Marjolein Dennissen

122 The Herculean task of diversity networks (Crenshaw, 1989). For example, due to the network’s focus on one single identity, a disabled, lesbian woman felt like the odd one out by being the disabled in the LGBT network or the lesbian in the disability network. Likewise, reflecting underlying notions of white privilege, the focus of the women’s network was on gender issues only, thereby prioritizing ethnic majority women and ignoring ethnic minority women within the network. Thus, my analysis of structural intersectionality revealed the dynamics of structural intersectionality in diversity networks, showing how these single category networks are inextricably linked with processes of privilege and disadvantage. This is a dynamic that normalizes the idea of separate identity categories and facilitates the continuous avoidance of the complexity of intersectionality in diversity networks. Political intersectionality addresses how social identity groups organize themselves between two or more political agendas or movements. The concept of political intersectionality allowed me to explore the political strategies of diversity networks in order to build coalitions for equality in organizations across single identity categories. By introducing the notion of political intersectionality, I showed how the diversity networks in my study were hindered by a politics of preserving privilege rather than interrogating it. These diversity networks willingly catered to the privileged majority members of their network, which hampered the actual collaboration and coalition building between diversity networks. Due to their focus on a narrow identity politics and the reversed Oppression Olympics, the diversity networks failed to address disadvantage and privilege. For instance, a collaboration between the LGBT network and the ethnic minority network was considered relevant for only those members with LGBT-ethnic minority identities. While heteronormativity was reduced to an issue of a small minority of network members rather than a matter of the organization at large, whiteness or white privilege was not even considered as a common theme. This showed that the privileged majority of the network sets the agenda according to their interests and, as a consequence, organizational processes of privilege, such as heteronormativity, are not questioned. Furthermore, partaking in a reversed Oppression Olympics, the diversity networks emphasized their added value to the organization and tended to deflect attention to any type of oppression, which is constructed as a complaint. Thus, my analysis of political intersectionality revealed how the need to make a positive contribution to the organization forecloses the possibility to actually challenge organizational inequality. Studying diversity networks with an intersectionality lens shows that organizational inequalities cannot be dismantled separately because they entail multiple intersecting identities that mutually reinforce each other. The politics of preserving privilege in diversity networks obscures the intersection of different forms of inequality and leaves the inequalities along other axes of difference intact. This means that, as long as diversity networks remain focused on single categories, they cannot incorporate structural and political intersectionality and do not contribute successfully to equality in organizations.