Why is Intersectionality Important in the Analysis of Economic Data?

For the most part, majority of the economic analysis that is undertaken focusses on a single axis- mostly economic class, divided into a number of intervals which may in turn represent pay grades. But with time, more knowledge and greater understanding, the wonderful concept of intersectionality has taken birth, and is now beginning to receive traction. What it essentially means is that there are different axes of social power that may be operating simultaneously. So now, we are not only looking at economic class as a determinant of say, education, but also acknowledging that different social axes like caste, gender and ethnicity may also be at play. The purpose of intersectionality as a theory is to see how different social axes overlap, and their impact on people or institutions.

The term was initially coined by feminist and critical race scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, who wrote about how traditional feminist ideas and antiracist policies exclude black women- because they face an overlapping discrimination that is unique to them. Crenshaw provided to us an avenue to explore more than one axis to explain complex and compound questions. She uses a vivid metaphor of an intersection of two roads, an intersection that is traffic clogged, and thereby represents black women in society. It aims to explain how injuries are multiplied, and cannot simply be explained by racism or sexism alone, and is also not the sum of racism and sexism, but in fact it’s a region where they collide- or multiply.

I have only just become acquainted with the works of Feminist Economist Nancy Folbre, (and can I please say she has changed the way I think!), when speaking about her book, “The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems”, she talks about a way of thinking about patriarchal systems, which in themselves are forms of oppression and inequality in terms of other forms of inequality and hierarchy which may intermingle and have an effect on each other. The idea is to not simply think in terms of men or women, black or white, capitalist or worker, to move away from forced dichotomies.

That means, if one is studying the impact of caste in higher education enrolments, then it is also important to acknowledge other players in this stratification- for example, gender- women in India are less likely to enrol than men, a regional (cultural) divide, and also economic class.

Intersectionality has been used as a tool for analysis in the field of economics in the past, primarily in the studies involving public health and nutrition that establish a departure from previous health inequality researches that examined social stratification using a single axis. An interesting research paper was one by S. Mukhopadhyay titled “The Intersection of Gender, Caste and Class Inequalities in Child Nutrition in Rural India”. It uses a framework to establish this intersectionality that was previously developed using dummy variables, and finds that there is a complex relationship between caste, class and gender, and also that the differences between the Northern and Southern region are not simplistic and need to be taken into account when studying social axes.

That being said, there isn't too much economic analysis that has been done using the tool of intersectional theory. And I truly believe that we are a country that lives in many generations simultaneously, where patriarchal structures do not stand alone, where inequality isn't only based on class, and where gender stratification does not operate independently. To fully understand these dynamics and to operate in a more holistic research environment, looking at different aspects of inequality, and then using this as a theoretical tool to apply to these inequalities, one may reach a more accurate conclusion. For all these reasons, further research in inequality must also consider the theory of intersectionality, to move forward and towards a more holistic understanding of a question.