ABSTRACT This article explores early twentieth-century personal advertisements in Copenhagen as a rich archive of female same-sex desire and agency between 1900 and 1910. At the heart of the analysis is the ambiguous term ‘girlfriend’, which invites a reconsideration of women’s relationships, encompassing platonic companionship, romantic intimacy and sexual pleasure. In a society that predominantly restricted legitimate intimacy to the institution of marriage, the personal advertisements are understood to have constituted a public queer space wherein women from diverse social backgrounds negotiated desire, financial exchange and social respectability. Drawing together the voices of both upper- and working-class women, the study reveals a nuanced interclass dynamic involving intimacy, flirtation and economic interaction. It offers new insights into the public articulation of female same-sex desire and sexual agency, and foregrounds the complex intersections of gender, class and modernity in early twentieth-century Scandinavian society.

Inequitable access to healthcare is a central driver of the disproportionate burden of disease in Indigenous peoples. The aim of this study is to investigate inequities in access to dental care, accounting for supra-additive effects at the intersections of educational attainment, household income, and Indigeneity. Data were extracted from the 2017 to 2018 Canadian Community Health Survey, a national survey of Canada's ten provinces and three territories. A multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy was performed, defining 18 intersectional strata by educational attainment, household income, and Indigenous status. Three outcomes pertaining to dental care access were assessed: (i) dental attendance in the past 12 months, (ii) attending the dentist never or only for emergencies, and (iii) avoiding attending the dentist due to cost. There was evidence of substantial between-stratum heterogeneity in access to dental care. Fixed effects of age, sex, educational attainment, household income, and Indigeneity explained 91.0%-98.2% of the between-stratum variance. The median odds ratio (MOR) indicated that, depending on intersectional identity, the odds increased by 80% for having visited the dentist in the past 12 months (MOR: 1.80; 95% CI: 1.71-2.08), 118% for attending never or only for emergencies (MOR: 2.18; 95% CI: 2.04-2.50), and 83% for avoiding visits due to cost (MOR: 1.83; 95% CI: 1.68-2.22). Indigenous status and socioeconomic position greatly concentrate the risk of poor access to dental care, but there is little evidence for supra-additive interactions between these factors.

This article reads Usha Ganguli’s Rudali, a dramatic adaptation of Mahasweta Devi’s novella with the same title, to examine the precarious socio-political condition of rudalis, the Dalit women hired to mourn the death of rich people. Their abject lives resonate with Giorgio Agamben’s idea of homo sacer, figures stripped of civil rights, social recognition, and human dignity. To show the intersectionality of class, caste, and gender, this article makes a close textual reading of dialogue, characterization, and stage design. It also investigates how the ritualized mourning spectacle augments the recognition of rudalis who are otherwise excluded from the socio-political realm, and why Ganguli recasts them as agents of political resistance in postcolonial India. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, understood as social disgust and exclusion, and Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, the article explores how caste, class, and gender-based expulsion relegate Sanichari and her rudali community to bare existence, rendering them expendable within the hierarchized socio-economic structures. It argues that ritualized mourning becomes a counter-discursive practice through which rudali community expresses their dissent and resist social abjection. Therefore, the charting of their grief as a public performative act, Ganguli’s rework transforms the culturally silenced rudali homo sacer into a speaking subaltern whose mourning mediates to expose systemic injustice. Finally, the play, as a cautionary poetics of resistance, stages the ransacked lives of marginalized rudalis while critiquing the uneven social order. These findings serve to broader questions of intersectional injustice and the politics of visibility confronting marginalized communities.

This article investigates the interplay between housing segregation and school segregation in major Indian cities, emphasising the broader implications for urban equity. Analysis of UDISE+ and population census data reveals a positive and statistically significant association between residential segregation rooted in caste divisions and the perpetuation of caste-based school segregation in urban India. This residential segregation, stemming from the intersection of caste and class, confines socially and economically disadvantaged caste groups to nearby low-fee private schools or public schools. India’s school admissions policy, which relies on unrestricted school choice based on income, exacerbates these inequities and perpetuates caste-based segregation among schools due to persistent caste-based economic disparities in urban areas. The findings underscore the critical impact of spatial and educational segregation on urban equity, offering insights into how these forms of segregation reinforce social stratification in urban settings.

