Sor Juana's simultaneous marginalization as woman, intellectual, and colonial subject reveals that Rawlsian justice must account for overlapping sources of inequality, not single axes.
Contemporary Rawlsian theory often abstracts away identity, but Sor Juana's lived experience demands we complicate the veil of ignorance. She was disadvantaged not only as a woman barred from universities, but as a criolla intellectual in a Spanish colonial hierarchy, and as someone whose religious identity constrained her public role. Her tradition insists that behind Rawls's veil, we must not assume a single dimension of inequality. Real justice requires naming how gender, nationality, class, and power combine to exclude certain people from the intellectual commons. When Sor Juana defended her right to study theology despite her gender and position, she was implicitly arguing that a truly fair society must account for these intersecting barriers simultaneously. Modern practitioners should ask: which overlapping inequalities does our justice framework ignore? How would our institutions change if we designed them not knowing our gender, origin, intellectual standing, and religious position all at once?
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