Intersectional feminist scholarship moves beyond issues solely focusing on gender and sexuality in order to address the complex realities that we embody and experience. Race, ethnicity, class, nationality, age, ability, and other dimensions of difference or social locators do not exist apart from gender and sexuality. Instead, these aspects of individual identity, interpersonal relationships, social institutions, policies, politics, and cultures intersect to form myriad experiences and power arrangements. In pursuit of greater understanding of multiple perspectives and increased social equality, we must examine the most salient social locations in a given case or study.
Children remain largely absent from sociolegal scholarship on sexual violence. Taking an intersectional approach to the analysis of attorneys’ strategies during child sexual assault trials, this article argues that legal narratives draw on existing gender, racial, and age stereotypes to present legally compelling evidence of credibility. This work builds on Crenshaw’s focus on women of color, emphasizing the role of structures of power and inequality in constituting the conditions of children’s experiences of adjudication. Using ethnographic observations of courtroom jury trials, transcripts, and court records, three narrative themes of child credibility emerged: invisible wounds, rebellious adolescents, and dysfunctional families. Findings show how attorneys use these themes to emphasize the child’s unmarked body, imperceptible emotional responses, rebellious character, and harmful familial environments. The current study fills a gap in sexual assault research by moving beyond trial outcomes to address cultural narratives within the court that are inextricably embedded in intersectional dimensions of power and the reproduction of social status.
Lépinard applies the intersectionality framework to women’s rights organizations, looking to see if and how this concept has been adopted by various women’s rights organizations. Doing qualitative and quantitative data analysis, the author draws from interview data with activists working in various women’s rights organizations in France and Canada. The author demonstrates how intersectionality is used and understood by these organizations (how they fail and succeed with the intersectional challenges), which she calls repertoires, as a way to understand the social experience and the political interests of women in various intersectional positionalities. There are also national differences across France and Canada that bring in notions of citizenship and immigration. This is a great piece for addressing issues in social movements and academic versus activist understandings of concepts relevant to both groups.
This interesting piece by Flippen uses the intersectionality framework to examine how legal status, labor market position and family shape the labor supply of Latinas in Durham, North Carolina, which is a new immigrant destination. The author uses data from a local, representative survey of Latino immigrants and interviews in Durham/Chapel Hill metro area. The initial survey, conducted between 2001 and 2002, included 209 women between the ages of 18 and 49. In 2006 and 2007, an additional 910 were interviewed, for a total sample size of 1,119 women. The author shows, for instance, that Latina women’s position in the economy constrains their labor supply. For example, human capital (e.g., education) does not translate into significant gains in labor market participation. English language skills and time work better at shaping whether women work and work full-time. However, legal status and family status are disadvantage for immigrant Latina’s labor market experiences. This is a good article to introduce to students because legal status and national origin seem to be an important piece in the intersections framework, and this study also cuts across other important arenas – family and work, and transnationalism.
In a symposium on the work of Patricia Hill Collins, Bose describes global approaches to intersectional scholarship. Intersectional research plays an important role in social policy worldwide, particularly useful because this lens does not pit oppressions against one another. Scholars may choose from a variety of interpretations of what intersectionality is and how to employ it methodologically. Bose discusses group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered practices of intersectionality. She argues that researchers can amend a system-centered approach to study salient intersecting inequalities within and across nations.
Building on the “glass escalator” concept of how men tokens enjoy advantages in women-dominated occupations, Harvey Wingfield argues that black men do not enjoy the same ride as their white counterparts. The author examines racialized aspects of the gendered mechanisms that move white men upward in traditionally female occupations that mitigate these effects for black men. These “glass barriers” include racist stereotypes about black men, acts of blatant discrimination, and white supremacist perceptions of occupation suitability. Another glass barrier involves black men as unwilling to dissociate from feminized aspects of their occupation, which points to a caring self that men of color adapt as a tactic to combat racial inequality and reject white hegemonic masculinity. These findings suggest efforts to promote equality in the workplace should combine undoing gender by blurring the boundaries between femininity and masculinity with upsetting systems of racial inequality that marginalize men of color.
Andersen provides a thorough overview of feminist sociology, advocating for an incorporation of power, historical, and structural analyses in studies of gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality, however, cannot and should not be extracted from the web of social locations (or flavors or whatever metaphor you prefer) in which they exist. This intersectional view understands gender as a piece of larger puzzles of social realities including race, class, sexuality, and nationality. This theoretical perspective allows us to conceptualize how gender (and other locators) shape symbols, interactions, structures, and other social phenomena. This article analyzes central debates in feminist sociology, giving helpful background information alongside detailed critiques. These key focuses of feminist scholarship include structure and agency, power, sexuality, intersectionality, and inequality. Everyday realities, privileges, hardships as well as diverse experiences and practices form a social world chock full of complexities for us to examine.
Gender & Society in the Classroom is curated by scholars in the field and is a listing of articles that would be relevant in certain classrooms. These lists are not exhaustive but contain a small section of important articles that can begin to start classroom discussion on a variety of topics.
Organized by Kyla Walters, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Updated by Linda Gjokaj, Oakland University. Comments and suggestions contact gendsoc@oakland.edu.
Gender & Society 
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