Intersectional Inequality in Education in Africa, Asia, and the Americas

Intersectional inequality—the notion that disparities run along combinations of social groups such as gender or ethnicity—has become an increasingly prominent concept in social sciences. However, there is little empirical research using an intersectional framework to measure inequality. We propose two metrics of intersectional inequality based on the concept of horizontal inequality. Applying these measures, we analyze educational intersectionality in gender and ethnicity using data from 40 countries. We show that the intersectional perspective reveals particularly disadvantaged groups that remain masked if gender and ethnic inequality are analyzed separately. In several countries, the most disadvantaged intersectional group is of a different gender or ethnicity than the generally more disadvantaged gender or ethnicity. Moreover, in most countries intersectional inequality is greater than the sum of gender and ethnic inequality. In these countries, neither increasing education levels nor reducing gender and ethnic inequalities is sufficient to “leave no one behind.”