In this brief video, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a 2017 National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference speaker, civil rights advocate, and professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law and Columbia University Law School, talks about intersectional theory, the study of how overlapping or intersecting social identities—particularly minority identities—relate to systems and structures of discrimination.
Gender and Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a term used to explain the idea that various forms of discrimination, such as those centered on race, gender, class, disability, sexuality, and other forms of identity, do not work independently but interact to produce particularized forms of social oppression. Intersectionality acknowledges that power dynamics and social systems and structures are complicated and that people can experience multiple forms of oppression like racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and homophobia at the same time. This synchronicity creates unique experiences of oppression (Taylor, 2019).
Origin and Explanation of the Term
Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the term "intersectionality" in her 1989 article, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. Her 1991 article, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color builds on her initial thinking. In this video, Crenshaw speaks about how intersectionality expands our understanding of social oppression and how it operates in a given society, culture, or environment.
Put simply, viewing discrimination through an intersectional lens, the inequities and inequalities that people experience are never the result of a single, distinct factor. Rather, they are the outcome of intersection and overlap of different social identities enmeshed in power dynamics and contextual factors in a given environment (YW Boston Blog, 2017).
Application to Gender
Regarding gender, as is explained in What is Intersectionality and What Does it Have to Do with Me? (Hopkins, 2018), intersectionality accounts for gender and its interaction and overlap with other social identities. People experience disadvantages according to the relative value and social standing of their multiple social identities, which creates a complex convergence of oppression:
Intersectionality is a way of understanding social relations by examining intersecting forms of discrimination. This means acknowledging that social systems are complicated and that many forms of oppression, like racism, sexism, and ageism might be present and active at the same time in a person’s life. Intersectionality is about understanding and addressing all potential roadblocks to an individual or group’s wellbeing. For example, while the career of a young white able-bodied woman might improve with gender equality protections, an older, black disabled lesbian may continue to be hampered by racism, ageism, ableism, and homophobia in the workplace. But it’s not as simple as adding up oppressions and addressing each one individually. Racism, sexism, and ableism exist on their own but when combined they compound and transform the experience of oppression. |
Another Angle to Consider
At the same time, Hopkins explains, intersectionality can also consider the privileges or advantages that people experience in line with their social identities, and how those advantages and disadvantages interact and overlap. That is, depending on a person's society, culture, or environment, they can experience specific advantages over other individuals or groups in line with power dynamics and contextual factors, but if that same person lived in a different setting, they could experience distinct disadvantages. Thus, intersectionality provides an essential framework to truly engage with how privilege, oppression, and power operate in a given environment.
Intersectionality, Gender, and Social and Behavior Change
The Gender and Development Network states that an intersectional approach to gender-transformative programming in social and behavior change (SBC) means being mindful of three main points:
- Anyone can experience gender discrimination in one way or another, with some groups being more disproportionately burdened. But not only gender shapes experiences of discrimination, marginalization, and oppression, but also race, socio-economic status, and other factors.
- An individual’s particular experience of intersecting discriminations is unique; it is not simply the sum of different discriminations.
- Politically, gender equality proponents must tackle all forms of discrimination and oppression whether based on gender, race, or class.
As Hopkins states:
The concept of intersectionality challenges us to adopt a more systems-oriented and complexity-aware lens in understanding and addressing how gender interacts with other social locations to shape and influence the conditions and outcomes of people’s lives across diverse contexts. It means listening to others, examining our own privileges and asking questions about who may be excluded and adversely effected by our work. By doing so, we can better identify and shift the structures, pathways, and mechanisms through which intersecting inequalities continue to operate and negatively impact lives. By applying an intersectional lens to our work, we can design multi-level, norms-shifting interventions in collaboration with partners and stakeholders that can tackle gender and other social injustices in more transformative ways. |
This work is challenging and requires a lot of introspection and reflection on the part of SBC professionals as we negotiate the ways in which our own social identities impact how we do work that is truly intersectional and inclusive.
In this Trending Topic we share resources and tools to help with understanding and applying an intersectional lens to SBC programming, and several examples of intersectionality as applied to gender-integrated programming across the globe. If you have materials you would like to share with us, please upload the items, or contact info@thecompassforsbc.org.
Hopkins, P. (2018, April 22). What is Intersectionality? [video] YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1islM0ytkE
Taylor, B. (2019, November 24). Intersectionality 101: what is it and why is it important? Womankind Worldwide. https://www.womankind.org.uk/intersectionality-101-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-important
YW Boston Blog. (2017, March 29). What is intersectionality, and what does it have to do with me? YW Boston. https://www.ywboston.org/2017/03/what-is-intersectionality-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-me
Photo credit: MONUSCO Pictures / Myriam ASMANI Retrieved from Flickr
Resources
This short video explains the concept of intersectionality and its application in social sciences.
