From Inclusion to Transformation: Politics & Gender as a Critical Actor for Intersectional Political Science

Abstract

The popularization of intersectionality within political science, feminist scholarship, and activism has constituted nothing less than a paradigm shift (Hancock 2007a). Politics & Gender has been a critical actor in enabling change within our discipline. However, this development has been hard won and there remains much to be done to operationalize intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, and to center women of color and other intersectionally marginalized groups within scholarship. This article both traces the evolution of intersectional approaches within Politics & Gender over two decades and articulates pathways for future gender and politics research which aims to employ intersectionality. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles’ foci on different inequality structures and categories, their methodological approaches, and how they employ the concept of intersectionality. Subsequently, we argue in favor of approaches which center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups, emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion, analyze intersectional structures and institutions as well as individual experience and identity, treat the constitution of categories and groups as contextual and contingent, dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point, and challenge fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.

Introduction

The popularization of intersectionality within political science has constituted nothing less than a paradigm shift in our discipline. Since its foundation in 2005, Politics & Gender has been a “critical actor” (Childs and Krook 2006, 2008) in enabling this change. Some of the most significant early examples published by the journal include Smooth’s (2006) forceful call to advance beyond single axis approaches to scholarship on electoral politics, regarding this as “A Mess Worth Making;” Weldon’s (2006) advocacy for both structural and comparative analyses employing intersectionality; Hancock’s (2007a) foregrounding of the importance of intersectionality as both a “Normative and Empirical Paradigm” (our emphasis); Jordan-Zachery’s (2007) question “Am I a Black Woman or a Woman Who Is Black?,” emphasizing the mutually constitutive — not additive — nature of categories and structures; and Simien’s (2007) important intervention into methodological debates with “Doing Intersectionality Research: From Conceptual Issues to Practical Examples.” Despite the popularity and impact of these contributions (all of which have over a hundred citations at the time of writing), many of their arguments remain prescient almost two decades later, precisely because much of this work remains unfinished. During this period, we have witnessed a proliferation of intersectional scholarship, employing diverse methods to analyze a wide range of topics in a myriad of country contexts. Yet, we have not fully answered their calls to center women of color and other intersectionally marginalized groups within scholarship, resolve methodological quandaries and tensions, as well as operationalize intersectionality in line with the transformative visions articulated within Black feminist theory (inter alia Collins 1990; Combahee River Collective 1977; Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; hooks 1981; Hull, Scott, and Smith 1982; King 1988; Mirza 1997).

This article both traces the evolution of intersectional approaches within Politics & Gender over two decades and suggests pathways for future research in line with these aims. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles’ foci on different inequality structures and categories, their methodological approaches, and how they employ the concept of intersectionality. We find that although intersectionality research is increasing, it is overall narrowly focused on a few Global North countries, as well as on particular topics and groups. Moreover, not all intersectionality research operationalizes intersectionality consistent with Black feminist theory, but rather employs additive approaches that fail to examine processes of intersectional privileging, and narrows its sights to inclusion within liberal institutions, to the exclusion of liberatory social transformation. We argue in favor of approaches which center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups, emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion, analyze intersectional structures and institutions as well as individual experience and identity, treat the constitution of categories and groups as contextual and contingent, dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point, and challenge fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.

This is not the first article to trace the evolution of intersectionality in political science. We build upon the approach taken by Mügge et al. (2018), who examine intersectionality research in a range of political science journals, up to 2016, and find that authors who are themselves women of color are significantly more likely to center race in their analyses. We take up their call to delve more deeply into the foci and operationalizations of intersectionality within the discipline, in part as a means to “intervene in the exclusionary politics of knowledge production in political science and the wider academy” (Mügge et al. 2018, 31). We also further expand upon the work of Garcia and Zajicek (2022), who examine empirical intersectionality research published from 2010 to 2017 in public policy journals and highlight the rich potential of intersectionality “for conceptual reconstruction of existing theories, its focus on power, inequality, and social change, and its applicability to qualitative as well as quantitative research” (284). In building on this scholarship, our motivation is to both map the existing impact of intersectionality on gender and politics scholarship (highlighting the role of Politics & Gender as a critical actor in this process) and to argue that future research which operationalizes intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory has the greatest power to realize its transformative potential.

In line with Mügge et al (2018), we define an article employing intersectionality as one which references the term at least four times. In a small number of exceptional cases, we include an article which mentions the concept more than once but less than four times, if it explicitly focuses the analysis on an intersectionally marginalized group. In order to identify relevant articles, we began by downloading metadata from Scopus on every text published by Politics & Gender between its inception in 2005 and the time of writing in summer 2024. Of these 820 texts, we first identified everything indexed by Scopus as containing “intersectionality” as a search term: 132 articles, of which 81 met our sampling criteria. Both authors then scanned the titles and abstracts of the remaining 688 articles for references to intersectionality, Black feminism, key individuals such as Michelle Obama, or intersectionally marginalized groups. With this strategy we identified a further 11 articles which met our criteria. Therefore, our sample includes a total of 92 articles (Appendix 1). These include both full length research articles and shorter “Critical Perspectives” and “Notes from the Field” pieces, but not book reviews. We had initially intended to include only full-length articles, but when building our sample, it became apparent that these shorter formats had been crucial platforms for the development of cutting-edge intersectional approaches. This attests to the unique contribution that the journal has made not only through its commitment to supporting diverse approaches to the study of politics and gender, but also to innovative publishing formats which help to enable this. The sample is therefore comprised of 60 full length articles and 32 shorter pieces.

Our full coding scheme and examples are included in Appendix 2. We include the country or countries that the empirical or theoretical analysis is focused on, the methods (quantitative, qualitative, mixed, or theoretical), and the primary identities that are constituted in the analysis (such as “LGBTQIA+” or “disabled”). We created binary variables for whether or not the analysis is focused on a specific population, inequality, or intersection (as opposed to, for example, discussing intersectionality and methodological challenges broadly), and whether or not the analysis centers an intersectionally marginalized group (such as “Black women”). We also code for the main topic(s) or subfields(s) within gender and politics research that the articles contribute to, such as media studies, descriptive and substantive representation, or voting behavior.

