Intersectionality is a perspective that investigates ‘how intersecting power relations influence social relations across diverse societies as well as individual experiences in everyday life’ (Collins & Bilge, 2020).
Intersectional theory views categories such as race, gender, social class, sexuality, ability, and age as interrelated and mutually shaping one another. No category works alone.
Considering these factors together helps explain complexity in individuals, the world, and human experience.
Definition of Intersectional Theory
Intersectional theory contrasts with monism. Monism is the idea that each factor of an individual, such as race or gender, can be adequately understood or investigated separately, as a single dimension.
Intersectional theorists argue that treating these factors as separate entities is inaccurate. Gender issues do not exist apart from class. Sexuality does not exist apart from race.
Intersectionality aims to show that humans are shaped by the interaction of different factors. These interactions occur within connected systems and structures of power.
Some of these structures of power include laws, policies, governments, religious institutions, and media. Through this, people can be privileged and oppressed in many ways such as through racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and ableism (Hankivsky, 2014).
People rarely experience oppression through a single factor. Intersectionality therefore adds layers of complexity to the understanding of social inequality.
Intersectionality analyzes the relationship between individual differences. It moves beyond seeing social inequality through a single lens, such as race alone or class alone. Instead, it sees oppression and inequality as the product of complex interactions among power structures.
Key Takeaways
- Core Idea: Intersectionality treats race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and age as interlocking. Each shapes how the others are experienced.
- Origins: Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989. Black feminists had voiced the same ideas about two decades earlier.
- Compound Disadvantage: Crenshaw showed that discrimination against Black women is not the sum of racism and sexism analyzed separately. Courts missed it by checking each category alone.
- Privilege: The theory also covers advantage. Most people are privileged in some ways and disadvantaged in others.
- Applications: Criminology, social work, and research use it to see inequalities that single-factor analyses miss.
- Research Caveat: A 2021 review of 707 studies found that many quantitative studies did not apply the theory’s core tenets.
- Limitations: Critics argue that the theory still groups people by identity markers, and that categories can subdivide endlessly.
History Of Intersectional Theory
Crenshaw and the Origin of the Term
The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 paper titled Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.
She recognized that socially marginalized people all over the world faced unique challenges and dilemmas because of intersectional factors.
The concept of intersectional theory is thought to have emerged from the ideas debated in critical race theory. Critical race theory is a cross-disciplinary social movement. Its civil-rights scholars and activists examined the intersection of race, society, and law to challenge American approaches to racial justice.
Crenshaw focused on the oppression of Black women, who face social inequality in two ways: first for being Black, and second for being a woman. Her evidence was a legal case in which a Black woman felt discriminated against in hiring.
- Aim: Crenshaw (1989) sought to show that antidiscrimination law treats race and sex as separate, exclusive categories. It therefore fails to protect, or even see, Black women.
- Method: She analyzed US employment-discrimination lawsuits brought by Black women. The central case was DeGraffenreid v. General Motors.
- Results: The court would not treat the women’s claim as race-and-sex discrimination. The company had hired Black people (Black men) and women (white women), so it could not be discriminating.
- Conclusion: Judging each category separately hides compound discrimination. Black women’s oppression is ignored when society does not grasp how interconnected factors oppress people in unique ways.
This is doctrinal case analysis, not a representative sample, so its cases illustrate rather than measure. Its influence is still wide. The idea that compound disadvantage differs from the sum of its parts now shapes almost every field the theory reaches.
In 1991, Crenshaw expanded on the ideas of intersectionality by applying it to violence against women. She argued that women of marginalized race and ethnic groups in the United States face different structural barriers in trying to address the sexual violence that exists in their lives.
- Aim: Crenshaw (1991) sought to extend intersectional analysis from law to political organizing and services. She examined how race, gender, class, and immigration status shape women of color’s experience of domestic and sexual violence.
- Method: She drew on fieldwork from services for battered women in a low-income, predominantly Latina and Black Los Angeles neighborhood, plus public political debates.
- Results: Services built around white, English-speaking, economically independent women failed women facing language barriers, deportation fears, and economic dependency. Crenshaw called this structural intersectionality.