Beauty standards for women in Indonesia continue to be shaped by skin color hierarchies that position fair skin as an ideal symbol of attractiveness, modernity, and social value. These standards are not merely the result of individual aesthetic preferences, but are deeply rooted in colonial legacies, social class stratification, and patriarchal culture that are continuously reproduced through mass media and digital platforms. This condition is clearly reflected in the practice of colorism within digital spaces, particularly on social media. One prominent example is the case of TikTok influencer Ratu Namira, who became the target of derogatory public comments focusing on her skin tone rather than the quality or substance of her content. This study aims to analyze how skin color discrimination against women is constructed,Volume 5 No. 1 Januari 2026https://jurnal.untag-sby.ac.id/index.php/sintesaE – ISSN 2986-3759JURNAL ILMIAH KAJIAN KOMUNIKASI175normalized, and intensified in digital public spaces through an intersectional perspective. This research employs a qualitative approach using digital discourse analysis and visual analysis of public commentsrepresentations of women’s bodies on TikTok. The analytical framework is grounded in third-wave feminism, the concept of the male gaze, and algorithmic bias theory in order to examine the intersections of gender, skin color, social class, and digital technology. The findings reveal that the harassment directed at Ratu Namira cannot be understood as neutral aesthetic judgment, but rather as a form of symbolic violence reflecting the convergence of colonial history, patriarchal norms, and class-based hierarchies. Furthermore, TikTok’s algorithm plays a significant role in amplifying discriminatory discourse by prioritizing content and comments that generate high levels of engagement. Consequently, colorism against dark-skinned women on social media constitutes a form of structural discrimination that operates simultaneously across social, cultural, and digital domains, shaping women’s representation, lived experiences, and social positioning within online spaces.Keywords: Colorism, Beauty Standards, Intersectionality, Women, TikTok

ABSTRACT This qualitative research explores how the intersection of gender, class, and refugee status shapes Syrian women’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV), coping strategies, and help-seeking behaviors in Jordan. Drawing on 40 in-depth narrative interviews—30 with Syrian women residing in urban host communities and 10 in the Zaatari refugee camp – the research employed purposive sampling in coordination with humanitarian organizations and utilized thematic analysis guided by an intersectional framework. Findings reveal that displacement and transition into low-income refugee status have intensified Syrian women’s marginalization, exposing them to compounded socio-structural challenges. These include loss of privacy in domestic spaces, lack of familial support networks, xenophobia, labor exploitation, and heightened vulnerability to sexual abuse. Together, these factors increase the risk of IPV and significantly constrain the ability of women to exit abusive relationships or seek institutional support. Importantly, the research also highlights an often-overlooked dimension: intersectionality-mediated resilience and agency. Despite their compounded vulnerabilities, some women navigated structural limitations with strategic agency – accessing work opportunities, achieving relative economic independence, and leveraging new social roles to foster survival and resistance against IPV.

In a cycle of three short stories published in Continuadísimo (2008), Naty Menstrual explores the deaths of her protagonists, who are travesti sex workers living with HIV/AIDS. In the first two stories, the travestis die by suicide; the eponymous La Mr Ed turns into a vine and La Angie in “La empastillada” cuts herself with a mirror. Selva, the protagonist of “Camarada Kaposi,” disappears after a man in uniform is seen in the hospital. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the USA in the 1980s, Bersani asked his provocative question “Is the rectum a grave?” (1987), and I will explore the ways in which Menstrual’s three stories can be read alongside this question. Her narratives retain the polemical aspects of Bersani’s essay, yet afford the protagonists dignified, almost mythical deaths. Her stories transcend the stigmas and sense of moral panic around HIV/AIDS that Bersani described to give an insight into the complex intersection of sex, class, sexuality, and subjectivity. In writing unapologetically about travesti sex workers, Menstrual, like Bersani, revels in the subversive potential of sex to shatter the self and she also re-signifies the imagery of death that marked early discourses around HIV/AIDS.

In 2020, a global surge of activism linked to the Black Lives Matter movement prompted scientists to stage an academic 'strike', drawing attention to the ethical responsibility of addressing systemic racism. This catalysed debate in conservation, adding urgency to decades of scholarship on marginalization. In this Perspective, we review this literature and examine how exclusion in conservation persists across intersections of race, class, urban-rural divides, nationality and power dynamics from local to global levels. We highlight how marginalization and 'othering' disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) communities, especially in the Global South. Expansion of protected areas and the prioritization of individual animal lives over human well-being can intensify such inequities. We propose a framework for more inclusive conservation: recognizing and supporting human rights, ensuring local community agency, challenging entrenched norms in BIPOC engagement, and fostering educational opportunities led by and for BIPOC communities. Amid shifting global politics, including reduced US federal support for social and conservation issues, this framework provides guidance to counter racism and exclusion. By rethinking conservation practice, it seeks to build long-lasting, equitable and inclusive approaches that respect both people and nature.

