intersectionality.

The way overlapping social identities and systems of discrimination interact to shape a person's or group's experience.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• intersectionality of race and gender
• an intersectionality framework
• analyze through intersectionality

On the page

The study uses intersectionality to examine how race and disability affect access to housing.

Her analysis treats the forms of disadvantage as interacting rather than simply adding separate labels.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal / analytical. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Commonness: moderately common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: MW directly read: complex cumulative intersection of discrimination, especially marginalized groups; overlapping mutually constitutive categories such as gender, race and class. Not merely listing identities, and no universal outcome inferred. Individually useful in research, criticism, methodology or conceptual analysis. Definitions and examples are original; no mood or intensity assigned to neutral analytical concepts. Commonness is an editorial estimate, not a frequency statistic. Writing functions: interacting inequalities in social analysis, overlapping categories without simple additive assumptions.