Beth Stephenson
Administrator, Freelance Social Media Marketer, Blogger
I’m passionate about helping companies with their marketing, admin and communications, particularly with their social media. I want to help companies who are great at marketing their clients but not so good at marketing themselves. I also would like more companies to understand neurodiversity and wish to help companies better their diversity and inclusion
INTERSECTIONALITY
I’m Beth, and I’m the newest member of the team at BeOnBoard. I’m a freelance social media marketer and I look after the organisation’s social media accounts – creating content and managing the profiles.
I’m also part-time administrator for Bristol Disability Equality Forum. Through working for them, I got to speak at the Bristol Women in Business Charter’s event on intersectionality. I’m going to share what I spoke about and how this topic relates to the great work done at BeOnBoard.
What is Intersectionality?
Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw nearly 30 years ago, it was created as an exploration of the oppression of BAME women. It is the idea that people have more than one identity, which are inherently combined, and how they merge to create different modes of discrimination and privilege.
For myself, my identity categories are woman, white, straight, disabled, Christian. Whilst being white and straight gives me certain privileges, my gender and, most notably for me, my disabilities do impact me daily and meant that it took me a few years to get my foot in the door of the working world.
What I Spoke About
Before the event, I was given four questions to structure what I would say, and I tried to keep to them as best as I could. The first half of my talk was about myself and how my intersections have impacted me – I spoke highly of Bristol social enterprise Babbasa who really helped me when I was at my lowest in the job search. I took part in their Challenge programme to host a youth conference and was given a mentor who I then did paid work with.
The other half of my speech was what advice I would give to businesses and organisations to bring about more intersectionality in the workplace. I did this in two parts – relating to my own Disabilities and more general advice that links to Disabled people of all impairments.
How it Links to BeOnBoard
I finished my talk by saying the following line – “there is more of a risk in not taking a risk”. This is something that applies to all parts of a business, including the boardroom. Equality, diversity, and inclusion are nothing without intersectionality and this includes who is on your board.
I believe that BeOnBoard is an organisation that includes and works on intersectionality, and this will hopefully be done in more detail on November 18 when we celebrate National Inclusion Day – you can find out more about the events taking place here.
