"Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege."
The recognition that different social identities - such as gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability - intersect and interlock, shaping a person's experiences and opportunities in complex ways.
Feminism: Understanding the basic principles of feminism is essential to understanding intersectionality as it is rooted in feminist theories and activism. This includes ideas such as equality, empowerment, and dismantling oppressive systems.
Race: Understanding race and how it impacts experiences and opportunities is crucial to understanding intersectionality in the context of gender. Race intersects with and influences gender and other social identities to create unique experiences of oppression and privilege.
Class: Economic class plays a significant role in understanding intersecting identities and structural inequalities. People from different economic classes experience oppression differently and have different access to resources and opportunities.
Ability/Disability: Understanding and accounting for the barriers faced by people with disabilities is another critical aspect of intersectionality. These individuals may face discrimination and exclusion as a result of their disabilities, but disability also intersects with other identities to create more complex experiences.
LGBTQ+ Identities: Sexual orientation and gender identity are essential aspects of intersectionality, particularly in the context of the LGBTQ+ community. People who identify as LGBTQ+ may face discrimination and violence due to their identitites.
Colonialism: Decolonizing one's understanding of intersectionality, particularly in the context of gender, is important in recognizing the ways in which colonialism has shaped social systems and understandings of gender.
Patriarchy: Acknowledging the impact of patriarchal systems, which empowers men over women, in the way that gender and other identities interact with one another and their marginalisation is essential.
Language: Language shapes our understanding of the world around us and plays a crucial role in understanding intersectionality. For example, language can contribute to oppression and marginalisation of certain identities.
Religion: Religion is another important aspect of intersectionality as it can both provide a source of empowerment or reinforce systems of oppression, depending on how it is expressed.
Globalisation: Globalisation has transformed the world around us and has led to the spread of ideas and their connotations, which also shapes our understanding of intersectionality. It impacts different individuals and different groups differently based on their social identity.
"Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance."
"These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing."
"Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women's differing experiences and identities."
"The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989."
"Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation."
"In this framework, for instance, discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated."
"Intersectionality engages in similar themes as triple oppression, which is the oppression associated with being a poor or immigrant woman of color."
"Criticism includes the framework's tendency to reduce individuals to specific demographic factors, and its use as an ideological tool against other feminist theories."
"Critics have characterized the framework as ambiguous and lacking defined goals."
"As it is based in standpoint theory, critics say the focus on subjective experiences can lead to contradictions and the inability to identify common causes of oppression."
"However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality."
"An analysis of academic articles published through December 2019 found that there are no widely adopted quantitative methods to investigate research questions informed by intersectionality."
"The analysis ... provided recommendations on analytic best practices for future research."
"An analysis of academic articles published through May 2020 found that intersectionality is frequently misunderstood when bridging theory into quantitative methodology."
"In 2022, a quantitative approach to intersectionality was proposed based on information theory, specifically synergistic information."
"In this framing, intersectionality is identified with the information about some outcome (e.g. income, etc.) that can only be learned when multiple identities (e.g. race and sex) are known together."
"Intersectionality is identified with the information about some outcome [...] that can [...] not [be] extractable from analysis of the individual identities considered separately."
"Critics [argue] the inability to identify common causes of oppression."
"Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, [...] to include the different experiences of women of color, poor women, immigrant women, and other groups."