Intersectional Inequalities Research Articles

The Case for Decolonising the Dental Curricula in the UK.

Students across disciplines in UK universities are demanding decolonisation of their education. These demands aim to resist the white European colonial endeavour that create racist inequalities. To address racial inequalities, the dental discipline has predominantly focused on diversity rather than decolonisation. By using two inter-related referents of decolonisation to dental caries and cosmetic dentistry, this article demonstrates the epistemic violence exerted through the objective hierarchised knowledge practices in dentistry. First, by starting from the position of racisms, empire and slavery, the enduring colonial patterns of power and hierarchies come into view. We see how knowledge production in dentistry has neglected the interconnected histories of colonialism, racial capitalism and patriarchy that continue to shape oral health inequalities and work towards promoting white supremacist beauty ideals. Moreover, the interconnected character of inequalities - race, class and gender - begin to emerge. Second, by proceeding from the place of colonialism, the limits of dental knowledge and the violence embedded in knowledge practices emerge. This highlights the need for new ways of knowing. To decolonise is to confront and weaken the dental discipline's entanglement with the enduring colonial patterns of power and hierarchies that are complicit in maintaining inequalities. Diversity without decolonisation will simply subsume marginalised voices into the existing hierarchised knowledge paradigm and continue to reproduce a hierarchised, unequal world. I argue that if dental schools want to address racial and intersectional inequalities, they need new transformative ways of learning and knowing to equip students to work towards social justice in the outside world.

Performing color-evasiveness: A DisCrit analysis of educators’ discourse in the U.S.

This study explores how an ideology of color-evasive racism (i.e., color evasiveness; Annamma et al., 2017) imbued white educators' discourse surrounding intersectional inequities in schools for Girls of Color in the U.S. Our analysis of interview and focus group data addresses a gap in educational research identifying color-evasive racism in discourse by in-service educators, specifically for white educators making sense of inequities in schools. We draw from Bonilla-Silva's (2018) application of color-blindness to discourse to identify three specific discursive frames that white educators employ, namely 1) centering self, 2) claiming white racial innocence, and 3) employing progressive notions, and the discursive tools within each. This focus on white educators' discourse expands understandings of how color-evasivene racism is employed, (re)producing intersectional inequities in education. Given that each of these educators was nominated because of their strengths working with Girls of Color, we believe this paper's significance captures the complexities of teaching in a system of white supremacy and identifies underlying ideologies animating discourse that can be disrupted through a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) lens.

Essential workers' pandemic mobilities and the changing meanings of the commute.

This commentary reflects on the pandemic commute and its significance for, on one hand, engaging with the problematic category of essential work, and on the other, future geographical research on transport and mobilities. Drawing on essential workers' contributions to the ‘Not working from home’ public engagement project, I outline some experiences of commuting during the COVID‐19 pandemic. I illustrate the role of pandemic commuting in defining, and wrestling with, what the category of essential work might mean. I then discuss the ways in which attending to pandemic commutes may extend and reshape existing research on unequal mobilities. Some of the future research directions made more urgent by a focus on pandemic commutes include critical engagements with: first, intersectional inequalities in the journey to work; second, the category of ‘essential journeys’ as used in transport policy and practice; third, the positionality of academic researchers who work on the topic of commuting; and finally, the treatment of commuting time as an integral part of working time.

Placing intersectional inequalities in health.

Research into geographical inequalities in health has focused almost exclusively on examining the effects of area-level deprivation and has been largely framed through a compositional-contextual lens, their inter-relationship and the influence of vertical macro-economic and political/policy drivers. However, in the broader health inequalities field, intersectionality has recently emerged as a critical theoretical and methodical approach which examines the concurrent and interacting influences on health of multiple axes of inequality (such as socio-economic status, gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality or gender-identity). Simultaneously, social geography has been explicitly using intersectionality to analyse how mutually constitutive forms of social oppression interact and interrelate with place. This paper exploits the analytical space opened up by this 'intersectional turn' by outlining the benefits for research into geographical inequalities in health that can be achieved by taking a more explicit approach to intersectional inequalities. It argues that: (1) geographical research into health inequalities should more explicitly and widely apply an intersectional lens; and relatedly that, in turn, (2) place needs to be considered as an aspect of intersectionality and integrated into the wider intersectional inequalities in health literature. The paper summarises the evolution of theories of place and health inequalities and outlines intersectional theory and the work to date that has been undertaken to integrate this perspective into our understanding of health inequalities. Drawing on the social geography literature into place and intersectionality, the paper explores how this perspective is being used to enhance our understanding of place effects more generally - and how place itself can be considered as an element of intersectional inequalities. Drawing these different bodies of work together, the paper concludes by considering the implications for theories of geographical inequalities in health.

