RACIAL, GENDER AND CLASS INEQUALITIES IN EDUCATION: an intersectional analysis for public policies
Intersectionality. Educational inequalities. Gender. Race/Color. Socioeconomic Conditions.
The concept of intersectionality, developed from theories and debates of black feminism in the United States, now finds its place in several academic fields, configuring what can be called a "knowledge project" (COLLINS; CHEPP, 2013; COLLINS, 2015), seen as an emerging construct without a fixed definition. In common among researches who adopt intersectionality as a theoretical foundation, it is the understanding that one-dimensional categories such as gender, race, class, sexuality or age are insufficient for a precise interpretation of the social world, since they do not capture the diversity of combinatorial situations that exists. Thus, the objective of this research is to explore possible applications of this concept to the understanding of persistent educational inequalities, since the results on the educational performance of Brazilian students have typically been analyzed in a one-dimensional way in separate categories. It seeks to answer: how, exactly, do these categories intersect? How can we shift the analytical approach into combined situations? In the case of education, the hypothesis is that there is a particular ordering with respect to other forms of inequality, such as better educational indicators among white women, followed by white men, black women and, finally, black men. Understanding, therefore, that an intersectional analysis of educational inequalities would allow a better diagnosis of exclusion patterns that affect specific groups, influencing even their life choices, this research aims to put into practice strategies of research capable of looking at the combination of variables such as race, gender and socioeconomic status of public school students in order to achieve a more accurate understanding of the ways in which educational inequalities are reproduced. Mapping the diversity of possible inequality markers from the perspective of intersectionality can illuminate aspects previously neglected in both the formulation and implementation of educational policies.