- Conclusion: Services and movements must be built around intersecting identities from the outset. Single-axis politics (political intersectionality) can erase the racialized character of abuse or discourage reporting.
Like the 1989 paper, this is situated case material. It generates theory rather than estimating how common each barrier is. Its lasting contribution is the vocabulary of structural and political intersectionality.
Black Feminist Roots
Ideas of intersectional theory are believed to have emerged about two decades before Crenshaw used the term. Black feminists began to speak out about the white, middle-class nature of mainstream feminism.
Many Black women found it hard to relate their own oppression to the main feminist movement. That movement tended to focus on white women.
Simultaneously, during the civil rights movement, many Black women experienced sexism and were excluded from leadership roles. Black women were therefore doubly excluded. Suffering racism in the feminist movement and sexism in the civil rights movement encouraged them to call for a feminist movement that includes their lived experiences.
Historians of sociology trace earlier anticipations of this multi-axis analysis to the journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Her analysis of press reports of lynching in the post-Reconstruction United States is read as showing that race, gender, and class operated together (Wells-Barnett, 1895).
Collins and the Matrix of Domination
Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins developed a parallel account from within Black feminist sociology. She argued that race, gender, and class form a single, interlocking matrix of domination, not three separate systems that happen to overlap (Collins, 1990).
On this view, oppression operates at three levels at once:
- Personal Biography: Individuals experience and resist oppression in their own lives.
- Community: Groups shaped by the cultural context of race, class, and gender do the same.
- Institutions: The law, the labor market, and the education system structure both.
Collins later warned that intersectionality risked becoming a victim of its own success (Collins, 2015). As the term spread, its core claim was at risk. That claim is that categories of inequality are relational and mutually constituting, not simply additive.
Intersectional theory has been used mainly to explain the intersection of race and gender. It also explains how factors such as social class, religion, ethnicity, age, and ability can oppress or privilege people in unique ways.
Examples Of Intersectional Inequality In Society
Below are some examples of the ways in which intersectional inequality can occur in society:
Gender and disability
Neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are well-known disabilities. Yet they are mostly diagnosed in males.
This is partly due to the preconceived idea that they were male conditions. Early research, theories, and diagnostic criteria came mostly from male samples, so females who had them were largely ignored. The result is late or missed diagnosis.
There is less research on how autism and ADHD present in females, so many are diagnosed late, if at all. A woman seeking a diagnosis may feel oppressed in a healthcare setting. She experiences intersectional oppression as a woman with a disability stereotyped as male.
Age, gender, and poverty
Child marriage is an example of how gender and age can intersect with poverty.
In developing countries, young girls are particularly vulnerable to the practice of forced marriage, many being married before the age of 18.
Therefore, young girls in these poverty-stricken areas may feel oppressed by the intersecting factors of being young, female, and poor.
Race and social class
Intersectional analyses can demonstrate how there are racial inequalities for people of color and the opportunities that are available to them. For instance, black people may often find that they face oppression for their race, but even more so if they are also from a working-class background.
Consider a Black student who cannot afford college tuition. They face oppression for their race and lack the wealth to pay. This leaves them with fewer opportunities than white people from wealthier backgrounds who can afford tuition.
People of color from a working-class background can face further inequalities if intersected with other factors such as physical disability, their age, and their gender.
Crime and race
Social class, age, gender, and race do not affect crime rates in isolation; they work together to shape the experiences of individuals as well as the larger society.
When it comes to crime, people of color may face different levels of inequality from many intersecting factors. For instance, a black person who is from a poorer geographical region may be more likely to face criminal charges for something due to being black and not being wealthy.
Gender and age can also intersect with race. A Black man in a certain age range is more likely to be stopped and searched by police than a white person in another age range. He may also face greater punishment for the same crime.
National data show how these factors combine.
- Aim: Edwards, Lee, and Esposito (2019) estimated how lifetime risk of being killed by police in the United States varies by race-ethnicity, sex, and age.
- Method: They combined national data on police-involved deaths with population life tables. This gave age-specific and lifetime risks for each race-sex group.