In terms of how intersectionality is approached, we code for whether the article explicitly advocates for, or problematizes, intersectionality, or takes a more mixed or ambivalent position. We also distinguish between how intersectionality is operationalized (treating categories and structures such as gender and race as additive, mutually constitutive, or mixed) and the level of analysis (individual/group level versus structural/institutional level, or both). We include a binary variable for whether or not the analysis explicitly focuses upon intersectional advantage or privilege, such as that experienced by white women. This focus on intersectional advantage is distinct from discussing “diversity among women,” which leaves categories such as whiteness and cisgender identity unquestioned (Christoffersen and Emejulu 2023; Christoffersen and Siow 2024).

Finally, we included a string variable for “ideology” — that is, what, according to the authors, is the definition of success? What do the authors argue should change, both within politics and political science, based on the empirical findings and/or theoretical argument, outlined in their key contributions and implications? We subsequently coded these strings inductively, while being mindful of Christoffersen and Siow’s (2024) observation that in the feminist political science literature on representation specifically, the emphasis has often been on inclusion of women within liberal democracy, rather than the structural transformation and liberation from oppression called for by the Black feminist theory and activism from which intersectionality emerged (Collins and Bilge 2020). Among articles where the contributions and implications pertain broadly to representative politics, three distinct ideologies emerged: liberal inclusion versus liberation from oppression at opposite ends of the spectrum, and institutional change falling between inclusion and liberation. Articles whose contributions and implications pertain to social movements defined success as “solidarity.” Among articles where the contributions and implications pertain to intersectionality and scholarship (common given the methodological debates that have been hosted in the journal), their ideology was coded as strongly advocating for intersectionality, or alternatively, as being equivocal toward it. Further information on the codes and their definitions is included in Appendix 2.

Given the small sample size and uniqueness of the data, we had limited means for quantified tests of intercoder reliability. Instead, both coders piloted the scheme individually and discussed ambiguities and dilemmas before revising categories and decision rules. All subsequent cases of any ambiguity were reviewed and discussed between both coders in order to reach consistent agreement.

In the following sections, we explore the frequency of articles substantially engaging with intersectionality in Politics & Gender, and the content of intersectionality research in terms of country of focus, topics, and methods employed. We then discuss framings and operationalizations of intersectionality: Does the article advocate for or problematize intersectional approaches? Which identities are constituted, and do these represent intersectionally marginalized groups? Is the analysis at the level of individuals and groups, or institutions and structures, or both? Are categories and structures operationalized in additive or mutually constitutive ways? And finally, what is the definition of success? To what extent do the authors retain the normative commitments of intersectionality and its roots in Black feminist theory?

Politics & Gender as a Critical Actor: The Popularization of Intersectional Approaches

Of the 820 texts (including research articles, “Critical Perspectives” series and “Notes From the Field” pieces published during the period), a total of 92 (11.2%) substantively engaged with intersectionality. Despite discourses regarding the popularization of intersectionality, published pieces employing intersectional approaches therefore remain (perhaps surprisingly) a relatively small proportion of the collective body of scholarship published in Politics & Gender (see Figure 1, below). Simultaneously however, we do observe a positive trend in the number of articles employing the approach, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the articles published by the journal. Additionally, the journal’s success and increasing output has resulted in significant rises in the frequency of articles published overall over time: 2023 saw the publication of no less than 14 articles that employ intersectionality to a significant extent.

Figure 1. Number of articles substantively engaging with intersectionality published by Politics & Gender over time.

Politics & Gender therefore has positioned itself as an important critical actor in the dissemination and development of intersectionality within gender and politics scholarship, and political science more broadly, in light of its high rankings and impact. Furthermore, given the significant proportion of articles using intersectionality published by the journal in shorter, less traditional formats (including the recently created “Notes from the Field” series), these remain a crucial platform for the development of cutting edge methodological and theoretical approaches, as well as collaborations with non-academic partners, where debates and deliberation about the implementation of intersectionality in policy and institutions are exceptionally timely.

Despite the contributions made by Politics & Gender, there is something paradoxical about the popularity but continued marginalization of intersectional work within “mainstream” gender and politics research. Regardless of its purported status as a “buzzword” (Davis 2008), intersectionality arguably remains positioned as a subfield within a subfield. Race, class, and other structures of inequality are therefore often treated as optional extras to the study of gender, rather than there being a consistent diffusion of these conceptions of power through gender and politics scholarship, let alone in political science more broadly. Politics & Gender has published a significant quantity of work attempting to use the framework or “do” intersectionality. Yet, the marginalization evidenced by a lack of broader uptake within scholarship which is contented with studying gender alone — or to relegate concerns around intersecting structures to suggestions for future research — leaves intact many of the fundamental assumptions and frameworks underpinning gender and politics scholarship, some of which are arguably fundamentally at odds with intersectionality itself.

Expanding Empirical and Methodological Frontiers: The Evolving Content of Intersectional Scholarship

Country Focus

What states and regions does intersectional research published in Politics & Gender focus on? In terms of country focus, empirical analysis of the United States as a case remains very heavily dominant, present in 60% of articles (N=55) (Table 1, below). This is important because racialization is context specific, and exploration of the ways that race and gender (among other inequalities) intersect in other national or regional contexts has been generally marginalized within intersectionality scholarship (Bassel and Emejulu forthcoming; Boulila 2019; El-Tayeb 2011; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Mirza 1997, 2003; Wekker 2016). Outside of the US, the UK, France, and Canada have also featured relatively frequently. However, although intersectional approaches have been applied to contexts as diverse as The Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (Corbett and Liki, 2015; Siow and James 2024), Russia (Avdeyeva and Matland 2021), South Korea (Lee 2023), Ghana and South Africa (Reid and Ritholtz 2020), and Uruguay (Townsend-Bell 2014), there remains a paucity of work on contexts beyond North America and Western Europe.

