Showing papers on "Intersectionality published in 2011"

Considerations on Mainstreaming Intersectionality

Abstract: This article identifies five key considerations for adopting and mainstreaming intersectionality: the language and concepts that are used; the complexities of difference and how to navigate this complexity; the choice of focusing on identities, categories, processes, and/or systems; the model that is used to explain and describe mutually constituted differences; and the principles that determine which interactions are analyzed. The author argues that in the process of mainstreaming intersectionality, it is crucial to frame it as a form of social critique so as to foreground its radical capacity to attend to and disrupt oppressive vehicles of power.

HIV, Gender, Race, Sexual Orientation, and Sex Work: A Qualitative Study of Intersectional Stigma Experienced by HIV-Positive Women in Ontario, Canada

Abstract: Background HIV infection rates are increasing among marginalized women in Ontario, Canada. HIV-related stigma, a principal factor contributing to the global HIV epidemic, interacts with structural inequities such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. The study objective was to explore experiences of stigma and coping strategies among HIV-positive women in Ontario, Canada.

Intersectionality as multi-level analysis: Dealing with social inequality

Abstract: The concept of intersectionality is on its way to becoming a new paradigm in gender studies. In its current version, it denominates reciprocities between gender, race and class. However, it also allows for the integration of other socially defined categories, such as sexuality, nationality or age. On the other hand, it is widely left unclear as to which level these reciprocal effects apply: the level of social structures, the level of constructions of identity or the level of symbolic representations. This article advocates an intersectional multi-level analysis which takes into account reciprocal effects between the various levels. This approach includes an analytical grasp of and methodical reflection on these reciprocal effects as well as making them empirically accessible.

Intersectionality and Public Policy: Some Lessons from Existing Models

Abstract: In comparison to research practices, intersectionality is an underdeveloped concept within policy discourse and application. Because of the complexity and relative newness of this approach, policy ...

Race, gender, class, and sexual orientation: intersecting axes of inequality and self-rated health in Canada

Abstract: Intersectionality theory, a way of understanding social inequalities by race, gender, class, and sexuality that emphasizes their mutually constitutive natures, possesses potential to uncover and explicate previously unknown health inequalities. In this paper, the intersectionality principles of "directionality," "simultaneity," "multiplicativity," and "multiple jeopardy" are applied to inequalities in self-rated health by race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in a Canadian sample. The Canadian Community Health Survey 2.1 (N = 90,310) provided nationally representative data that enabled binary logistic regression modeling on fair/poor self-rated health in two analytical stages. The additive stage involved regressing self-rated health on race, gender, class, and sexual orientation singly and then as a set. The intersectional stage involved consideration of two-way and three-way interaction terms between the inequality variables added to the full additive model created in the previous stage. From an additive perspective, poor self-rated health outcomes were reported by respondents claiming Aboriginal, Asian, or South Asian affiliations, lower class respondents, and bisexual respondents. However, each axis of inequality interacted significantly with at least one other: multiple jeopardy pertained to poor homosexuals and to South Asian women who were at unexpectedly high risks of fair/poor self-rated health and mitigating effects were experienced by poor women and by poor Asian Canadians who were less likely than expected to report fair/poor health. Although a variety of intersections between race, gender, class, and sexual orientation were associated with especially high risks of fair/poor self-rated health, they were not all consistent with the predictions of intersectionality theory. I conclude that an intersectionality theory well suited for explicating health inequalities in Canada should be capable of accommodating axis intersections of multiple kinds and qualities.

Authoring identity amidst the treacherous terrain of science: A multiracial feminist examination of the journeys of three women of color in science

Abstract: The study of the identity processes of women of color in science-based fields helps us (a) find ways to support similar women, and (b) study the dynamics of inequity, within and beyond science. Participants in this study (a Black woman, a Latina, and an American Indian woman) survived inadequate high schools and discouraging college science departments to win formal recognition (fellowships, publications). Using multiracial feminist theory, including intersectionality, and practice theory, we conceptualize authoring of identity as an ongoing process. Qualitative methods were designed around Black feminist precepts of caring and personal accountability, the use of concrete experience and of dialogue (Collins, 2000a). Participants' opportunities to author legitimate science identities were constrained by their location in the matrix of oppression. They reported conflicts between their identities as women of color and as credible science students, and having racist, sexist identities ascribed to them. All became more adept at fending off negative ascription and all found settings with less identity conflict; their ability to read a situation and quickly adjust, la facultad (Anzaldua, 1999) helped them survive. But the fact that they have needed to do this is unjust.

