Intersectionality and the Benefit of Privilege

A benefit of privilege is that there is consistency in how your communities evaluate and support you.

For example, academic women are evaluated both as academics and as women. As an academic, there is emphasis on excellence, self-promotion, commitment to the discipline, and an expectation of long hours. As a woman, there is an expectation of commitment to family, all the expectations of self-sacrifice and family management that come with motherhood, and disapproval of self-promotion. The way to lead a good life in both realms is incompatible, and an academic woman must navigate inconsistent social evaluations in a way that an academic man does not. In addition to the practical costs of each woman's way of "doing it all", there is also the psychological cost of balancing discrepant values systems.

Another example is that of immigrants, particularly the children of immigrants with non-dominant cultural values. What is valued by their peers is not valued by their parents, and vice versa. Again, it is not possible to be simultaneously approved of by both communities, and so the child must find some way to navigate that inconsistency.

There are a number of options:
- Edit self-presentation, selectively offering only those part of the self that are acceptable or approved of by each audience.
- Develop a thick skin, be your own person, don't let what other people say affect you so much.
- Come to recognize that these multiple value systems exist with their inconsistencies, and develop an authentic solution.

However this is resolved, it represents one of the costs of not being part of the dominant group.