Mini-Symposium: Intersectionality Research
TL;DR: The intersectionality research is defined principally by its focus on the simultaneous and interactive effects of race, gender, class, sexual orientation and national origin as categories of difference in the United States and beyond.
Abstract: Since legal theorist Kimberle Crenshaw first spoke of intersectionality in the late 1980s, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have debated its relative strengths and weaknesses in theoretical, methodological, and policy terms. Intersectionality research is defined principally by its focus on the simultaneous and interactive effects of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and national origin as categories of difference in the United States and beyond. This symposium is a conscious attempt to draw on our expertise in intersectionality and our identities as political scientists to spotlight different approaches to intersectionality. Part of our goal is thus to facilitate the development of innovative theoretical arguments and new empirical research designs in this area of scholarship by featuring examples of intersectionality research from distinct subfields. The essays that follow this introduction speak to a broad audience, as they represent four distinct subfields: political theory, American politics, comparative politics, and public policy. Each essay addresses the growing body of research focusing on what Dara Strolovitch (2007) calls intersectionally stigmatized populations at different levels of analysis. Each article also brings the tools of political science to bear on topics ripe for intersectional analysis, again reinforcing the notion that intersectionality theory and political science have much to offer each other. Much of the early scholarship on intersectionality has focused almost entirely on the United States and is often critiqued as having utility solely in the American context. Later scholarship, in attempting to address this critique, opened another avenue of questions, such as, what happens to a concept when it "goes global" and is applied to contexts outside of the United States? Comparative politics scholar Erica Townsend-Bell provides one answer to this question. Her essay, "What is Relevance? Defining Intersectional Praxis in Uruguay," is less focused on intersectionality as a theoretical construct and more concerned with its development as political praxis. Using the 2005 International Women's Day March and the 2003 domestic violence coalition as illustrative examples, she identifies the conditions under which a normative philosophical commitment to intersectionality does not square with its adaption and translation on the ground. Through analysis of field interviews with activists Townsend-Bell attends to the ideological disputes over which identity categories are most relevant to single-issue and multiissue women's organizations in Uruguay. Linking her interests in intersectionality with traditional questions of social movements and group formation, Townsend-Bell exposes real-life circumstances that arise when social movement actors attempt to find the most productive and usable ways of provoking social change collaboratively. Through her critical analysis of intersectionality's applicability in the Uruguayan context, she provides further evidence of the need for intersectional consciousness (Greenwood 2008) prior to movement building, and her essay reminds us that intersectionality as a term travels across time and geographic regions. Like Townsend-Bell, Nancy Wadsworth's essay, "Intersectionality in California's Same-Sex Marriage Battles: A Complex Proposition," also focuses on a longstanding area of interest shared by intersectionality scholars and political scientists: the tensions and limitations of majoritarian efforts to protect the rights of minorities. From a very different political context Wadsworth examines the coalitional and rhetorical strategies used to mobilize support in favor of a ballot initiative in the United States, Proposition 8, which eliminated the right to samesex marriage in California. Wadsworth makes the case for a broader, more inclusive conceptualization of intersectionality, insisting that religion qualifies as yet another identity category of difference. …
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TL;DR: This paper explored the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggested that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism, and pointed out that even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse.
Abstract: Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights the dialectical relationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole.
73 citations
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TL;DR: Preliminary empirical analyses suggest an intersectional approach to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking yields a more accurate understanding of gender, race/ethnicity, and welfare politics in the states.
Abstract: In all the research on state-level variation in welfare policy, one thing is clear: race, ethnicity, and representation matter. In this paper, we argue that gender matters as well. Our primary research question is whether the election and incorporation of women into state legislatures has any effect on state welfare policy. Adopting an intersectional approach, we put women of color front and center analytically and ask whether their relationship to welfare policy and policymaking differs from that of other women and men of color. We gauge the impact of state legislative women and women of color on numerous dimensions of state welfare policy, including benefit levels and the various rules and regulations used to determine eligibility, enforce work requirements, and promote more “responsible” behavior. Our findings are highly contingent: depending on which women and which policies one examines, the presence and power of legislative women had a liberal effect, a conservative effect, or no effect. Yet one thing is clear: the presence and power of legislative women of color mattered most - more than the presence and power of other women, and more than the presence and power of men of color. Our analysis, therefore, demonstrates the utility of an intersectional approach to the study of representation and welfare policymaking - one that takes into account the simultaneous and overlapping nature of race, ethnicity, and gender, and that focuses attention on the diversity among women and within racial/ethnic minority groups.
68 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors test hypotheses derived from two alternative approaches to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking, and find that women of color will have the strongest countervailing effect on state welfare reform.
Abstract: Welfare policy in the American states has been shaped profoundly by race, ethnicity, and representation. Does gender matter as well? Focusing on state welfare reform in the mid-1990s, we test hypotheses derived from two alternative approaches to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking. An additive approach, which assumes gender and race/ethnicity are distinct and independent, suggests that female state legislators—regardless of race/ethnicity—will mitigate the more restrictive and punitive aspects of welfare reform, much like their African American and Latino counterparts do. In contrast, an intersectional approach, which highlights the overlapping and interdependent nature of gender and race/ethnicity, suggests that legislative women of color will have the strongest countervailing effect on state welfare reform—stronger than that of other women or men of color. Our empirical analyses suggest an intersectional approach yields a more accurate understanding of gender, race/ethnicity, and welfare politics in the states.
