Does Intersectional Training Endure? Examining Trends in a Global Database of Women’s and Gender Studies Graduates (1995-2010)

The undergraduate experience remains a cornerstone in the foundation of Women’s and Gender Studies yet scholars know little, as a field about how students learn, retain and demonstrate highly valued skills and concepts like intersectionality. Furthermore, due to continued skepticism and wariness about the role of assessment, the field has not revisited definitional questions about skills, concepts and their assessment since the early 1990s. This paper intervenes by answering the following questions: How does intersectionality show up in graduates’ reflections on their training and what do they say about it? How do graduates utilize intersectional thinking in their personal and professional lives? How translatable is intersectionality in the professional world? Drawing from qualitative and quantitative data from a large and institutionally diverse global database of women’s and gender studies graduates, I examine how graduates rank and make sense of intersectionality as both a concept and skill. Intersectionality remains a highly valued aspect of core knowledge production in field, especially at the undergraduate level. In describing what potential students gain through majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies many departments use language that focuses on intersectionality as a defining feature of their training. Yet the challenge for the field is that it has relied on primarily small qualitative research studies and anecdotal evidence to make its case for the importance of intersectionality in the undergraduate curriculum. By examining various data, this paper provides an empirical and theoretical lens to reflect on the continued institutionalization of intersectionality in the academy