Sociology of Gender - Intersectionality

Intersectionality

Intersectionality suggests that forms of inequality, oppression, and privilege shaped by interconnected axes of identity are mutually reinforced by social interactions and by social, political, and economic structures, such as capitalism, patriarchy, and institutionalized heternormativity. Intersectionality emphasizes that race, class, gender, and other markers of identity are social constructions. This theory disassembles the assumption that systems of power relations are normative and can hold individuals accountable for their own character and efforts. West & Fenstermaker in their 1995 article Doing Difference offer that models that conceive gender, race and class as distinct axes are highly limiting in their understanding of the whole experience or identity of an individual. For example, they critique the additive model, in which the whole will never be greater (or lesser) than the sum of it parts. By analyzing each identity marker as an individual characteristic, we ignore the effect of the interconnection of these markers. Additional sociologists have written about the intersectionality of class, race, and gender. Joan Acker outlines four gendered processes of intersectionality. The first includes procedures that create hierarchies based on gender and race. Another is the process in which social images and ideas condone gendered institutions. The third is a process of interaction between individuals and groups that, through communication, creates gender. The fourth is the internal labeling of the self and others to gendered personas. Evelyn Nakano Glenn critiques both the patriarchy model of gender, which ignores racial differences among oppressed women, and the internal colonialism model, which focuses on minority populations in general, ignoring gender differences.