Talk:Kirthi Jayakumar

Intersectional Feminism: Caste and Gender
The section "Intersectional Feminism: Caste and Gender" (heading should be written in sentence capitalization and without Wikilinks) includes a blockquote by Jayakumar about two Indian women, one Dalit and the other of a more privileged caste. Both women wish to study mechanical engineering. The admissions test is in English, and the privileged woman has had more opportunities to learn English, and passes the entrance exam, while the Dalit woman fails the entrance exam, but is admitted anyway because of a quota. However, she still can't attend engineering school because she can't afford the tuition. This is supposed to illustrate intersectionality, in this case, of caste and gender. But, in my opinion, it fails to do so. For the Dalit woman, the quota cancels out the effect of her lack of opportunity to learn English and her status as a Dalit, and in the end, the only reason she doesn't attend engineering school is she can't afford it. But not being able to afford it could happen to anybody, male or female, Dalit or non-Dalit, rural or urban, or whatever. If India has a problem that people who want to improve their lives through higher education are denied that opportunity, India can solve that problem by making student loans and need-based scholarships more widely available, and (in my opinion) that, and not intersectionality, is what is illustrated by the blockquote example. A more illustrative example of actual intersectionality would have a person in two or more oppressed groups not being able to take advantage of an educational opportunity because of the synergistic interaction of being in multiple oppressed groups, rather than a person who can't take advantage of an educational opportunity for ultimately one reason. For example, if the illustrative example told of a low-income Dalit man and a low-income non-Dalit woman who each received a student loan and were able to study engineering, but a low-income Dalit woman was denied a student loan and couldn't study engineering, that would illustrate the intersectional effect of being both Dalit and female.

It may be that I am simply not getting the point. It may be that the blockquote really is a bad example for the purposes of illustrating the intersectionality of caste and gender and should be replaced with a better example. (It may be that the whole concept of intersectionality is muddled and that the illustrative example actually serves to illustrate how muddled the concept is, or that Jayakumar is not good at creating clear examples of intersectionality.) I encourage greater experts than myself to improve this example and the article as a whole.

The section was inserted 12:27, 18 November 2016‎ by IP user 49.206.123.65, who doesn't have a talk page and who has made only two edits to Wikipedia: this one and the article about Intersectionality. If nobody comments here, and nobody does anything to improve this section, eventually I may edit this section myself, but it should really be done by someone with expertise I don't have. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:55, 17 July 2017 (UTC)