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Abstract

How to engage and apply intersectionality is still a point of contention among scholars. In this conceptual paper, we use examples from our preliminary research on the experiences of middle-class Black women with depression and Black Muslim women who have experienced intimate partner violence to illustrate how we applied intersectionality as a framework and a method. We highlight the foundational literature that informed our applications. We then describe how we employed intersectionality in our respective studies. Through our reflections, we conclude that intersectionality was, and continues to be, a necessary frame for guiding our work due to its rendering visible for critique and intervention categories of privilege and oppression and our centering the experiences of Black women. We, however, note having felt limited in our ability to fully apply intersectionality in our preliminary research. We conclude that what was missing for us reflects critiques of a gap in social work feminist scholarship that is a central tenet of intersectionality: liberation. We posit ways of doing intersectional research that liberates by offering recommendations for research, education, and policy.

Keywords

intersectionality critical feminism Black women depression intimate partner violence

Applying intersectionality substantively—as opposed to merely rhetorically—is easier said than done. (Moradi & Grzanka, 2017, p. 501)

Introduction

What intersectionality is and how it should be used is an open dialogue among scholars that has advanced knowledge but also presented challenges to intersectionality's application and to the concept itself (Jordan-Zachery, 2007). However, this dialogue need not be to intersectionality's detriment nor point to a weakness; rather, “interrogating the many engagements that intersectionality has fostered can inform our thinking about future directions for research, scholarship, and action” (Cho et al., 2013, pp. 786–787).

Such is our aim in the present paper. We seek to advance intersectionality as a concept in scholarship through reflection of our own research experiences. We examine our applications of intersectionality as both a framework and a method by presenting our experiences in engaging in research with middle-class Black women with depression and Black Muslim women survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV).

Brief History of Intersectionality

While “intersectionality” was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, Black women first introduced the concept of intersectionality in the 19^th century. In 1832, Maria Stewart, an abolitionist and political scholar, became the first American-born woman of any race to present a political oration before a mixed gender audience (“Maria A. Stewart,” 2021). She advocated for the inclusion of African American women in the abolition movement. Nearly 20 years later, Sojourner Truth, a formerly enslaved abolitionist, questioned the idea of gender and race being mutually exclusive in her “Ain’t I Woman” speech (Bowleg, 2012). The speeches of both women are some of the earliest documented accounts of Black women highlighting the intersectional experiences of Black women (Bowleg, 2012; Jordan-Zachery, 2007).

Intersectionality has been further conceptualized in recent history. The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists, wrote in their 1977 manifesto, “[w]e are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of an integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Combahee River Collective, 1977). As such, they asserted achieving liberation requires challenging all forms of oppression. In 1990, Patricia Hill Collins introduced “Black feminist epistemology” in her book Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 1990). Black feminist epistemology explores the overlapping and interconnected oppressions Black women experience and presents a critical examination of the matrix of domination that is present in Black women's lives. Intersectionality has historically examined the social location of Black women while also serving to liberate Black women and their communities. As Jordan-Zachery (2007) asserts, intersectionality “articulates a politics of survival for Black women” (p. 256).

Intersectionality as a Research Enterprise

Intersectionality has its roots in activism (Hancock, 2016) and more recently has become an academic research endeavor across disciplines, including law, sociology, psychology, and social work. Scholars have both embraced intersectionality's diversity of usage and identified necessary, key elements that qualify a research project an “intersectional” endeavor. For example, Hancock (2007) summarized key assumptions of intersectional research: (a) more than one category of difference affects political problems and processes; (b) the relationship between the categories is an open empirical question; (c) categories of difference are conceptualized as dynamic productions of individual and institutional factors; (d) each category has within-group diversity; (e) research examines categories at multiple levels of analysis; and (f) attention must be paid to both empirical and theoretical aspects of the research question. Collins and Bilge (2016) offer six core ideas that should appear, in part or in full, in intersectionality research: social inequality, power, relationality, social context, complexity, and social justice. Jordan-Zachery (2007) identified that intersectional analysis must be contextual, it must challenge existing power structures, and it must liberate. In sum, intersectionality has many descriptors including, but not limited to, a paradigm, a metaphor, a heuristic, a theory, and an analytic tool (Carbado et al., 2013; Cho et al., 2013; Collins, 2019; Hancock, 2007). Broadly categorized, intersectionality is commonly considered a framework and a method, which we explore further below.

Intersectionality as a Framework

Scholars have used intersectionality as a framework to establish their epistemological and ontological assumptions (Cho et al., 2013; McCall, 2005; Mehrotra, 2010). Intersectionality names the existence of the intersection of multiple forms of oppression and privilege, allowing scholars to pose research questions and engage in analyses that posit these intersections as reality. It also allows for scholars to point to the intersections as true sites for critique and intervention.

There are several examples of how researchers use intersectionality as a framework to inform their research and research questions. For example, Brady et al. (2017) called attention to the existence of power, privilege, and oppression, through their utilization of intersectionality as a framework to qualitatively examine Asian American women's body image. Beyond asking Asian American women how they perceived themselves, they also investigated how gender and race shaped these perceptions and, “how do Asian American women manage their body image beliefs in contexts of power, inequality, and privilege?” (p. 481). They expressly used intersectionality as a framework while using grounded theory as a method of analysis.