Table 1. Country focus of articles employing intersectionality

The lack of intersectional data and analysis in Global South contexts exacerbates intersectional inequalities in development programming and governance (Siow and James, 2024). The marginalization of Global South scholarship, as well as scholarship by women of color in Europe and North America, is well documented and reflects the wider context in which Politics & Gender operates. These inequalities are not limited to Politics & Gender, but relate to those that characterize academic publishing globally, including hegemony of English as the language of publication in “top” journals; increasingly hostile border regimes that restrict Global South participants from accessing academic conferences, at which many collaborations are born; resource disparities among institutions to meet the costs of publication, including open access fees; and a privileging of academic authorship to the exclusion of that of activists and practitioners (Dołowy-Rybińska 2021).

Notably, only a very small minority of articles in the sample (11%, N = 11) include a comparative element, despite early calls for work which does so (e.g., Weldon 2006). Those which do are primarily small N-comparative case studies. For example, Bassel and Emejulu (2010) compare struggles for intersectional space in France and the UK, demonstrating that “even though France and the UK are often portrayed as opposites with regard to constructions of citizenship, […] these seemingly differing traditions of citizenship end up having a similar effect of misrecognizing minority women and men’s experiences and demands” (517). More recently, Reid and Ritholtz (2020) compare Ghana and South Africa in terms of LGBT vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that “it is not enough to make LGBT people the object of inquiry, but to queer — as a verb — and deconstruct the intersectional factors that produce specific forms of marginality within LGBT communities” (1102). Their analysis reveals that while “LGBT migrants in South Africa and lesbian and bisexual women in Ghana both experience discrimination that contributes to pushing them into the informal economy and distances them from familial/communal bases of support, the processes of their marginalization differ. These differences, however, are obscured when the analytical lens only takes into account sexuality” (1105).

While these studies demonstrate the empirical and theory testing contributions of comparative intersectional work, larger N studies are much scarcer. This in part speaks to the difficulty of simultaneously taking seriously the complexity of intersectionality while developing robust cross-national indicators, especially where race and ethnicity are concerned. An illustrative example is Pepin-Neff and Wynter’s (2020) four country survey, which investigates the intersectional effects of race, gender identity, and sexuality on the affective costs experienced by LGBT activists. While the study is pathbreaking in many ways, the operationalization of race is limited to “white” versus “non-white,” drawing on country specific definitions. This indicates some of the trade-offs and ambivalences in a comparative approach. Therefore, while Politics & Gender has published intersectional scholarship covering a wide range of countries and regions, there remains huge potential for both the application of intersectional approaches to cases beyond the US and Western Europe (drawing on diverse feminisms articulated by women of color and context-specific operationalizations of race), as well as building on the methodological innovations and substantive insights generated by exemplary cross-national and large-N studies.

Topics

Turning to the empirical and theoretical focus of studies employing intersectionality, we consider the extent to which the approach has been applied to the various subfields within scholarship published by Politics & Gender, as well as the degree to which it has opened up new areas of analysis. What topics are prevalent and to what extent do these reflect or contrast with the concerns of Black feminist theory, activism, and scholarship more broadly? The subject matter that has been considered through an intersectional lens is extremely varied. While quintessential topics such as the political experiences of Black women are considered in contexts ranging from the civil rights movement (Simien and McGuire 2014), Black lesbians’ self-representation online (Jordan-Zachery 2012), and Michelle Obama and the first lady as an institution (Handau and Simien 2019), recent publications focus on issues as multifarious as prostitution, trafficking and child sexual abuse (Baker 2018), the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda (Burgess, Brettschneider, and Keating 2018), and COVID-19 (Forester and O’Brien 2020). See Figure 2 for a list of all topics which appeared in two or more articles.

Figure 2. Most frequent topics.

Despite this diversity, the implementation of intersectionality itself is the single most prevalent topic, appearing as a major focus in 27% of articles (N = 25). This includes articles concerned with the implementation of intersectionality in political science research and those concerned with intersectionality’s implementation in institutions such as policymaking and civil society. Ongoing debates around how to employ intersectionality as scholars of politics are indicative of the further potential for development of future intersectional research, given both its infancy in gender and politics compared to political sociology in particular (Alexander-Floyd 2014). Meanwhile, the increased attention to operationalizing intersectionality in public policy represents an important political development not observed in prior reviews such as that of Garcia and Zazicek (2022), who examined articles published up to 2017. Increasing numbers of purposeful implementations of intersectionality by government policymakers and advocates require analyses of its implementation (La Barbera, Espinosa-Fajardo, and Caravantes 2023) and the ambivalences in state take-up of intersectionality (Townsend-Bell 2014). The continuation of this scholarship and related scholar activism will continue to be important frontiers for political scientists taking intersectional approaches in the future.

The second most prevalent topic is descriptive and substantive representation. This has historically been a core issue of gender and politics scholarship (and responds to Smooth’s classic “Mess Worth Making” [2006] text). However, it is important to note that these concerns regarding representation among elected representatives (as opposed to, for example, grassroots activism) have been somewhat less central to Black feminist theory, and there is substantial room for greater engagement with the ways that intersectionality problematizes traditional theories of representation (see Christoffersen 2024). Two particularly promising developments toward work more strongly aligned with Black feminist theory is scholarship on civil society — especially that which centers actors from intersectionally marginalized groups — and policy scholarship which employs intersectionality as a lens to consider intersecting structural inequalities.

Examples include Siim (2014), who considers a wide range of democratic political actors in the struggle for political intersectionality in the European public sphere. Likewise, English (2019) analyzes which women are represented by groups constituted as “women’s organizations.” As the titles suggest, much of this scholarship is concerned with the struggles of civil society coalition building (e.g., Bassel and Emejulu 2014; Price 2018; Unal 2019), and the search for ways of constituting groups (in activism and policy) in ways that center the most marginalized (see, e.g., Bassel and Emejulu 2010; Strolovitch 2012, Baker 2018). There are striking differences in the attention paid to these important issues within intersectional research about civil society and policy, compared with the relative rarity that they appear in intersectional scholarship on descriptive and substantive representation. For many of those most intersectionally marginalized, their descriptive representation among elected representatives is impossible (Christoffersen and Siow 2024), at the same time that there is often a disconnect between the claims-making of civil society coalitions and the issues articulated by more powerful elected representatives within the discursive constraints of liberal institutions.

