In May 1976, Emma DeGraffenreid, an African-American woman, unsuccessfully sued General Motors’ assembly division in St. Louis, where she had also unsuccessfully applied for a job.
The basis of the complaint was that the company discriminated against black women based on race and gender: black men were hired to work in production, while white women were hired for administrative tasks, but neither section was hiring a black woman.
Accustomed to dealing with claims of discrimination based on race or gender, the court and the law it upheld resisted the fundamental notion presented in the case: the need to recognize “new classes of protected minorities” that fell at the intersection of race and gender, and the fact that such a composite identity was linked to a systemic deficit of social justice.
For Kimberlé Crenshaw, then an interim law professor at the University of California Los Angeles Law School, the legal flaws exposed by the ruling were startling.
He referred to the case in a landmark article published in The University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1989, in which she drew on black feminist and critical legal theory (the progenitor of critical race theory or CRT) to develop the concept of “intersectionality” to describe how multiple and overlapping social identities relate to oppressive structures.
Explaining the genesis of the concept in a 2016 TED Talk, Crenshaw, now a leading authority on civil rights, feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law, said the DeGraffenreid case highlighted a “framing” problem. The frame or lens used by the court to view racial and gender discrimination had been “biased and distorted,” she maintained.
Arriving at intersectionality was partly an attempt to give a name to a previously unnamed problem.
“We all know where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see it, and when you can’t see a problem you practically can’t solve it,” Crenshaw told his TED audience.
And further on: “What do you call being hit by multiple forces and then being left to fend for yourself? The intersectionality seemed to do it for me.”
An idea whose time has come
While the concept of intersectionality has been around for over 30 years, its application has been limited, even by academic standards. But changes seem to be underway, though not always for the right reasons.
In the US, critical race theory as a critique of systemic racism has gained prominence in recent years, partly in response to black anger, but also as a target of right-wing politicians seeking to ban race. CRT teaching in the US educational system at all levels, including universities.
Intersectionality, an offshoot of CRT, while not directly in the firing line, is also taking hold, moving beyond US borders and into the rest of the world, including Europe and Africa, with particular application in academia and research where the framework is gaining traction as a tool to support relevant and equitable science.
In Europe, the prestigious EU research and innovation funding program known as Horizon Europe has embraced intersectionality in its bid to integrate gender into research and innovation content and help researchers and innovators with ” methodological tools for intersectional, gender and sex analysis”.
Horizon Europe has also included intersectionality in its latest guide on gender equality plans. The guidance suggests that organizations should consider going beyond data disaggregated by sex and/or gender alone and exploring differences based on other individual or group characteristics, such as “people with an immigrant or minority background, people with disabilities, people with low socioeconomic status. or at risk of poverty, members of the LGBTIQ community” — in essence: multiple intersecting identities.
Intersectionality in Africa
In Africa, the South African-based Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has recognized the value of an intersectional approach in the work of African science grantmaking councils as a tool to support relevant, equitable and fair science in the continent.
Launched in 2015, the Science Grant Councils Initiative (SGCI) in Sub-Saharan Africa is a multi-funder initiative that aims to strengthen the capacities of science grant councils in sub-Saharan Africa to support research and evidence-based policies that contribute to economic and social development.
Sixteen councils representing Botswana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe participate in the SGCI.
As part of that initiative, the HSRC partnered with Gender at Work and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa on a gender and inclusion project that is helping to foster greater gender inclusion in the education sector. science, technology and innovation.
The project explicitly supports the incorporation of an intersectional transformative approach in the development, implementation and monitoring of gender policies, programs and research in the functions of science grant councils.
As central players in national innovation systems, science grants councils are recognized as key players in addressing gender inequality in national science systems.
World Science Forum
To highlight this work and the role of intersectionality, the HSRC and UK-based NGO Portia hosted a panel discussion on the topic at the World Science Forum in Cape Town, New York. December 5 to 9.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Elizabeth Pollitzer, Director of Portia, which works to improve gender equality in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and to promote gender inclusion. in STEM. Other panelists include Heidi van Rooyen and Ingrid Lynch from HSRC, who lead SGCI’s gender and inclusion project, Dorothy Ngila from South Africa’s National Research Foundation, Isabella Schmidt from UN Women, Thomas Thayer from Elsevier publishing house and Lilian Hunt of Wellcome. Confidence.
In a nod to Crenshaw, who acknowledged the challenge posed by an “invisible” and “unnamed” problem, the HSRC panel is titled: “Different Lenses, Better Results? Intersectionality as a Critical Component of Gender Transformative Research ” and sets out to discuss the potential of an intersectional approach to provide the theoretical and methodological tools to make inequalities visible, in order to address them.
“One of the important qualities of intersectionality is that it broadens the gender perspective, recognizing the overlapping inequalities related to other forms of diversity, such as age, race, class, (dis)ability and sexuality and others that create and reinforce marginalization”. Pollitzer said.
Investigation report
The panel also aims to provide practical examples of how researchers and funders have embraced this framework to advance science in the service of social justice, and reveals the findings of a recent mixed-methods research project that attempts to establish to what extent and how. which is currently integrating an intersectional framework into the African cycles of grantmaking, human capital development and research.
Titled “Intersectionality in Research, Grantmaking, and Human Capital Development: Considerations for Public Funding Agencies in Advancing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion,” the report finds that most authors using intersectionality theory are found in institutions in North America (60%, particularly in the US and Canada), followed by Eastern and Central Europe (16%) and Northern Europe (7%). Significantly, authors located in Africa are among the least represented in the data set (2%).
It highlights the dominance in African and global scholarship of four social identities: gender, race, socioeconomic status, and age. The least researched social identity for both is disability. According to the investigation, the financial support corresponds to these identities.
While a review that formed part of the study identified several mechanisms employed by science grant-awarding councils to increase women’s participation, it found that gender was primarily treated as binary (female and male), with other identities being treated. intersect and that contribute to the marginalization of women. certain individuals and communities receive less consideration.
A key premise of the panel discussion, and one that fits well with the World Science Forum 2022 theme “Science for Social Justice”, is the idea that addressing gender disparities in science is not just a matter of rights. and justice, but rather helps produce more inclusive teams in organizations, higher quality research, and greater relevance and impact of research and innovation.
And there is research to prove it: an article published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America shows that the more gender-balanced scientific research teams are, the more likely they are to produce innovative and high-impact scientific research.
That is a scientific fact that no one can afford to ignore.
Sharon Dell is a freelance journalist and editor with extensive experience in the field of higher education and academic research.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian..
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