The term “intersectionality” has moved from academic discourse to more mainstream circles, but is now in danger of being emptied of its significance, argues Talat Yaqoob and provides some key questions that anyone interested in using an intersectionality framework should ask themselves.

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The concept of intersectionality has become more commonly engaged in across both academic research and policy development in the UK. For example, considering compounding needs in the delivery of adult social care and in building a more competent understanding of structural inequality in policy design. Whilst this is welcome, its somewhat meteoric rise in use has been accompanied with a superficial and often problematic application.

The language of intersectionality has joined the ranks of “diversity and inclusion” and it risks becoming part of a virtue signalling and tick-box culture

The use of it, particularly by public institutions, has diluted it of its power and transformed it into a more palatable and often ineffective methodology. The language of intersectionality has joined the ranks of “diversity and inclusion” and it risks becoming part of a virtue signalling and tick-box culture, used to illustrate how progressive your policy, service, or training is.

There is no better illustration of this than when the word intersectionality is used as a adjective rather than a verb. When someone states that they themselves or their organisation are “intersectional”  the word is often being used as a synonym for “diversity” or “diverse” rather than expressing (and providing the evidence) that they take an intersectional approach to their work.

This interpretation of intersectionality reduces it to being a descriptor of identities and therefore opening it up to rebuttal as “oppression Olympics”.

Intersectionality as a method

Intersectionality is a method of analysis providing a framework to assess the impact of multiple and compounding systemic oppressions and how these influence policy design and outcomes, services, and decision-making. That includes the impacts of classism and poverty, sexism, racism, disability discrimination, homophobia and xenophobia.

Whilst yes, the end outcome is to improve the lives of communities of identity and the analysis will include data about the experience of those communities, it is not an analysis that is meant to promote individualism. Rather it should be used as a basis to focus attention on how systemic oppressions operate together.

With the rising global pushback against any efforts to deliver a fairer, more just society, it is crucial that intersectional analysis and practice delivers deep and sustained change that cannot be undone overnight as a consequence of cowardly political whim.

The Combahee River Collective in their statement from 1977 expressed this especially well; “we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking”

Kimberle Crenshaw in her keynote to the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival in 2016 explained that “intersectionality, is not primarily about identity, its about how structures make certain identities the consequence of, the vehicle for, vulnerability.”

With the rising global pushback against any efforts to deliver a fairer, more just society, it is crucial that intersectional analysis and practice delivers deep and sustained change that cannot be undone overnight as a consequence of cowardly political whim.

How intersectionality is misused

In the rush to appear progressive, intersectionality has become co-opted, unsurprisingly, by the very institutions that often uphold the systemic oppressions the framework it is meant to highlight and tackle. Whilst there may be good intention behind the use of intersectionality in these spaces, it is often not backed with the resources needed to apply an intersectional framework and most importantly, comes without the analysis of power and outcomes that are needed to instigate systemic change.

In third sector and equalities spaces, whilst progress has certainly been made, intersectionality largely remains a pursuit on the periphery of core delivery, added in as an additional paragraph to a report, when a specific community is being responded to, or when resources allow.

In Government and policy design spaces in particular, intersectionality has been misunderstood as a way to respond to everyone’s needs or create a level playing field via homogenous policy making or “mainstreaming” rather than designing it with the specificity and evidence-base that intersectionality demands; this is what Christofferson describes as “generic intersectionality with examples from public policy“.

In third sector and equalities spaces, whilst progress has certainly been made, intersectionality largely remains a pursuit on the periphery of core delivery, added in as an additional paragraph to a report, when a specific community is being responded to, or when resources allow.

In both cases, whilst application of intersectionality may be well intentioned, this understanding is likely to further embed the very inequality that intersectional analysis is attempting to mitigate.

The need for better data

There is no denying that a lack of effective, intersectional and disaggregated data whether on health inequalities, educational attainment, or the labour market is a barrier to intersectional analysis. This has been highlighted to Government and public institutions by equalities organisations for over a decade. Whilst this is a necessary call to action, we appear to have created permission for institutions to await this “better data” before an intersectional framework to research and policy design can be applied.

There is no denying that a lack of effective, intersectional and disaggregated data whether on health inequalities, educational attainment, or the labour market is a barrier to intersectional analysis.

Applying intersectionality need not be solely dependent on large-scale studies or Government databases such as the household survey, instead advocating for parity of esteem for community-based and co-produced research is part of an anti-oppressive and intersectional response. Pushing for the resourcing of this better data is important, but whilst that resourcing appears unlikely to be prioritised in the current fiscal landscape, intersectional analysis can and must still be applied.

Building more effective intersectionality frameworks

To take intersectionality seriously, we need to invest in building the skills for its application across research spaces and policy development. This requires working to build intersectionality frameworks specific to the research and policy area we wish to influence. Examples of this exist in health equity and more general frameworks to be build on have been published by UN Women. Fundamentally, before describing a piece of work as “intersectional” or stating you intend to take an intersectional approach, some key questions need to be asked:

• Are marginalised communities who experience intersecting oppressions engaged with authority?
• What skills and competencies to apply intersectionality exist within the group of those involved?
• Have adequate resource been allocated to develop this work meaningfully and with more depth?
• How is an anti-oppressive approach being applied and how is relational and systemic power being responded to within this work?
• How are the specificities of the harms of compounding structural oppressions being articulated?
• How do the outputs of this work highlight the overlapping consequences of structural power?
• How does this work challenge siloed policy-making and research design which often assumes a homogenous life experience (including that of inequality)?

Asking questions like these should be seen as a very basic starting point, but this starting point needs to be reinforced in order for us to make the necessary gains that intersectional analysis can enable. In the rush to apply it, these basics are being forgotten and the importance of tackling structural and systemic power is being ignored, rendering this framework powerless.  

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Ryan DeBerardinis in Shutterstock

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