An intersectional framework can be used as a guide to data collection for systemic literature reviews. Waller et al. (2022) utilized intersectionality as a framework in their systematic literature review of studies that examined African American women's experiences with seeking help for IPV. They highlighted representational intersectionality, in which controlling images in social society “objectify, denigrate, and disempower African American women as evidenced in the racialized archetypes and tropes used to minimize African American women's experiences and diminish their voices” (p. 2). In their exploration of the literature, they identify the ways in which African American women sought help but also used a representational intersectional frame to identify the ways in which controlling images shaped African American women's IPV help-seeking. Thus, applying intersectionality as a framework served as a necessary frame for critically examining oppression and the othering experiences of African American survivors.

Intersectionality as a Method

There is no one way to engage in intersectionality as a method (Misra et al. 2021), and how to “do” intersectionality methodologically, be it quantitatively or qualitatively, is an ongoing discourse among scholars (Bowleg & Bauer, 2016; Del Toro & Yoshikawa, 2016; Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016; Esposito & Evans-Winters 2021; MacKinnon, 2013). While scholars seem to favor intersectionality as a method for qualitative research, few have actually described qualitative intersectional analysis beyond using it as a frame (Abrams et al., 2020). In contrast, quantitative intersectionality scholars have continuing exchange on how to engage in quantitative intersectional research that is not additive nor dismissive of lived experiences (Bauer et al., 2021). Given that we have primarily engaged intersectionality in qualitative research, we will focus on how scholars have outlined intersectional analysis in qualitative studies.

Misra et al. (2021) built on Collin and Bilge's (2016) delineation of key tenets of applying intersectionality in research by naming tenets to intersectional methodology that were apparent across studies: oppression, relationality, complexity, context, comparison, and deconstruction. Abrams et al. (2020) also outlined how intersectionality could be employed at every step of the qualitative research process, including study conceptualization, recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and in engaging in reflexivity. Regarding data analysis, intersectionality could be used methodologically alongside a range of qualitative methods to strengthen analyses. Intersectionality could be incorporated into the frame the researcher uses for coding, either inductively or deductively. Intersectionality could also be applied at different levels of analysis. Beyond looking for social identity constructs explicitly named by participants at the semantic level, an intersectional lens could be applied at more abstract levels of analysis to “hear” what is implied but not apparent in text, offering richer analyses. However, the researcher is cautioned to be aware of their own biases and “reproducing inequality within the coding and analytic processes” (Abrams et al., 2020, p.16).

Winker and Degele (2011) delineated an eight-step method of qualitative intersectionality analysis. As is in line with other scholars, Winker and Degele conceptualized intersectionality to be a multi-level “system of interactions between inequality-creating social structures (i.e. of power relations), symbolic representations and identity constructions that are context-specific, topic-oriented and inextricably linked to social praxis” (p. 54). Identity constructions include the ways in which we differentiated ourselves from others into categories, for instance, “woman” or “Black.” Symbolic representations reflect beliefs and norms of the society and the roles people are expected to play, “support[ing], in their role as ideologies and norms of justification, structural power relations and are–at the same time–generated with them” (p. 54). Social structures are the systems of privilege and oppression that exist in society, for example, race, gender, and class. Winker and Degele's (2011) multi-level intersectional analysis steps began with analysis of the lowest, more concrete level (identity constructions), subsequently moving up to the other levels, and then examining relationships across all the levels, gradually moving analyses to higher levels of abstraction.

Barrios et al. (2021) applied the first four steps of Winker and Degele's (2011) intersectional analysis method to their qualitative, grounded theory examination of a racially diverse group of women's experiences of leaving abusive relationships. Specifically, they first (a) coded for identity constructions, (b) coded for symbolic representations, (c) coded for social structures, and then (d) created central categories across the three previous levels using a deductive approach. The authors did not apply the last eight steps, citing the inability to do so due to the study being a secondary analysis and thus not being able to ask participants questions related to these last steps. However, as will later be reflected in experiences of the present paper's first author, not applying these final steps may also be due to a lack of clarity on how to do so.

Intersectionality and Social Work Feminist Scholarship

Recently, Matszuka et al. (2021) conducted a systematic review and assessed the application of intersectionality in social work research, using guidelines developed by Moradi and Grzanka (2017) for the “responsible stewardship of intersectionality.” Across the 33 studies included in the sample, Matszuka et al. (2021) found that social work scholarship varied in its alignment with the guidelines. Most of the studies provided clarity as to their knowledge production, utilized measures or methods that captured intersectional experience, emphasized the operation of power and privilege, and made social justice recommendations. However, there were problematic gaps in social work scholarship. Most of the studies did not credit Black women for the origination of intersectionality as a concept, did not offer a critical analysis of power and privilege, and did not use methods that created social justice as opposed to just stating social justice needs. Matszuka et al. (2021) advise that for social work to be responsible in it taking up the charge of engaging in intersectional research, scholars must consider if social justice is embedded in each stage of the research process, and we must cite intersectionality's roots: Black women.

