The Intersectionality Imperative: Calling in Stigma and Health Research

In drawing attention to the power, privilege, and inequities embedded in multiple interconnected social categories like gender, race, and class, intersectionality is a critical theory and approach well-suited to stigma and health research. With deep historical roots in 19th century Black feminism, intersectionality has traveled generatively across diverse disciplines. Like stigma, intersectionality is fundamentally about the power conferred by our social context. Like stigma research, intersectional research ultimately aims to rectify inequities and promote the well-being of members of stigmatized or marginalized groups. Using an intersectional approach in stigma and health can guide research aims; prompt new questions, and reframe, reconceptualize, or discover psychological phenomena or processes, as well as empower members of stigmatized groups and address disparities and inequities. It can be deployed to think innovatively about differences, similarities, connections, and coalitions among intersectional groups, or to analyze how institutions perpetuate disparities. Acknowledging the important contributions made by stigma and health 4 research within an intersectional approach, we call in stigma and health researchers who either question intersectionality's relevance to their work or want to explore its applicability or feasibility. Reflecting on some of the debates within intersectionality scholarship around what intersectionality is, who it is for, and how it can be implemented, we also point to future directions for research. We affirm the intersectional imperative to identify and rectify inequities and disparities that construct and result from intersecting systems of oppression, while acknowledging a diversity of interpretations and methods that embrace that guiding principle.