ABSTRACT This article examines the socio-economic transformations of 1950s rural Punjab through Gurdial Singh's seminal novel Marhi da Deeva (1964). By putting moral economy framework in conversation with political economy, this essay reveals how the gradual transition from semi-feudal relations to capitalist tendencies had fundamentally reshaped the moral economy of rural Punjab. As market logic clashed with paternalistic bonds, caste-based oppression intensified rather than diminished. This analysis demonstrates how socially embedded novels provide essential insights into complex intersections of caste and class, psychological dimensions of dispossession, and the human costs of structural transformation, perspectives that are often marginalised in social sciences.

This paper investigates the intersections of race, class, and gender in women’s voices and/or in historical characters from a selected corpus of English and Afrikaans poems from South Africa. The discussed authors include Makhosazana Xaba, Koleka Putuma, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Malika Ndlovu, Yvette Christiansë, Ronelda Kamfer, Jolyn Phillips, and Lynthia Julius. The article will specifically examine how black and coloured women’s poetry often focuses on historical female figures, either ignored or marginalised in the official records. By unearthing forgotten women and their life stories, the poets we examine contribute to illuminating the complex experiences of South African black and coloured women from different periods. The theoretical approaches that have supported us in this journey include recent views on the concept of intersectionality, such as the current reflections on the dynamics of assemblage (Bogic 2017), critical approaches to South African feminism and literature, like Barbara Boswell’s And Wrote My Story Anyway (2020), and insights on the controversial political and cultural archives of South Africa, as put forward by Verne Harris (2021). This analysis will focus on how the selected poems contest the dominant versions of history and the official archive’s lack of inclusiveness.

To address social injustice, it is crucial to understand the intersecting social dimensions that contribute to it, such as gender, race, and class. While intersections of race and gender are well-studied, class remains underexplored in social psychology. This research investigates how class (measured by education, income, and occupational status) and gender influence interpersonal attitudes regarding likability, respect, and social distance across different cultures. We present results from factorial survey experiments in eight countries (Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Russia, UK, US) with different gender norms and inequality levels. High education and income influenced attitudes towards women (vs. men) more positively, and low income and occupational status influenced attitudes towards men (vs. women) more negatively. In countries with more conservative gender norms, these differences were stronger. General inequality also impacted status- and gender-based attitudes. Our findings demonstrate that gender and class interact differently across cultures, contributing to discourses on intersectionality and informing social equality and policy interventions.

This study explores how socio-economic background shapes the representation of girlhood in selected Indonesian children’s literature. Guided by Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory, which views identity as shaped by overlapping social categories, this study applies qualitative textual analysis to two storybooks from the Let’s Read Asia project, Cepat Kering, Bunga Kemboja! and Bukan Halangan. By using the close reading method, the analysis focuses on identifying scenes, expressions, and descriptions that construct different forms of resilience through different class contexts. The findings show that Ratih, a working-class girl, develops resilience and independence through financial hardship and self-sacrifice. On the other hand, Kapisa, the girl from a middle-class family, builds resilience through care, guidance, and access to information. These contrasting pathways demonstrate that social class strongly shapes the meaning of resilience and determines whether it is formed by necessity or through privilege. The study concludes that while both stories promote positive images of girls, they also risk normalizing inequality by presenting different class-based realities as equally admirable. These results highlight the importance of examining girlhood experiences at the intersection of gender, class, and age.

This dossier of La Palabra reaffirms the journal’s commitment to a critical and plural debate on literature and gender, bringing together articles that examine texts, authorship, traditions, and discursive practices from different theoretical, historical, and cultural perspectives. The body of work published here reflects not only the vitality of the field, but also its capacity to reinvent itself in the face of the social, political, and aesthetic transformations shaping the contemporary world. We received submissions in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, which gives this issue a distinctly transnational and multilingual character. This linguistic diversity is not merely formal; it reflects the circulation of concepts, questions, and methodologies across different academic and cultural contexts, broadening the horizons of debate and fostering comparative readings, inter-American dialogues, and exchanges between the Global North and the Global South. The journal thus reaffirms its vocation as a meeting place for diverse critical traditions, without linguistic or epistemological hierarchies. The articles address central issues in literary and gender studies, such as representations of femininity and masculinity, sexual and gender dissidences, relations between body, power, and language, as well as the intersections of gender, race, class, and coloniality. The issue also features analyses that revisit the literary canon from a critical perspective, alongside readings that foreground authors and texts historically marginalized, shedding light on mechanisms of exclusion and strategies of resistance inscribed in literature. This volume further demonstrates the consolidation of gender studies as a transversal field, capable of engaging in dialogue with different areas of literary theory, including narrative studies, cultural criticism, postcolonial theory, translation studies, and comparative literature. Far from constituting a restrictive thematic focus, the literature and gender axis emerges here as a powerful critical lens through which to examine literary production in its aesthetic and political complexity. We thank the authors who entrusted their work to the journal, as well as the reviewers, whose rigor and intellectual generosity were essential to guarantee the quality of this issue. We hope that the texts gathered in this volume will contribute to deepening debates, raising new questions, and encouraging future research, reaffirming literature as a privileged space for critical reflection on forms of existence, identity, and social imagination. We wish all readers an attentive and stimulating reading experience.

