When I teach Psychology of Women & Gender, there are typically a range of students in my class. Some are psychology majors, some are women’s & gender studies minors, and some are taking the class with no background in psychology and/or women’s & gender studies at all. So one of the challenges is helping all students develop understanding of key concepts relatively quickly.
Intersectionality is a key concept in Psychology of Women & Gender. It describes the ways in which different types of oppression (e.g., racism, classism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, sexism) are interconnected and can’t be examined as separate entities (see Crenshaw, 1993). The theory stems from the pivotal contributions of women of color, including Sojourner Truth, the Combahee River Collective, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins (to name just a few).
Because intersectionality has generated a lot of interest in the popular press, many students have heard the term, but not all understand it. Even when students have a background in women’s & gender studies, they sometimes oversimplify it. I was inspired by two authors, Spelman (1990) and Ken (2010), to create an activity that would help students understand intersectionality. A priority for me was that the activity would make the idea of intersectionality concrete since it’s a complex, nuanced theory.
I’ll describe the full activity as I do it on my campus with the resources at my disposal. In a future post, Mindy will talk about how she has adapted this activity to work without the same physical resources available.
I start by grouping students into clusters of 4-5 people. First, I give each group a long string and different colored plastic beads. I ask each group to label each bead with an individual social characteristic based on the ADDRESSING model from our textbook (as well as other characteristics they may identify). After each bead is labelled, I then tell them to create a necklace with beads. Each group then displays their necklace in the front of the class.
Next, I give each group a set of ingredients to make a cake. (We have this class meeting in a lab kitchen available for use on my campus.) I give students pre-measured ingredients including flour, sugar, salt, eggs, and butter/oil along with a mixing spoon, a large bowl, and a cake pan. I ask each group to label each ingredient with an individual social characteristic based on the ADDRESSING model from our textbook and put these ingredients and labels on a single sheet of paper. Afterward, I tell the students to follow the directions provided and proceed to make the cake.
What groups don’t realize at first is that the instructions following the combining of the ingredients differ. One set of instructions says to put their “cake”, as is, at the front of the class along with their list of ingredients/identify characteristics. Other instructions specify baking the cake for 15 minutes in our class oven before taking it out and placing it at the front of class with their ingredient list. Still other instructions specify baking the cake for the full time (e.g., 30 minutes) before placing their baked cake and ingredient list at the front of the class.
After everything is displayed, I have the students do a gallery walk by the necklaces and cakes. I then ask them to complete the following questions:
- Question #1: What makes the beads different than the indigents in the cake? Which analogy best describes intersectionality? Which analogy best describes quantitative research in psychology?
- Question #2: Which cake would you most want to eat? What occurred that allowed for that cake to be most appealing? How might this analogy be related to intersectionality?
Ideally, I want the students to learn that the bead analogy is problematic because any bead can be removed or added without changing the substance of another bead. I also want them to see just how much psychological research utilizes the bead model as a basis for quantitative research.
In the cake analogy, I want students to see that cake become something fundamentally different from any and all of its ingredients once it is mixed together. The whole cake becomes greater than each individual ingredient, and each ingredient also changed in relation to one another. This helps students understand intersectionality as interconnected.
Importantly though, I also want students to learn that the baking process makes a difference. Under the right context, the cake becomes delicious. So, it’s not just the indigents that matter, but also the conditions under which it is prepared. This helps students understand how context (e.g., power, accessibility to resources) is related to intersectionality, as well.
After the class is complete, we all enjoy a slice of cake! The students always remember this class and reference it often throughout the semester.
Remember, next week, Mindy will talk about how she also uses the bead and cake analogies without the use of an actual kitchen to still help students understand intersectionality at a deeper level!