Program Design: Brief Thoughts on Program Accessibility and Gender Intersectionality

As many of you know I am preparing to do this seven city in four week tour for the outreach on the Black Women Business Startups report we recently released here at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. As I have been working on the presentation as well as the Inclusive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Guide (a project we will release this fall) I have thought alot more about how to explain exclusion vs accessibility and why intersectionality is important. Let's first look at program accessibility.

Program Accessibility

Just because a program is present does not mean it is accessible. Exclusion can occur in a variety of ways. Some of the ways exclusion limits program accessibility are as follows:

• Financial accessibility (Program cost)
• Time / duration accessibility (Time of day and length of program)
• Location accessibility (Travel distance for participant)
• Design accessibility (Conditions set before a participant can enter program)
• Education level accessibility (Too intellectually rigorous or too intellectually weak for participant)
• Culture / gender accessibility (The participant feels unwelcomed or discriminated against)

Design accessibility is one I have been having a lot more conversations about with funding organizations and other organizations that require certain "conditions" prior to entry.

As an example let's consider an alternative business finance company that has an objective of expanding capital to low-income business startups. If their underwriting is very close to a banks standards, a structural barrier is that inhibits achieving what your objective is. Why? Because if you are requiring 10% to 20% and a credit score minimum of 600 your target market is not likely to have that capability in many instances.

Honestly, if you go through many programs designed to support under-optimized demographic groups you can see significant design structures that create problems with true accessibility for diverse audiences.

This is some of what I am going to talk about as I begin my outreach for the Black women business startups report Wednesday in Tulsa.

Gender Intersectionality

As a follow up to the last post, there is a unique avoidance of intersectionality in certain programs and activities. Rodney Sampson (Founder of OHub and co-author of the Inclusive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Guide) pointed out something very significant last week when we were working on the guide. He stated that when you hear the term "Women" and "Minority", which often go together in inclusive work, it implicitly eliminates the intersectionality of "women who are a minority". In effect it boils down to looking at things from the lenses of either white women or the general ethnic or racial group that is the program target. Often, the ethnic or racial group is seen through the lens of the males in the group unless the program is very, very specific.

This can then make Black / Hispanic / Asian women underserved and often invisible, as they are often functioning through both lenses. So a program designed with white women in mind or a program designed with the general "ethnic or racial group" in mind, maybe less than optimal for minority women who are seeing the world uniquely from both their gender and their race or ethnicity.

So What Is the Point

The point to all of this is that if we want to create a society with economic balance, and optimize the ability of individuals in this society by maximizing their skills we need to approach our program design process better. Will some programs generally targeting women be of benefit to non-White women? Absolutely. Will some programs targeting Hispanics be of benefit to Hispanic women? Sure. But by adding a level of understanding that focuses both on the accessibility of programs as well as the intersectional aspects (which can be more than race and gender by the way) we can create better social return on investment in the short run and a better society in the long run.

The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, or any organization I am affiliated with.