In sum, despite frequency of discussion about how to do intersectionality, the most frequent topics of intersectional research beyond this (representation, public opinion, and voting), reflect the stalwarts of mainstream Anglo-American political science rather than those of Black feminist theory more widely. Meanwhile, increased attempts to operationalize intersectionality in policy and civil society provide both opportunities and imperatives for future research.

Methods

In line with expectations, among articles that engage substantively with intersectionality, there are considerably more that take a qualitative approach (45%, N = 41) than a quantitative one (23%, N = 21). Mixed methods scholarship was least prevalent (8%, N = 7), while theoretical work constituted a quarter of all relevant articles published by the journal (N = 23).

There have been significant debates, both within and beyond the journal, in terms of how, methodologically speaking, to operationalize intersectionality — especially quantitatively (see, e.g., Scott and Siltanen 2016). Politics & Gender has showcased a variety of approaches. For example, Tolley (2023) demonstrates the intersectional effects of race and gender on legislative recruitment in the Canadian context. English (2019) quantitatively analyzes thousands of comments submitted to US rule makers by women’s organizations to test a series of hypotheses about their characteristics and their references to intersectionally marginalized groups. Avdeyeva and Matland (2021) employ a survey experiment to test the effects of politicians’ gender and ethnicity on trait stereotyping and voter bias in Russia. While quantitative intersectional work remains unusual, these examples illustrate the possibilities of operationalizing intersectionality quantitatively. This is exceptionally important given the lack of high quality descriptive quantitative data on intersectionally marginalized groups and the effects of this lack on policy making (see, e.g., Christoffersen 2023; Hancock 2007b; Siow and James 2024).

However, these studies are also indicative of the tendencies of quantitative operationalizations of intersectionality to simplify both gender and race to binaries. Although this is often a pragmatic choice associated with both the need for statistical power and the character of secondary data sources, it is arguably incumbent on quantitative intersectional scholarship to practice greater reflexivity in relation to these issues, as well as methodological creativity (see, e.g., Horstmann et al. 2022; Lindqvist, Sendén, and Renström 2021; Wandschneider et al. 2020). Furthermore, quantitative intersectional political science scholarship also signals some of the dangers and challenges associated with employing intersectional approaches and operationalizing intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, namely centering intersectionally marginalized groups, considering structures and institutions as well as individuals and groups, and maintaining relevant normative commitments as well as scholarly rigor.

From Inclusion to Transformation: Approaches to Intersectionality

Framing

The vast majority of articles employing or including significant discussion of intersectionality advocate unequivocally for its usage (91%, N = 84). Intersectionality has not been without critique, however. A small number problematize or articulate a degree of ambivalence toward intersectionality. Some do so from a queer theoretical perspective (e.g., Burgess, Brettschneider, and Keating 2018; Duong 2012; Robertson and Sgoutas 2012). Collectively, these scholars problematize the naturalization and reification of categories (such as “woman” and categories pertaining to sexuality) in many operationalizations of intersectionality (see, more recently, Murib 2024; also e.g., Bey 2023; Puar 2013). Meanwhile Al-Ali and Käser (2022) analyze the concept of Jineolojî and the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement, showcasing alternative approaches grounded in marginalized women’s experiences which align with, but are distinct from, Black feminism.

More adversarial critiques of intersectionality argue in favor of emphasizing “unity” among women rather than diversity. For example, Hirschman (2012) argues, “It is a feminist truism how ‘different’ women are from one another, and such difference is said to make the category ‘woman’ impossible. And yet we use the term for the most part without confusion, incorporating those differences into our usage. Despite our repeated insistence that women are so different from one another, perhaps we share more than we differ”(402). Squires (2007) considers similar discourses in relation to threats perceived by some women’s policy agencies in relation to intersectionality. In both cases, this is a necessarily additive operationalization of intersectionality, since “gender” is the constant in constructing “women,” while other inequalities are not thought to always be in operation, qualitatively changing gender’s status to create substantive differences.

Despite the rarity of outright critique, proponents of intersectional approaches have, since the journal’s inception, voiced concerns around questions of how and to what end intersectionality is employed. The staunchest advocates have simultaneously acknowledged and confronted methodological and theoretical challenges head on (Hancock 2007a; Smooth 2006). In the context of these ongoing debates, we highlight the following important areas of contention: the construction of categories, marginalization of intersectionally marginalized groups, and erasure of race within intersectional work; the distinction between individual versus structural analyses; additive versus mutually constitutive operationalization of intersectionality, and the detachment of intersectionality from its normative commitments.

Constituting Groups and Identities

The majority of articles (68%, N = 63) focused upon a particular population, inequality, or intersection. However, not all offered a rationale for doing so, or for the selection of the specific populations, inequalities, or intersections that they focused upon. In the field of intersectionality and public policy studies, it has been argued that applying intersectionality requires an open-ended empirical investigation of where the greatest intersecting inequalities lie, in order to identify priority populations, inequalities, and intersections (Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery 2019). Erica Townsend-Bell (2011) also advocates for considering the perspectives of local activists as to which inequalities are most relevant in the particular context.

The group most frequently constituted within the empirical or theoretical analysis is Black women (31 articles - Figure 3). This reflects the scholarly and activist roots of intersectionality, the predominant focus on the US, and the erasure of race in Europe (Emejulu and Bassel 2021). More widely, articles analyzing one or more groups constituted primarily in terms of gender and race as women who are racially minoritized — either as Black, Asian, Latinx, Muslim, Indigenous, or migrant — made up 55% of the sample (N = 51). There were significant differences, however, and scholarship on Indigenous, migrant, and Muslim women’s experiences is very rare, highlighting the need for greater political science scholarship which centers these groups’ political experiences.

Figure 3. Identities constituted.

In contrast, the group constituted most frequently after Black women is simply “women,” with no further explicit reference to race, ethnicity, or other characteristics. This reflects a popular operationalization of intersectionality as “diversity among women” (Christoffersen 2021; Christoffersen and Emejulu 2023). Christoffersen and Siow (2024) have argued elsewhere that intersectional political science research can make the greatest gains by taking intersectionally marginalized groups as a starting point, taking care not to leave privileged categories and structures such as whiteness as undefined norms. Indeed, only 40% (N = 37) of articles employing intersectionality center an intersectionally marginalized group in their analysis. Of these 37 articles, the vast majority (31) center racially minoritized women (including those constituted variously as “Black,” “minority,” “Aboriginal,” or “Kurdish”). Within this group, 13 center Black women, and two center Black lesbians specifically. The decentering of minoritized women and other intersectionally marginalized groups (along with the normative concerns of Black feminist theory) has received substantial critique elsewhere (see. e.g., Bilge 2013; Junn and Brown 2008; Mügge et al. 2018).

