The term intersectionality was originally introduced by Crenshaw1 to highlight how Black women’s experiences were marginalized via erasure within feminist movements. Using intersectional analysis, Crenshaw and others identified the modal “woman’s experience” of oppression as a quintessentially White woman’s experience in the absence of any consideration of race, as was common in early second-wave feminist organizing. Since Crenshaw’s initial formulation, intersectionality has been extrapolated beyond gender and race to consider how many individual factors intersect with and impact each other in the lives of individuals and communities. Today, intersectionality is a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding the ways in which gender identity, gender expression, race/ethnicity, disability, class, age, and other social identities interweave in their impact on health and well-being.2,3 Acknowledging that interwoven forms of marginalization cannot be reduced to one particular factor, an intersectional approach considers how simultaneously belonging within multiple marginalized groups informs how one is impacted by marginalization.4
Intersectionality in Physical Activity Research
Evidence from White settler colonies, such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, as well as racially and ethnically diverse parts of the world consistently suggests that participation in regular physical activity, including sport, is the highest among well educated, wealthy, cis-heterosexual White, able-bodied men above all others.5,6 Barriers to physical activity participation in relation to race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, ability, class, and other social position factors have predominantly been investigated using qualitative methods.7 This qualitative preponderance is partly attributable to a premise of intersectionality that social positions and relevant experiences cannot neatly fit into ordinal scales for metric statistical analysis.8 Nonetheless, one recent scoping review investigating the operationalization of intersectionality in physical activity research9 suggested that intersectionality may also serve as a useful framework in quantitative research. In particular, elucidating complex processes of individual- and social–structural-level factors that drive inequalities in physical activity participation in population-based, large-scale surveys could better inform more inclusive physical activity promotion policies and programs. In addition to the need for quantitative research applying intersectionality, the authors9 of the review also suggested that intersectionality-based investigation in physical activity contexts has largely been limited to investigating the sex/gender + race/ethnicity dyad; thus, investigating varying axes of marginalization beyond the sex/gender + race/ethnicity dyad is important. Two recent reviews of qualitative studies examining LGBTQ+ adults’ intersectionality-based experiences in sport settings10,11 also highlighted that more intersectional research is required to better understand how more individuals with different memberships within marginalized groups can have quality opportunities and experience in physical activity. More recently, Joseph et al’s12 scoping review on racialized women in sport in Canada reiterated the importance of considering intersectional identities, suggesting that there is a lack of or no evidence investigating intersectionality-based experiences in sport beyond the sex/gender + race/ethnicity dyad (eg, no studies found focusing on the experience of sport among racialized trans women).
Bridging Intersectionality With Quantitative Research
Complex processes and mechanisms of individual- and social–structural-level factors that drive inequalities in physical activity participation could be better elucidated by incorporating intersectionality into quantitative research.9 Quantitative methodology has unique strengths. First, the use of large and representative population-based data that are quantifiable could help establish strong evidence for causality and generalization.13,14 If intersectionality is appropriately operationalized in quantitative research, the knowledge generated could precisely identify the main drives and potential solutions for inequalities in physical activity participation. Further, quantitative methodology enables researchers to analyze and represent a wide range of individuals’ social identities and positions with sufficient statistical power.15 For example, a study examining intersectional health inequalities16 analyzed 96 possible combinations of gender (women/men), race/ethnicity/immigrant status (Black/White/Latinx immigrant/Latinx nonimmigrant), parental education (high/middle/low), low income (yes/no), and sexual identities (straight/nonstraight). Second, the operationalization of intersectionality in quantitative research allows researchers to document inequalities within more intersectionally marginalized groups and analyze the individual- and structural-level factors of social inequalities that shape individuals’ experiences and life.3 This is particularly important for physical activity research because to better understand barriers to physical activity, it is necessary to identify structural-level and macrolevel influence (eg, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and classism) and their interactions with individual-level and microlevel factors (eg, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, age, ability, income, and education). Such importance is also highlighted in recent publications in physical activity research.9,12,17–19
Methodological Challenges
Quantitative methodology possesses inherent challenges in capturing complex and intersecting power and oppression that influence health outcomes, for example, lack of appropriate measures3; use of static, discrete, and categorical data20; simplification of categories for statistical analysis21; and the flattening of intersectionality in statistical analysis and interpretation.22
In quantitative research, socially positioned barriers to physical activity have been investigated, but have treated each social position as distinct phenomena. Such approaches to studying marginalization are consistent with monistic theories of social inequality that privilege one aspect of social position over others, such as Marxist class theories that neglect gender or earlier feminist theories that isolated gender-based oppression from other aspects that shape women’s lives.23 A recent scoping review9 suggested that only 2 quantitative studies have examined intersectionality in physical activity.24,25 These studies evinced several methodological limitations such as dichotomizing of a race variable (ie, White vs non-White), obscuring considerable diversity, and lacking a broad-spectrum gender variable. The homogenization of various social identities can render experiences of marginalized groups invisible and contribute to failing to capture the fluid and dynamic nature of intersectional group memberships.
