Intersectionality: Race, Class, Caste, and Femininity

Sor Juana was Creole, of mixed racial ancestry in a caste-stratified colonial society—her access to education and religious life was shaped not only by gender but by her particular racial and class position. Her femininity was not the same as that constructed for Indigenous women or enslaved women in the same moment. This concept insists that femininity is not a universal category but is always already intersected with race, class, colonial status, and other structures of power. For contested femininity, this means recognizing that challenging gender constraints requires simultaneous attention to racial justice and economic equity. Women's liberation cannot mean only elite women's access to intellectual life; it must mean universal access across all social positions. Sor Juana's life reminds us that even exceptional intellectual women operate within systems of racial and economic hierarchy.