"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 examination of how political processes and institutions interact with other social identities such as race, gender, and sexuality.
Social categories: Identification of social categories such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, and the varying levels of privilege or oppression associated with each.
Power structures: An understanding of power structures within social systems, including political and economic systems that can perpetuate oppression or privilege.
Marginalization: Examining the ways in which individuals or groups are marginalized due to their identities and social positioning.
Privilege: Understanding the ways in which privilege operates, and the ways in which it can be invisible to those who hold it.
Representation: The ways in which different groups are represented in social and cultural contexts, and how these representations can perpetuate stereotypes and biases.
Identity formation: Understanding how race, gender, and other identity markers are formed, and how they intersect with other social categories.
Oppression: Analyzing different forms of oppression, including structural and individual approaches.
Intersectionality: The concept that different forms of oppression intersect, and that an individual's experiences of marginalization are shaped by their social positioning at the intersections of different categories of oppression.
Social movements: Studying the ways in which different social movements have emerged to resist oppression and work towards social justice.
Postcolonial theory: Understanding the ways in which colonialism has shaped social structures and power relations, and its ongoing impact on marginalization and oppression.
Race and Gender Intersectionality: This type focuses on how race and gender interact and intersect to produce particular experiences of discrimination and social exclusion.
Class and Gender Intersectionality: This type considers how social class intersects with gender to shape experiences of inequality and oppression. It examines how gendered expectations and norms differ based on class status and vice versa.
Disability and Gender Intersectionality: This type explores how disability and gender intersect to create complex experiences of marginalization and discrimination.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Intersectionality: This type examines how sexual orientation and gender identity intersect to produce particular experiences of discrimination and marginalization.
Immigration and Gender Intersectionality: This type considers how immigration status intersects with gender to shape the experiences of immigrants in society.
Caste and Gender Intersectionality: This type examines how caste and gender intersect to shape experiences of oppression, especially in South Asian societies.
Religion and Gender Intersectionality: This type considers how religion and gender interact to create particular experiences of oppression and marginalization.
Age and Gender Intersectionality: This type explores how age intersects with gender to shape experiences of inequality and exclusion for individuals of different ages.
Nationality and Gender Intersectionality: This type examines how nationality intersects with gender to shape experiences of oppression and marginalization.
Transnational Intersectionality: This type focuses on the intersections of multiple identities and issues across borders and transnationally, examining how global forces affect local experiences of inequality and oppression.
"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."