Intersectionality: designing research processes for transformative change

Ensuring gender-research processes are transformative is a radical undertaking. These processes begin with the intentional actions of committed gender researchers to establish best practices and new standards for ‘doing gender’ research in food, land and water systems. People’s identities are complex and entail much more than being men or women, young or old, rich or poor. These categories converge to create—depending on situational contexts—very different experiences of power, discrimination, opportunity and indeed life itself. So where can a researcher start if they want to adopt a more intersectional approach?

The concept of intersectionality originated in critical race theory and feminist activism, and is now starting to enter mainstream research methodologies in agrifood systems. At their best, intersectional data production and analyses expand our understanding of how social identities combine with power relations to shape processes of marginalization, disadvantage and disempowerment—and how to challenge and turn them around to become processes for empowerment.

There is a risk that intersectionality becomes just another variable in research analysis: where scientists use conventional methods and mindsets but add more variables (age, economic status, religious affiliation, etc.) to develop increasingly rich data sets to identify and better understand patterns of opportunity and challenge. However, this approach is likely to add complexity without challenging the structures and institutions that perpetuate inequality.

In 2024, the CGIAR Gender Transformative Research Methodologies Community of Practice (GTRM-CoP) convened three webinars to discuss ‘how to do’ intersectional research as part of a gender-transformative research approach.

Dr Shelley Feldmann shared her thoughts, derived from decades of feminist research and teaching, in a talk entitled ‘Reimagining intersectionality: the institutionalization of a concept, its complexity, illusions and contradictions’. Tina Yap Li Yan and Dr Surendran Rajaratnam discussed their experiences working with Indigenous Peoples in Peninsular Malaysia in ‘Gender equality, social inclusion in a climate adaptive, inclusive, nature-based aquaculture project, Malaysia’, and Andrea Sánchez Enciso and Christiane Monsieur highlighted lessons from their practical work in the field on FAO’s Dimitra Clubs.

This blog post combines some of the presenters’ insights and recommendations.

Intersectional research relies on understanding power relations

Feldman argues that for many gender specialists, intersectional research represents one of the most important theoretical contributions of gender and feminist analyses. This is because such research acknowledges complexity and hierarchy, and division and difference among members of any identity category, including—but not limited to—women. Intersectional research acknowledges and seeks to understand power as a relational phenomenon within social groups as well as between them.

Thinking with an intersectional lens shows us that all identity categories including race, class, and gender as well as sexuality, ability and disability, nationality and ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples, migrant status—among other categories—are not homogenous, exclusive categories. Rather, categories can combine to create power relations which shape experiences of oppression and discrimination for some populations, and empowering opportunities for other communities. Whether oppressive or empowering, intersectional research draws attention to the critical importance of exploring power relations as central to gender-transformative analyses. It is also critical to understand that intersectional identities are not additive. Rather, they are intertwined, intersecting, reciprocal and complex.

Turning to the research process itself, Yap Li Yan, Rajaratnam, Sánchez Enciso, and Monsieur emphasize the importance of paying attention to the questions that the participants, as well as the researchers, are interested in. In particular, they stress the importance of creating genuinely equitable participatory processes for generating and analysing data.

Intersectional research needs to be intentional and integral

Intersectionality is not an add-on to research-for-development data collection and analysis. Sánchez Enciso and Monsieur argue that researchers must ensure the foundational integration of intersectionality throughout the entire project cycle, starting from the project-design phase through implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and closure.

They emphasize that staff and implementing partners need to ‘walk the talk’, too. Efforts need to be made to sensitize all project staff and implementing partners on the principles of intersectionality and gender equality. We also need to include human rights perspectives as well.

The community needs to own the research process

Intersectional methodologies need to be practical, and they must be owned by the community. To achieve this, researchers need to ensure:

• research needs to be contextualized to the community
• participatory approaches need to be community-led
• everyone in the community needs to know what is happening

Sánchez Enciso comments that “it is essential to engage people in a reflective process tailored to their specific needs and realities and to avoid reliance on external, generic concepts and examples.”

Monsieur notes that community-level work has significant potential for facilitating behaviour change since communities play a crucial role in shaping and perpetuating social norms. Indeed, rural communities can either support or hinder progress, depending on how existing entrenched norms and attitudes are in limiting or facilitating women’s opportunities and agency. As such, engaging norm holders—such as traditional leaders, farming leaders, teachers, elected officials and legal authorities—alongside other community members helps projects achieve critical mass and ensure they are organic and impactful. Building the capacities of local partners is central to ensuring that approaches are contextualized, community-owned, and sustainable beyond the project life cycle.

Yap Li Yan and Rajaratnam make similar points regarding their work with Indigenous Peoples in Malaysia. Yap Li Yan recommends that researchers use a participatory approach with the most affected individuals, contextualised in ways that they can understand. Her example is to use local examples (including stories) and materials. “It is especially important to ensure methods are used which enable Indigenous People to play an influential part in decisions that affect their lives,” she says.

Researchers need to dismantle us–them hierarchies

Researchers need to be serious about foregrounding the needs and desires of the community they work with. This means consciously finding ways to erode hierarchies and to dismantle, as far as possible, ‘power over’ relations between the researcher and ‘the researched’.

Through her experience working with Indigenous Peoples in Peninsular Malaysia, Yap Li Yan has learned that occasionally deploying a gentle and respectful sense of humor—provided this is non-intrusive to people’s beliefs and lived experiences—and demonstrating genuine interest in their lives is important to building a sense of connection. This behaviour also helps to align the researcher with the typically relaxed characteristics of Indigenous Peoples in Malaysia, and the importance they place on oral tradition and communication.

Yap Li Yan recalls a Malay proverb which stresses the importance of relationships of equality: “masuk kandang kambing mengembek, masuk kandang kerbau menguak” (“When you enter a goat's pen, bleat like a goat, when you enter a cow pen, moo like a cow”). In other words, researchers need to consider and adapt to the ways people in the community live their lives, the way they speak, and the things they do and value. For example, researchers can consider (if invited) to gather food, or even hunt, with Indigenous Peoples and cook together with them.

This does not mean that external researchers need to abandon their own way of thinking or values, but it does mean creating relationships between researchers and community members based on equality. This helps to facilitate real change and vision.

This blog was produced by members of the CGIAR Gender Transformative Research Methodologies Community of Practice (GTRM-CoP), which convenes CGIAR and other researchers passionate about gender transformation and social justice to co-develop, test and scale, with partners, methodologies necessary for long-lasting, deep change in food, land and water systems.

Further reading recommended by the presenters includes:

• this book chapter Feminist research in agriculture: moving beyond gender-transformative approaches
• this FAO guidance document Intersectionality: A Pathway for More Inclusive, Youth-Oriented, and Gender-Responsive Agrifood Systems
• the journal paper Designing for change through “reflecting and doing”: the CGIAR Community of Practice on Gender- Transformative Research Methodologies
• this new suggested research standard Focusing on the process of research: Embedding reflexivity for gender-transformative action
• this journal article Intersectionality in gender and agriculture: toward an applied research design
• a final journal article This Word is (Not?) Very Exciting: Considering Intersectionality in Indigenous Studies