Intersectional Accountability Structures

Sor Juana's own position—brilliant, respected, yet constrained by gender, race, and religious authority—made visible the intersecting systems of control. She understood that liberation in one domain without others is incomplete. Climate justice similarly cannot be disaggregated from gender justice, racial justice, and decolonization. Women, especially in the Global South, face compounded vulnerabilities: they perform most subsistence agriculture while lacking land rights; they collect water and fuel in ecosystems degraded by industrial extraction; they bear reproductive costs of pollution. Indigenous peoples face displacement for carbon offset projects or renewable energy installations that merely transfer extraction to new forms. Intersectional accountability means designing climate solutions that don't sacrifice one group for another, that address root causes rather than symptoms, and that center most-affected communities in all decision-making. Sor Juana's insistence on intellectual integrity demands we don't claim climate solutions while perpetuating colonial relationships, gender inequality, or racial hierarchies. True climate responsibility requires attending simultaneously to ecological restoration and human liberation.