Intersectional Identities and the Future of Work: Perspectives of Young Women

This conference paper explores the intersectional identities of young women negotiating their identities between race, culture, and faith in the workplace. Based on research findings from a thesis examining the construction and expression of second-generation Muslim Welsh women's identities within everyday spaces and places, this study utilised a mixed-methods approach to gather data from 30 participants through interviews and focus groups. Key themes investigated included the construction and embodied experiences of gendered identities.The study explored the challenges faced by young Muslim women in Wales as they navigate their identities in the face of societal and workplace obstacles, including racism, Islamophobia, and gender discrimination. According to Pain, et al. (2001), social identities are not entirely changeable but are heavily influenced by power dynamics and resistance. The participants sought to resist exclusion by seeking out support mechanisms and building positive relationships. However, misconceptions and biases held by colleagues proved to be significant barriers to their sense of belonging in the workplace. It highlights the complex intersection of power dynamics and resistance in shaping social identities, particularly in the face of Islamophobia and marginalisation.The study interrogates the assumed relationality between the resisted and resistant and how this manifests in the workplaces for these participants and their employment experience while also examining the wider impact on their sense of belonging to society. The participants draw boundaries to protect their gendered, religious, and cultural identities while attempting to find commonalities with wider workplace culture. The resistant work identity creates difficulties for balancing everyday embodied experiences through intersectional inequalities faced. Intersectional identities specifically focus on the disadvantageous positions caused due to the negotiation power of these multiple identities (Valentine, 2007).This research paper forms part of an ongoing investigation of current practices of employers in recognising the importance of having a diverse workforce. It aims to evaluate progress towards equality and diversity at work, considering the rhetoric-reality gap between employers' stated commitment to diversity and their practical achievements at an organisational level. The paper will focus on the practical experience of women from different backgrounds in their workplaces and the impact of robust policies in turning the dial on diversity, creating positive workplaces where employees can embody their intersectional identities without resistance. The research paper will take the theoretical position of examining the practices surrounding career progression in the context of intersectional studies and how various factors such as gender, race, and ethnicity intersect and contribute to the creation and perpetuation of advantages and disadvantages across multiple dimensions of difference at the individual, organisational, and societal levels (Castro and Holvino, 2016).ReferencesCastro, M., and Holvino, E. (2016) Applying Intersectionality in Organizations: Inequality Markers, Cultural Scripts and Advancement Practices in a Professional Service Firm, Gender, Work and Organization, 23(3), pp 328 – 347.Pain, R., Barke, M., Fuller, D., Gough, J., Macfarlane, R., & Mowl, G. (2001). Introducing Social Geographies, Hodder Headlines Group, London.Valentine, G. (2007). "Theorizing and Researching Intersectionality: A Challenge for Feminist Geography*", The Professional Geographer, 59(1), pp. 10-21