Marjolein Dennissen

121 Discussion My analysis showed that the legitimating discourses of diversity network board members simultaneously stimulate and counteract equality on different levels. However, board members tended to construct the value of their networks primarily in terms of individual career responsibility and community building to prevent their members’ isolation. The organizational level of inclusion was largely overlooked by board members. The underplaying of the organizational level has profound implications for the value of diversity networks for organizational equality. When the organizational processes and practices that reproduce inequalities are not addressed, the contribution that diversity networks can possibly make to organizational equality will remain limited. The dynamics of intersectionality in diversity networks: Revealing the complexity of multiple identity categories In Chapter 3, I took an intersectionality perspective to study diversity networks. Analyzing diversity networks as exemplars of single category diversity management practices through an intersectionality lens, I developed a better understanding of how single category diversity networks sustain intersectional inequalities in organizations. Drawing on the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991), I used the concepts of structural intersectionality and political intersectionality to gain insight into how diversity networks and their members deal with multiple intersecting identities. Structural intersectionality focuses on the individual experiences of people at the intersections of multiple identities. By means of structural intersectionality, I analyzed how individual diversity network members negotiate their multiple identities in relation to their membership of diversity networks. I distinguished three possible strategies: 1) complying with the single category structure of diversity networks; 2) problematizing the single category structure of diversity networks as an individual problem; and 3) challenging the single category structure of diversity networks. These strategies show how single identity categories are taken for granted and, consequently, how difficult it is to actually challenge the single category structure of diversity networks. Most network members complied with the categorical organization of diversity networks, and only a few network members vocalized the need for intersectional perspectives. Those members that did question the single category structure were network members with multiple subordinate identities; network members with single subordinate identities believed that issues relating to other subordinate identity categories belong to other networks. Moreover, network members with single subordinate identities tended to remain unaware of the privileges that coexist their other identities. Within diversity networks, privileged categories such as maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness are silenced and assumed as the self-evident norm. As such, the single category structure of diversity networks obscures the role of unmarked categories of privilege and reinforces the exclusionary effects of intersectional marginalization, that is, the marginalization of people with multiple subordinate identities relative to those with single subordinate identities