Intersectionality challenges practices that privilege any specific axis of inequality, such as race, class, or gender and emphasizes the potential of varied and fluid configurations of social locations and interacting social processes in the production of inequities. Although intersectionality is now recognized in the context of women’s health, men’s health, and gender and health, its full implications for research, policy, and practice have not yet been interrogated.
This paper investigates, from an intersectionality perspective, the common struggles within each field to confront the complex interplay of factors that shape health inequities. Drawing on developments within intersectionality scholarship and various sources of research and policy evidence (including examples from the field of HIV/AIDS), the paper demonstrates the methodological feasibility of intersectionality and in particular, the wide-ranging benefits of de-centring gender through intersectional analyses.
The paper begins with a brief overview of intersectionality, including its relationship to diversity. It then moves to examine core practices within the fields of women’s, men’s, and gender and health. The intent is to show, from an intersectionality perspective, how the treatment and ubiquitous favouring of gender (and sex) as core and primary dimensions of health undermine efforts to understand the complexities of health experiences and outcomes. The paper seeks to bring into sharp relief the resulting mis-specifications of the content of any privileged identity/social location (including but not limited to gender), as well as the masking of health-related experiences of those whose lives are located at the intersection of multiple dimensions of inequity.
To illustrate the importance of an intersectionality framework, the paper offers normative and operational guidance for empirical research, examples from emerging intersectionality research, and in particular, evidence from the field of HIV/AIDS. This discussion strives to demonstrate the transformational possibilities of an intersectional analysis but also specifies ongoing gaps and challenges related to applications of intersectionality that require further attention and research development. The paper concludes by considering some of the research, policy, and political consequences of intersectionality for the fields of women’s health, men’s health, and gender and health.
Key Findings:
- Intersectionality raises critical lines of enquiry. First, it brings to the fore the limitations of research that emphasizes pre-determined classifications (e.g. man and woman) or prioritizes any one single category (e.g. sex or gender) or even a set constellation of variables (e.g. sex and gender) within a contextual analysis. Significantly, when sex and gender-based inequities are recognized as inseparable from other social locations such as class, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status, geography, and ability, without any presumption of ranking (Weber & Fore, 2007), this raises the critical issue of whether centring sex and gender is useful, to what extent, and in which circumstances.
- The list of potential intersecting factors extends beyond gender but also may or may not include gender at the forefront when determinations are made about what profoundly affects life chances, opportunities, and health, including manifestations of disease and illness. The key is to continue the process of interrogating when and how gender (and sex) are salient for examining, elucidating, and responding to health inequities and to ensure that researchers who may be entrenched in certain ways of doing things, do not only see what they want to see in their research (Weber, 2007).
