Intersectional Identity and Children's Rights

Sor Juana navigated intersecting identities—woman, intellectual, person of mixed heritage, nun, colonized subject—each creating distinct forms of constraint and possibility. Contemporary intersectional analysis recognizes that a child's experience cannot be understood through a single identity category. A girl who is poor, disabled, and indigenous faces specific vulnerabilities that differ from those of a poor girl without disability or an indigenous girl with economic privilege. Traditional children's rights frameworks often treat children as a monolithic group, overlooking how systems of oppression compound and interact. Through Sor Juana's example, we understand that real justice requires examining how gender, race, class, disability, sexuality, immigration status, and other dimensions of identity intersect in each child's life. Intersectional children's rights advocacy means: disaggregating data to reveal disparities, listening to children at the margins of movements, designing programs that address compound marginalization, and building power with the most impacted children. It means recognizing that a universal 'children's rights' agenda can inadvertently center privileged children while erasing those facing multiple, interlocking systems of harm.