasive, dedicated, neat, and smooth where the woman was bossy, pushy, selfish, vain, and a show-off. Both people are acting in similar fashions and it is easy to see the woman being held back by these preconceived ideas of gender roles and descriptions. I think that that video and the article are both in agreement with the final message of "Don't let labels hold you back."

Pantene Boss vs. Bossy