The time is now: developing ergonomics for equity and justice through intersectionality

The year of 2020 brought many historic events highlighting continuing, and at times heightened, inequities across the globe - the SARS-COV-2 pandemic with associated health inequities and the killing of George Floyd in the United States are only two examples. These events highlight that our current systems are inequitable: they do not support well-being or positive outcomes (i.e., system performance) equitably for all humans. The goal of our profession, ergonomics, is to optimize human well-being and system performance (International Ergonomics Association (IEA), 2020) - notably without any mention or regard to the race, ethnicity, gender, class, and/or other ways of classifying humans. These disparities in well-being and outcomes, in my opinion, cement beyond any shadow of doubt that ergonomics should and must be applied to issues related to equity and justice across social categorizations of humans in the systems we design, aligning with previous arguments around global issues (Thatcher et al., 2018), including sustainability (Dekker et al., 2013). Further, social categorizations are related and interdependent and must not be considered individually, leading to the topic of this special issue: intersectionality in the context of work.nbsp;