Empowerment through Inclusion: Strengthening Project Engagement with Minoritized Voices - Part 1 of 2

Authors are listed in alphabetical order of first name.

Our Motivation

If you are committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion, are you conscious of interpersonal, institutional, and structural discrimination? If you plan to be an ally, do you reflect on your own position of privilege and power?

At MetaDocencia, we understand inclusion implies listening to, respecting, and valuing all persons as peers, with power over decisions and budgets. We know this is not a universal definition of inclusion. However, when this does not happen, those of us minoritized tend to become exhausted and feel undervalued, potentially leading to disengagement. In this post, we share our experiences over decades of being part of different minorities in diverse international projects. Sadly, many of these projects lost the value of what we could contribute because the number of pyrrhic battles in a lifetime is finite.

This is the first of a 2-part blog post series that we hope will make individuals representing minorities in your group or project feel valued. Read part 2 in this link or access the complete article on our Zenodo page here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14509713

Who will Find this Publication Most Useful?

This could be of interest if you:

• Are part of a rather horizontal organization that is constantly advocating diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, and need help to articulate and communicate some good practices.
• Are an employee of an institution where there is a hierarchy with inherent power imbalances in which the approaches for active care we suggest below are more or less actionable depending on your level of responsibility. For example, you:
  • Are responsible for hires, and someone mentioned you must avoid tokenization
  • Wonder how your decisions over the budget could bring more inclusion
  • Are in a leadership position, maybe assuming you’re doing the best you can to include others, but you know you still have a lot to learn
• Have been marginalized and now you have more chances and want to open doors for others.
• Are a member of a minoritized group, like a community of practice gathering women around programming, and seek help to better include your peers in new opportunities.

Some Definitions

Allyship was defined as “when a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalized group of people to help take down the systems that challenge that group’s basic rights, equal access, and ability to thrive in our society” [ 1] (Nicole Asong Nfonoyim-Hara, as quoted by Samantha-Rae Dickenson). It is worth noting that being an ally is a personal choice, not a mandate. You may still need to reflect upon the following ideas if you don’t want to cause unintentional harm and hostility to minoritized members of your community or organization.

Who are minorities? The United Nations reports the lack of a universally accepted legal definition and recognizes minorities assuming both objective criteria (based on shared characteristics of the group) and subjective criteria (focused on the principles of self-identification and identity preservation) [ 2]. We think of a minority, or a group of minoritized people, as a part of a larger group where the majority has different characteristics, such as different biological, social, religious, economic, political, or national traits, and has more support and power, which makes the minority prone to inequity, discrimination, and violence. Members of the minority are historically oppressed.

Consequently, people with the greatest power are not usually found among women, young people, the poor, or members of the Majority World [ 3], among others. Minorities are generally silenced and removed from the focus of the conversation, i.e. they are marginalized. Although minorities face other problems than marginalization, for the purpose of this text we’ll use the terms minoritized and marginalized interchangeably.

Do You Really Create a Safe Space for Minorities?

If you are committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion and work with at least one person from a minority, do you take care of them? Do you know how to value, protect, and promote them? If you have experienced a space where you are the only one different from the rest of the participants, you will understand how intimidating it can be to be in a clear minority and recognized as the different one. If someone representing a minoritized group finds themselves alone in a project, it is crucial to recognize the potential intimidation and isolation they may experience. This can lead to reduced participation or conformity with the majority. Whenever there is a choice, include more than one person representing the group you are seeking to have represented. If your project or initiative claims to represent an entire continent or is considered global (which is as commendable as it is challenging), it will be key not to forget to include representatives that span the geographies you aim to represent in everything you do.

Regardless, we understand that including more than one individual from marginalized groups can be challenging in specific contexts. We also know that including only one person does not automatically make a project diverse and inclusive. When there is at least one person representing a minoritized group in a project, we find the Intersectionality Spectrum [ 4] helpful to understand how to prioritize who must be listened to more, due to the sum of intersectionalities (for example, women of color would have a higher weighting than white women) [ 5] [ 6].

But if including someone seems impossible and they do not participate much or always follow the majority, do not hesitate to be their ally. Allyship is hard work. Saying the right things is much easier than doing the right things. Being a true ally is often costly, including your own belonging group being upset at you for your allyship. If speaking up in front of a whole group in favor of minoritized persons is not your thing, providing moral support in private also helps. We have even found that to be rare! Engage in a more direct and personal conversation to support them in expressing their thoughts. Let them know that their opinions are relevant, their views are unique, and they can’t be replaced. Empowering minoritized individuals on their own terms is imperative to fostering true inclusivity.

Through accumulated experience, we have finely tuned our detector to recognize if we are considered colleagues and peers versus being regarded as minoritized voices to be listened to for the relevant political correctness of the moment. We repeatedly stopped participating in specific spaces, only to receive messages later saying: “We miss your voice.” It is sad to receive such messages after we have decided to dedicate our time to other projects where we are effectively recognized as peers.

Below, we share some actionable approaches to active care that you can take to help marginalized persons build trust, value their individuality, protect their identity, and promote their participation as key actions to foster empowerment through inclusion. Follow the link to part 2 in this series for actionables to win at this inclusion bingo:

A bingo card of some suggested actionable approaches to active care for empowerment through inclusion. How many of them do you practice?

What do you think of these ideas? Do you have others to share? Are you part of a minoritized group and want to share your experience? Are you part of a project that seeks to include or retain minorities and want to know more? Join our community in Slack (in Spanish, with English also welcome in the #english channel) and tell us your story!

Acknowledgments

This report was made possible by NASA grants 80NSSC23K0854 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8215455), 80NSSC23K0857 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8250978), and 80NSSC23K0861 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8212072), grant DAF2021-239366 and grant DOI 10.37921/522107izqogv from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, a fund advised by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Funder DOI 10.13039/100014989), and the Digital Europe Programme under Grant No. 101100604 (BioNT).

Did you like this publication? You can reuse it freely under CC BY 4.0 license, just remember to cite it.

This is the recommended citation to use for reference:

Eunice Mercado-Lara, Julián Buede, Laura Ación, L. Paloma Rojas-Saunero, Lisanna Paladin, Luciana Benotti, Monica Granados, Muneera A. Rasheed, Nicolás Palopoli, Patricia Loto, Paola Lefer, Rowland Mosbergen, Sara El-Gebali, Vanina Varni. (2024). Empowerment through Inclusion: Strengthening Project Engagement with Minoritized Voices. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14509713