It is clear that feminist social work scholarship is subject to the many of the same ongoing mistakes and debates that occur in the wider intersectionality literature. For social work scholarship to engage in “good” intersectionality and critical feminist research practices, it is necessary for scholars to share how they’ve engaged intersectionality in their work, along with critical analysis of challenges and successes. The remainder of this paper describes why and how we have applied intersectionality in our research and the benefits we enjoyed and challenges we faced in doing so. We conclude with a comparison of our experiences and highlight next steps for social work intersectionality research.

Positionality

Quenette L. Walton

As a middle-class Black woman, the path to this work—examining depression among middle-class Black women—was intentional. First, my path to this work began when I was a practitioner working in Chicago, Illinois, a large Midwestern city, with a diverse group of Black women who had a wide range of mental health challenges but rarely sought, engaged in, or completed mental health treatment. I was left with more questions than answers about why Black women did not seek treatment, what were some of the facilitators and barriers for Black women to engage in and complete treatment, and when Black women engaged in and completed treatment, what were some of their supports. Given these questions, I pursued a doctoral degree and began to learn more about intersectionality.

Given the roots of intersectionality— “…Black feminism, women of color activism, and the historical and contemporary marginalization of intellectual contributions of women of color” (Moradi & Grzanka, 2017, p. 500)—I believe it was appropriate for me to frame the research I was conducting and continue to conduct in a way that intentionally centers the lived experiences of middle-class Black women. Centering the lived experiences of middle-class Black women through an intersectional lens allowed me to explore how race, class, and gender intersect with their unique experiences of oppression and privilege and contribute to depression among middle-class Black women.

With a desire to not only understand how oppression and privilege contributed to depression among middle-class Black women, I was also committed to understanding how oppression and privilege contributed to their engagement in mental health treatment. Thus, my research expanded to include the development of mental health interventions that are uniquely designed for middle-class Black women and recognize how their identities are constantly and simultaneously present within their body. For me, centering the lived experiences of middle-class Black women also means recognizing that the systems middle-class Black women are a part of are not mutually exclusive. Further, centering middle-class Black women's lived experiences means unpacking both the intersecting systems of power in their lives and their experiences of oppression, marginalization, and privilege which occur within and outside of their mental health treatment (Moradi & Grzanka, 2017).

Lastly, my path to this work was informed by the empirical evidence revealed by existing research that informed my own study design. Research has consistently shown that Black women live in social environments that are shaped by historical, political, cultural, and social forces, and the nature of these challenges and experiences is a result of the complex interaction of these social forces (Collins, 1998; Crenshaw, 1993; Settles, 2006; Thomas, 2004). Within these historical, political, cultural, and social forces, Black middle-class women's experiences with oppression and privilege have been rendered invisible because much of what we have come to know about Black women has been situated within low-income Black women's experiences. The field has failed to fully recognize Black women with intersecting identities that are both oppressed and privileged, as they have been forced to fit into frameworks that see Black women as only Black, woman, and low-income (Crenshaw, 1991; Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008). As such, intersectionality was ideal for not only centering the lived experiences of middle-class Black women but also extending the empirical evidence to include discussions about Black women that are oppressed, marginalized, and privileged. Thus, using an intersectional frame for my research was a natural next step from my practice.

In my initial study, I used grounded theory to explore depression among middle-class Black women living in Chicago, Illinois. Guided by intersectionality, Kleinman's explanatory model of illness, and person in the environment, 30 non-clinically depressed middle-class Black women engaged in individual semi-structured interviews. I found that middle-class Black women exist in a world where their race, class, and gender identities affected their perceptions of and experiences with depression. I argued that middle-class Black women's perceptions of and experiences with depression were inextricably shaped by their race, class, and gender and put forth a substantive theory, “Living in Between” (Walton, 2022), to contextualize their perceptions of and experiences with depression. Essentially, “Living in Between” was about middle-class Black women

…straddling two worlds given their identities as middle-class Black women living in the United States. One world the women described was rooted in Black cultural norms that included what it meant to be Black in the United States, how Black people should handle different experiences, and acceptable ways of coping with those experiences. The other world the women described was rooted in White, middle-class norms, which included behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that have enabled Black women to be successful, views about mental health, specifically depression, and acceptable ways to cope with depression. (Walton, 2022, p. 153)

Olubunmi Basirat Oyewuwo

My journey into engaging in a study of the experiences of Black Muslim women survivors of IPV stems from my experience in practice, my community membership, and my own identity. I came to examine IPV after learning of experiences of women in my own Nigerian Muslim community. I made this my practice focus, and I briefly worked in a shelter as a legal advocate and then as a group facilitator in a battering intervention and prevention program.

I noticed an identity gap in these practice settings. I became particularly curious as to how race, culture, and religion affected survivors’ seeking services. I saw few women who looked like me who also shared my religious background enter the shelter doors, but I knew this problem existed across communities, including my own. This led me to seek a PhD.

In reviewing the literature, I found that few articles addressed the experiences of Black Muslim women. Of the studies that examined the experiences of Muslim women, only a few included Black Muslim women in their sample. Of studies that examined the experiences of Black women and religion, again, only a few included Black Muslim women in their sample. I was also interested in exploring more than just the experiences of Black Muslim women; I was curious about how their social identity and the experiences they had based on their social identity shaped their experiences.