59 citations
TL;DR: McConnaughy and White as mentioned in this paper found that women who are racial or ethnic minorities face a cumulative discrimination that extends beyond racism or sexism alone, and that black and Hispanic women experience discrimination differently from white women or men of color because they simultaneously belong to a low status gender group and a low-status racial/ethnic group.
Abstract: Efforts to understand the political implications of categorical prejudices—like racism and sexism—are complicated by the intersectional nature of social groups. Evaluating attitudes toward members of a single social category (e.g., African-Americans) in isolation can produce misleading conclusions, as racial cues commonly coincide with gender cues and create meaningful subgroups (McConnaughy and White 2014). The idea that different subgroups of women experience distinctive forms of discrimination is reflected in the concept of “double jeopardy.” Double jeopardy suggests that black and Hispanic women experience discrimination differently from white women or men of color because they simultaneously belong to a low-status gender group and a low-status racial/ethnic group (King 1988; Levin et al. 2002; cf. Sidanius and Veniegas 2000). As a result, women who are racial or ethnic minorities face a cumulative discrimination that extends beyond racism or sexism alone (King 1988; Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008).
47 citations
Cites background from "Mini-Symposium: Intersectionality R..."
...Intersectionality is defined by its focus on the “simultaneous and interacting effects” of multiple social categories such as race, class, or RACIALIZING GENDER 3 gender (Simien and Hancock 2011, 185)....
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TL;DR: The 2012 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney included fierce dialogue about women and issues typically connected to them, and the inflammatory comments that conservative radio-show host Rush Limbaugh made about female law student Sandra Fluke and the Affordable Health Care Act's (ACA) requirements that all workplaces cover contraceptives were central topics in the news as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The 2012 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney included fierce dialogue about women and issues typically connected to them. The inflammatory comments that conservative radio-show host Rush Limbaugh made about female law student Sandra Fluke and the Affordable Health Care Act's (ACA) requirements that all workplaces cover contraceptives were central topics in the news. The controversy literally followed Romney in the form of “Pillamina,” a human-sized costume designed to look like a pack of birth control pills that shadowed the candidate's summer swing state tour. While “Pillamina” was the work of Planned Parenthood's Action Fund, the Obama campaign also took aim at Romney on this issue, running a television commercial featuring “Dawn and Alex,” two women talking about how out of touch Romney is with women's health issues. The Romney campaign's attempts to counter these attacks and shift the focus of conversation were largely thwarted, as questionable comments from Republican Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock brought the issue of abortion to the forefront. Both of these statements added fuel to the narrative that Republicans are out of touch with women's needs. And Romney himself contributed to the problem, as his notorious “binders full of women” debate response broadened the scope of the issue from reproductive rights to more general issues about gender equality. Altogether, these Republican comments and positions opened the door for Democrats on the campaign trail to attack the party, and a popular conclusion is that this “War on Women” narrative hurt the Republican Party and played an integral part in Obama's victory.
33 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: Strolovitch as discussed by the authors found that groups too often prioritize the interests of their most advantaged members: male rather than female racial minorities, for example, or affluent rather than poor women.
Abstract: The United States boasts scores of organizations that offer crucial representation for groups that are marginalized in national politics, from women to racial minorities to the poor. Here, in the first systematic study of these organizations, Dara Z. Strolovitch explores the challenges and opportunities they face in the new millennium, as waning legal discrimination coincides with increasing political and economic inequalities within the populations they represent. Drawing on rich new data from a survey of 286 organizations and interviews with forty officials, Strolovitch finds that groups too often prioritize the interests of their most advantaged members: male rather than female racial minorities, for example, or affluent rather than poor women. But Strolovitch also finds that many organizations try to remedy this inequity, and she concludes by distilling their best practices into a set of principles that she calls affirmative advocacy - a form of representation that aims to over-come the entrenched but often subtle biases against people at the intersection of more than one marginalized group. Intelligently combining political theory with rigorous empirical methods, "Affirmative Advocacy" will be required reading for students and scholars of American politics.
224 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, intersectionality is used to understand the crosscutting political effects of both marginalization and privilege within and among groups in U.S. society, and intersectionality could provide a fruitful framework with which to understand issues of inequality in the post-civil rights era.
Abstract: The post-civil rights era has left an important dilemma in U.S. politics. Despite the fact that the United States has become more integrated across racial and gendered lines since the 1960s, inequality, particularly economic inequality, has grown. Although much of that inequality continues to fall along racial, gender, and class lines, the opportunities afforded by the “rights revolution” have also created an important heterogeneity of privilege within marginal groups. As social scientists, how best can we identify the sources and results of this inequality? More specifically, how can we better understand the crosscutting political effects of both marginalization and privilege within and among groups in U.S. society? I contend that intersections theory may be a useful place to begin, and that the idea of intersectionality could provide a fruitful framework with which to understand issues of inequality in the post-civil rights era. Such a framework would help address some of the theoretical problems that sometimes arise within empirical work on marginal groups in political science and, ideally, allow scholars to understand better how experiences of marginalization and privilege affect the shape and character of American political life.
104 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an intersectional approach to political consciousness and data to demonstrate its importance for predicting solidarity in diverse social change organizations is presented, and the importance of intersectionality in social change is discussed.
Abstract: This article introduces an intersectional approach to political consciousness and presents data to demonstrate its importance for predicting solidarity in diverse social change organizations. Women...
104 citations