Intersectional Perspectives on Gender and Politics

Gender, understood as a socially constructed set of structural, institutional, and socio-cultural inequalities (Roth, Scheele & Winkel 2022) behavioural expectations, rules and norms, is also a political category. It encompasses power relations, discourses of (dis-)embodiment and de-naturalization, biological determinism – wherein physical characteristics or biological sex are used to ascribe specific, distinct and complementary behaviours (Fabris, Patch & Schubert 2022), as well as 'hierarchies of difference' (Hawkesworth 2013), often also based on physical capacities. In public discourse, gender is frequently misrepresented as a binary male-female categorization, although the concept relates to a far wider set of identities and communities, including the queer and LGBTIQIA+ spectrum. While communities affected by gendered power relations may take different forms, they share experiences of marginalization and oppression, most recently visible in a global contestation of gender rights, particularly on behalf of right-wing populist actors. This backlash against gender rights often appears jointly with criticism or even rejection of other diversity-related discourses (such as minority or migration issues). Gender – as a socially-constructed category of diversity – does not exist in a vacuum; it interacts with other social markers (e.g. race or ethnicity, migratory background, class, age). Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, an intersectional approach is essential to address social inequalities that emerge in these nexuses. As Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery (2019) argue, intersectionality draws attention to often overlooked aspects of policy, namely 'the complex ways in which multiple and interlocking inequities are organized and resistant in the process, content, and outcomes of policy' (2019: 2). Recently, several scholars have advanced how intersectionality may serve as a critical approach to policy analysis. Among others, Hankivsky (2014) has highlighted how policies are often made for supposedly homogenous groups of recipients while human lives are rather complex and multidimensional. Hence, an intersectionality lens requires policy analysis to include exploring the relevance of each category or structure that is involved in specific social situations.