Another major challenge of quantitative intersectionality is the measures relying on self-identifying information. Two previous studies utilizing quantitative intersectionality5,25 used participants’ responses to self-identifying questions on different social identities to categorize participants into the most to least privileged. Therefore, individuals with more marginalizing characteristics (eg, men of color with low income) are automatically considered to be more disadvantageous than individuals with less marginalizing characteristics (eg, women of color with high income). However, this does not fully capture the complexity of intersectionality and intersectional experiences. Many studies of social inequity or discrimination, including those claiming an intersectional framework, use the concept of “identity” to index the grounds of inequity or discrimination,2,9,20 where “identity” is generally understood to be an internal sense of one’s self or personal connection to one’s cultural heritage. However, particularly in physical activity contexts, recognizing how discrimination and other forms of harm frequently occur based on aspects of the self that are legible and visually or otherwise interpreted by others, regardless of one’s identities, could play a vital role in better understanding individuals’ experiences in those spaces. For example, previous research26 has shown that being perceived by others to be gender nonconforming, regardless of one’s gender or sexual identity, yields indistinguishably negative outcomes for transgender and cisgender individuals, as well as for heterosexual and nonheterosexual individuals, indicating that identity may have little bearing on individuals’ experiences despite decades of identity-based research on homophobia and transphobia therein.27,28 Furthermore, research on the experiences of workers with disabilities has linked invisible disability with secure employment and visible disability with unemployment, indicating that the perception of ability may have more of an impact on employment than having any disability at all.29 Finally, having a particular ethnic identity (eg, Korean, Laotian, or Han Chinese) has been found to have virtually no impact on experiences of (eg, anti-Asian) racism, which depends upon the racialization of all people legible as such into one homogeneous category,29 to the extent that qualitative studies of racial microaggressions experienced by Asian people of multiplicitous ethnicities routinely do not identify sample ethnicity.30
Additive nature of quantitative measures, thus the additive approach to analysis and interpretation, is another challenge. Two previous studies5,25 used conventional statistical analyses in applying intersectionality in their investigation: multiple main relationships (ie, additive approach), multiple regressions with interaction terms, and stratification. Multiple main relationships are rooted in the argument that experiences of Black women are considered double discriminations (eg, double jeopardy), while the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism.21 In the statistical analysis of race, gender, and sexual orientation, for example, the main relationship model separately yields the relationships between each identity variable and an outcome of interest. However, social identities are not mutually exclusive; experiences of a Black + experiences of a Lesbian + experiences of a woman do not equate to the experiences of a Black lesbian woman.21 Therefore, using the additive approach, quantitative studies only produce results of multiple main relationships that cannot capture the intersections of multiple factors.21 Use of multiple regressions with interaction terms and stratification generally produces more complex findings but involves less statistical power than the test of main relationships. In the analysis procedure, a multiple regression (ie, additive approach) must be performed and then interaction terms are tested, which means that the probability of finding statistically significant interactive relationships is contingent on the size of the main relationships.21,22
Moving Forward
The intersectionality framework allows researchers to consider both the influence of microlevel social identities and the social positions and processes that produce social/structural inequalities (eg, income and educational inequalities) in physical activity contexts. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative scholarships, future research should challenge quantitative methods that have treated varying social position factors as distinct phenomena and urge quantitative researchers to reconceptualize what constitutes evidentiary strength. Furthermore, making intersectional experiences visible and developing rigorous methods for collecting quantitative data on the magnitude and distribution of multiple layers of marginalizations will advance understanding about unique barriers to physical activity among individuals with intersectional identities.
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