Intersectionality, Quotas, and Minority Women's Political Representation Worldwide

Abstract: The majority of the world's countries have implemented policies designed to advance the political representation of women and/or minority groups. Yet we do not yet understand how these disparate policies affect the election of minority women. In this article, I draw on theories of intersectionality to conduct the first worldwide analysis of the effects of gender and minority quotas on minority women's representation in national legislatures. Using hierarchical linear modeling, I analyze how quotas influence the election of women from more than 300 racial, ethnic, and religious groups across 81 countries. I find that policies designed to promote the political representation of women and minority groups interact to produce diverse but predictable outcomes for minority women. Although quotas are ostensibly designed to promote diversity and inclusiveness, the quota policies in effect today rarely challenge majority men's dominance of national legislatures.

Surveillance and Sacrifice: Gender Differences in the Mentoring Patterns of Black Professors at Predominantly White Research Universities

Abstract: Previous research documents Black professors’ heavy service commitments and time spent mentoring; yet little work explores how this form of faculty work differs by gender. This intersectional analysis examines narratives of 37 Black professors at three institutions (collected across two studies), focusing on how race and gender shape Black professors’ expectations and experiences mentoring. Findings indicate that racism and sexism influence whether and how Black faculty members mentor in unique ways. Women engage in close, personal relationships and face high gender-based expectations regarding student contact, leading to their carriage of a heavy mentoring burden. Men are more formal and compartmentalize their relationships, partly due to perceived visibility and surveillance, as well as increased likelihood of accusations of inappropriate relationships with female students.

Examining our privileges and oppressions: incorporating an intersectionality paradigm into nursing

Abstract: An intersectionality paradigm is a means by which nurses can attend to issues of oppression and privilege within their practice and profession. Intersectionality is introduced as an essential theory to help debunk the hegemony of the 'white, middle class' perspective that often directs nursing research, practice, and education. The values and benefits of using an intersectionality paradigm in nursing are shown through recent research done with Aboriginal women. These findings contribute to an increased understanding of the importance and necessity of attending to the power relations that dominate nursing care encounters and influence the way nurses provide care. By acknowledging and responding to the presence of privilege and oppression and the associated power dynamics within the therapeutic encounter, nursing can strive further in helping to alleviate social injustices and health disparities that arise from unequal power relations.

Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness

Abstract: Despite the ubiquity of intersectionality in feminism and allied methodologies, it is typically associated with the elaboration of oppression. A consideration of intersectionality theory as applied to the ‘other side’ of power relations – that is to the intersections of whiteness and middle-classness (and the complications arising from ethnicity) – enables the exploration of power in relation to the enduring inequities between groups. Dominant positionality is embedded in intersectionality theory in two ways: (1) as part of a complex, postmodern identity formation in which – even at the individual level – oppression co-exists alongside domination; (2) in the emphasis on relationality in which oppression and domination are co-conditional. Building on an essay by Floya Anthias, the intersections of whiteness and middle-classness are further elaborated by showing that, along with ethnicity and gender, these positions (and positionings) reinforce each other in some circumstances and contradict each other in d...

Mapping the margins in higher education: On the promise of intersectionality frameworks in research and discourse

Abstract: In this chapter, the authors discuss how understandings of individuals and groups in higher education research are limited by overreliance on one-dimensional analyses. They also underscore the importance of intersectionality research as one method to address such limitations.

