Disability and Work Topics 101: Explaining Intersectionality and Disability

Introduction

Have you heard of the word intersectionality? Intersectionality is a major part of how we approach our services here at CCRW. But what exactly is intersectionality? How do intersectionality and disability relate to each other? And why should you care?

Intersectionality is a way to understand how the different parts of a person’s identity, like their disability, race, or gender, can combine to create unique experiences. Someone might face challenges not just because they have a disability, but also because of these various parts of their identity.

For example, consider Nisha. She’s a young, neurodivergent, South Asian woman who uses a wheelchair. Nisha was born in Canada, but her parents were born in another country and immigrated to Canada before she was born. All the different parts of Nisha’s identity, like her age, disabilities, ethnicity, cultural background, and gender, shape her experiences and make her unique. These overlapping aspects of her identity also shape the barriers she may face, especially when living in a society where power and privilege are unevenly distributed.

Everyone is different, and intersectionality helps us understand how those differences relate to our experiences navigating the world. It also shows us that barriers people face usually don’t have just one cause. When we understand intersectionality and disability, we can do a better job of standing up for people with disabilities. Keep reading to learn more!

How Women of Colour Shaped the Foundations of Intersectionality

People often say that Kimberlé Crenshaw came up with the term intersectionality. While Crenshaw did play the important role of giving it a name in 1989, the idea had been developing at least as early as the 1960s and 1970s.^[1]

During that time, many women of colour in the USA lived in communities divided by race and ethnicity. Social justice movements like the civil rights movement and the Red Power movement were growing in some of those communities. These movements stood up to racism and fought for things like equal rights and fair treatment.

Even though their lives were very different, many of these women recognized the same thing: the unfair treatment they faced wasn’t just about one part of who they were, but about how race, gender, class, and other parts of their identity are connected.

They saw it in their everyday lives. For example, Black women in the civil rights movement often felt that their voices weren’t heard. While the movement focused on fighting racism, it didn’t address the sexism that Black women also experienced, sometimes even within the movement itself.^[2] Meanwhile, Indigenous women involved in the Red Power movement were not only fighting racism and sexism. They were also fighting against the ways that colonization tried to take away their cultures, identities, and rights.^[3]

Even though they were fighting different battles, these women recognized that the issues were linked, and you had to fix them together rather than separately. These lived experiences laid the foundation for what Crenshaw would later call intersectionality.

Naming Intersectionality: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Contribution

In 1989, Crenshaw gave this idea a name: intersectionality.^[4] When she did so, she made it easier to talk about how the different parts of our identity affect our experiences—and the different ways that we are perceived by others based on those identities.

Crenshaw wanted people to stop thinking of Black women as only Black or only women. Black women are both, which means that they can experience discrimination based on gender, based on race, or based on both combined.

She explained this with an example of a real court case from 1976. Some Black women sued General Motors, saying that the company didn’t hire them because they were Black women.^[4] The judge didn’t agree, though. He said they couldn’t claim that they were discriminated against based upon both their race and gender at the same time.

But the judge was wrong. General Motors did hire Black people, but only Black men for industrial jobs. They also hired white women for secretarial jobs. But as Black women, the plaintiffs were at a disadvantage. They were left out because of the combination of their race and gender, a reality the judge didn’t recognize. That experience is what intersectionality helps us to understand.

Understanding the Word Intersectionality

It is helpful that we have the word intersectionality now. But the idea is still complicated, so let’s break it down.

Understanding intersectionality involves two main ideas. Let’s go back to Nisha, who we met at the beginning of this post, to understand those two ideas.

1. Everyone has multiple identities. Nisha’s identities include that she is a young woman of South-Asian descent who is neurodivergent and uses a wheelchair. She may also identify by her faith, sexuality, or educational level, which are parts of her identity that we won’t explore here.
2. These identities relate to power in society. Every society has rules and beliefs that give some people more power, which means that they have more influence in society than others.^[5] People with more privileged identities have more power, while those with less privileged identities have less power. The people with more privileged identities sometimes receive unfair advantages because they have more power.

Many of the identities that Nisha holds are less privileged identities. Because of this, she may encounter a variety of barriers. For example, when Nisha starts working, she might face negative stereotypes. People might think she’s unreliable because she’s young, not a “real Canadian” because she’s second-generation, or see her as a burden because of her disability. She also might deal with all these stereotypes at once.

While Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality originally focused on race and gender, the idea has since expanded to include many aspects of identity, including intersectionality and disability together. The reality is that everyone with a disability also has other identities like age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, and education level, and they may face discrimination based on any of these. Nisha for example might face barriers due to ableism, racism, sexism, ageism, or xenophobia.

Intersectionality and Disability

It is important to look at disability through an intersectional framework, because intersectionality helps us see the full picture of someone’s experience. If we only think about disability, we might miss other reasons why someone faces unfair treatment, like racism, sexism, and ageism, or the way these forms of discriminations mix.

Imagine that Nisha is going for her first job interview. If we only think about disability, we might focus on some of the barriers she could face because of her disabilities. For example, Nisha might not be able to access the interview space because the building doesn’t have an elevator, or she may have trouble focusing on the interviewer’s questions due to bright overhead fluorescent lighting, or the interview taking place in a space with a lot of background noise. We might then think that addressing barriers related to her disabilities would solve her problems. But what if her age, gender, and cultural background also played a role? This could look like people not believing her to be capable or knowledgeable because she is young and has a disability. Or it could look like managers avoiding giving her challenging tasks and assuming she needs constant support, limiting opportunities for professional development. She might even struggle with advocating for herself, because of cultural norms around deference to authority from her background that make it challenging to request accommodations in the workplace.

Making Change with CCRW

At CCRW, we believe that creating a more inclusive and equitable society means recognizing the full diversity of people with disabilities and addressing the multiple barriers they may face in and out of the workplace.

We apply an intersectional framework to our service delivery, research, and advocacy efforts:

• Employment services: we work with job seekers to understand the unique challenges they face, not just related to disability, but also to other parts of their identity. This helps us provide more personalized and effective support. For example, we provide things like:
  • Wrap around supports to clients to assist with other aspects of their lives during their job search journey, like offering single parents childcare support while they complete apprenticeship hours or search for jobs
  • Trauma-informed services by staff who have completed training in recognizing trauma responses and building safe and empathetic environments
• Employer education: we encourage businesses to think beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. We help them understand how unconscious bias, systemic barriers, and workplace culture can affect people differently depending on their intersecting identities.
• Research: we advocate for inclusive data collection and analysis that reflects the real diversity of the disability community. This helps ensure that our research gives a voice to the people who are often overlooked.

By taking an intersectional approach to Employment Services, CCRW moves beyond surface-level inclusion and toward meaningful change. For persons with disabilities, this means addressing not only ableism, but also the ways it intersects with racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. When we recognize those connections, we can build workplaces and communities that work for everyone.

Glossary of Key Terms

Ableism

Discrimination based on disability.

Ageism

Discrimination based on a person’s age, usually against younger or older people.

Barriers

Challenges experienced by persons with disabilities not because of their disability but because of how the world is set up.

Bias

Unfair preferences for or against groups or individuals; we don’t always know when we have biases.

Civil Rights Movement

20th century movement when people, especially Black Americans, fought to end unfair treatment based on race.

Colonization

One group taking control over another group’s land, resources, and culture.

Discrimination

Treating someone unfairly or differently because of who they are.

Identity

All the parts that make someone who they are, such as culture, gender, age, and disability.

Oppression

Unfair systems or behaviours that hurt or limit people.

Power

Held by those who can make decisions or have influence in society.

Privilege

Unfair advantages someone receives because of who they are. Everyone experiences privilege in different ways.

Racism

Discrimination based on race.

Red Power Movement

Movement led by Indigenous Peoples in the U.S. and Canada to fight for their rights, land, and self-determination.

Sexism

Discrimination based on sex or gender.

Xenophobia

Discrimination based on people being from other countries or other cultures.

References

1. Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2020). Intersectionality (2nd ed.). Polity Press.
2. Brush, P. S. (1999). The Influence of Social Movements on Articulations of Race and Gender in Black Women’s Autobiographies. Gender and Society, 13(1), 120–137. http://www.jstor.org/stable/190243
3. Langston, D. H. (2003). American Indian Women’s Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Hypatia, 18(2), 114–132. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3811016
4. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8. Link
5. Inclusion Advisory Group. (2024). Intersectionality: Guidance for organisations of persons with disabilities. CBM Global Disability Inclusion. PDF