As a Black Muslim woman, I am acutely aware of the entangled nature of gender, race, and religion in my everyday experiences. I am aware of how my identity renders me hypervisible at times and completely invisible at others and how this is not a product of one aspect of my identity alone. I am also aware that at times, there are aspects of my identity that become more salient in certain situations than others. I related to intersectionality as a framework for understanding social identity, as it very much describes my own movement in the world. Although Crenshaw (1991) did not intend for intersectionality to be an identity theory, she does note that there is a need to “…account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed” (p. 1245).

My preliminary study examined the relationship between race, gender, religion, and domestic violence coping processes among an ethnically diverse sample of Black Muslim women recruited in Chicago (Oyewuwo-Gassikia, 2017). In this grounded theory study, I utilized intersectionality and coping as theoretical frameworks and employed community-based recruitment strategies. Six Black Muslim women enrolled in the study. Participants were asked to complete an initial interview, a follow-up interview, and a member-check. I found that women's coping strategies included seeking help, saying no, pacifying, and leaving, and I argued that coping processes were shaped by individualized perceptions of what it meant to be a “Good Muslim Woman” (GMW). GMW was a contested identity construction that varied in meaning among the women and was reflective of sociocultural and structural influences. I concluded that women's efforts to be the GMW influenced their understanding and recognition of violence, their responses to violence (which included resisting it), and their healing processes. Detailed findings of this study are published elsewhere (Oyewuwo-Gassikia, 2020; Oyewuwo, 2020)

To improve service delivery, research has to go beyond understanding how and why women seek or do not seek services; research must include understanding of the social environment and how structural forces such as race and gender shape these experiences. Experiences of discrimination, oppression, and privilege need to be considered when examining how women navigate their personal safety. Further, the systems that women seek out for safety also need to be examined for how they perpetuate and emulate the oppressions of the structural environment. Because intersectionality allowed me to explore individual-level experience while connecting experience to structural realities, the utilization of it as a framework and method resonated with me.

Application of Intersectionality in Research

In this section, we present how we applied intersectionality to our research with middle-class Black women with depression and Black Muslim women survivors of IPV. We describe the scholarship that informed our research, how we engaged intersectionality, and the benefits and limitations of its application.

Middle-Class Black Women

I frame my work on middle-class Black women with depression through an intersectional lens because of my positionality and because of my views on how I believe knowledge is developed. I recognize that how knowledge is developed is influenced by how I approach the scholarship to inform my work, how I engaged with the literature on middle-class Black women with depression, how engagement with the literature prompted the work and methods on middle-class Black women with depression, and the questions that arose during this process. Thus, my introduction to intersectionality was through my dissertation where I engaged intersectionality as a framework.

To understand the what and how of intersectionality, I examined bodies of literature in social work, legal studies, public health, psychology, sociology, and women and gender studies, to help me with gaining a deeper understanding. First, I wanted to know how intersectionality was defined, the historical context of the word, how intersectionality was applied, and how intersectionality was applied specifically with Black women in general and middle-class Black women specifically. As a result, there were several foundational pieces that led me to understand how intersectionality was defined and applied as a framework: double and triple jeopardy (Beal, 1969; Collins, 1990; King, 1988), the Combahee River Collective statement (1977), Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991), and other scholars (Cho et al., 2013; Guy-Sheftall, 1995, Jordan-Zachery, 2007; Samuels & Ross-Sheriff, 2008; Settles, 2006).

My initial search of intersectionality began with understanding the terms “double jeopardy” and “triple jeopardy” in relation to Black women's lives. Because double jeopardy was first introduced in the 1850s and focused on Black women's experiences with racism and sexism in America (Beal, 1969; Collins, 1990; King, 1988), I began to have more questions about how class was understood in relation to the discrimination Black women experienced. These questions led me to Frances Beal's articulation of double jeopardy which was expounded on by scholars who incorporated Black women's experiences with class discrimination because of the low wages they earned and the poorest conditions in which they worked (Beal, 1969; King, 1988). Building upon Maria Stewart's, Sojourner Truth's, and Frances Beal's writings, I was led to the Combahee River Collective (1977) statement, which solidified my initial understanding of intersectionality and the consequences of the interlocking systems of oppression that adversely impacted Black women's social, emotional, political, and economic lives (Guy-Sheftall, 1995). By intentionally centering Black women's interlocking oppressions because of their race, class, and gender, this made using intersectionality as a frame even more important for deeply understanding middle-class Black women's experiences in America with depression. Yet, what was missing from these discussions on defining intersectionality was the how, specifically what steps one can take to use intersectionality as a frame.

Given the Combahee River Collective's (1977) approach to the interlocking systems of oppression Black women in America experience, I was then introduced to Kimberlé Crenshaw's (1989) important piece, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. In this piece, Crenshaw (1989) introduced the ways in which Black women have been marginalized within antidiscrimination law, as well as feminist and antiracist theories. Crenshaw positioned Black women at the center of her work because Black women were often compared to White women and Black men within the legal system. In this piece, Crenshaw (1989) began to define and link the structural impact of intersectionality with key individual factors.

Following, I examined Crenshaw's (1991) piece, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color to see how intersectionality was applied. In her application of intersectionality as a framework, Crenshaw paid particular attention to the vulnerabilities of Black women including those who were socially disadvantaged due to their race, class, and gender. By paying attention to the vulnerabilities of Black women, we recognize that Black women who are also socially disadvantaged because of their race and gender can also be disadvantaged because of their class. Thus, my work focuses on middle-class Black women and the reality of them living at the margins of social vulnerability despite their assumed class advantages.

