Intersectional Identity and Justice

Sor Juana embodied multiple marginalized identities: a woman, of mixed racial heritage, illegitimate, and in a rigid religious hierarchy. Her life demonstrates that fairness cannot address injustice by treating any single dimension in isolation. She faced barriers not simply as a woman or as a person of African and Indigenous ancestry, but as the intersection of all these identities within institutional power structures. This intersectional approach reveals how systems of oppression compound: a poor woman faces different injustices than a wealthy woman; an enslaved person of color experiences distinct barriers from a free person of color. Sor Juana's intellectual work—her poetry, theology, and philosophy—served partly as her strategy for claiming space in systems designed to exclude her on multiple grounds. Her tradition teaches that civilizations pursuing fairness must examine how different identities experience justice differently and recognize that addressing one form of inequality while ignoring others perpetuates systemic unfairness. True justice requires attending to the full complexity of human experience.