- Results: Lifetime risk was higher for African American and American Indian/Alaska Native men and women, and for Latino men, than for white peers. It was highest for Black men, at about 1 in 1,000.
- Conclusion: Risk is patterned by race, sex, and age together. It peaks between ages 20 and 35, and for young men of color police use of force is among the leading causes of death.
The study is descriptive rather than causal, and it covers only the United States. It shows where risk clusters, not why. Looking at race, sex, and age together reveals a pattern that any one factor alone would miss.
Environmental justice
Environmental hazards are not distributed randomly across a population. Hazardous waste facilities and polluting industry have historically been sited disproportionately in low-income neighborhoods with large populations of color. This produces a compounded environmental burden that intersects race with social class (Bullard, 1990).
Affected communities have organized around the concept of environmental racism. It describes how siting decisions, and slower clean-up in the neighborhoods concerned, compound racial and economic disadvantage. The result is a geographically concentrated form of harm.
The example shows intersectional analysis extending into environmental and public-health policy. It reaches beyond the more commonly discussed axes of gender, disability, and crime.
Transgender and gender non-conforming violence
In 2020, a report found that there were a record number of violent and fatal incidents against transgender and gender non-conforming people. What was found was that a significant number of these victims were black transgender women (Human Rights Campaign, 2020).
This is the result of misogyny, racism, and transphobia, each of which can intersect and oppress these individuals.
What is Intersectional Feminism?
Early feminist movements have been criticized for being too focused on the experiences of primarily white, western, and middle-class women.
For example, the suffragette movement was influential in first-wave feminism for helping to extend voting rights for women. The voting rights of the working class and minority ethnic groups were mostly ignored at this time. Not all women gained equally.
Intersectional feminism considers that misogyny and the exploitation of women do not just affect white middle-class women, but there are many intersecting factors.
This type of feminism offers insight into why not all women experience oppression similarly.
Each woman has her own unique experience. A Black woman, a transgender woman, and a lesbian woman will each experience oppression intersecting with misogyny differently.
While, for example, a transgender woman may experience misogyny and transphobia, she will experience misogyny differently from a cisgender woman and transphobia differently from a transgender man.
Crenshaw (1989) discussed how feminism can leave out the experiences of Black women. Descriptive definitions of patriarchy draw on white women’s experiences. Readers of feminist literature may therefore wrongly assume that patriarchy does not apply to Black women.
This is because the traditional role of black women in the family and in other black institutions does not always resemble what is described as patriarchy in white communities.
Many supporters of feminism say intersectionality is essential. Any work towards women’s rights must be intersectional so as not to exclude large majorities of women. Otherwise it treats their experiences as the same as those of white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied women.
What Can Be Learned From Intersectional Theory?
Below are some of how intersectional theory has expanded our understanding of individuals in society:
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Humans cannot be reduced to a single category
From an intersectional perspective, human lives cannot be reduced to single categories. People’s lives are multidimensional and complex, being shaped by different factors and social dynamics operating together.
Moreover, no one social category takes priority in policy analysis. Analysts cannot assume that any single category explains people’s needs and experiences. Individuals do not have to choose which category they best fit into.
For instance, a Black woman does not have to choose between the ‘woman’ category and the ‘Black’ category. Both factors are valid. Both affect her in unique ways.
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Feminism can be exclusionary
Other feminist theories and past feminist movements can be criticized by intersectional theory for excluding many groups of women. Politically, feminists who organize ‘as women’ can exclude women defined as ‘different’ from whatever brings that subgroup of women together. That subgroup is usually privileged, white, western, and able-bodied.
Ignoring intersectional factors means that some feminists overlook marginalized groups of women. These include women from an ethnic minority, disabled women, transgender women, and working-class women.
Modern feminist perspectives are therefore encouraged to be more inclusive. Being inclusive of every type of woman attracts more feminist supporters. It also avoids limiting feminism’s appeal to one type of woman.
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Intersectional theory provides a deeper understanding of oppression
Intersectional theory has provided a stronger understanding of how many different forms of oppression can affect individuals in unique ways.
