Hormoz draws on personal experience to talk about the intersectional approach to Result CIC's Diversity and Inclusion training.

This week we added a new page to our website about our Diversity and Inclusion Training. 



Demand for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training from us has increased, partly because of our own lived experience but also because our focus, since inception, has been on helping a broad range of marginalised people to feel self-aware and confident enough to stand up to inequality.

Last week (1-7 February) was Race Equality Week. This was an inaugural event in the UK sparked by the events of last summer and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The events meant a community interest company called Race Equality Matters (REM) was set up. They have been the brainchild behind the week and they managed to get numerous organisations to sign up to support this week.

Their strapline ‘Let’s not go back to normal’ resonates with Result CIC’s values. As they say:

• Normal is 75% of ethnic minorities experiencing racism in the workplace. 

• Normal is a third of FTSE 100 companies having no ethnic minority board members. 

• Normal is graduates from minority backgrounds being twice as likely to be unemployed.

The work of organisations like REM and others are important and crucial at a time when the feeling of the opportunity of progress with BLM has been so strong since the summer.

Our approach to Inclusivity is very much an intersectional one. It’s essential to recognise that people can’t be fitted into neatly labelled boxes. 

I’m a prime example. I’m Asian. I’m an immigrant. I have a mental health condition. I’m gay.

February is LGBT History Month and the current airing of It’s A Sin on Channel 4 is bringing a neglected and essential piece of recent history to the fore, with its compelling exploration of the impacts of AIDS on the gay community in the UK in the 80s and 90s.



For me, it brings back a lot of painful memories which the programme portrayed powerfully. I was involved in a project in 2018 with the LGBT Foundation where there were interviews with several people and you can watch this here.



Reaction to It’s a Sin, particularly on social media, has shown just how much of this period has been forgotten or, more accurately, ignored. And whilst it serves to remind us of just how far we’ve come, it has also brought up long held but more subtle examples of bias.



For example, compare some tabloid headlines to It’s A Sin and the even more explicit Bridgerton, and the language used is evidence enough. Whilst Bridgerton is described as ‘fun’. ‘raunchy’ and ‘exciting’ to an audience, It’s A Sin has been described as ‘shocking’, ‘explicit’ and ‘extreme.’ Does it matter? Well, it’s still illegal to be gay in 72 countries. In 5 of them, being gay carries the death penalty. How we present things, how we talk about them, whether we normalise them or insist on making them ‘other’ really matters.



Yes, things have changed, things have progressed since the days of Gay Plague headlines, but whether the subject is race, sexuality or another form of ‘difference’, inequality still has a huge impact on everyday lives.



An intersectional outlook is vital, the need not to put people into boxes, as exemplified by Yvonne Richards, a straight woman diagnosed as HIV+ at a time when people believed the virus only affected gay men.



Last year we coached Yvonne via the George House Trust and in November, she wrote a wonderful piece for us about her experiences as a woman living with HIV which you can read here.



Her inspirational approach to her intersectional life saw her interviewed on Channel 4 News recently about living as an HIV+ woman and you can listen to her on Radio 4’s The Listening Project on Sunday 14 February from 1.30pm. 

Hers is a story, much like my own, which doesn’t fit comfortably into neat categories. We are all more than the sum of our parts, and we believe that, whether it’s a global movement like Black Lives Matter or LGBT History Month, or your place of work wants better to understand and embrace what equality really means, an intersectional view encourages the whole person to be included.



If you’d like to know more about our Inclusivity Training, find out more.