Although there is little consensus on defining middle-class Blacks, scholars use education, occupation, and income to define middle class (Lacy, 2007; Pattillo-McCoy, 1999). As such, middle-class Black women were eligible to participate in my study if they earned a college degree or higher, earned $40,000 or more, and held a professional, managerial, technical, or administrative job. It should be noted that despite being considered middle class because of a college degree, an income greater than $40,000, and a professional position, the middle-class Black women in my study were still impacted by the historical legacies of discrimination (e.g. redlining and racial residential segregation). Further, the consequences of the historical legacies of discrimination highlight the gap in wealth between Blacks and Whites and illuminate how the middle-class Black women in my study were placed in a position where their financial situations caused strain or became precarious and ultimately, as Sacks et al. (2020) noted, changed so fast. Thus, intersectionality was an ideal frame for me to use within my work. And it was through Crenshaw's illustration of intersectionality as a framework that informed my definition of the term and my continued desire to understand how intersectionality helped frame other research studies with Black women who lived both privileged and oppressed lives.

It was also important for me to see how intersectionality was being used to frame Black women's lives. It was Settles’s (2006) scholarship on using an intersectional framework to understand Black women's racial and gender identities. Settles (2006) used a mixed method design to attempt to disentangle Black women's racial and gender identities. Settles (2006), like many scholars during this time, noted—descriptively—that “Black women placed equal importance on their race and gender, but the black-woman identity was rated as more important than either the black or woman identities” (p. 597). What was still missing from this framing, for me, was the how. As such, I turned to Jordan-Zachery's (2007) and Cho et al.’s (2013) scholarship.

The work of Jordan-Zachery (2007) helped me with explaining how the social construction of Black women's identities within America make them both privileged and oppressed within and outside of their communities. Jordan-Zachery (2007) helped me think about and name the social construction of Black women's experiences with depression and use this frame to guide my work. Likewise, Cho et al.'s (2013) work extended my understanding of how to use intersectionality as a frame. These scholars helped me move past the descriptive part of using intersectionality as a frame to using intersectionality as a frame to “…address larger ideological structures in which subjects, problems, and solutions were framed specifically for middle-class Black women” (Cho et al., 2013, 791). However, like other scholars I have read, I was only able to go so far with applying intersectionality as a frame because each scholar I read had their own interpretation of intersectionality which in turn informed how they applied intersectionality as a frame. Thus, I struggled with a clear way on how to apply intersectionality as a frame. As a novice scholar, I was skilled in conceptualizing intersectionality, yet shaky with applying it.

Given the scholars that have informed my work in using intersectionality as a framework, I pulled from them to help me with calling attention to the particularities of Black women (Cho et al., 2013). I intentionally centered middle-class Black women's lived experiences in a way that examined their identities at the nexus of their privileges and tensions of their lives. I used what Crenshaw (1989) describes in Demarginalizing as a frame in my study, as what I was most interested in for middle-class Black women with depression “…was an explicitly interventionist response to the institutional and political discourses that largely ignored these issues for Black women of middle-class status (i.e. race, class, and gender issues; p. 790).” In other words, I used intersectionality to frame my work on middle-class Black women as a response to the empirical evidence and discourse about a group of Black women that have largely been ignored. My goal in this search was not only to think about the problem middle-class Black women had with depression but to also think about possible solutions. Thus, intersectionality for me was used to both frame and describe problems of inequality and to work toward identifying concrete solutions to help middle-class Black women be well.

There were three key benefits for me in using intersectionality as a frame for my work. First, intersectionality allowed me to examine the social, emotional, political, and economic lived experiences of a group of women that are often overlooked within research: middle-class Black women. Second, using intersectionality as a frame helped me critique differences and challenge the functioning of race, class, and gender given the many oppressive structures Black women confront (Jordan-Zachery, 2007). In using intersectionality as a frame, I was challenged to wrestle with my own identity and think about the ways in which my own privileges and oppression were present in my life. In many ways, I was not removed from the research I was conducting given my own intersecting identities. Yet, I was doing and continue to do research that is positioning Black women for their survival and hopefully their liberation (Jordan-Zachery, 2007). Lastly, intersectionality allows me to investigate the lives of middle-class Black women from a both/and perspective. Similar to Jordan-Zachery's (2007) approach, I use intersectionality as a frame to help explain middle-class Black women's experiences with depression and the various factors that influence their experiences to enable my examination of how the social construction of middle-class Black women

makes them simultaneously invisible and hypervisible to members within their own community and to those outside of their community. By considering the social construction of these women, and its usage both within and outside of their communities, I believe that I am better able to understand and explain why there is little to minimum resistance against these policies that tend to treat black, middle-class, women substantially different from white women who are also middle-class. (p. 257)

As a frame, intersectionality offers flexibility with contextualizing the lived experiences of Black women who sit at the center of multiple oppressions and privileges. Intersectionality allowed me to tell a different story about what it means to be Black, a woman, and middle class in America. However, I was only able to go so far, because there was no clear direction on “how” to use intersectionality as a frame and many scholars who have used intersectionality did not articulate how their work contributed to Black women and their communities’ liberation (Jordan-Zachery, 2007).

