Across Europe and beyond, educators and career guidance professionals are becoming more aware of the subtle ways that gender stereotypes shape the aspirations and opportunities of young people. The GUIDE project has already made strides in raising awareness of gender bias and equipping counsellors with tools to recognize and counteract it.
But gender is just one dimension of identity. A young person’s experience is also shaped by ethnicity, socioeconomic background, disability, sexuality, migration status, and many other factors. These dimensions don’t exist separately — they overlap, compound, and interact in unique ways.
This is the essence of intersectionality, a concept introduced by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how multiple forms of discrimination can intersect and intensify. In career guidance, this means acknowledging that every learner brings a unique blend of identities, which can either open doors or create barriers in unexpected ways.
For guidance to be truly equitable and empowering, it must adopt an intersectional lens. This article explores why that matters, the challenges professionals face, and strategies to make career counselling genuinely inclusive.
How intersecting identities shape opportunities
Consider these examples:
- A girl from a low-income migrant family may be discouraged from pursuing science, not only due to gender bias but also because of cultural stereotypes about her community’s educational attainment.
- A young man with a disability may be stereotyped as incapable of taking on certain professional roles, while simultaneously pressured to “prove his masculinity” in physical or manual work.
- A non-binary student of colour may face both gender non-conformity stigma and racial prejudice when accessing vocational training or internships.
These scenarios illustrate that stereotypes rarely operate in isolation. Instead, they overlap, creating what researchers call a “double bind” or even “triple bind” of disadvantage. For career guidance, this means the task is not only to challenge gender stereotypes, but also to understand how they intertwine with other identity factors.
Challenges for guidance professionals
Applying an intersectional perspective in practice is not without obstacles:
- Lack of awareness and training: Most professional development in guidance focuses on gender or cultural sensitivity separately, but rarely combines them.
- Structural constraints: Counsellors often work under time pressure and with limited resources, which can make tailored, intersectional approaches difficult.
- Risk of overgeneralization: Well-meaning professionals may unintentionally stereotype further (“all migrant girls struggle with X”), rather than seeing each learner as unique.
- Institutional barriers: School curricula, labour market structures, or national policies may reinforce one-dimensional approaches rather than support holistic, inclusive methods.
Acknowledging these challenges is the first step towards overcoming them.
Strategies for intersectional career guidance
To move forward, guidance professionals can adopt several strategies:
- Inclusive needs assessments
Begin by allowing learners to define their own identities and priorities. Instead of assuming which aspects of identity matter, ask open-ended questions: “What parts of your background or experience feel important to your future career?” - Tailored role models and mentoring
Representation matters. Bringing in diverse professionals — e.g., female engineers with disabilities, or LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs — shows learners that success is possible across many intersecting identities. - Cultural competence and reflexivity
Professionals benefit from ongoing training that helps them reflect on their own assumptions. This includes examining how their own identity shapes interactions with learners. - Collaborative approaches
Intersectionality is too complex to be handled by one professional alone. Working with community organizations, cultural mediators, or disability support services can ensure more holistic support. - Use and adapt digital tools
Tools such as those developed in GUIDE — for identifying stereotypes and exploring decision-making styles — can be expanded with intersectional dimensions. For example, exercises can prompt reflection not only on gender, but also on class, disability, or migration.
Illustrative case study
In one European vocational training programme, a 17-year-old girl from a Roma background expressed interest in becoming an electrician. Her counsellors initially hesitated, assuming the sector was “too male-dominated” and “difficult for her community.”
By applying an intersectional approach, her guidance professional re-examined these assumptions:
- Gender: While electrical work is indeed male-dominated, role models of women in STEM were introduced.
- Ethnicity: Instead of assuming cultural barriers, the counsellor engaged her family directly in conversations, highlighting economic benefits and safe working environments.
- Socioeconomic status: The counsellor connected her to a scholarship programme that reduced financial barriers to training.
The outcome was positive: she enrolled in a technical school and began to see herself as a trailblazer rather than an outsider. This case demonstrates that intersectional guidance is not about treating identities separately, but about weaving them into a fuller picture of opportunity.
Policy and institutional implications
Intersectional guidance is not only about individual practice; it has systemic dimensions. For institutions and policymakers, this means:
- Embedding intersectionality in training curricula for guidance professionals.
- Collecting better data on career outcomes across multiple identity factors, not just gender.
- Adapting national frameworks so that guidance is evaluated by inclusivity and equity, not just efficiency or job placement numbers.
- Supporting grassroots organizations that represent marginalized communities, ensuring their perspectives shape guidance practices.
Conclusion
Gender-sensitive career guidance is a critical step towards equity. But it cannot stop there. Every learner is more than their gender — they are also shaped by class, culture, ability, and many other dimensions of identity. Ignoring this complexity risks reinforcing the very stereotypes we aim to dismantle.
Intersectionality provides a framework to see learners in their full humanity, to understand the unique barriers they face, and to unlock the possibilities that emerge when guidance is truly inclusive. For professionals, it is both a challenge and an opportunity: to go beyond surface-level awareness and embrace a richer, more empathetic approach.
The message is clear: if guidance is to empower all, it must be intersectional.
