Addressing Double Disadvantage: The Politics of Intersectionality in Germany
23 Pages Posted: 28 Aug 2014
Date Written: 2014
Abstract
This paper introduces an edited volume addressing the question "when and why do political elites address the (perceived) needs of women belonging to disempowered social categories?" We systematically examine a range of social intersections while holding the national institutional setting constant. We focus our attention on one particular polity – the Federal Republic of Germany – and explore the experiences of a range of doubly-disadvantaged groups in obtaining policy responses. This allows us to go beyond the well-established focus on gender and ethno-religious minorities in Western Europe (although we do include case studies on this subject) and broaden our empirical scope to study working-class women, disabled women, lesbians, women in the military, a regional minority (Eastern German women), and the intersexed. Limiting our study to a single country allows us to compare the ability of women from a range of social groups to access the political system. We seek to inspire other scholars to undertake studies in this vein elsewhere to allow the field of political science to draw additional, generalizable conclusions about the politics of intersectionality.
Keywords: intersectionality, Germany
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