This paper explores Bell Hooks’ feminist analysis of masculinity in her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love through the lens of gender-based violence. Hooks critically examines the ways in which patriarchal structures harm both men and women, perpetuating a cycle of violence that negatively impacts gender relations. By engaging with Hooks’ arguments, this paper aims to understand how toxic masculinity and societal expectations of male behaviour contribute to gender-based violence and suggests that reconstructing masculinity is a crucial step toward ending such violence. Through a feminist critical lens, the paper will analyse the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in the shaping of masculinity and its implications for gender violence.

This paper reexamines Lee Hoe-sung’s Kinuta o Utsu Onna (The Woman Pounding the Fulling Block), the first work by a non-Japanese national to receive the Akutagawa Prize in 1972. Previous studies have tended to essentialize the text’s “ethnicity,” either celebrating it as an instance of “Korean lyricism” or critiquing its Orientalist reception. This study critically reengages Fredric Jameson’s concept of “national allegory”—not as a reductive framework that collapses individual narratives into national ones, but as an analytic capable of illuminating the layered structures of colonial experience.</br>The analysis demonstrates that the protagonist Chang Sul-i’s life cannot be reduced to a teleology of ethnic suffering. Her movements across Korea, Japan, and Sakhalin reveal a life trajectory formed at the intersection of gender, class, and ethnicity. Within the text, the mother appears both as a “daughter of the nation” and as a figure clothed like a “Japanese woman,” or as a subject who resists normative expectations—thus fracturing any singular or coherent notion of ethnic representation.</br>The paper also examines the text’s linguistic hybridity. Korean words rendered in katakana, the sinse-taryeong stripped of its original rhythm, and the indeterminate nickname “Jojo” all function as mechanisms that unsettle the presumed correspondence between language and ethnic identity. By foregrounding the impossibility of cultural translation—which destabilizes any transparent link between language and ethnicity—these strategies dismantle the fantasy of “pure” ethnicity while creating the very conditions through which diasporic narration becomes generative.</br>In conclusion, by critically expanding the analytic of “national allegory,” this study elucidates how Kinuta o Utsu Onna stages a doubled and fractured temporality in which colonial history, gendered labor, and linguistic non-monolingualism reconfigure subjectivity and community beyond the myth of ethnic sameness.

The unorganized sector in India employs a significant share of the female workforce, yet their contributions remain largely invisible in national statistics and policy frameworks. This study explores the socio-economic conditions of women workers in India’s unorganized sector, focusing on employment patterns, income disparities, working conditions, and social security access. Using a mixed-method approach that integrates field survey data with secondary sources, the research investigates how gender-based labor segmentation, wage inequality, and lack of institutional support affect women’s economic well-being. Findings indicate that women in informal employment face multidimensional vulnerabilities, including unstable income, long working hours, occupational insecurity, and limited decision-making autonomy. The study underscores that the intersection of gender, caste, and class perpetuates these inequalities, with female workers concentrated in low-skilled, low-paying, and precarious jobs. Policy recommendations include promoting gender-responsive labor regulations, social protection measures, and access to financial literacy and microcredit. By highlighting the economic realities of women in the unorganized sector, this study contributes to a more inclusive understanding of labor and gender dynamics in India’s evolving economy.

Despite important advances worldwide in promoting gender equality, middle-aged women encounter considerable challenges arising from the intersection of gender, age and social class. Existing research has addressed this phase of life only to a limited extent, and the practical constraints faced by middle-aged women have not been sufficiently researched. This study uses China and Sweden as comparative case studies to examine how institutional structures and cultural norms interact to shape women's work, care responsibilities, and health. The analysis is based on theoretical frameworks of gender socialisation, intersectionality and feminist political economy, while integrating demographic data, policy analyses and research results. Research in China shows how structural constraints, such as inadequate care facilities and work protection, and traditional attitudes to care, restrict women's work opportunities and widen health inequalities. In Sweden, although the social security system enables women to participate more actively in the labour market, society has failed to close the gap in unpaid care work. This continues to cause persistent stress and mental exhaustion. The findings demonstrate that, while social protection systems can help rectify structural inequalities, traditional social expectations and entrenched labour practices continue to fall heavily on middle-aged women. This study contributes to feminist research by showing how different institutions and cultures affect the lives of middle-aged women. The study notes the absolute necessity of political and cultural change before true gender equality can be obtained.