We also note that some articles within the sample do center intersectionally marginalized groups when summarizing the wider contributions and implications of their research (e.g., Badas and Stauffer 2019), yet they fall short of doing so in analysis, employing additive approaches, and using white women and men as a baseline for comparison. However, the wider body of work published in Politics & Gender shows clearly how we can move beyond this approach. Within qualitative and theoretical articles, centering an intersectionally marginalized group can be accomplished through placing members of this group’s perspectives, experiences, needs, and interests at the center of analysis. In quantitative articles, intersectionally marginalized groups can serve as the baseline, to which other intersectional groups (versus variables such as “race” or “gender”) can be compared.

It remains important to employ intersectionality not only to study intersectional marginalization, but to study the ways that intersectional privilege confers advantages for others, in a relational process. Without such focus, intersectionally privileged social positions are rendered as normative and invisible (Carbado 2013). A significant minority of articles (21%, N = 19) explicitly studied processes of intersectional privilege. For example, Hancock (2009) provides an early “untraditional” intersectional analysis, employing intersectionality to study the ways that not only gender, but also race and class, positioned prominent white women candidates in the 2008 US election; as well as how not only race, but also gender and class, positioned Black men. More recently, Tolley (2023) examines the advantages that white women politicians accrue from Canadian political party selection processes and efforts to “diversify,” that disadvantage racially minoritized men and women in relational processes.

The erasure of race has also been a key point of debate regarding the constitution of categories and groups in work claiming to take “intersectional” approaches (see, e.g., Alexander-Floyd 2012; Bilge 2013; Jordan-Zachery 2013; Lewis 2013; May 2015; Tomlinson 2013a, 2013b). One way that this erasure is accomplished, particularly in European research contexts (Lewis, 2013; Mügge et al. 2018), is through scholars’ choice to constitute groups in relation to migration background rather than race, or even ethnicity. For example, focusing on Sweden, Folke, Freidenvall, and Rickne (2015) employ “foreign born” as a proxy variable for racial minoritization, which the authors call “the simplest possible definition of polyethnic minority status” (359). This operationalization is typical of the Swedish (and wider European) context in which official data is not collected on race. The author’s use of “foreign born” in this context nevertheless serves to erase race through: assuming similarity between, thereby erasing racial distinctions among, white and racially minoritized migrants; and making invisible the experiences, structured by racism, of racially minoritized citizens who are not “foreign born,” and whose parents were similarly not “foreign born.” The authors include in the appendix as a relevant robustness test an expanded analysis capturing whether at least one parent was “foreign born.” The article nevertheless purports to speak about “ethnic minorities.” While, as in this case, these limitations reflect those in official data, this limitation is not always recognized or commented upon by article authors. Moreover, there are alternative approaches in which scholars themselves collect data on the race and ethnicity of representatives (including the self-presentation of representatives themselves [Funk and Hinojosa 2023]) to overcome limitations of official data.

A second way in which the erasure of race is accomplished in the constitution of groups and identities is through expanding to other categories of analysis beyond race/gender, but demoting race in the process. For example, some articles expand beyond consideration of race and gender (and sometimes, class), central to intersectionality’s theoretical origins, to consider gender’s intersection with other categories (e.g., LGBT status or disability). Yet in doing so, race disappears from the forefront of analysis (Albaugh and Baisley 2023). For instance, as Hirschmann (2012) argues in an article entitled “Disability as a New Frontier for Feminist Intersectionality Research,” “disability is the new gender,” while race and race/gender are not mentioned beyond noting that “Disability intersects with all vectors of identity, since disability affects people of all classes, races, ethnicities, and religions, male and female, straight and gay¹” (397).

A third way in which the erasure of race is accomplished is to employ intersectionality to study dominant women, but not the relational processes that position them as advantaged at the expense of intersectionally marginalized women. In the context of Italy, Avanza (2020) seeks to explicitly unlink intersectionality from what (Hancock 2016) calls intersectionality’s “political project:” “Working on dominant actors with a dislikable political agenda, I use intersectionality as a paradigm allowing empirical investigation, not as a political tool of emancipation for actors facing multiple oppressions” (558), concluding that “pro-life activism can certainly be a resource for women’s agency” (567). We argue therefore that future scholarship should take heed of these dangers in order not to perpetuate the erasure of race from intersectional scholarship.

Approximately one-third of articles (N = 29) do not focus on any specific population or group. Some of these make broad arguments across different inequality structures, namely “systems of domination such as racism, sexism, neoliberal capitalism, and ableism” (Forester and O’Brien 2020, 1150), while others focus analysis upon institutions rather than social groups (e.g., Siim 2014). More problematically, others employ a quantitative approach that operationalizes intersectionality simply as comparisons across different social groups without a normative element, and without centering any particular group (e.g., Folke, Freidenvall, and Rickne 2015). As a result, we find that racially minoritized men feature primarily as comparisons between white women and men, and racially minoritized women and men (either with or without comparisons between women and men of different racially minoritized ethnicities). They are rarely constituted in a way that treats race and gender as mutually constitutive, resulting in simultaneous and contingent privilege and oppression, noting the specific vulnerabilities encountered by this group (see, e.g., Briscoe Palmer and Siow forthcoming). Therefore, the risk of broad intersectional research uncoupled from what Hancock (2016) has termed intersectionality’s “political project” is that intersectionality is operationalized in a generic way, that ultimately serves to uphold structural inequalities (Christoffersen 2021).

