It’s 2025, and while there has been massive progress on so many things in the world, one that still has a lot of ground to make up is workplace equality. One particular aspect that should have long disappeared is discrimination based on a person’s protected characteristics.
Protected characteristics are things such as race, gender, age, religion or disabilities. Every day, people suffer because an employer highlights them for worse treatment because of who they are.
Two or more characteristics
Recent California legislation has amplified the definition of employee protections against discrimination by specifically mentioning that sometimes it occurs on the basis of more than one characteristic. This is known as intersectional discrimination.
Here is an example. An Asian employee has not received the opportunities they feel they deserve. They are sure it is because of their race, but when they raise the issue with the boss, the boss denies it. They tell them that it can’t be true because several Asian employees have gotten promoted. The employee then thinks that maybe it is about the fact that they are gay. Maybe their boss secretly dislikes gay people, and that’s why they are not giving them the opportunities they feel they have earned. Their boss denies it again, pointing out that the company has a high-ranking executive who is gay.
Finally, the employee puts two and two together. They realize that the reason their employer has been denying them the opportunities is that they are both gay and Asian. That intersection of things is too much for their employer to deal with, and hence, they discriminate against them by denying them the chance to rise up the ranks, despite them being the most suitable candidate.
Employees who feel they have been targeted for any kind of discrimination, whether it is based on one characteristic or more, may want to learn more about their options for taking action.