Shifting landscapes of Live-in Women Domestic Workers in Uttar Pradesh demonstrate the ongoing socio-economic and cultural transformations shaping urban and semi-urban areas of India. With rapid urbanization and increasing women’s labour force participation in formal sector have substantially augmented the dependence on women domestic workers in families living in urban centres of Uttar Pradesh. This paper attempts to examine how women engaged in informal sector as domestic aid are supporting women working in formal sector. Women and families working in villages as “kameens” are often paid less by their “Jajmans” and hence, they tend to look for alternative job opportunities including MNREGA in village itself. But still, they experience monetary difficulties. As a result, they get fascinated by the employment opportunities, quality of education, standard of living and financial freedom of semi-urban and urban centres. These are few pull factors that compel them to migrate to semi-urban and urban areas. On the other hand, the increasing women labour force participation in formal sector has created a vacuum in context of their daily household tasks. Therefore, the women domestic workers play a crucial role in providing help in urban households and taking over the absence by performing all the chores including care-giving and nurturing in these households. With the process of urbanisation, the families who have migrated to urban areas of Uttar Pradesh still have their economic and emotional ties with their villages. In this scenario, they strive to strengthen their rural connects and engage women for household work in urban and semi-urban localities from their native village who were earlier performing the role of kameens. These women from kameen families are often seen as reliable source of support. The present study tries to analyse the shifting landscapes of live-in women domestic workers in Uttar Pradesh through sociological lens. It scrutinizes how the intersection of caste, class and gender hierarchies shape the working and living conditions of these women. The research paper highlights how live-in domestic workers reveal the blurred lines between domestic space and workspace, care and paid labour, affection and authority within employer–employee relations. The study unwraps the continuation of traditional roles based on kinship, caste and village bonds brings access to employment and often reinforce social hierarchies with the domestic realm. Although the employers treat them like a family member, nevertheless, the deep-rooted asymmetries of power and dependence cannot be ignored. Even without formal labour rights, live-in domestic workers exercise quiet forms of resistance and everyday negotiation to assert dignity within these confined intimate spaces. Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a transition from an agrarian economy to a diversified urban centre. Historically rooted in agriculture, state’s economic profile is being reshaped by the expansion of trade, industries, and the growing service sector. Developments across all sectors have opened new avenues of employment, particularly for women. This economic expansion led to an increasing dependence on domestic workers to sustain urban lifestyles. With more women entering the formal workforce, the demand for paid domestic labour for tasks such as childcare, eldercare, cleaning, and cooking has amplified.

This contribution explores the interaction between gender, migration, and L2 learning among migrant caregivers in Italy. Drawing on critical and feminist approaches to L2 language learning and teaching, the article highlights how gender dynamics influence access to linguistic resources, learning strategies, and socio-professional integration opportunities for migrant women. Interviews with Eastern European workers reveal multidimensional challenges, including time constraints, emotional pressures, and communicative asymmetries, as well as forms of linguistic agency. The study stresses the need for inclusive language teaching that value situated knowledge and the translingual competencies developed by caregivers, recognizing the intersectionality of gender, migration, and social class.

ABSTRACT This article examines how young people and their families from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) narrate experiences of home and belonging in post-Brexit Britain. While Brexit debates have largely centred on the macro-politics of belonging – who is considered deserving of the right to remain and under what conditions – less attention has been paid to how such discourses of ‘conditional citizenship’ shape the everyday lives of migrant families. Drawing on qualitative data from twenty family case studies in urban and rural areas across England and Scotland, the article explores how young CEE migrants negotiated conditional citizenship and ‘deservingness’, engaged with national, local and cosmopolitan identities, and navigated intersections of race, class and generation within a shifting socio-political landscape. Using ‘home’ as an analytical lens, it shows how these narratives are rooted in particular histories and geographies of migration yet shaped by Britain’s changing political context. For these young people, home is not a singular origin or seamless destination, but a set of relational, multi-sited and contingent practices. Schools, family networks, neighbourhoods and transnational ties offer homing infrastructures, yet these are shaped by political discourses and social encounters that can both include and exclude.