“Intersectionality”

This chapter presents an overview of key debates and challenges in sociological research on intersectionality. Approaches to studying intersectionality are bound-up with assumptions about how intersectionality produces inequality. Intersecting oppressions by gender, race and class has become an important, if not crucial, concept among scholars studying inequality. Intersectional perspectives emphasize that intersections of gender, race and class do not simply affect women of color; gender, race and class are relational systems of power and inequality that affect all people. Advocates of the anti-categorical approach contend that inequality is generated through the creation of social categories such as race, class and gender. Scholars who use an intersectional perspective to study a single group also argue that categories are ongoing social constructions. Yet they use categories provisionally for one group to understand the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality and other dimensions of identity for this group.