"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."
Examines the ways that different social identities intersect in relation to human rights, including race, gender, sexuality, and disability.
Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social identities and how they impact an individual's experiences and opportunities in society.
Human Rights: The basic rights and freedoms that are entitled to every individual regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, or any other status.
Equality: The principle of equal treatment and opportunities for all individuals.
Discrimination: The unjust or prejudicial treatment of individuals based on their social identities.
Gender: The social and cultural roles and expectations associated with being male or female.
Race: A social construct used to categorize individuals based on physical characteristics such as skin color.
Sexuality: An individual's sexual orientation, attraction, and behavior.
Disability: Limitations in physical or mental abilities that may impede an individual's ability to participate fully in society.
Indigenous rights: The protection and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples, including land rights, cultural rights, and the right to self-determination.
Immigration and refugee rights: The protection and promotion of the rights of immigrants and refugees, including access to education, healthcare, and legal rights.
International human rights law: The legal frameworks and mechanisms put in place at the international level to protect and promote human rights.
Discrimination in the workplace: The ways in which biases and inequalities manifest in the workplace and impact individuals based on their social identities.
Intersectionality in healthcare: The ways in which social identities intersect with healthcare experiences and outcomes.
The impact of colonization on Indigenous communities: Explores the effects of colonization on Indigenous peoples and the resultant impacts on their social, economic, cultural, and political lives.
Environmental justice: The intersection of social, economic, and environmental inequalities and how they impact communities.
Gender and Sexuality Rights: Focuses on fighting gender and sexuality-based discrimination and promoting gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and reproductive justice.
Racial and Ethnic Rights: Focuses on combating racial and ethnic discrimination and promoting the rights of minorities.
Disability Rights: Focuses on promoting the rights and dignity of people with disabilities, including access to education, employment, and healthcare.
Environmental Rights: Focuses on protecting and preserving the environment as a human right, and on addressing environmental harms and climate change.
Humanitarian Law: Focuses on protecting civilians and other vulnerable groups during armed conflicts and ensuring respect for international humanitarian law.
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Focuses on promoting the right to education, healthcare, and other social goods necessary for people’s well-being.
Indigenous and Minority Rights: Focuses on promoting the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities, including their cultural and political rights.
Refugee and Asylum Law: Focuses on protecting refugees’ rights and ensuring their access to international protection and asylum.
Transitional Justice: Focuses on addressing past human rights abuses and promoting accountability, reconciliation, and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies.
Cyber Rights: Focuses on digital technologies and their implications for human rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, and the right to access information.
"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."