ABSTRACT
This chapter concludes with a brief look at the democratic implications of persistent, intersectional barriers to the American presidency. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary slate was the most diverse in US history, with six women, four men of color, two women of color, and the first openly LGBTQ+ candidate. Intersectionality is employed in diverse ways by scholars—as a paradigm to map the complexity of social hierarchies; as a theoretical approach to illuminate how power functions and operates; as a methodological tool to improve the precision of qualitative and quantitative analysis. In the United States, Maria Miller Stewart and Anna Julia Cooper were writing about the experiences of Black women as simultaneously and iteratively gendered and raced in the 1830s,5 and feminist and Dalit social reformer Savitribai Phule was employing intersectional feminist critiques in India in the mid-1800s. To date, over 100 women have mounted campaigns, and 12 women have made serious bids for the presidency.
