Kimberle Crenshaw Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY OF IMPLICIT BIAS IN PUBLIC HEALTH
INTRODUCTION
The term ‘intersectionality’ (theory) was first coined by Black feminist legal scholarship Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Crenshaw described the understandings of race and sex/gender, by outlining the multiple marginalizations in the exclusion of black women from the discourse of white feminists, and racism.1,2 ‘Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how multiple social identities such as race, gender, sexual orientation, SES, and disability intersect on a micro level of individual experience to reflect interlocking systems of privilege and oppression (i.e racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism) at the macro social-structural level’.3
In the United States,
As identified by Bowleg, the challenges of intersectionality researches include: a lack of clear methodology to study intersectionality, the difficulty in determining whether all intersectional identities have equal values, whether to focus on intersectional identities, processes, policies of positions, the virtual impossibility of asking inherently non-additive intersectionality questions in quantitative research3,9 or problems of determining the most appropriate statistical method to use.15
Pragmatic inter-categorical approaches to intersectionality of implicit bias can be adequately used to explore the complexities and health effects of multiple identities of sex, race, income, social class, gender, education, sexual orientation, age, immigration, to social positionalities (McCall, 2005). In public health research, the challenges of intersectionality researches present ample opportunities to ensure identification and possible solution to, and quality research in health disparity and implicit bias.