When gender, race and class collide, barriers to inclusion can become insurmountable. And they often go unseen by the people designing the systems. Yasmin Poole explains how intersectional thinking brings them into view and the invisible burden of disadvantage.
At 27, hypothetical student “Miriam” was forced to flee her war-torn country to keep her family safe. With a husband and a two-year-old in tow, she’s hoping to start her life again in Australia.
Miriam is smart, great at maths and wants to study engineering. But the barriers she has to overcome to get accepted into university stack up quickly.
While her bridging visa allows her to study, she will be charged international student fees, unless she can get a scholarship. To graduate, she’ll also need to complete a 90-day internship, which many employers don’t offer to someone on a bridging visa.
Miriam fled home with just the essentials, so she doesn’t have a laptop or her transcripts to show her education history. She will also need to secure childcare for her two-year-old so she can work part-time while she studies, but she’s not eligible for government subsidies.
Miriam may not be real, but this scenario is.
These are just some of the possible intersecting barriers faced by refugees and people seeking asylum in Australia, explored by UNSW Business School STEMM Champions during a diversity workshop with activist, speaker, writer and Rhodes Scholar, Yasmin Poole.
Refugees and people seeking asylum aren’t alone in facing such barriers.
When we look at how individuals’ identities – from gender and race to religion and age – combine and interact with systems of power, the intersecting forms of privilege and oppression emerge more clearly. This approach to understanding people’s experiences is referred to as intersectionality.
In just seven minutes of brainstorming, participants in Poole’s workshop surfaced significant barriers for Miriam. What emerged wasn’t just the sheer number, but how few of these burdens might be considered when designing policies, programs and processes for these types of students.
“I feel this lack of intersectional thinking[NH1] in Australia all the time,” Poole says. “That was also what drove my interest in thinking about an intersectional framework.”
As a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, Poole’s research focused on how governments can create better policy for overlooked communities across race, gender, disability and class.
So how do you spot the cracks before someone slips through? Poole suggests three places to start.
Before you develop a policy, process or program, define the problem first and ask how your solution might affect different groups.
“What's the desired outcome of the project and what are potential outcomes that can be created for intersectional communities,” Poole says.
Mapping the journey of a group your work affects, from the first thing they might think about until reaching the outcome they want, can help. Think about the different identities they bring and where they might get stuck in policies, culture or their own self-doubt thinking.
Poole then recommends for leaders and key stakeholders to continue to monitor how people are executing the policy and whether they’re consulting diverse stakeholders in the community throughout the process. Then ask if the policy has achieved its desired aim through an intersectional lens.
“Thinking intersectionally starts from beginning to end,” she explains. “It's having meaningful conversations about a particular group and if they have been marginalised or disadvantaged, it’s about changing some of our policies focus.”
When developing more inclusive systems and workplaces, it’s important to distinguish between what inclusion is and what it isn’t.
“Sometimes people hear inclusion or diversity and think, it's about getting “X” percent of people in this organisation to be people of a certain colour, race, or gender” Poole says. “That is not what inclusion is. It’s about systemic inequality and injustice.”
So, rather than treating it as a tick-box exercise that doesn't change the foundation of the workplace, Poole suggests flipping the script.
Instead of tracking race or gender, organisations should be looking at how racism and sexism show up in cultural norms, processes and who gets to have a voice in the workplace.
For universities, this might mean looking beyond overall participation numbers to better understand which students face financial barriers to placements or do not meet existing scholarship eligibility criteria. And for faculty, recognising the broader circumstances that may affect their ability to participate, progress and thrive at work.
Poole says retention, cultural safety and what a community tells you provide the kinds of insights that will help you make foundational changes that have a real impact.
3. Find your role with the five Fs
Poole’s activism journey began with silence.
Sitting in class in Year 11, Poole listened quietly as her classmate explained why they supported banning Muslims from entering Australia. The student didn’t know Poole’s mother is Muslim, so Poole said nothing.
But her classmate’s words have stayed with her ever since. It’s why, later that year, Poole entered a public speaking competition where she spoke about her experience growing up in regional Victoria as the daughter of a Muslim migrant woman.
“The more I did advocacy work, the more I realised the voices of people with my experiences are missing in the political and media landscape. My role, even though it was scary, was to put myself out there. Because if I didn't raise an issue in that moment, it probably wouldn't be raised.”
But being in the spotlight is just one of the ways to make a difference. Poole says everyone can create change through one of five roles.
“There are many ways for you to contribute,” Poole suggests. “We all need to be part of it and continue to push that ship. And everyone with different experiences and perspectives have an important role to play.”
Poole’s final piece of advice is to wear what she calls your “equity glasses.”
Every time you walk into a room, a meeting or start a new project, ask:
No one can remove every barrier that “Miriam” will face. But Poole believes everyone has moments of opportunity that can fall within their remit. Developing scholarship criteria, writing a job description or setting a meeting agenda – each offers the change to do things differently.
“We can all have agency over that," Poole says. “The challenge is to notice the next opportunity that comes across your desk.”
