Before we are going to characterize the target groups of our sustainable development projects and/or climate justice initiatives, it is important to reflect on the intersectionality approach and its meaning for our work.
“Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The term was conceptualized and coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989.” (Wikipedia. Retrieved 20.07.2021)
“Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, an in human experiences. The events and conditions f social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single exis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axis that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves.” (Patricia Hill Collings & Sirma Bilge, 2018).
Generally, intersectionality is being used as an analytic tool highlighting that social divisions of class, race, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, sexuality, and ability do not operate as discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each other and work together.”
Hill and Bilge also pose six core ideas that “appear and reappear when people use intersectionality as an analytical tool: inequality, relationality, power, social context, complexity, and social justice.”
Please, watch the following short video (6 min) to listen to different voices and their points of view regarding to intersectionality (6 min):
The following article addresses the linkage between intersectionality and climate justice:
“Intersectionality is often used as a lens to look at particular structures or social problems in our world. So, when you’re asking yourself if something is Intersectional, it comes down to asking yourself if what you’re examining utilizes a broad-spectrum worldview about the diverse experiences of different kinds of people.” (Source: Climate conscious. See article below).
Read more here:
Intersectional Environmentalism: A Crash Course. Who, how, and why of Intersectional Environmentalism.
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/intersectional-environmentalism-a-crash-course-6a0c495ace91
If you want to explore further about intersectionality, here you find some texts:
“Intersectionality” from Patricia Hill Collings & Sirma Bilge, 2018.