Theorists of intersectionality insist that no one form of oppression can be understood without considering the others.
Specifically, theorists claim that certain aspects of social inequality, social problems, and injustices will be invisible if factors such as gender, race, and class are analyzed separately.
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People can be advantaged and disadvantaged by structures of oppression
Intersectionality is not just about marginalized groups. Social structures do not only disadvantage certain groups. They also privilege others, in ways unique to each situation.
Someone may be intersectionally marginalized (e.g., a black working-class woman), intersectionally privileged (white wealthy man), or a combination of both. A white woman of a working-class background may be intersectionally privileged for being white but intersectionally marginalized for being working-class.
Social relations are so complex that nearly everyone is privileged in some ways and disadvantaged in others. This does not mean that everyone is equally advantaged.
Evaluation Of Intersectional Theory
Strengths
Intersectional theory offers several advantages over single-factor approaches:
- Fuller Explanations: It generates more complete information about the origins, root causes, and characteristics of social issues.
- Effective Responses: It supports more effective and efficient responses to growing social inequities than fitting people into one box.
- Beyond Dual Systems: Dual systems theory saw patriarchy and capitalism as two distinct systems. Intersectionality argues gender and class effects cannot be reduced to either alone.
- Broader Thinking: Researchers, policy makers, and social change leaders can move beyond single factors that cannot fully explain human life.
- Inclusive Policy: Laws and policies can include all types of people and social groups, so fewer people fall through the cracks.
Limitations
The main criticism of intersectional theory is that it still tends to stereotype people into categories. It tries to move away from lumping people into singular identity boxes.
The groups people are put in are more complex, but the theory still groups people by identity markers. Yet each person’s experience is unique.
Groups can keep subdividing. The created groups can share an infinite number of additional characteristics, which separates them into smaller and smaller groups. Eventually, only one person may fit the new category.
For instance, after considering factors such as gender, race, sexuality, ability, and class, one could look at everything that causes opposition, such as appearance and personality. Perhaps everyone’s experience in a society is so unique that they cannot be classified so simply.
Contemporary Research
Three questions dominate the research since 2015. Do quantitative methods capture what the theory claims? If not, why not? And does the framework reveal patterns that single-axis analysis misses?
A systematic review (methodological evidence) and a theoretical analysis (epistemological argument) address the first two questions. A national study of police killings (Edwards et al., 2019, described above) addresses the third.
Is the Theory Applied Faithfully?
- Aim: Bauer et al. (2021) examined how intersectionality theory has been applied in quantitative research between 1989 and mid-2020, and how faithfully studies integrated its core tenets.
- Method: A PRISMA-guided systematic review searched four databases. It covered original quantitative or mixed-methods studies and methods papers that explicitly applied an intersectionality framework.
- Results: 707 articles qualified. About one in four did not define intersectionality, and about one in six used social positions that did not reflect power. Most used simple regression with interaction terms.
- Conclusion: Core tenets are often lost or misapplied when a relational, power-focused theory is translated into standard quantitative methods. Researchers need clearer guidance on what a genuinely intersectional analysis requires.
As a PRISMA-guided review of 707 studies, this sits near the top of the evidence hierarchy for a methodological question. Its scale makes the finding hard to dismiss as a few weak studies.
It can describe how research was done, but it cannot settle how to quantify a relational theory. It also assessed only what published papers reported.
Can Quantitative Methods Be Intersectional?
- Aim: Else-Quest and Hyde (2016) asked whether intersectionality, a framework with qualitative and critical roots, can be reconciled with quantitative psychological research.
- Method: This was a theoretical analysis, not a data study. They set out three core assumptions of intersectionality and tested each against positivism, social constructionism, and standpoint epistemology.
- Results: Quantitative methods are not inherently incompatible with the framework. The deeper tension is that quantitative psychology usually treats categories as fixed predictors, not as markers of power relations.
- Conclusion: Quantitative work can be intersectional if measurement choices rest on an epistemology that treats categories as power-laden and context-dependent.