Familial Frictions: Intersectional Inequalities Faced by Romani Queer Women

This article reviews the growing but still scarce scholarly work on queer Romani women in Eastern and Central Europe to highlight how economic and symbolic inequalities are inseparably intertwined and mutually strengthen each other in the case of this group. The review finds that cultural and symbolic injustices dominate the analysis of the situation of queer Romani women; economic deprivation is often mentioned when providing an overview of the situation of Romani people but is hardly ever brought up when the specific experiences of queer Romani people are discussed. The article zooms in on one area where the interplay between economic and symbolic inequality is pronounced: the central role of familism in the lives of Romani communities, and the detrimental impact it has on the situation of queer Romani women. The article also proposes a set of other mechanisms undermining the equality and well-being of queer Romani women where economic and symbolic inequalities are similarly intertwined.

Decomposing intersectional inequalities in subjective physical and mental health by sex, gendered practices and immigration status in a representative panel study from Germany

BackgroundThe mapping of immigration-related health inequalities remains challenging, since immigrant populations constitute a heterogenous socially constructed group whose health experiences differ by social determinants of health. In spite of the increasing awareness that population mobility and its effects on health are highly gendered, an explicit gender perspective in epidemiology is often lacking or limited.MethodsTo map inequalities in self-reported physical and mental health in Germany at the intersections of sex, gendered practices and immigration status, we used data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and applied an intercategorical intersectional approach conducting multilevel linear regression models. We differentiated between sex (male/female) as reported in the survey and gendered social practices, quantified through a gender score (on a femininity-masculinity continuum).ResultsWe included 20,897 participants in our analyses. We saw an intersectional gradient for physical and mental health. Compared to the reference group, i.e. non-immigrant males with masculine gendered practices, physical and mental health steadily decreased in the intersectional groups that did not embody one or more of these social positions. The highest decreases in health were observed in the intersectional group of immigrant females with feminine gendered practices for physical health (-1,36; 95% CI [-2,09; -0,64]) and among non-immigrant females with feminine practices for mental health (-2,51; 95% CI [-3,01; -2,01]).ConclusionsPatterns of physical and mental health vary along the intersectional axes of sex, gendered practices and immigration status. These findings highlight the relevance of intersections in describing population health statuses and emphasise the need to take them into account when designing public health policies aiming at effectively reducing health inequalities.

Intersecting sex-related inequalities in self-reported testing for and prevalence of Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) risk factors in Kerala

BackgroundNon-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) are among India’s top burdens, particularly in states like Kerala, which is at an advanced stage of the epidemiological transition. Evidence in India points towards intersectional inequalities in risk factors of NCDs and testing, both of which are understudied in Kerala. We estimated the self-reported testing and prevalence of key NCD risk factors—blood pressure (BP) and blood glucose (BG) comparing Kerala men and women across educational, wealth, religion, as well as caste and tribal status subgroups.MethodA multistage random sample survey of 3398 women and 2982 men aged 30 years and over was administered in 4 districts of Kerala from July to October 2019. Descriptive analysis for men and women was undertaken using survey weights. Slope index of Inequality and Relative Concentration Index for wealth and education related inequalities, and, Weighted Mean Difference from Mean and Index of Disparity for caste and tribal status, as well as religion related inequalities were calculated using World Health Organisation’s Health Equity Assessment Toolkit Plus and Stata 12.ResultsA significantly higher proportion of women reported BP and BG testing by medical personnel in the previous year than men (BP Testing among Women (BPTw): 90.3% vs BP Testing among Men (BPTM):80.8%, BG Testing among Women (BGTw): 86.2% vs BG Testing among Women (BGTM):78.3%). Among those tested, more women (11.2%) than men (7.9%) reported High Blood Pressure (HBP) but not High Blood Glucose (HBG). Testing for BP was concentrated among less-educated women while BG testing was concentrated among both less educated women and men. HBP and HBG were concentrated among less educated and wealthier groups. Although sex differences were insignificant across caste and tribal status and religion subgroups, magnitude of inequalities was high for HBP and HBG.ConclusionDistinct patterns of sex inequalities were present in self-reported testing and prevalence of NCD risk factors in Kerala. Education and wealth seem to be associated with testing while prevalence appeared to vary by religious groups. Given the low rates of illiteracy, it is encouraging but maybe a data artefact that a small population of less-educated persons was getting tested; however, exclusion of poor groups and inequalities by other dimensions raise concerns. Further exploration is needed to understand underlying mechanisms of these inequalities to ensure we leave no one behind.

