Abstract
Public policy as an interdisciplinary science has enjoyed growth in its influence, stature in academia, and methodological sophistication. Public policy scholars have advanced knowledge in how we understand the emergence, determinants, and impacts of policy across a wide variety of geo-political, nation-state, and institutional contexts. The author contends that these scholars should more fully integrate an intersectional lens—one that would help elucidate how people see themselves, how they envision their life options, why they respond to public policies in the manner in which we observe in our empirical work, and, sometimes, how they emerge and function as leaders in their communities. The author reviews the origins of intersectionality as a conceptual and analytical framework, discusses why interest in it is growing among scholars, and provides two applied policy examples to illuminate how the field might benefit from deploying an intersectional lens.
The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.
—Donella Meadows
Earlier versions of this article have been written in a series of bibliographic essays. The author would like to thank Christine Sierra, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Pei-te Lien for their support in building on this earlier work.
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Notes
- 1.
Feminist scholars have had long debates about the extent to which dichotomies like “oppressor/oppressed” are situational to the extent that a person may be considered “oppressed” in one circumstance but exercise oppressive power over people in other situations. For example, see the discussion by bell hooks (1981).
- 2.
See, for example, Segura (1989), Martinez (1996), Hossfeld (1993), Chabram (1994), Cordova (1990), Jorge (1983), and others who write about the intersectional dilemmas of Latin American women. Ralston (1991), Das (1994), Fong (1978), Cheng (1984), Chow (1989), Khandelwal (1998), Kibria (2002), and Ray (2003) write about the intersectional experiences of Asian American women. Greenebaum (1999) and Re’em (2001) discuss religious intersectionality; Prindeville (2003) has written about Native American women, and an extensive comparative literature exists among intersectional scholars elucidating cross-race/ethnicity group differences.
- 3.
In particular, “courts have had difficulty in handling cases involving intersectional discrimination” (Wilkinson 2003, 7). Legal scholars have made substantial headway in highlighting areas where existing legal codes have been “traditionally developed to respond to the single markers” rather than the intersection of identity markers that determine people’s lived experiences, opportunities, and choices (Donaldson and Jedwab 2003, 5).
“According to the 2000 census (U.S. Census Bureau 2001), there are approximately 36.4 million African-Americans (12.9 percent of the population), 35.3 million Hispanics (12.5 percent of the population), and 11.9 million Asian-Americans (4.2 percent of the population)” (Friedman and Amoo 2004). These numbers include individuals who either report belonging to only one race or in combination with another race.
Although the UN and other international organizations have recognized intersectionality, they have found the concept difficult to integrate into policy decisions—an issue that I return to at the end of this article.
- 4.
Rummens (2003) also notes that the term identity is derived from the French word identité and from the Latin noun identitas, which means “the same,” and underscores the comparative, relational, contextual nature of the term. Scholars who study identity formation argue that there are at least three stages in the development of one’s identity: formation (cognitive functions of the individual as he/she matures), construction (developing the notion of self in relationship to others in one’s social context), and negotiation (making conscious and sometimes unconscious choices about affirming or rebelling against the generalities associated with one’s own identity markers).
- 5.
The five forms of intersectionality that she outlines in her typology are: (1) targeted discrimination, (2) compound discrimination, (3) structural-dynamic discrimination, (4) structural subordination, and (5) political intersectionality.
- 6.
For example, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) defines “family” so narrowly that millions of American workers (who have the need for a leave to care for their loved ones) are ineligible for the benefits. In devising the legislation, it was easier for policymakers to just use existing notions of family (as a given) than to raise a fight about the extent to which the term applies to the incredibly diverse kinds of households in the United States.
- 7.
Hum and Simpson (2003) argue that the onus is on those groups who feel excluded from existing policy or institutional arrangements to make the case to policymakers that excluding them constitutes “multiple jeopardy.” They also argue, however, that there should be as many policy instruments (programmes) as there are groups—known as the Tinbergen Principle in economics (after the first Nobel Laureate in economics)—so that all groups are in some way addressed by policy action. The work of a second Nobel Laureate economist (Robert Mundell) extends this discussion further by arguing that to maximize programme impact, the responsibility for designing the policy instruments is held by those in position to directly influence the long-term goal.
- 8.
In addition, Cantor (2001) found that about 29 per cent of family leave-takers borrow substantial amounts of money during family leave; 39 per cent put off paying their bills; 35.6 per cent use savings earmarked for other things; and 70.1 per cent dramatically limit family spending. Moreover, a significant proportion of low-wage earners work in jobs that do not offer any paid time off at all, and even when they do, low-wage earners must go completely without pay for some portion of their leaves because they do not have enough sick or vacation days to cover the time they need away from their jobs. Finally, more than 300,000 working families annually file bankruptcy specifically because they had no access to short-term disability leave when they needed it (Warren and Tyagi 2003).
- 9.
For example, an intersectional approach could examine the politics of public policies that seek to address sexual assault by making the conceptual leap between the increased vulnerability of women of colour to sexual assault in society overall with their increased vulnerability in specific arenas such as low-income workplaces and prisons. As Tyson Darling explains, women of colour represent the fastest growing prisoner population in the United States and sexual assault “that targets racialized women in U.S. prisons is largely invisible” (Tyson Darling 2002). Tyson Darling (2002) outlines other policy areas where an intersectional approach would contribute information that currently escapes examination by scholars and policymakers. In particular: (1) the disparity in surgical sterilization of minority women; (2) cuts in government spending on basic social services that fall disproportionately on poor women; (3) narrowly defined sexuality and reproductive rights for poor or marginalized women; and (4) the extent to which “women and girls enter trafficking networks because of the racial and social stratification and discrimination that marginalizes them, renders them far more vulnerable to racial, sexual, and descent-based discriminatory treatment in being targeted by traffickers” (18).
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Manuel, T. (2019). How Does One Live the Good Life?: Assessing the State of Intersectionality in Public Policy. In: Hankivsky, O., Jordan-Zachery, J.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98473-5_2
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