Intersectionality and Voting Rights

Abstract

<jats:p>One hundred years after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the ability of women to effectively exercise the right to vote is far from guaranteed. Although 1920 may mark the historical moment when women’s suffrage was added to the Constitution, the past century has been rife with obstacles preventing many women, particularly women of color, from exercising their right to vote. Scholars have noted that for these women, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was pivotal in more fully securing the right to vote (Hewitt 2010; Junn and Brown 2008; Montoya 2018; Smooth 2006). With a resurgence in voter-suppression efforts and a US Supreme Court ruling that weakened the VRA, voting rights again are imperiled. Although the role of race and class justifiably have been placed at the center of analysis, little attention has been given to the potential gendered considerations. This article argues that gender is still a salient part of the story, and intersectional analysis is necessary for a more thorough understanding of the impact that restrictive laws might have in order to counter them.</jats:p>

Bayesian Multilevel Modeling for the Intersections of Race and Gender

“…The intellectual lineage of scholars of color describing these intersections is long; however, Crenshaw coined the term and approach in a way that has been widely disseminated in academic circles and politics alike (Davis 2008;Cho, Crenshaw and McCall 2013). 3 Americanists using intersectionality have used it to explain: the race-gendering of women of color in political institutions such as Congress (Hawkesworth 2003;Smooth 2011;Brown 2012), political behavior of women of color (Junn and Masuoka 2008;Junn 2017;Junn and Masuoka 2020;Brown 2014;Ojeda and Slaughter 2019), voting rights (Montoya 2020), interrogating U.S. democracy (García Bedolla 2007), and political atti-tudes of different racial groups of women (Frasure-Yokley 2018;Gershon et al 2019). Researchers have also sought to apply intersectionality in the comparative context (Weldon 2006), and have created better datasets for intersectional analysis (Barreto et al 2018).…”

This is What Democracy Looks Like: Racial Identity, Anger, and the Political Behavior of White Women

“…When an issue is neither racialized nor gendered, there is relationship between white consciousness regardless of gender group. These results contribute to the growing body of knowledge surrounding the effects of overlapping layers of identity, power, and subordination (Hancock 2007;Brown 2014;Montoya 2020) by addressing how gender and white racial identity influence white men and women's opinions on political issues.…”

“…While we have long known about the importance of group identity; individuals do not belong to just one group. Newer research accounts for multiple layers of identity and argues against using approaches that account for only one identity because they fail to address the complexity of human behavior and the effects of overlapping statuses (Hancock 2007;Brown 2014;Montoya 2020). Therefore, this examines the intersection of gender and strength of white racial identity, while controlling for socioeconomic status variables (e.g., income and education).…”

“…Recent racial, ethnic, and gender politics literature highlights the need to pay closer attention to the effects of being a member of multiple categories of inequality-such as being a minority woman-as the identities work in concert to affect political behavior (Brown 2014;Montoya 2020). We know that expressed levels of gender linked fate are less stable than racial linked fate and that marital status affects the level of linked fate expressed by Latina and white women but not Black women (Stout, Kretschmer, & Ruppanner 2017).…”