In contrast, we note that scholarship focused upon LGBTQIA+ and trans groups offers an approach to the constitution of categories which avoids many of the pitfalls discussed above. The influence of queer theory and focus on coalition building does not leave power structures of heteronormativity or cisnormativity as assumed and is much more ambivalent about the constitution of categories and identities in general. Twenty articles in the sample constituted queer/genderqueer identities in the analysis under various monikers. Of those, seven constituted racially minoritized queer identities, including Black US lesbians (Fogg-Davis 2006; Jordan-Zachery 2012), LGBTQI+ migrants (Robertson and Sgoutas 2012), queer voters (Bell and Borelli 2024), queer of color youth (Hancock 2014) and activists of color across multiple countries (Murib 2018; Peppin-Neff and Wynter 2020). It was also notable that those articles that constituted queer/genderqueer identities, but did not focus on intersectionally marginalized queer identities, nevertheless diligently highlighted structural intersections, such as the links between, for example, racist and anti-trans politics. For example, Price (2018) argues “The election of Trump and the subsequent actions of his administration have amplified a sense of urgency within both movements. It not only served as a reminder to the common adversaries — socially conservative Republicans and the far right — that the movements share, but it also, from their viewpoints, relegitimized and reinforced blatant racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in political discourse and in the policy-making process” (591).

The attention to intersecting structures within articles informed by queer theory is also coupled with a striking ambivalence toward the constitution of categories. This is in somewhat stark contrast to intersectional scholarship on gender and representation that often employs a “diversity among women frame” (leaving the category “women” unproblematized).² For example, as Price (2018) argues, “Coalitions are born out of necessity. Most people belong to multiple social groups and are often situated between social movements. We need to re-envision identity categories as potential coalitions rather than view them as simply affinity groups” (592).

In summary, we argue that in terms of the categories constituted, intersectional research need not limit its focus to Black and other racially minoritized women as its quintessential subjects. Indeed, there has been and remains much to be gained from the expansion of intersectional analysis to other categories and structures. However, in doing so, we can make the greatest gains by centering (not just including) intersectionally marginalized groups (including intersectionally marginalized men), making privileged categories and associated power structures such as white supremacy and cisnormativity explicit, treating the constitution of groups and identities as fluid and contingent, and insisting that we neither erase race nor divorce intersectionality from its normative commitments in the process.

Individuals versus Structures

Intersectionality theorists have long argued for the importance of distinguishing between, and attending to, multiple levels of analysis. While different typologies of levels of analysis have been offered (Collins and Bilge 2020), in particular, theorists have highlighted the importance of attending to levels of both individual experience and identity, including as part of social groups, on the one hand, and institutions and structures of inequality that produce such experiences, on the other (Crenshaw 1991). These distinctions are present in the research questions that articles seek to address. For instance, Bassel and Emejulu (2010) explored the institutional space in policy processes that limited the opportunities for actors to make intersectional justice claims in France and the UK, resulting in the misrecognition of women and men experiencing intersecting inequalities. A focus on institutions, rather than on identity and experience decontextualized from power structures, enables a sophisticated analysis of the workings of power that shape and constrain experience.

We coded articles as to whether their core contributions and implications pertained to an individual/group level of analysis (for instance, highlighting the importance of inclusion of particular groups in political processes), or to an institutional/structural level of analysis (for instance, highlighting the importance of institutional or policy change), or both. Concerns around the importance of structural intersectionality, and attention to institutions as well as individuals and groups, do seem to have been taken up within research published by Politics & Gender. Nearly three-quarters (72%, N = 66) of articles employing intersectionality include analysis at the structural (or a combination of the structural and individual) level. Analysis at the level of structures and institutions is of the utmost importance to ultimately understand power and the ways in which it operates, as well as to create institutional change. However, taking a structural/institutional approach, rather than one focused upon individual experience and social groups, does not alone translate into an operationalization of intersectionality in line with its Black feminist theoretical origins. Some such articles do so and do refer to intersectionality, while gender remains the primary category of interest (Elomäki and Kantola 2023). Therefore, as Christoffersen and Siow (2024) have argued, to operationalize intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, we must relinquish positioning gender as superordinate and instead treat structures as mutually constitutive and contingent.

Additive versus Constitutive Operationalizations of Intersectionality

Theorists have also suggested that the level of analysis is related to whether intersectionality is operationalized in an additive, or a mutually constitutive, way. In particular, additive operationalizations of intersectionality tend to be restricted to or overly focused upon the level of individual experience (Yuval-Davis 2006). One remedy for an over-focus on intersectionally marginalized groups that is potentially further stigmatizing, a remedy that would trouble rather than reinforce inequities (Dhamoon 2011), is to instead focus upon intersectional advantage, which some articles do (Hancock 2009; Tolley 2023), as discussed above.

Articles were coded as to whether they operationalized intersectionality in an additive way, suggesting that inequalities can be separated from one another, or a mutually constitutive one, viewing inequalities as always shaping and indivisible from one another. Our analysis suggests that a substantial proportion of articles (28%, N = 26) apply an additive approach. The proportion is particularly high among quantitative studies (38%, N = 8/21). For example, Doan and Haider-Markel (2010) seek to explore the effect of “intersectional stereotyping” on public opinion but operationalize gender and sexual minority status additively as “dual membership in stigmatized groups.” This enables conclusions such as “in certain contexts gender stereotypes are more significant, and at other times stereotypes about sexual minorities appear to be driving evaluations of candidates” (63). Such conclusions separate gender and sexual minority status, treating them as “either/or” instead of “both/and,” rather than viewing these categories as always being interlocking and mutually constitutive, in line with intersectionality theory.

The journal has, however, showcased other important examples of how to combine quantitative methods and mutually constitutive operationalizations of intersectionality (Avdeyeva and Matland 2021; Pepin-Neff and Wynter 2020; Tolley 2023). Mutually constitutive approaches in quantitative research can be achieved by advancing beyond the use of interaction terms between variables, such as gender and race, to create variables for social groups. For example, rather than treating race and gender as discrete variables and modeling interaction effects between them, Ward (2016) analyzes press coverage of political campaigns positing minority women as the baseline category (thus centering minoritized women as a group), and modeling the differences in coverage of this group with white men, white women, and minoritized men, controlling for additional factors. While mutually constitutive quantitative approaches often take an individual person as a unit of analysis, they can also be employed when studying civil society organizations, by treating intersectional organizations (those constituted at the intersection of inequalities) as a distinctive group to those organized along a single axis of identity (English 2019).