One Size Does Not Fit All—Addressing the Complexity of Food System Sustainability

Food system sustainability has been highlighted as one of the major strategies to ensure healthy diets. A plethora of approaches to stabilize food systems have been suggested, including agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, and other forms of sustainable agriculture. However, a disconnect between sustainable production and consumption exists, which may hinder further progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2. This discourse was needed to connect these intersectional perspectives. To meet this need, we bring together the disconnected socio-environmental pillars and show how together they contribute to the food system sustainability agenda. We discuss the complexity of food system sustainability to cater to different geographies, building on evidence from development projects worldwide. We account for factors such as the need to incorporate intersectionality factors, food-system-related policy issues, food waste, food injustice, and undernutrition. While these intersectional inequalities can be solved through various human interventions, policy implementation, and dietary choices, we found that connecting the different policymakers remains a significant challenge for a sustainable food system. We propose implementing specific food system sustainability strategies that will be useful for policymakers and other stakeholders to enable the inclusion of a socio-environmental perspective for food systems that connect agricultural production with consumption.

Transnational feminist sociology

This review essay explores a number of key books published in transnational feminist sociology over the last 20 years, including Kamala Kempadoo’s (2004) Sexing the Caribbean, Pei-Chia Lan’s (2006) Global Cinderellas, Smitha Radhakrishnan’s (2011) Appropriately Indian, Héctor Carrillo’s (2018) Pathways of Desire, Oluwakemi Balogun’s (2020) Beauty Diplomacy, and Rhacel Parreñas’ (2021) Unfree. The review analyzes three key themes found in transnational feminist sociology: migrant domestic work, sexuality and migration, and gender and nationalism. It also points to the important contributions transnational feminist research makes to sociology through its focus on global-local processes, intersectional inequalities, and the relationship between structure and agency.

Transforming Policy Standards to Promote Equity and Developmental Success Among Latinx Children and Youth

ABSTRACTThe main goal of this social policy report is to propose a holistic approach for promoting developmental success among Latinx children and youth. This report highlights the need to 1) redefine success and 2) account for intersectional inequalities. First, the current demographic landscape of Latinx students is presented to showcase the variability in experiences among Latinx children and youth. We review past policies (across the last two and current U.S. Administrations and within the state of California), educational programs (e.g., McNair scholars' program, AVID), and theoretical frameworks (within developmental and sociocultural disciplines). Next, we introduce a nuanced holistic approach for promoting Latinx children and youth's developmental success, underscoring the integration of factors within the sociocultural, family, and individual domains. Finally, this report provides accessible recommendations for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to effectively promote equity and developmental success among diverse groups of Latinx children and youth.

Book Review: Translocational belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas and Social Inequalities

Book Review: Translocational belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas and Social Inequalities

Intersectional inequalities in younger women\u2019s experiences of physical intimate partner violence across communities in Bangladesh

BackgroundPhysical intimate partner violence (IPV) risk looms large for younger women in Bangladesh. We are, however, yet to know the association between their intersectional social locations and IPV across communities. Drawing on intersectionality theory’s tenet that interacting systems of power, oppressions, and privileges work together, we hypothesized that (1) younger, lower educated or poor women’s physical IPV experiences will be exacerbated in disadvantaged communities; and conversely, (2) younger, higher educated or nonpoor women’s physical IPV experiences will be ameliorated in advantaged communities.MethodsWe applied intercategorical intersectionality analyses using multilevel logistic regression models in 15,421 currently married women across 911 communities from a national, cross-sectional survey in 2015. To test the hypotheses, women’s probabilities of currently experiencing physical IPV among intersectional social groups were compared. These comparisons were made, at first, within each type of disadvantaged (e.g., younger or poor) and advantaged (e.g., older or nonpoor) communities; and then, between different types of communities.ResultsWhile our specific hypotheses were not supported, we found significant within community differences, suggesting that younger, lower educated or poor women were bearing the brunt of IPV in almost every community (probabilities ranged from 34.0–37.1%). Younger, poor compared to older, nonpoor women had significantly higher IPV probabilities (the minimum difference = 12.7, 95% CI, 2.8, 22.6) in all communities. Similar trend was observed between younger, lower educated compared to older, higher educated women in all except communities that were poor. Interestingly, younger women’s advantage of higher education and material resources compared to their lower educated or poor counterparts was observed only in advantaged communities. However, these within community differences did not vary between disadvantaged and advantaged communities (difference-in-differences ranged from − 0.9%, (95% CI, − 8.5, 6.7) to − 8.6%, (95% CI, − 17.6, 0.5).ConclusionsUsing intersectionality theory made visible the IPV precarity of younger, lower educated or poor women across communities. Future research might examine the structures and processes that put them at these precarious locations to ameliorate their socio-economic-educational inequalities and reduce IPV in all communities. For testing hypotheses using intersectionality theory, this study might advance scholarship on physical IPV in Bangladesh and quantitative intersectionality globally.

