The Marginalized Witness Advantage

Sor Juana's position as a woman, a creole intellectual, and someone outside formal ecclesiastical hierarchy gave her critical distance from which to observe institutional hypocrisy and corruption. Her exclusion from universities and formal theological offices meant she could critique without being fully invested in protecting institutional power. This pattern repeats throughout history: outsiders, minorities, and the marginalized often detect corruption before insiders do, precisely because they lack institutional incentive to deny it. Anti-corruption strategies that systematically exclude marginalized voices therefore lose a crucial source of accountability. Modern anti-corruption efforts should deliberately amplify perspectives from those outside formal power—women in male-dominated sectors, lower-rank employees, colonized populations, and stigmatized groups. Their distance from the apex of power often grants them both clearer vision and moral authority to challenge corruption.