Despite the benefits of using intersectionality as a frame, there were some limitations that cannot be overlooked given my role as a novice scholar at the time of this research and my desire of wanting a guide on “how to” use intersectionality. First, the scholarship I used to help me define and apply intersectionality was limited in its ability to provide a “how to” in using intersectionality as a framework. Further, the scholarship I relied upon to help me frame my work drew more from the fields of psychology, women and gender studies, sociology, and very few pieces from the field of social work which possibly led to missed opportunities to have a guide to frame my work through an intersectional lens coupled with the foundations of social work scholarship. In their astute assessment of intersectionality as a field, Cho et al. (2013) note that intersectional scholarship coalesces around three key areas: applications, theoretical and methodological paradigms, and political interventions employing an intersectional lens. What these scholars noted is that despite the wide range of disciplines using intersectionality, its use has primarily been academic and has missed the opportunity to “…go beyond mere comprehension of intersectional dynamics to transform them” (Cho et al., 2013) in a way that is discipline specific, contextually rich, and can exist simultaneously inside and outside of the academic walls. As such, I was only able to go so far.

Black Muslim Women

Approximately one in three women have experienced physical violence, rape, or stalking by an IPV in their lifetime (Black et al., 2011). IPV is not specific to any one sociocultural group; however, sociocultural and structural factors may shape how survivors navigate safety (Cheng et al., 2022; Cho, Shamrova et al., 2017; Monterrosa, 2021; Oyewuwo-Gassikia, 2016, 2020; Waller et al., 2022). As such, it is imperative that research on IPV reflect the diversity of survivors, including American Muslims.

American Muslims’ experiences of IPV are a growing area of study. However, while a fifth of the American Muslim population are Black (Mohamed & Diamant, 2019), few studies on American Muslims and IPV include Black Muslims in their sample. Thus, my dissertation examined how social identity shapes how Black Muslim women respond to IPV, engaging intersectionality as both a framework and a method. In considering the use of intersectionality, I pulled sources from across a variety of disciplines, examining how they defined intersectionality, engaged intersectionality as a framework, and utilized intersectionality as a method.

My introduction to intersectionality was from Crenshaw (1991). Crenshaw applies intersectionality as a framework for understanding the experiences of women of color who experience domestic violence and sexual assault. Crenshaw highlights the barriers to safety that are further created from essentializing just race or just gender as social justice concerns. By ignoring the marginalization, a survivor may experience on account of her race or gender, those working toward racial justice and feminists create further marginalization. Crenshaw served as my ontological foundation; the piece named intersectionality as being.

Crenshaw (1991) also provided me with a framework for examining social location and interrogating societal forces that shape individual-level lived experience. Given my focus on Black Muslim women, and the recognition that this group also experiences religious discrimination, intersectionality was a relevant frame to contextualize their experiences of violence. Crenshaw provided me with a framework for examining how multiple social identity categories shape women's experiences of violence and help-seeking, leading me to identify my central research question: how does a Black Muslim woman's identity influence how she responds to domestic violence?

Lisa Bowleg (2012) provided a concrete definition of intersectionality that helped me articulate how I wanted to examine the connection between individual-level experience and the structural environment. Bowleg's definition of intersectionality also informed my visual representation of my guiding theoretical framework that connected social identity to IPV response. According to Bowleg (2012),

intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how multiple social identities such as race, gender, sexual orientation, [socioeconomic status], and disability intersect at the 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. (p. 1267)

Leslie McCall (2005) outlined a continuum of approaches, or epistemologies, to intersectionality, for which there are three distinct points that differ in “how they understand and use analytical categories to explore the complexity of intersectionality in social life” (p. 1773): anticategorical complexity, intracategorical complexity, and intercategorical (categorical) complexity. Intracategorical complexity resonated with me as an orientation for my work for a number of reasons. First, intracategorical complexity conceptualization came from Black feminists and initiated the study of intersectionality. Given the historical origins of the term, this form of intersectionality seemed most conceptually pure to me. Additionally, intersectionality was conceptualized by Black women about the experiences of Black women, and I am a Black woman who was studying Black women; thus, it felt imperative that I utilize this framing of intersectionality. Further, Black Muslim women's experiences with IPV were almost invisible in the literature, and the intracategorical approach is often used to focus on particular social groups at neglected points of intersection “…in order to reveal the complexity of lived experience within such groups” (McCall, 2005, p. 1774). Lastly, the in-betweenness of the intracategorical approach aligned with how I view the social environment. Like the anticategorical approach, the intracategorical approach recognizes that identity is socially constructed and allows the questioning of social identity categories. And like the intercategorical approach, intracategorical approaches acknowledge both the durability and the consequences of these categories. As such, intersectionality allowed me to name systems of oppression, recognizing that they are socially constructed but have real implications for people's lives.

I was– also invested in using intersectionality as a method, and so, as a new researcher, I sought out the methodological “how-to” guide for it. I understood intersectionality as a frame—it guided my questions, and it guided my ontological and epistemological assumptions—but I was not clear on how to do intersectionality as a method given that I had already chosen grounded theory as my method. Charmaz's (2006) constructivist grounded theory and Winker and Degele (2011) multi-level intersectionality analysis method provided this structure for me.