Intersectional inequalities in science

The US scientific workforce is primarily composed of White men. Studies have demonstrated the systemic barriers preventing women and other minoritized populations from gaining entry to science; few, however, have taken an intersectional perspective and examined the consequences of these inequalities on scientific knowledge. We provide a large-scale bibliometric analysis of the relationship between intersectional identities, topics, and scientific impact. We find homophily between identities and topic, suggesting a relationship between diversity in the scientific workforce and expansion of the knowledge base. However, topic selection comes at a cost to minoritized individuals for whom we observe both between- and within-topic citation disadvantages. To enhance the robustness of science, research organizations should provide adequate resources to historically underfunded research areas while simultaneously providing access for minoritized individuals into high-prestige networks and topics.

Gender, Parenthood, and Employment During COVID-19: An Immigrant-Native Born Comparison in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended how we live and work. In Canada, the gender gap in employment among parents with young children widened substantially during the pandemic. Previous studies, however, examine parents in Canada without distinguishing them by immigrant status, although immigrant versus Canadian-born parents may have distinct work-family experiences. In this study, we investigate how the intersection of parental and immigrant statuses influenced change in gender employment gaps during the pandemic. Drawing on Labor Force Survey (LFS) microdata from March 2019 to February 2021, we examine the probability of employment by gender, parental status, and immigrant status. When comparing the school closure period (March to August 2020) relative to the same months in 2019 (pre-pandemic), immigrant women, irrespective of parental status, witnessed larger declines in employment than their male counterparts and non-immigrants, and the gender gap widened the most among recent immigrants with school-aged children. When schools gradually reopened (September 2020 to February 2021), employment recovered faster for recent than established immigrant mothers. Overall, our findings show that among parents of young children, the growing gender gap in employment during the pandemic was concentrated among immigrants, with immigrant mothers disproportionately disadvantaged. This study illuminates how the pandemic exacerbated intersectional inequalities based on gender, parenthood, and immigrant status.

Barriers to healthcare and their relationship to well-being and social support for autistic adults during COVID-19.

The present study aimed to investigate barriers to healthcare and their relationships to social and emotional well-being and intersectional inequalities for autistic adults during COVID-19 restrictions in the UK. Autistic adults experience severe health inequalities and report more barriers to accessing health services compared to other both disabled and non-disabled populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many areas of society that may have increased vulnerability of autistic people to social and health inequalities, including delivery of healthcare from in-person to remote methods. One hundred twenty-eight autistic adults who lived in the UK took part in an online survey. Measures included the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist (Short Form) and PROMIS outcome measure bank to assess emotional well-being and social support. Participants rated their agreement with items, retrospectively considering three different points of the trajectory of COVID-19 restrictions: before COVID-19, during the first lockdown in spring 2020, and in the month prior to taking the survey during autumn 2020. They completed a follow-up survey six months later to continue to assess change as restrictions in the UK were eased. The average number of barriers to healthcare showed no significant change between all four time points. However, the nature of barriers to healthcare changed at the point of lockdown and persisted beyond the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. Barriers to healthcare were associated with some social and emotional well-being variables and demographic groups including gender, education and presence of additional disabilities. The findings may help to identify areas to target to improve access to both remote and in-person health systems for autistic people as modes of delivery continue to change over time.

Uncovering Social Stratification: Intersectional Inequalities in Work and Family Life Courses by Gender and Race

Abstract Enduring and accumulated advantages and disadvantages in work and family lives remain invisible in studies focusing on single outcomes. Further, single outcome studies tend to conflate labor market inequalities related to gender, race, and family situation. We combine an intersectional and quantitative life course perspective to analyze parallel work and family lives for Black and White men and women aged 22–44. Results using sequence analysis and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) show that White men enjoy privileged opportunities to combine work and family life and elicit specific gendered and racialized constraints for Black men and women and White women. Black women experience the strongest interdependence between work and family life: events in their work lives constrain and condition their family lives and vice versa. For Black men, stable partnerships and career success mutually support and sustain each other over the life course. In contrast, for Black women, occupational success goes along with the absence of stable partnerships. Precarious and unstable employment is associated with early single parenthood for all groups supporting instability spillovers between life domains that are most prevalent among Black women, followed by Black men. The findings highlight a sizeable group of resourceful Black single mothers who hold stable middle-class jobs and have often gone unnoticed in previous research. We conclude that economic interventions to equalize opportunities in education, employment, and earnings, particularly early in life, are more promising for reducing intersectional inequalities in work-family life courses than attempting to intervene in family lives.

