Intersectional Vulnerability to Corruption

Sor Juana's vulnerability to corruption and abuse was compounded by her position: female, Indigenous-descended, lower-status, in a colonial system, within a hierarchical religious institution. She could not appeal to any single identity for protection; rather, her multiple marginalizations were exploited simultaneously. This intersectional dimension of corruption is often overlooked. Corruption doesn't affect everyone equally; it preys most viciously on those with fewest institutional protections. Women, racial minorities, the poor, religious minorities, and disabled people face both higher corruption risk and reduced access to justice when victimized. Anti-corruption work that ignores intersectionality will fail the most vulnerable. Effective strategies must ask: whose corruption matters institutionally? Whose abuse gets investigated? Who can afford legal recourse? By deliberately centering the experiences of multiply-marginalized people, anti-corruption efforts identify corruption patterns that affect everyone but are most visible among the vulnerable. Sor Juana's life shows that addressing corruption requires attending to how power operates across multiple systems simultaneously—gender, class, race, religion, education—and ensuring that anti-corruption protections reach those with least existing power to protect themselves.