"Maybe Too Little But Not Too Late: Four Challenges for Employment Discrimination Research in I-O"--Reflection

Derous, Ryan, and Buijsroggee critique Ruggs' article in four ways.  A lot of this critique is over my head because it's really theoretical and focused on I-O research methods. I'm certainly not the intended audience.  Here's what I was able to get from the article, though:

--Rather than studying marginalization, researchers should try to theorize discrimination and how it happens.

--Rather than looking at separate identity categories in research (like an article on Latina women and another on overweight homosexual men, etc), these authors suggest that research should look at intersectionality and double jeopardy.  The authors write:

Everyone, including members from the marginalized groups highlighted by Ruggs et al., belongs to multiple social categories (e.g., being a female and ethnic minority group member), and certainly some subgroups of minorities might be more vulnerable to prejudice than others. (76)

 I'm glad to see that the authors brought up intersectionality, because I've been thinking of that the whole time: what's the point of discussing the experiences of those in one identity category when all of us embody and live within many of these categories?  We need to examine the overlaps too.

And, like the authors said, since the overlaps are expansive, it might be more useful to look at the structures of discrimination and marginalization.  More change might happen there.

Derous, Eva, Ann Marie Ryan, and Alexander Buijsrogge. "Maybe Too Little But Not Too Late: Four Challenges for Employment Discrimination Research in I-O."  Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6 (2013): 75-80.