Because this is a theoretical analysis, its central argument is more contestable than an empirical finding. Its value is explanatory. It suggests why the drift documented by Bauer et al. happens, and it offers a route back to the theory’s own standard.
Together with Edwards et al. (2019), described above, these works qualify an uncritical reading of ‘intersectional research’. The framework’s diagnostic power is clearest in studies that model more than one axis jointly and stay consistent with its claims about power.
Much research using the term does not meet that bar. This is the definitional drift that Collins (2015) warned about.
Comparison With Rival Theories
Intersectionality developed in response to earlier frameworks, and other frameworks have challenged it in turn. The table shows how it differs from each.
| Theory | Core claim | How intersectionality differs |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple jeopardy (King, 1988) | Black women face several sources of disadvantage, added together: race plus sex plus class. | Combining categories produces a qualitatively different experience, not simply more of the same disadvantage. |
| Dual-systems theory | Developed within Marxist feminism: patriarchy and capitalism are two distinct systems operating side by side. | Structures are mutually constituting. Patriarchy takes a different form for a working-class Black woman than for a wealthy white woman. |
| Standpoint theory | Knowledge is shaped by social position, and marginalized positions can reveal what dominant ones obscure. | There is no single women’s standpoint, only standpoints differentiated by race, class, sexuality, and other axes. |
| Postmodern critique | Categories such as race, gender, and class are contingent constructions, not stable units (see postmodern feminism). | McCall’s (2005) anticategorical approach absorbs the critique by deconstructing categories. Most quantitative research instead treats them as given. |
Whether to deconstruct categories or to treat them as given in order to measure inequality remains an unresolved debate within the field.
Applications of Intersectional Theory
Why is intersectionality important in criminology?
Criminologists have usually been interested in investigating the relationship between race and crime, as well as between gender and class.
They have also been interested in observing how these factors determine any differences in offending and victimization. However, the intersection of these factors may have been overlooked.
Intersectional research suggests that using many intersecting factors can help to measure the social inequalities that can influence criminal behavior (Collins, 1998).
Many forms of systemic social disadvantages such as being working-class, and an ethnic minority have led to these individuals being over-criminalized.
For instance, these groups may be more likely than less disadvantaged people to be suspected of a crime they did not commit. They may also receive longer jail sentences.
Therefore, it is suggested that criminologists need to look at different forms of discrimination in the justice system not as separate issues, but as interwoven with each other.
Why is intersectionality important in social work?
Intersectionality is especially important in social work. In using intersectionality, social workers can have a better understanding of their clients in relation to how they are potentially oppressed by the society in which they live.
In terms of those who experience domestic violence, while it can impact people of all backgrounds, society may not always treat victims of abuse equally. Social biases influence how society perceives survivors of domestic violence and stereotypes often create barriers for care and support.
Social workers should approach each victim as an individual. They should not contribute to the oppression individuals can face in the system.
What is an intersectional approach in research?
An intersectional approach to research might include focusing on the unique challenges that those who have intersectional and interwoven systems of discrimination and oppression face.
Research could focus on transgender people who live in poverty. It could also focus on Black lesbian women.
When collecting data from research, applying an intersectional approach means that factors such as gender, class, disability, among others, are considered.
This data can be obtained to create a more specific, and in-depth analysis of how these factors influence the data. However, researchers should take care to not make generalized assumptions for each intersectional factor based on quantified data.
McCall (2005) distinguished three approaches to studying intersectionality:
- Anticategorical: Treats categories such as ‘woman’ or ‘Black’ as too unstable to use as fixed units and examines how they come to seem natural.
- Intercategorical: Provisionally accepts categories to measure inequality between groups. Most quantitative research takes this approach.
- Intracategorical: Focuses on one overlooked group, such as disabled trans women of color, to reveal complexity that broad comparisons flatten.
The choice shapes what kind of evidence a study can produce.
References
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Bullard, R. D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Westview Press.
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Unwin Hyman.
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Collins, P. H. (2015). Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112142
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Hankivsky, O. (2014). Intersectionality 101. Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy.
Human Rights Campaign. (2020). An epidemic of violence: Fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people in the United States in 2020. Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
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