The indispensability of Intersectionality

The 2020s constitute a period of global turmoil in which attempts to ‚build back better‘ will have to start from the recognition that it marked a period of unexpected transformational conjunctions. Movements to redress social inequities gained unprecedented recognition because COVID-19; the USA murder of George Floyd and climate change activism all forced inequalities into popular consciousness and enabled different accounts to be heard in mainstream media. These three issues were not unitary, but signifiers of complex, polyvalent issues that must be understood intersectionally. It is not surprising that already burgeoning theorisations of intersectionality were both taken up and disputed.

This lecture argues for the indispensability of intersectionality to understanding these issues and that these transformational conjunctions also help to move on theorisations and applications of intersectionality. It theorises the big picture that characterises inequalities in 2021 and the complexity of gendered inequalities in that picture. It punctuates that big picture with research examples from a range of research studies including transitions to motherhood for Muslim, white and black mothers, environment in the lives of families and boys and masculinities. The lecture will argue that such everyday examples are central to understanding the big picture of the polyvalence of gendered, racialised, ethnicised relations.