“From ‘it’s not possible’ to ‘how we can do it’”. Challenges, opportunities and proposals to adopt intersectionality in local administration
| Published date | 01 January 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09520767231185447 |
| Author | Gerard Coll-Planas,Teresa del Amo,Roser Solà-Morales |
| Date | 01 January 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Public Policy and Administration
2024, Vol. 39(1) 69–86
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/09520767231185447
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“From ‘it’s not possible’to ‘how
we can do it’”. Challenges,
opportunities and proposals to
adopt intersectionality in local
administration
Gerard Coll-Planas
University of Vic –Central University of Catalonia, Vic, Spain
Teresa del Amo
Terrassa City Council, Terrassa, Spain
Roser Sol`
a-Morales
University of Vic –Central University of Catalonia, Vic, Spain
Abstract
The growing interest in the incorporation of intersectionality in public policies, combined
with the lack of tools, entails two risks: the rhetoric use of the term and its depoliti-
cization. The present article seeks to analyse the obstacles and facilitating factors for
intersectional mainstreaming in the local administration, based on the study case of
Terrassa City Council (Spain), which spearheaded a European project to promote
bringing intersectionality to local policies. The article, based on the analysis of 16 in-
terviews, and the responses of 4 questionnaires and 13 reports, identifies three chal-
lenges: the lack of definition, lack of applicability and complexity of the intersectional
perspective; the clash between the dynamics of the public administration and the in-
tersectional proposal; and the segmented structure of the administration. Each challenge
is associated with opportunities and specific proposals that emerged in the fieldwork.
Keywords
Intersectionality, inequalities, local administration, public policy
Corresponding author:
Gerard Coll-Planas, University of Vic –Central University of Catalonia, Grupo de Estudios de G´
enero:
Traducción, Literatura, Historia y Comunicación’(GETLIHC) (2021 SGR 00399), Sagrada Fam´
ılia, 7, Vic 08500,
Spain.
Email: gerard.coll@uvic.cat
Introduction
In 1989 Kimberl´
eCrenshaw (1989) published “Demarginalizing the intersection of race
and sex”, in which she criticised “the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually
exclusive categories of experience and analysis”(p. 139) and argued that “the inter-
sectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism”and “any analysis that
does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular
manner in which Black women are subordinated”(p. 140). Crenshaw (1989,1991)
distinguished between structural intersectionality (which explains how the intersection of
the different axes of inequality distributes power across social groups) and political
intersectionality (which shows how, through political action –both institutional and
activist–, intersectional inequalities are reproduced or fought against).
In 2011, Hankivsky and Cormier (2011: 217) considered that intersectionality had
become “a primary analytic tool for theorizing identity and oppression”(p. 217), and
pointed out that there was a gap between “the theoretical construct of intersectionality and
its practical application”in public policies (225). In 2019, the publication of The Palgrave
Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy (Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery, 2019)
helped to look at the progress made in this period from another perspective. Inter-
sectionality is recognised even more as a theoretical framework and its incorporation in
the study of public policy is “a particularly growing area of interest”(Hankivsky and
Jordan-Zachery, 2019: 1). Despite this, Hankivsky and Cormier (2019) warn that
“methods for integrating intersectionality into policy development, implementation, and
evaluation are in their very early stages of development”(p. 69).
Among the experiences that have progressed in the incorporation of intersectionality in
public policies, we can mention practical guides (see Alm ´
en, 2014;CAWI, 2015;Page
et al., 2019), applied research (see Bishwakarma et al., 2007;Hankivsky and Cormier,
2011) and, in the field of health policies, studies based on the Intersectionality-Based
Policy Analysis (IBPA) Framework (see Hankivsky et al., 2019;Palencia et al., 2014). In
Spain, the growing interest in the adoption of intersectionality in public policies can be
seen in the rise in the number of academic works (for example, Lombardo and Verloo,
2010;Lombardo and Bustelo, 2012;Platero, 2012;Cruells and Coll-Planas, 2013;
Cruells, 2015;La Barbera et al., 2020;Rodó-Z´
arate, 2021), of practical guides (Sordo ruz,
2017;Coll-Planas and Sol`
a-Morales, 2019;Coll-Planas et al., 2021a;2021b) and the
organisation of many courses and workshops on the subject.
On the one hand, there is growing interest in the application of intersectionality in
public policies, which takes the form of: highlighting the problems generated by public
policies that address the axes without considering their interactions (for example, the exclusion
of social groups such as LGTB migrants from both LGTB and cultural diversity policies)
(Coll-Planas, Garc´
ıa-Romeral and Masi 2022); or proposing public policies that allow for a
more complex approach to social inequalities (such as strategic plans that address the different
axes of inequality, or policies that focus on the problems rather than on specificaxes).
On the other hand, the lack of tools to do it, leads at times to a confusing use of the term,
as a “mere sum of discriminations, ignoring the interactions between these”(La Barbera
et al., 2020: 26); as a “buzzword”(Jorba and Rodó-Z´
arate, 2019: 3); or as a “rhetorical
70 Public Policy and Administration 39(1)
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