"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 ways in which these social categories intersect and affect individuals' experiences in society.
Social Stratification: This concept refers to the division of society into different hierarchical groups based on various factors such as economic status, ethnicity, race, gender, etc.
Intersectionality: Intersectionality refers to the intersection of different forms of oppression, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and other identities that shape a person's experience of privilege and marginalization.
Social Constructionism: This is the theory that society constructs our perception of reality, including our perceptions of race, gender, sexuality, and other categories that we use to define and classify people.
Feminism: This is a social and political movement aimed at ending gender-based discrimination and achieving social, economic, and political equality between men and women.
Queer Theory: Queer Theory examines how society constructs and enforces sexual norms and categories, as well as how individuals resist and challenge those norms.
Critical Race Theory: This theory explores how race and racism have been constructed, upheld, and challenged in society, and how they intersect with other forms of oppression.
Cultural Capital: Cultural capital refers to the cultural practices and knowledge that people use to navigate and succeed in society. This includes things like language skills, education, and cultural experiences.
Socialization: This is the process by which individuals learn the norms, values, and expectations of their culture and society.
Racism: Racism refers to discrimination or prejudice based on race, as well as the institutionalized systems and structures that perpetuate inequalities along racial lines.
Sexism: Sexism refers to discrimination or prejudice based on gender or sex, as well as the institutionalized systems and structures that perpetuate inequalities along gender lines.
Upper class: Typically characterized by significant wealth, prestige, and social networks.
Middle class: Described as the average income earners, they usually hold professional/managerial positions, have an advanced degree, and own a home.
Working class: Typically describe people working in blue-collar jobs, with lower incomes and job security, often do not have a college degree.
Lower class: People who are living in poverty, experiencing social and economic hardships.
White: People whose ancestry originates in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Black: People who have African ancestry or whose family members came from Africa.
Asian: People of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and other East Asian and Southeast Asian descent.
Hispanic/Latino: People of Spanish-speaking or from Latin America.
Male: People who identify their gender as male/boy or were assigned male at birth.
Female: People who identify their gender as female/girl or were assigned female at birth.
Non-binary: People whose gender identity doesn't fit into binary male or female categories.
Transgender: People who identify with a gender different than the one assigned at birth.
"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."