Quantitative Intersectionality: A Critical Race Analysis of the Chicana/o Educational Pipeline

Abstract: Utilizing the critical race framework of intersectionality, this research reexamines the Chicana/o educational pipeline through a quantitative intersectional analysis. This approach disaggregates data along the intersection of race, class, gender, and citizenship status to provide a detailed portrait of the educational trajectory of Mexican-origin people along the Chicana/o education pipeline. In turn, this allows us to capture nuanced educational outcomes for this population as they are shaped by intersecting systems of oppression and privilege. Evident through this analysis are the diverse patterns of achievement for Chicanas and Chicanos who live under distinct social, economic, political, and legal conditions.

Access to intersectionality, content to competence: deconstructing social work education diversity standards

Abstract: This article provides an assessment of the current situation in social work education regarding the teaching of content on diversity, with a focus on implications for social work theory, practice, and education. The article provides a critical analysis of the historical development of approaches to teaching diversity content in social work education as reflected in several iterations of CSWE's Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) since the late 1960s. In addition, the article critiques long-standing approaches to teaching this content that have been based largely on modernist theories and assimilationist assumptions about difference in the United States. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities social work education faces today that have opened up as a result of the 2008 EPAS.

Multiple Disadvantages: An Empirical Test of Intersectionality Theory in EEO Litigation

Abstract: A rich theoretical literature describes the disadvantages facing plaintiffs who suffer multiple, or intersecting, axes of discrimination. This article extends extant literature by distinguishing two forms of intersectionality: demographic intersectionality, in which overlapping demographic characteristics produce disadvantages that are more than the sum of their parts, and claim intersectionality, in which plaintiffs who allege discrimination on the basis of intersecting ascriptive characteristics (e.g., race and sex) are unlikely to win their cases. To date, there has been virtually no empirical research on the effects of either type of intersectionality on litigation outcomes. This article addresses that lacuna with an empirical analysis of a representative sample of judicial opinions in equal employment opportunity (EEO) cases in the U.S. federal courts from 1965 through 1999. Using generalized ordered logistic regression and controlling for numerous variables, we find that both intersectional demographic characteristics and legal claims are associated with dramatically reduced odds of plaintiff victory. Strikingly, plaintiffs who make intersectional claims are only half as likely to win their cases as plaintiffs who allege a single basis of discrimination. Our findings support and elaborate predictions about the sociolegal effects of intersectionality.

Feminist intersectionality: Bringing social justice to health disparities research

Abstract: The principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are well established ethical principles in health research. Of these principles, justice has received less attention by health researchers. The purpose of this article is to broaden the discussion of health research ethics, particularly the ethical principle of justice, to include societal considerations — who and what are studied and why? — and to critique current applications of ethical principles within this broader view. We will use a feminist intersectional approach in the context of health disparities research to firmly establish inseparable links between health research ethics, social action, and social justice. The aim is to provide an ethical approach to health disparities research that simultaneously describes and seeks to eliminate health disparities.

Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender

Abstract: Although intersectional analyses of gender have been widely adopted by feminist theorists in many disciplines, controversy remains over their character, limitations, and implications. I support intersectionality, cautioning against asking too much of it. It provides standards for the uses of methods or frameworks rather than theories of power, oppression, agency, or identity. I want feminist philosophers to incorporate intersectional analyses more fully into our work so that our theories can, in fact, have the pluralistic and inclusive character to which we give lip service. To this end, I advocate an intersectional family resemblance strategy that does not create philosophical problems for feminists. I test my approach against Maria Lugones's argument in “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (Lugones 2007) to determine, in particular, whether we can successfully resist a move to create multiple genders for women. If we can successfully resist this move, then we can answer the objection that intersectionality fragments women both theoretically and politically. I also argue that my approach avoids Lugones's critique of forms of intersectionality that fall within “the logic of purity.”