Additive approaches were also particularly prevalent within work focusing on descriptive and substantive representation (62%, N = 13/21) — highlighting the need for more structural intersectional analysis of institutions (Christoffersen and Siow 2024; Hawkesworth 2003; Siow and Begum forthcoming). Theoretical work was found to be least likely to take additive approaches, and most likely to take mutually constitutive approaches. This attests to the challenges of applying intersectionality empirically, regardless of methodological approach (Bowleg 2008; Hancock 2007b).

Ideologies and Normative Commitments

Finally, in the interest of exploring the potential detachment of intersectionality from the normative concerns of Black feminism, we examined articles’ ideologies or “definitions of success.” Over a third of articles in the sample (N = 33) advocated “liberal inclusion” — the largest number of articles coded to any one ideology category and representing 50% of articles whose conclusions and implications pertained to representative politics, broadly conceived. Here, liberal democratic institutions are assumed and unproblematized, and the focus is on increasing representation of women (and at times, other marginalized groups) within such institutions (for example, as representatives, or as voters), rather than upon the institutional change that might be required to do so, or upon the liberation from oppression or the social transformation that Black feminism calls for (hooks, 1981; Spillers 1987). Sometimes this meaning is implicit. This finding lends empirical weight to the observations of Christoffersen and Siow (2024) that feminist literature on representation has focused upon inclusion of women within liberal democracy, rather than the structural transformation and liberation from oppression Black feminist theory calls for, as well as to arguments long made by Black feminists and colleagues (inter alia Alexander-Floyd 2012).

To illustrate, as one article concludes, “if we feel that the experiences of our representatives matter, and that certain relevant experiences will largely accrue only to certain types of person, we want a diversity of persons and, by implication, a diversity of experience” (Allen 2022, 1137).

Here, in line with the other articles coded as “liberal inclusion,” the article’s “definition of success” is obtaining inclusion of a diversity of people within liberal democratic institutions, while such institutions as well as liberal democracy itself are unproblematized.

In particular, articles seek greater descriptive representation in the hope (or with the assumption) that this might lead to improved substantive representation: “Electing women from a diverse set of backgrounds, including younger women and women with young children, can shift the policy debates and outcomes in legislatures and produce greater substantive representation for women, children, and families…Doing away with notions of political leadership as a masculine pursuit can open more pathways for women’s political success in the future in the United States and beyond” (Sweet-Cushman and Bauer 2024, 18).

Here again, the emphasis is on women’s “political success,” — that is, increasing numbers of women representatives; yet for some of the most marginalized women (e.g., undocumented migrants, trans women who are being stripped of citizenship rights), descriptive representation is not possible (Christoffersen and Siow 2024). Moreover, the inherently inequitable and racialized nature of liberal institutions too often remains unquestioned in the literature under study (exceptions beyond work published by Politics & Gender are Brown 2014; Kantola et al. 2023). Given the prevalence of “women” as the identity constituted in analysis, liberal inclusion often problematically positions gender as the most important category of analysis, rather than treating structures of inequality as mutually constitutive, such that their relative salience shifts according to context, and they are qualitatively changed by one another. However, “An inclusion approach leaves us unable to normatively or theoretically distinguish between the perspectives, needs and interests of those women on either side of structures like race and class” (Christoffersen and Siow 2024, 9).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, less commonly, articles’ ideology or definition of success was coded as being “liberation from oppression” (N = 16) with reference to political institutions and/or structures of inequality, or, similarly, as “solidarity” (N = 7) when contributions and implications pertained specifically to social movements. Such articles go beyond the idea of including those excluded from liberal democratic institutions to explicitly identify the need for transformational change, centering power: “the roots of social biases stem from complex structural phenomena, such as limited labor opportunities for women and minorities, and thus require transformative political and economic changes” (Avdeyeva and Matland 2021, 720).

Further still, some articles that seek liberation from oppression have been foundational to drawing attention to intersectionality’s detachment from such concerns in the wider literature: “As the concept of intersectionality has advanced, at times it appears that the second component — a liberation framework — has been lost…On the surface, it would appear that any work involving intersectionality, since it is a challenge to existing power structures, is inherently an act of liberation. Research that simply describes how marginalized groups operate or function in the face of their oppression can be helpful in the formulation of a political framework of liberation. However, when such research stands alone, it is not designed to liberate marginalized groups” (Jordan-Zachery 2007, 256, 262; emphasis ours).

Yet such detachment persists in recent literature, and importantly, is reflected in the emphasis on liberal inclusion found most often in articles that engaged with intersectionality within Politics & Gender. Moreover, even considering research that centers Black women, and in line with our finding above that articles are frequently concerned with descriptive and substantive representation, “there is a tendency among researchers to focus on the actions of elected black women. This leaves one to wonder how black women who are not elected to office engage and grapple with issues of intersectionality. How do they define and respond to a multitude of issues that influence their daily lives?” (Jordan-Zachery 2012, 409).

Some articles do examine political action beyond elected representatives, and explicitly call for solidarity in order to achieve liberation from oppression: “building intersectional political alliances is more important than ever. It is no longer sufficient for progressive social movements and advocacy groups to focus on single-axis political issues; they must now embrace issues they may have not considered to be part of their political bailiwick … This may mean building cross-movement coalitions as well as coalitions within their respective movements” (Price 2018, 582–3).

Other articles fall between the two ends of a spectrum comprised of “liberal inclusion” at one end and “liberation from oppression” at the other. Such articles were coded as seeking “institutional change” (N = 10). Such articles do not quite call for the transformation of liberal democratic institutions, but do problematize institutions to some extent, and call for some level of institutional change to respond to inequalities. For example, Bedolla (2014) outlines how intersectionality can guide institutional change within universities; Nooruddin (2007) draws attention to changes required within the judicial system to counter “ostensibly neutral rules of evidence or sentencing guidelines as raced-gendered institutions” (345); while Begum and Sobolewska (2024) look beyond surface level improvements in the descriptive representation of minority ethnic women among local politicians in the UK, to reveal the changes that would be required to selection and working conditions that would help to mitigate the gender and racial inequalities that continue to shape their experiences. Notably however, the number of articles coded as “liberal inclusion” exceeds that of liberation from oppression and institutional change combined.