I pulled from a number of sources to engage grounded theory, but my method most aligned with Charmaz's (2006) constructivist grounded theory approach. Charmaz notes that constructivist grounded theory is flexible and adaptable, which made my application of intersectionality as a method alongside grounded theory methodologically acceptable. Further, I used both inductive and deductive strategies in my analysis (Hennick et al., 2011), and I was explicit in my interest in race, gender, and religious identity while also being open to other identity categories and ideas that emerged from the data.

I followed the iterative stages of grounded theory analysis: open coding, identifying concepts and categories, axial coding, and selective coding. I allowed my research questions as well as my intersectional framing to guide my analysis. I applied Winker and Degele's (2011) method to analyzing my category called “intersectionality.”

Specifically, I applied the first four steps of Winker and Degele's (2011) method to this category. This began by coding for (a) identity constructions, (b) symbolic representations, and then (c) references to social structures. In the fourth stage, I identified participants’ subject constructions. For each participant, I analyzed the connections between the identity constructions, symbolic representations, and social structures that I had coded in the first three stages.

I became “stuck” between steps four and five of the Winker and Degele (2011) method. In my dissertation, I explain that I began identifying subject constructions (step five), and I highlight how this step aligns with the constant comparative method that is signature to grounded theory. However, like Barrios et al. (2021) who engaged in the Winker and Degele (2011) method in their study of women's experiences of leaving abusive relationships, I did not get all the way through step five. In my case, I believe I could go no further due to the need for more instruction on how to proceed. Winker and Degele (2011) cite a publication previously written that appeared to be a promising resolve to my uncertainty, and so, as a doctoral student in search of clear instruction, I searched for the paper. However, I was humbled when I found the publication: it was written in the authors’ native language (German) and had not been translated into English.

This is where I could only go so far. At this stage, I had a hard time incorporating their steps with grounded theory. Constructivist grounded theory allows for flexibility, but I did not know how to incorporate both analyses “correctly” in a manner that made sense for my study. Further, I was applying the Winker and Degele (2011) method to one category, and I was unsure how to proceed and still make sense of the findings that had clearly emerged. I needed a guide, or at least an example, of how to do it “right.” I also felt that I had been able to capture what was necessary for the purpose of the study and my research questions without needing to proceed further through the Winker and Degele (2011) steps.

In retrospect, and in reviewing the piece again for the purpose of this manuscript, I realize now that my additional work would have been to identify, outside of what emerged from my study, sources that speak to the structural experiences participants alluded to. For example, it would have been necessary for me to further examine how immigration status facilitates or creates barriers to coping, examining policy, media, and written accounts that speak to the structural aspects of immigration. I suggest areas for further research in my discussion that could get at Winker and Degele's (2011) structural level of analysis, but how to conduct such analyses in the context of my study was not clear to me (and possibly not necessary) at the time.

Intersectionality did allow me to name the existence of privilege and oppression at the onset. This included naming the analytical categories I was interested in, much in the same way it has done for others who have engaged in intersectionality as a framework. Additionally, utilizing intersectionality alongside grounded theory challenged me to remain open to the emergence of new ideas and areas of intersection that I had not deductively come in with. As a method, having a detailed step-by-step guide supported me in examining social identity in ways I had not considered. Beyond the naming of identity types, I was able to code those phrases that spoke to the roles that participants play in the performance of their identity. I was also able to link the named identities and the roles to the larger identity categories that I both deductively and inductively identified, such as race, religion, and gender. I was further able to link these three levels for each participant as well as across interviews. This also let me explore linkages between my “intersectionality” category and the other categories that emerged in my study.

My challenge with intersectionality came in applying it as a method. As a new scholar, I was in search of doing intersectionality “right.” Since then, I have come to accept what many intersectionality scholars have before me: there is plurality in doing intersectionality methodologically. However, scholars have outlined boundaries for what intersectionality is (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Hancock, 2007; Jordan-Zachery, 2007), and as such, “intersectionality methods” must meet basic intersectionality assumptions.

Discussion

Our reflections of our applications of intersectionality reflect the similar contentions in intersectionality research literature. As we describe in our reflections, intersectionality resonated with both of us because of our own social locations and the reflection of our own lived experiences as Black women, as well as the fact that we were studying the lived experiences of Black women. We both recognized the erasure of experiences of Black women in our respective topic areas. Intersectionality intentionally centers the experiences of Black women. Our works, as the second author describes, serves as a “response to the empirical evidence and discourse about Black women that have largely been ignored.”

There were some slight differences in our application, most apparent in one of our uses of intersectionality as a framework solely and the other's use of intersectionality as a framework and a method. We do not see this variation as a limitation; it just is. Other scholars have embraced these variations as part of the nature of the undertaking of intersectionality (e.g. Cho et al., 2013). And, arguably, our application varies because Black women are not a monolith.

We both went in search of the “what” and the “how” of intersectionality. We were influenced by similar scholarship, namely, Crenshaw (1989, 1991), Jordan-Zachery (2007), the Combahee River Collective (1977), and Collins (1990). We examined literature across disciplines. However, the extent to which we found the “how” left us with questions in the end. We came to understand how to describe the intersectional reality, but we both felt something was lacking. And as we revisit our process now, we realize that this was a natural progression in scholarship and that it is now our charge to use our initial work as a springboard for what true intersectionality research must incorporate: liberation. As Jordan-Zachery (2007) observes, “as the concept of intersectionality has advanced, at times it appears that the second component—a liberation framework—has been lost” (p. 256).