Health inequities in Canada : intersectional frameworks and practices

Abstract: Introduction: Purpose, Overview, and Contribution / Olena Hankivsky, Sarah de Leeuw, Jo-Anne Lee, Bilkis Vissandjee, and Nazilla Khanlou 1 Why the Theory and Practice of Intersectionality Matter to Health Research and Policy / Rita Kaur Dhamoon and Olena Hankivsky Part 1: Theoretical and Methodological Innovations / Edited by Sarah de Leeuw and Olena Hankivsky 2 Beyond Borders and Boundaries: Addressing Indigenous Health Inequities in Canada through Theories of Social Determinants of Health and Intersectionality / Sarah de Leeuw and Margo Greenwood 3 A Cross-Cultural Quantitative Approach to Intersectionality and Health: Using Interactions between Gender, Race, Class, and Neighbourhood to Predict Self-Rated Health in Toronto and New York City / Jennifer Black and Gerry Veenstra 4 Performing Intersectionality: The Mutuality of Intersectional Analysis and Feminist Participatory Action Health Research / Colleen Reid, Pamela Ponic, Louise Hara, Connie Kaweesi, and Robin LeDrew 5 Adding Religion to Gender, Race, and Class: Seeking New Insights on Intersectionality in Health Care Contexts / Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham and Sonya Sharma Part 2: Intersectionality Research across the Life Course / Edited by Nazilla Khanlou and Olena Hankivsky 6 Navigating the Crossroads: Exploring Young Women's Experiences of Health Using an Intersectional Framework / Natalie Clark and Sarah Hunt 7 Exploring Health and Identity through Photovoice, Intersectionality, and Transnational Feminisms: Voices of Racialized Young Women / Jo-Anne Lee and Alison Sum 8 An Intersectional Understanding of Youth Cultural Identities and Psychosocial Integration: Why It Matters to Mental Health Promotion in Immigrant-Receiving Pluralistic Societies / Nazilla Khanlou and Tahira Gonsalves 9 Adopting an Intersectionality Perspective in the Study of the Healthy Immigrant Effect in Mid- to Later Life / Karen M. Kobayashi and Steven G. Prus 10 Intersectionality in the Context of Later Life Experiences of Dementia / Wendy Hulko Part 3: Social Context, Policy, and Health / Edited by Bilkis Vissandjee and Olena Hankivsky 11 An Intersectional Lens on Various Facets of Violence: Access to Health and Social Services for Women with Precarious Immigration Status / Jacqueline Oxman-Martinez and Jill Hanley 12 Place, Health, and Home: Gender and Migration in the Constitution of Healthy Space / Parin Dossa and Isabel Dyck 13 Preventing and Managing Diabetes: At the Intersection of Gender, Ethnicity, and Migration / Bilkis Vissandjee and Ilene Hyman 14 Intersectionality Model of Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder / Joan Samuels-Dennis, Annette Bailey, and Marilyn Ford-Gilboe Part 4: Disrupting Power and Health Inequities / Edited by Jo-Anne Lee and Olena Hankivsky 15 Addressing Trauma, Violence, and Pain: Research on Health Services for Women at the Intersections of History and Economics / Annette J. Browne, Colleen Varcoe, and Alycia Fridkin 16 Intersectional Frameworks in Mental Health: Moving from Theory to Practice / Katherine R. Rossiter and Marina Morrow 17 Intersectionality, Justice, and Influencing Policy / Colleen Varcoe, Bernadette Pauly, and Shari Laliberte 18 Intersectional Feminist Frameworks in Practice: CRIAW's Journey toward Intersectional Feminist Frameworks, Implications for Equity in Health / Jo-Anne Lee Afterword / Olena Hankivsky List of Contributors Index

Work-life, diversity and intersectionality: a critical review and research agenda

Abstract: Work-life issues have important implications at both organizational and individual levels. This paper provides a critical review of the work-life literature from 1990 onwards through the lens of diversity, with a particular focus on disparities of power induced by methodological and conceptual framings of work and life. The review seeks to answer the following questions: What are the gaps and omissions in the work-life research? How may they be overcome? To answer these questions, the review scrutinizes blind spots in the treatment of life, diversity and power in work-life research in both positivist and critical scholarship. In order to transcend the blind spots in positivist and critical work-life research, the review argues the case for an intersectional approach which captures the changing realities of family and workforce through the lens of diversity and intersectionality. The theoretical contribution is threefold: first, the review demonstrates that contemporary framing of life in the work-life literature should be expanded to cover aspects of life beyond domestic life. Second, the review explains why and how other strands of diversity than gender also manifest as salient causes of difference in experiences of the work-life interface. Third, the review reveals that social and historical context has more explanatory power in work-life dynamics than the micro-individual level of explanations. Work-life literature should capture the dynamism in these contexts. The paper also provides a set of useful recommendations to capture and operationalize methodological and theoretical changes required in the work-life literature.