A long way to go: gender and diversity in land use science

ABSTRACT Female scientists and researchers with diverse cultural backgrounds, especially of the Global South, are underrepresented in scientific systems. This is also the case for land use science and even for research teams researching in Global South countries. To assess trends in gender parity, ethnic diversity and intersectionality in this field, we conducted a meta-analysis based on systematic literature review that included 316,390 peer-reviewed journal articles. We found that 27% of all authors between 2000–2021 represented women. Ethnicity representation was biased towards White researchers (62%) followed by Asian (30%), Hispanic (6%) and Black (2%) researchers. Intersection of inequalities further underrepresented Black and Hispanic women when author positions were considered, giving Black women 0.6% chance of becoming first authors in land use science in comparison to 19.3% chance of White women. Supportive actions to empower women are needed to reduce intersectional inequalities and to achieve the sustainable development goals.

Cracking IT: Negotiating Working-Class Gender Capital through Group Enterprises in India

Digital work is often associated with higher levels of earning and increased social mobility. Working in the digital economy will not benefit all women equally or act as an enabler of broader social change. The article draws attention to the intersection of gender and class in work in the information technology (IT) sector of India, where women have increased their visibility and participation. Through a gender capital approach and intersectional analyses, the article points to the incontrovertible impact of class and gender when women from low-income backgrounds engage in IT-based group enterprises in the state of Kerala. A central insight from the study is the need to disaggregate types of IT work as women’s experiences in IT are shaped by the simultaneity of working practices, intersectional inequalities and gendered behaviours, often with limits to gender capital and spill-over impact on broader gender and social relations.

Resilience Ethics and Sustainable Governance


 Resilience ethics means a shared ethical responsibility for our actions and environment. Sustainable governance is interested in the complexity of sustainability and the rise of resilience thinking. There are multiple ways to apply the idea of resilience to shared narratives about public problems and environmental concerns for the future. In particular, resilience ethics are related to human interventions in ecosystems and the resultant responsibility to care for them. The integration of resilience and sustainability leads us to study the distribution of wealth and other root causes of social inequality and injustice. The current paper argues that institutional change and collective action are critical elements in society’s resilience. Therefore, three global problems should be addressed as the focus of resilience and sustainability: (1) divided societies and growing inequalities should be considered in terms of income distribution, employment, and education; (2) wealth and power should be redistributed in terms of common-pool resources and affected communities; and (3) intersectional inequality should be reconsidered in different axes of oppression and social injustice. A renewed perspective for democratic and responsible citizenship is required to enhance direct citizen participation in public policies and social change. In this regard, social and administrative scientific advances create opportunities for the resilient future.

Intersectional inequalities in physical and mental health by sex, gender and immigration in Germany

Abstract Background The mapping of migration-related health inequalities remains challenging, since immigrant populations constitute a heterogenous socially constructed group whose health experiences differ by social determinants of health. In spite of the increasing awareness that population mobility and its effects on health are highly gendered, an explicit gender perspective in epidemiology is often lacking or limited. Methods To map health inequalities in Germany at the intersection of sex, gender and immigration status, we used data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and applied an intercategorical intersectional approach conducting multilevel linear regression models. We differentiated between sex (male/female) as reported in the survey and gendered social practices, quantified through a gender score (femininity-masculinity continuum). Results We included 20,897 participants in our analyses. We saw an intersectional gradient for physical and mental health. Compared to the reference group, i.e. non-immigrant men with masculine gendered practices, physical and mental health steadily decreased in the intersectional groups that did not embody one or more of these social positions. The highest decreases in health were observed in the intersectional group of immigrant women with feminine gendered practices for physical health (-1.54 CI -2.41;-0.79) and among non-immigrant women with feminine practices for mental health (-2.71 CI -3.19;-2.14). Conclusions We saw differentiated patterns of physical and mental health along the intersectional axes of sex, gender and immigration status, both for physical and mental health. These findings highlight the relevance of these intersections in describing population health statuses and emphasise the need to take them into account when designing public health policies aiming at effectively reducing health inequalities. Key messages Being a man and having masculine gendered practices were associated with higher mental and physical health scores, for both immigrants and non-immigrants. Adopting an intersectional perspective, which takes into account social positions (e.g. gender, immigration status) and their impact on health inequalities, can help to target public health policies.