Intersectionality, therefore, refers to the simultaneous experience of social categories such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation and the ways in which these categories interact to create systems of oppression, domination, and discrimination.
What is the theory of intersectionality?
In other words, intersectional theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression : their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers.
What is an example of intersectionality?
Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and height . These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
What is the main idea of intersectionality?
“Intersectionality” refers to a theory in sociology that outlines how an individual may face multiple types of overlapping discrimination depending on their race, gender, age, ethnicity , physical ability, class or any other characteristic that might place them in a minority class.
Why is intersectionality important psychology?
An intersectional lens enables psychologists to investigate marginalised identities that influence a person or group’s wellbeing (such as race and faith and sexuality and disability and gender and more), and to work collaboratively with individuals, groups and communities to develop strategies for maintaining wellbeing ...
Why do we need intersectionality?
As a structural and relational theory and a method or analytic tool, intersectionality is poised to reveal both the intersections of institutions, systems, and categorizations that produce oppression and the intersections of identity categorizations within individuals and groups .
What is an intersectional identity?
Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how social identities —such as gender, race, ethnicity, social class, religion, sexual orientation, ability, and gender identity—overlap with one another and with systems of power that oppress and advantage people in the workplace and broader community.
How is intersectionality used in practice?
The health of communities that face intersectional forms of discrimination is often overlooked. One practical way to put intersectionality into practice is to ask whether the particular health needs of individuals and communities that face overlapping and intersecting forms of oppression are being met.
How does intersectionality impact our lives?
– intersect and affect our lived experiences. Intersectionality is a term used to help us understand how multiple forms of overlapping oppressions – shaped by sexism, racism, poverty, homophobia and other forms of discrimination and violence – affect our lives in nuanced and context-specific ways.
How do you write intersectionality?
To address intersectionality in a paper, identify individuals’ relevant characteristics and group memberships (e.g., ability and/or disability status, age, gender, gender identity, generation, historical as well as ongoing experiences of marginalization, immigrant status, language, national origin, race and/or ...
Why is intersectionality important in the workplace?
An intersectional approach to workplace equality creates allyship and structural change where women who succeed have the ability to pull up other groups behind them. Intersectionality eliminates the competitive mentality where advancements for one minority group hurts another .
Why is intersectionality important in healthcare?
An intersectionality approach is supportive of rights and justice based approaches to health and health care . It can lead to precise insights about who is involved in and affected by policies or interventions in different settings, thus allowing for more targeted and effective policies (Hankivsky and Cormier, 2011).
Who defined intersectionality?
Twenty-eight years ago, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in a paper as a way to help explain the oppression of African-American women.
Why is it important to study intersectionality?
An intersectional perspective deepens the understanding that there is diversity and nuance in the ways in which people hold power . It encourages theoretical understandings of identity that are more complex than simple oppressor/oppressed binaries.
Broadly defined, intersectionality is the idea that disadvantage is conditioned by multiple interacting systems of oppression . When racism and sexism interact —in the experience of women of color, for instance— the disadvantages produced are different than the disadvantages produced by racism and sexism on their own.
Who invented intersectionality?
Kimberlé Crenshaw , the law professor at Columbia and UCLA who coined the term intersectionality to describe the way people’s social identities can overlap, tells TIME about the politicization of her idea, its lasting relevance and why all inequality is not created equal.