We have multiple examples from the literature on what intersectionality is conceptually. However, there are limited examples on how to engage in intersectionality as liberation, particularly in the social work field. How do we liberate through research? And can we?

Matsuzaka et al. (2021) offer insightful suggestions for how to advance intersectionality scholarship in social work. Their suggestions mirror Moradi and Grzanka's (2017) seventh guideline, “envision[ing] social justice research and activism as inextricable and recursive while acknowledging our privilege and responsibility to use research, teaching, practice, and activism as forces of positive social change” (p. 508). First, social work must acknowledge and interrupt the exclusion of the scholarship of women of color and Black women in particular. This includes both the historical roots of intersectionality and Black women scholars who employ intersectionality in their research today. Our scholarship is not merely “in addition to” nor should it only appear in social work “social justice” courses. It is truth, and it should be centered in a field that claims to be social justice oriented.

Additionally, our new task needs to be in “equal[ly] emphasi[zing] intersectionality's role as critical praxis” (Matsuzaka et al., 2021, p. 166). This involves returning to intersectionality's roots in activism and sociopolitical action (Hancock, 2016; Matsuzaka et al., 2021). Concretely, Matsuzaka et al.’s (2021) offer “engaging entities outside of academia, such as artists, political groups, activists, and community organizers, within intersectional research” (p. 167).

We also posit some ways for doing. Researchers must wrestle with the question, who should be doing this work and how should it be done? If I am an insider, what does liberation look like that is sustainable for the communities in which I research? If I am an outsider, how do I engage in intersectionality for liberation? Additionally, we must be intentional about disseminating our research in community settings. We realize that this is not easy to do as one must have not only access but, arguably, belonging to the community should we not intend to do further harm.

We must also engage in the sociopolitical ramifications of our work and consider implications on the policy level. For example, Jordan-Zachery (2007) examines the social construction of Black women's identities experiences both in relation to dominant society and within Black communities. She connects these findings to oppressive policies and offers a political framework for analysis.

We must also bring intersectionality into the classroom, as is a requirement per the 2022 Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (Council on Social Work Education, 2022). We must apply intersectionality scholarship across all educational levels and curricula areas. There are scholars within the field of social work who are actively and critically engaging with intersectionality as a framework and a method across research and practice areas. We should incorporate their work into the classroom, invite them to speak to students, and consider projects and assignments that would require students to read their scholarship. To teach intersectionality, we must understand intersectionality. This requires us all to read foundational and contemporary works, engage in critical discourse with diverse scholars of intersectionality, and learn from scholars who are doing intersectionality as a framework and a method with a goal of liberation.

Social workers are trained to work with the most marginalized, oppressed, and vulnerable populations (National Association of Social Workers, 2021). Liberation also includes formulating and applying practice recommendations at all levels of practice—micro, mezzo, and macro—that are explicitly informed by intersectionality (Hudson & Mehrotra, 2021).

Conclusion

Our processes of engaging intersectionality are reflective of the still emerging nature of intersectionality scholarship in social work. Given the contexts in which we presently live, it is necessary that we move this scholarship forward. To advance critical feminist social work scholarship, we need intentional action to go beyond description, contend with how to “do” intersectionality, and set our sights on liberation.

We provided reflections of how we came to understand and engage intersectionality as a framework and method in our preliminary studies, noting the necessity of intersectionality in producing our studies’ findings while also acknowledging the limits to our understanding of how to apply intersectionality as a framework and method. We identified liberation as the next step for how to truly engage in intersectional research, outlining recommendations for how the field of social work can do so across research, teaching, policy, and education.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

As we reflect on the work we’ve done to get this piece to publication, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge those who supported and influenced our journey: our families, the women who participated in our studies and trusted us enough to share their stories with us, the foremothers of intersectionality, our mentors, and the Affilia reviewers. Our sincerest gratitude.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Olubunmi Basirat Oyewuwo

Quenette L. Walton

Author Biographies

Olubunmi Basirat Oyewuwo, PhD, LMSW is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Northeastern Illinois University. Her research focuses on improving the health and well-being outcomes of women, as well as Black, Muslim, and immigrant communities. Her primary line of research employs an intersectional lens to examine the intimate partner violence experiences of American Muslims using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW is an assistant professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her research focuses on social class, gender, culture, and race as intersectional social determinants of health and mental health disparities. The aims of her research program are to build knowledge and develop theory that informs policies, practices, culturally relevant, and evidence-based interventions to reduce depression and improve well-being among middle-class Black women.

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“We Can Only Go So Far”: Employing Intersectionality in Research with Middle-Class Black Women and Black Muslim Women

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Brief History of Intersectionality

Intersectionality as a Research Enterprise

Intersectionality as a Framework

Intersectionality as a Method

Intersectionality and Social Work Feminist Scholarship

Positionality

Quenette L. Walton

Olubunmi Basirat Oyewuwo

Application of Intersectionality in Research

Middle-Class Black Women

Black Muslim Women

Discussion

Conclusion

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Author Biographies

References