Approaching intersectionality in gender psychology research

Sex Roles, 2008

Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive relations among social identities, is a central tenet of feminist thinking and has transformed how gender is conceptualized in research. In this special issue, we focus on the intersectionality perspective in empirical research on gender. Our goal is to offer a "best practices" resource that provides models for when and how intersectionality can inform theory and be incorporated into empirical research on psychological questions at individual, interpersonal, and social structural levels. I briefly summarize the development of the intersectionality perspective, and then review how the realization of its promise has been diverted by preoccupation with intersectionality as a methodological challenge. I conclude with a discussion of why intersectionality is an urgent issue for researchers invested in promoting positive social change.

Sex Roles, 2011

Enlisting both established and beginning scholars as authors, the editors of Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology have provided a handbook that covers a breadth of topics and aligns with their original goal, to provide a critical review of historic, current, and future research in all aspects of gender research within the discipline of psychology. In this high quality review, the first seven sections (Volume I) focus on general and experimental psychology, whereas the latter seven sections (Volume II) cover social and applied areas of psychology. Through the systematic review of prior work, combined with special editor request that each chapter author include a future research section, the handbook exposes gaps in our understanding of gender in the discipline of psychology. For example, although the term gender is not synonymous with women, it appears that more gender research that integrates men and masculinity is needed. For reasons of depth and breadth, and more, the volumes ar

Gender Psychology has been a field which has consistently relied upon information known for the past decade to intersect with other fields. Therefore; the question remains of; should this field be taught separately? And, within the viewpoint of this student; over 80 percent of this classes content has been taught within one of several other fields, including: Sociology, Social Psychology, Women"s Studies, and Black women"s studies. In addition; some of the course material within Gender Psychology actually conflicts with the material taught within these other disciplines. Thus; this paper attempts to question why there is not an immediate need for intersectionality within gender; while examining the socio-historical content which makes it necessary to reinforce its understanding within the very essence of "doing gender".

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and international engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality, leaving some authors to suggest that intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution that the field of women's studies has made thus far. Yet, consideration of intersectionality as a research paradigm has yet to gain a wide foothold in mainstream psychology. The current article uses a program of multimethod research designed in partnership with, and intending to center the intersectional experiences of, majority world women to propose a research agenda for the empirical study of intersectionality. Specifically, it is suggested that a research agenda rooted in intersectional understandings requires that: (1) researchers think carefully about social categories of analysis and how their methodological choices can best answer those questions, (2) psychologists reposition their research questions to examine processes by which structural inequities lead to power imbalances and gender-based norms that sustain women's experience of marginalization and oppression, and (3) we understand how intersectional experiences can be applied toward change. Intersectional investigations hold a key to interrupting the structural dimensions of power that result in egregious consequences to peoples' social, economic, and political lives, but only if we radically restructure what we think about knowledge, our roles, and the products of our research.

The term intersectionality made its entrance in the research community just over two decades ago. Since that time, many approaches to intersectionality have arisen that differs in discipline, methodology, epistemology, and conceptualization. Unfortunately, little research has examined how to study/apply intersectionality. While the broad research community has created various conceptualizations of intersectionality less has been done on its application. This paper examines the messiness and controversy of intersectionality, arguing that the problematic nature of the `operationalization," or application, of intersectionality is integrally linked to its conceptualization across varying paradigmatic approaches.

Gender is not a simple concept and feminists have theorised the concept of gender from various stand points. Whilst some argued that gender is a form of power, others have argued that ‘it is a complex phenomenon’. In most studies on gender relations between women and men researchers tend to take on either material or symbolic feminist approach to gender. Whilst structural and material feminists suggest that gender should be seen as a system of power and in relation to male domination and economic constructions of gender that results in women’s subordinate position, discursive feminists looked at cultural and social constructions of gender and suggest that gender is constructed through and by discourse within which the network of power relations operates. This paper argues for an approach which allows us for analysing gender at a level that neither dismisses the arguments that found in the structural and material feminism, nor place the discursive and cultural approaches to gender at the centre. I suggest that we consider the ontological basis of gender, and we should interrogate the differences in explanations between structural and discursive feminism. We need an approach that is informed by both materialist and discursive feminist scholarships, but which does not ‘put one over the other’ (Anthias, 2001:378). I argue, with Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis (2002), that we need to use a ‘situated’ feminist standpoint which would allow us to grasp the specific social, political and economic processes involved in each historical instance as important for any investigation on gender and social divisions. Further, I see, as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1983), that an intersectional approach to gender is an appropriate tool for understanding the concept of gender. I discuss four specific areas relating to the constructions of gendered relations: a) the political construction of gender; b) the cultural and social construction of gender; c) multiplicity and locality of gender relations; and d) intersectionality and relations of gender with other social categories and inequalities. Gender and gendered identities are discussed as separate notions. First, I discuss the structural, radical and material conceptualisations of gender, and I review the ways that I use the material notion of gender in my work. Second, I discuss the problems associated with radical and structural theorisations of gender. Third, I discuss deconstructive theorisations of gender and move on to explain my own understanding to the concept of the gender, in which I stress that gender should be recognised as a social category, and in relation to how it interweaves with other social categories. Fourth, I give a clarification of what I mean by intersectionality and how my approach to intersectionality is different than that found in the structural and radical feminism. In doing so, this paper aims to provide a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising gender as a social category.

Identity, 2009

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Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1991

This article analyzes and critiques the construct of gender as a psychoanalytic and cultural category. Without succumbing to a nonpsychoanalytic notion of androgyny, the argument developed here challenges the assumption that an internally consistent gender identity is possible or even desirable. Beginning with the idea that, from an analytic perspective, the construct of "identity" is problematic and implausible, because it denotes and privileges a unified psychic world, the author develops a deconstructionist critique of our dominant gender-identity paradigm. It is argued that gender coherence, consistency, conformity, and identity are culturally mandated normative ideals that psychoanalysis has absorbed uncritically. These ideals, moreover, are said to create a universal pathogenic situation, insofar as the attempt to conform to their dictates requires the activation of a false-self system. An alternative, "decentered" gender paradigm is then proposed, which conceives of gender as a "necessary fiction" that is used for magical ends in the psyche, the family, and the culture. From this perspective, gender identity is seen as a problem as well as a solution, a defensive inhibition as well as an accomplishment. It is suggested that as a goal for analytic treatment, the ability to tolerate the ambiguity and instability of gender categories is more appropriate than the goal of "achieving" a single, pure, sex-appropriate view of oneself. C ONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC THINKING ABOUT GENDER has resulted in a profound critique of Freud's phallocentric theories of male and female development. While there is no simple consensus among the many competing perspectives now being developed, most

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology

Intersectional invisibility: The distinctive advantages and disadvantages of multiple subordinate-group identities.

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2006

As we were editing this special issue we learned of four international conferences on intersectionality as well as of discussions of it in other national forums and in print. While it would be far fetched to suggest that everyone is talking about intersectionality, it is certainly an idea in the process of burgeoning. Indeed, the idea of focusing a special issue on intersectionality was generated from the European Journal of Women's Studies 10th anniversary conference where Kathy Davis and Pamela Pattynama stimulated a discussion so animated that it seemed obvious that we should open the pages of the journal to debating it with a view to establishing areas of agreement and points of contention in intersectional theory and practice.