Intersections of Work Employment Prof Wright Dixon CMN 396 RCGW Intersectionality Defined McBride Hebson Holgate 2015 Kimberl Crenshaw 1989 coined the term intersectionality to represent the experience of Black women s employment experiences Many scholars including Spelman 1988 posited that theorizing sexism and racism before Crenshaw s use of intersectionality Assumed that sexism was distinct from racism and classism How one is subject to sexism is unaffected by racism classism Work Employment Relations McBride Hebson Holgate 2015 Mc Bride Hebson Holgate 2015 asserts that Crenshaw s research used Black Feminist critique it two ways 1 highlight the experience of the privileged within groups divided by gender and race 2 led to misuse and marginalized views of Black women which she labeled the lived phenomenon Intersectionality work allowed for critical scholars to have a name to the experience and provided a foundational method to study Black women Intersectionality Re Defined McBride Hebson Holgate 2015 Intersectionality now encompasses the experience of black and minority ethnic women In addition intersectionality allowed for a larger range of oppressions Ageism Classism Social Groupings Age sexuality disability What is Intersectionality Paradigm Theory Much discussion challenged the idea of what makes or is intersecting Some questioned whether Intersectionality was more a paradigm or a theory of marginalized subjectivity or generalized identity Some argued that intersectionality should be a methodological approach Ontological and Epistemological Ontology the nature of being The existence of reality Epistemological distinguishes justifies belief from opinion The Contribution of Intersectionality Intersectionality established the validity of location of centers Black women at the intersection of race and gender structural intersectionality Black women experience sexism differently than the experience of white women and racism t0 that of Black men Black women experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism which means black women do not experience a certain amount based on their racial identity or gender The Challenge to Intersectionality McCall identified three aspects to intersectionality 1 Complexity of use terms to define or compare meaning intercategorial 2 Study experiences within a given context or category intracategorical 3 Rejection occurs within categorization of experiences with no preconceptions of what characteristics that individuals share anticategorical The Challenge to Taking an Intersectional Approach 1 The increasing field or research and literature because of the increase sensitivity to intersectionality and thus more methodological challenges 2 Intersectionality pushes scholars to go beyond problematizing the relationships within the categories of difference e g race class gender 3 Allows us engage in conversation in the theoretical challenges of problematizing the relationship between the categories of difference