Articles where the contributions and implications pertain to intersectionality and scholarship rather than political institutions, including social movements, were coded as to whether they strongly advocated for intersectionality (N = 17), such that their definition of success would be its wider or more authentic uptake or further development, or alternatively, as being equivocal in relation to intersectionality (N = 9). The latter category includes articles that may have taken an intersectional approach at the outset but conclude with alternative framings of intersectionality that depart from its Black feminist origins, or similarly where intersectionality disappears from the conclusions (e.g., Sterett 2018), and what is being argued for is strong gender machinery (e.g., Squires 2007).

Those that strongly advocate for intersectionality argue, for example: “intersectionality research requires more than simply performing separate analyses by race and gender and using traditional theories to interpret the results. Political scientists must construct new theories and methodological approaches that address the complex processes through which social categories shape and, in effect, determine political outcomes. To this end, there is much work to be done” (Simien 2007, 271).

Again, while this argument was made nearly 20 years ago, it remains extremely relevant in light of our findings concerning the frequency of additive approaches, even in qualitative work. Yet we did find strong examples of work, both quantitative and qualitative, which points to the possibility (as yet unrealized) of gender and politics scholarship that is not divorced from Black feminist aims of liberation and transformation (e.g., Alexander-Floyd 2008; Handau and Simien 2019; Walker and García-Castanõn 2017; White 2007). We hope that future research will continue in this trajectory.

Discussion and Conclusions

Although engagement with intersectionality is growing, with Politics & Gender being a critical actor in facilitating this development, we find that intersectional research continues to be marginal within “mainstream” gender and politics research, and that even research which does substantially engage with intersectionality often falls short of an operationalization of it in line with its Black feminist theoretical origins. Our analysis identifies gaps revealing several priorities for future research. Firstly, there is a strong need for intersectionality research featured in leading journals such as Politics & Gender to broaden to contexts beyond the Global North (see for example González Villamizar 2023) and to employ cross-country comparison.

Secondly, there is a need to feature exploration of topics beyond the usual stalwarts of political science (e.g., descriptive and substantive representation), for more critical approaches within studies of traditional topics, and importantly, to reconceive of what topics count as “gender and politics.” Literature on intersectionality and civil society, and public policy respectively, provides promising directions in line with the concerns of Black feminist theory to center the most marginalized and pursue transformative change through coalition building. Notably, we find that much intersectionality research fails to employ intersectionality consistent with Black feminist theory in various ways, as we expand upon below.

Although among the body of work analyzed in this article, the focus is predominantly on the US, with Black women being the group constituted most frequently, many arguments made regarding uses of intersectionality in Europe that erase race (Lewis 2013; Mügge et al. 2018), perhaps surprisingly, hold true. A substantial proportion of articles are concerned with “women” and “diversity” among them, failing to name whiteness, ableism, and cis-heteronormativity, and instead reproduce these as normative, and fail to center intersectionally marginalized groups in line with intersectionality theory (Crenshaw 1989). As has been forcefully argued in other disciplines, the category of “women” is not neutral, but exclusive (Emejulu 2022; Lewis 2017; Spillers 1987).

Moreover, findings suggest that gender and politics scholarship overwhelmingly continues to work somewhat uncritically with binary operationalizations of gender (see also Murib 2024), with some exceptions — in particular queer of color approaches. This raises the question of what it would take for intersectionality and refusal of cis-heteronormativity to become baselines for gender and politics research the same way as — for example, a refusal of gendered essentialism is now largely a baseline? In line with Christoffersen and Siow (2024), we argue for the need to decenter “women” among the groups and identities constituted in intersectional research, with research that adopts queer and trans perspectives providing promising directions for problematizing category reification more broadly.

When “women” are a group of interest, there is a need to make whiteness, cis-heteronormativity, ableism, and binary gender explicit. Failing to do so reproduces these inequality structures. Conceptualizing intersectionality in mutually constitutive ways recognizes that simultaneous and contingent processes of privileging and oppression disadvantage not only, or always, women, but also some men and gender diverse people in context-specific ways. Indeed, we also identify a gap in critical analysis of the role of women political actors in furthering the oppression of others. This gap is important because: “Intersectionality as a political project entails representing the interests of those who are most marginalized over those aligned with whiteness, patriarchy and class privilege – even if they are themselves intersectionally marginalized women” (Christoffersen and Siow 2024, 16)

Research on processes of intersectional privileging (Hancock 2009; Tolley 2023) represents a promising direction, one called for by Bedolla (2007) nearly 20 years ago. Even when race is considered in intersectional research, it is too often treated as a “mere difference” begetting comparison across white women/Black women and white men/Black men, while structures of whiteness and white supremacy are rarely mentioned, and not always problematized. We observe a general lack of engagement with wider critical race theory, in line with what Bilge (2013) describes as intersectionality’s whitewashing.

Relatedly, we observe a general lack of research for which its implications comprise of seeking justice and liberation from oppression. In other words, relatively few articles adopt a Black feminist definition of success in relation to political institutions/structures of inequality, instead limiting their sights to inclusion within liberal institutions. However, liberalism is racial (Mills 1997, 2017; Crenshaw et al. 2024). Elsewhere, we have been warned of the dangers of reformist liberal conceptions of racial justice that seek the incorporation of racially minoritized others into existing systems, without fundamentally transforming those systems. Liberal democracy is a racial project dependent upon the disposable unincorporated (HoSang 2021; Mills 1997, 2017). In other words, not everyone can or will be “included” in liberal democratic institutions. Feminist commitments of gender and politics scholars should prompt visions of social justice that avoid leaving the most marginalized behind.

Ultimately, we note that the calls of early key contributions of Black feminists in the journal (Hancock 2007a; Jordan-Zachery 2007, 2012; Simien 2007; Smooth 2006) have not always been heeded, or perhaps, have been strategically ignored. Future research would be well positioned to begin from these: to center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups; to emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion; to analyze intersectional structures and institutions; to treat the constitution of categories and groups as mutual, contextual, and contingent; to dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point; and finally, to challenge the fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.