This free course provides an excellent starting point for either individuals coming to gender studies for the first time, or those who wish to brush up on the basics through a more visual experience.
This thinkpiece describes the concept of intersectionality as helping one to both understand and respond to complex and multifaceted identities. It describes the way that inequalities and oppression manifest themselves, but also proposes the way in which program interventions should be shaped, and political resistance can be built.
The Gender and Health Hub is a network of policymakers, researchers, and implementers working at the intersection of gender and global health.
ALIGN is a digital platform and program of work that works to create a global community of researchers and thought leaders, all committed to gender justice and equality. It provides new research, insights from practice, and grants for initiatives that increase our understanding of – and what works to change – discriminatory gender norms.
Since its inception, the Gender Equality Index has strived to reflect this diversity. Intersecting inequalities capture how gender is manifested when combined with other characteristics such as age, dis/ability, migrant background, ethnicity, sexual orientation or socioeconomic background. An intersectional perspective highlights the complexity of gender equality.
Social behavior change (SBC) programs are uniquely placed to make a difference in achieving gender transformative goals. Integrating gender into SBC programs is key to promoting gender equality and achieving intended outcomes among persons of all genders and age groups.
The social impacts of COVID-19 have important implications to food security and, like many other social and environmental calamities, are not gender or spatially neutral. In many regions across the world, deep-rooted gender norms that devalue women’s unpaid domestic labor burdens also marginalize the health, nutrition, and decision-making power of women and girls.
Dr. Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed is a Gender and Development Manager (Research) at UNICEF Office of Research, Innocenti, where she also manages the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office-funded Gender-Responsive and Age-Sensitive Social Protection (GRASSP) research program. Zahrah works in the area of gender and women’s economic empowerment, the care economy, and social protection.
This paper argues that the international development sector can become a better ally to women’s rights movements by changing its approach to intersectionality.
In order to halt the stigmatization process and mitigate the harmful consequences of health-related stigma (i.e. stigma associated with health conditions), an explicit theoretical framework is critical for guiding intervention development, measurement, research, and policy.
À l’occasion de la Journée zéro discrimination et dans le cadre du mouvement mondial pour l’égalité des femmes et des filles, l’ONUSIDA met en évidence sept domaines dans lesquels la discrimination à l’égard des femmes et des filles persiste, en sensibilisant et en appelant au changement.
This paper examines the intersectional elements of the links between women's increased market-oriented economic activity and women's experience of domestic violence.
This paper suggests a framework that governments and stakeholders can use in their countries to take action to enable and accelerate national progress to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals while leaving no person in their society behind.
The aim of this primer is to provide a clear-language guide to intersectionality; exploring its key elements and characteristics, how it is distinct from other approaches to equity, and how it can be applied in research, policy, practice and teaching.
The authors conducted a literature review on articles about intersectionality and chose articles based on the proportion of the article that was devoted to intersectionality, the strength of the intersectionality analysis, and its relevance to low and middle income countries.
The COVID-19 and Gender Buzzboard covers many topics generated by users, and is a collaborative tool for agenda setting and research initiatives.
In 2017, Islamic Relief Worldwide piloted protective and inclusive programming in six countries. For the pilots, the humanitarian organization created several tools, including an intersectionality framework to help understand gender identities, their social positions and immediate and strategic impacts.
Policies and programs designed to eliminate female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in Senegal have been implemented over several decades, but the practice has been surprisingly tenacious.
The paper explores how the overlap of a double marginalized identity produces particular disadvantages for pastoralist women in Ethiopia, and how the Oxfam intervention in the Somali region addresses the connection between these disadvantages and poverty and power.
This paper presents the work of Voice of the Voiceless (VOVO), a civil society organisation based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and development partner of Oxfam.
The Commonwealth Foundation sets policy guidelines for all countries within the British Commonwealth. This document provides an understanding of intersectionality and its application to the Foundation’s focus in supporting people’s participation in governance.
This is an entire issue of the journal Agenda (Volume 31, Issue 1) which focuses on intersectionality and gender in Africa.
This article states that in West Africa, gender relations, roles and perceptions are changing at the local level, furthered by environmental and climate change impacts and the adaptation process to them.
This bibliography brings together key resources on the intersection between caste and gender and explores the central significance of gender for the operation of caste, and the impact of caste on gender. It groups the implications of the intersection of gender and caste norms into the themes of theory, education, health, violence, politics and work.