How an Intersectional Approach Can Help to Transform the University

Abstract

Advocates have been striving for decades to improve the representation of women and people of color in the academy. The results in political science have been fairly limited. From 1980 to 2010, the proportion of women among white political science faculty grew from 9.6% to 24.8% (APSA 2011, 44). Even with this sizable increase, women constituted fewer than a quarter of white political scientists. Within their respective ethnoracial groups, women of color made up a greater proportion of political science faculty but remain woefully underrepresented in the profession, with only 79 Latino, 161 African American, and 117 Asian American female political science faculty nationally in 2010 (APSA 2011, 44–46). Overall, the proportion of scholars of color within political science during this period, male and female, has remained largely flat; in 2010, 88.9% of political science faculty were white. In this essay, I argue that an intersectional approach to thinking about this issue—one that acknowledges the marginalization and privilege that cut across faculty within departments and universities—raises the possibility of changing the conversation about inclusion, potentially opening up new possibilities for making substantive change within political science departments and universities.