Gender as Political Category

Sor Juana's repeated assertion of her right to intellectual engagement was inseparable from her struggle against gender-based exclusion from knowledge institutions. Her critics invoked gender as the primary reason to deny her authority—not her competence but her womanhood disqualified her from certain intellectual spaces. This reveals gender not as a private identity matter but as a political system determining access, legitimacy, and recognition. Across cultures, gender systems vary significantly but consistently function to restrict who counts as a legitimate political subject and knowledge-creator. Understanding political identity across cultures requires analyzing how gender hierarchies shape which voices are heard, whose knowledge is validated, and whose rights are affirmed. Sor Juana demonstrates that feminist analysis is not supplementary to political philosophy but central to it. She shows that challenging political oppression requires simultaneously challenging gender hierarchies that interlock with other systems of exclusion. This concept insists that gender remains a fundamental political category, not merely a social difference.