Standing for Women? Which Women? The Substantive Representation of Women's Interests and the Research Imperative of Intersectionality

Abstract: In conducting interviews with female African American state legislators, I found that the great debates among women and politics scholars over the meaning of women's issues have not captured a major issue that surfaced time and again in the interviews. The African American women I interviewed affirmed that “women's issues” constituted a top priority on their legislative agendas and understood themselves as representatives of women's interests. But when they began to discuss the issues they championed on behalf of women, these issues were not the “usual suspects.” They often mentioned proposed legislation that I would have coded as a “children's issue” or, at times, a “race issue.” These legislators articulated a political agenda reflecting crosscutting issues that were not easily codified along a single issue axis. Instead, the legislators articulated their legislative priorities as complex and multifaceted. They saw their legislative priorities affecting constituents across their districts, but they also keenly expressed the impact of these issues on the lives and well-being of women in particular.

Gendered measures, gendered models: toward an intersectional analysis of interpersonal racial discrimination

Abstract: In this paper we draw from black and multiracial feminist theories to argue that interpersonal racial discrimination should be understood as a potentially gendered phenomenon. While there are some discriminatory practices that are directed at both black men and black women, some forms of racial discrimination affect men more than women, and some affect women more than men. Still other forms may be gender-specific. Our review of existing literature shows that most survey research has utilized measures and models of racial discrimination that fail to account for these gender differences. Drawing on the 2001–2003 National Survey of American Life (NSAL) we demonstrate the importance of gender for understanding and analysing interpersonal racial discrimination. We offer concrete ways for social researchers to centralize gender in their analyses. By doing so, we hope to advance the development of an intersectional approach to racial discrimination.

Gender, identities and intersectionality in medical education research.

Abstract: A not dissimilar debate took place 40 years ago in linguistics and foreign language teaching with the emergence of a general recognition that just teaching ‘rules’ about, for example, grammar had value at an elementary level but no further as their use must be accompanied by an understanding that language must be appropriately used. ‘Sit down, you fool’ is clear and correct English, but probably inappropriate if you say it to your boss. What is needed was labelled, in Hymes magisterial paper, as communicative competence. The question is not whether people have the skills, but whether they deploy them appropriately

‘Love your China’ and evangelise: religion, nationalism, racism and immigrant settlement in Canada

Abstract: This paper explores how race, religion and national origin intersect in one transnational context. In an educational ethnography, I encountered a discourse that called for overseas Chinese to convert and evangelise other Chinese (in China), which won many followers in Canada. Using Critical Race Theory and the notion of intersectionality, I analyse the shared understandings of race and national identity, and the shared experience of institutionalised discrimination in everyday life in this community. I suggest that sanctioned and enabled by Canadian banal nationalism and racism, structural discrimination against racialised minority immigrants contributes to difficulties they experience in settlement. Intersecting with racism and banal nationalism, Christian evangelism offers many Chinese immigrants an alternative frame to understand the meaning and purpose of immigration and of living as racialised immigrants. Implications for immigrant settlement and for education in general are discussed.

Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics

Abstract: Introduction: Why Geraldine Ferraro Needs to Meet Jay-Z Intersectionality to the Rescue So Say We All: Nous Sommes Solidaires Creating Counterintuitive Coalitions: Race, California, & Proposition 8 Citizenship and Solidarity in a Global Context: The Transnational Implications of Immigration Eradicating the Oppression Olympics: Solidarity in the 21st Century

Intersectionality and 'race' in education

Abstract: Education is a controversial subject in which difficult and contested discourses are the norm. Individuals in education experience multiple inequalities and have diverse identifications that cannot necessarily be captured by one theoretical perspective alone. This edited collection draws on empirical and theoretical research to examine the intersections of "race," gender and class, alongside other aspects of personhood, within education. Contributors from the fields of education and sociology seek to locate the dimensions of difference and identity within recent theoretical discourses such as Critical Race Theory, Judith Butler and 'queer' theory, post-structural approaches and multicultural models, as they analyze whiteness and the education experience of minority ethnic groups. By combining a mix of intellectually rigorous, accessible, and controversial chapters, this book presents a distinctive and engaging voice, one that seeks to broaden the understanding of education research beyond the confines of the education sphere into an arena of sociological and cultural discourse.

The New Entrepreneurs: How Race, Class, and Gender Shape American Enterprise

Abstract: For many entrepreneurs, the American Dream remains only partially fulfilled. Unequal outcomes between the middle and lower classes, men and women, and Latino/as, whites, and blacks highlight continuing inequalities and constraints within American society. With a focus on a diverse group of Latino entrepreneurs, this book explores how class, gender, race, and ethnicity all shape Latino entrepreneurs' capacity to succeed in business in the United States. Bringing intersectionality into conversation with theories of ethnic entrepreneurship, Zulema Valdez considers how various factors create, maintain, and transform the social and economic lives of Latino entrepreneurs. While certain group identities may impose unequal, if not discriminatory, starting positions, membership in these same social groups can provide opportunities to mobilize resources together. Valdez reveals how Latino entrepreneurs-as members of oppressed groups on the one hand, yet "rugged individualists" striving for the American Dream on the other-work to recreate their own positions within American society.

Intersectionality and Student Outcomes: Sharpening the Struggle against Racism, Sexism, Classism, Ableism, Heterosexism, Nationalism, and Linguistic, Religious, and Geographical Discrimination in Teaching and Learning

Abstract: In this article the authors consider NAME's focus on intersectionality as a tool for theorizing, researching, and employing in pre-K through college practice at preservice and inservice levels. A review of research using three or more identity axes to investigate student outcomes is included. The authors also discuss the benefits of analyzing educational questions intersectionally, noting cautions.

Misogyny posing as measurement: disrupting the feminisation crisis discourse

Abstract: Feminisation discourses appear to represent nostalgia for patriarchal patterns of participation and exclusion in higher education. It is curious why this particular melancholic formulation has gained currency in the context of higher education today, raising questions about the misogynistic impulse seeking to set a ceiling on women's current success by assuming it must have come about by disadvantaging men. This paper will raise questions about the norms, values and assumptions that underpin the binaried conceptualisation, or ‘mystic boundaries’ between women and men. This essentialised division situates women's achievements in relation to men's putative underperformance. I wish to suggest that feminisation discourses are unsatisfactory as they work with monodimensional, stable concepts of identity, ignore intersectionality, and are parochial in so far as they fail to examine gender globally, reduce gender inequalities to quantification, and treat gender as a noun, rather than as a verb or adjective. High...

The Dutch Homo-Emancipation Policy and its Silencing Effects on Queer Muslims

Abstract: The recent Dutch homo-emancipation policy has identified religious communities, particularly within migrant populations, as a core target group in which to make homosexuality more ‘speakable’. In this article we examine the paradoxical silencing tendencies of this ‘speaking out’ policy on queer Muslim organisations in the Netherlands. We undertake this analysis as the Dutch government is perhaps unique in developing an explicit ‘homo-emancipation’ policy and is often looked to as the model for sexuality politics and legal redress in relation to inequalities on the basis of sexual orientation. We highlight how the ‘speakability’ imperative in the Dutch homo-emancipation policy reproduces a paradigmatic, ‘homonormative’ model of an ‘out’ and ‘visible’ queer sexuality that has also come to be embedded in an anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim discourse in the Netherlands. Drawing on the concept of habitus, particularly in the work of Gloria Wekker, we suggest that rather than relying on a ‘speakability’ policy model, queer Muslim sexualities need to be understood in a more nuanced and intersecting way that attends to their lived realities.