Browsing by Subject "Intersectionality"
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Item Brokering Identity: Exploring The Construction Of Lgbt Political Identity And Interests In U.S. Politics, 1968-2001(2016-08) Murib, ZeinThis study introduces a theoretical framework grounded in intersectionality to the study of identity-based groups in politics, raising and addressing the following questions: how within group marginalization develops, why within group marginalization occurs, and to what effect? By focusing on the construction of the LGBT group and through discourse analysis of three bodies of archival evidence from 1968 through 2001 – the institutional records of several national LGBT interest groups and social movements, a variety of LGBT publications, and transcripts of germane debates from the Congressional Record – this study shows how political actors framed the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities as a cohesive and unified coalition by presenting LGBT people as a minority group defined along a single axis of identity: sexuality. The unity of this new LGBT minority group – organized exclusively around sexuality – was achieved by foregrounding the political interests of gender-normative lesbians and gay men, particularly those who are white, middle-class, able bodied, and gender normative. Consequently, issues such as marriage and second-parent adoption were elevated as the predominant political interests on behalf of the LGBT group, while others, such as the passage of gender-inclusive employment anti-discrimination legislation or political mobilizations to end the documentation of sex on state documents, were deprioritized. Throughout this study, attention is drawn to the ways in which this projection of LGBT group unity obscured intersecting identifications, such as race, gender, class, nation, ability, and immigration status, with significant political and material consequences for the most marginalized members of the LGBT minority group: people of color, people who are transgender, lesbians, people who are gender nonconforming, people who are poor or homeless, people with disabilities, and people who are undocumented.Item College Student Environmental Activism: How Experiences and Identities Influence Environmental Activism Approaches(2016-05) King, LauraCollege student environmental activism is one way students civically engage in addressing social issues. This study explores the environmental activism of twelve college students and how their experiences outside of college and in college influenced their activism. In addition, how students’ identities influenced their approach to activism was considered. Each participant approached environmental activism in their own unique way. The way in which students engaged with environmental activism was shaped by their childhood experiences, their worldview, and experiences in College both in and out of the classroom. The identities of participants influenced how they were involved and why they were involved in the current social movement. Students conceptualized the environmental movement and their role in it in different ways. The current movement focused less on saving wilderness and more on addressing climate change and related social issues. The activities participants engaged in fell on a continuum from volunteerism to advocating for social change. Students’ environmental activism was supported by family, peers, K-12 education, and spending time in nature as children. In college, students emphasized the importance of peer networks, interactions with faculty members, and experiences in classes. Students’ identities intersected in unique ways and influenced why they were involved in and how they approached environmental activism. Students discussed the way in which their identities of gender, race, and class shaped their involvement. In addition, some students viewed their sexuality, spirituality, and being a young person as key influencers. Students said their biographic availability enabled them to be involved in environmental activism. Student environmental activists were concerned about oppression and privilege related to how the environmental movement addresses social change.Item Definitional Tension: The Construction of Race In and Through Evaluation(2019-12) Shanker, VidhyaDespite the centrality of racialized difference to evaluation, the field has yet to develop a body of literature or guidelines for practice that advance understanding of difference and inequality, including its own role therein. The purpose of this study was to broaden understanding of observed differences and inequality in evaluation beyond individuals and individual lifetimes. Drawing from critical theories of systemic oppression and system dynamics, it used a discourse-historical approach to answer three questions: How has the U.S. scholarly evaluation literature constructed racialized difference? How has that construction changed since the field began formalizing? How is that trajectory related to surrounding systems? Results showed four discursive patterns: (1) minoritization and ambivalence toward whiteness; (2) the invocation of diversity and inclusion; (3) the replacement of race with culture; and (4) the rise of and decoupled relationship between indigeneity and colonization. All four patterns were tied to meso-level dynamics. In the second two, existing recruitment and training efforts initiated and led by and for evaluators representing racially otherized groups at lower levels of the American Evaluation Association were elevated to the association’s board-level, where leadership and language were broadened to represent dimensions of difference beyond race. Analysis of archival documents and interviews tied this meso-level pivot away from race to macro-level discourse and policies associated with racialized neoliberalization, which attributes inequality to individual as opposed to structural deficits. Unlike “Equal Opportunity” or “Affirmative Action,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “culture” depoliticize difference and privatize the responsibility for—and benefits of—desegregation. In fourth pattern, literature that authors who identified as indigenous published, which explicitly complicated the relationship between indigeneity and colonization, increased sharply and remained higher following the organizing efforts led by evaluation scholars and practitioners who identify as indigenous. Their efforts remained in their hands rather than being elevated or broadened. Variation among the patterns suggests that the American Evaluation Association’s relations with its racially otherized members and with educational institutions, large firms, philanthropy, and government are linked to the field’s construction of racialized difference through existing institutional mechanisms. Whether the mechanisms counteract or amplify racialized neoliberalization depends on whether they circulate capital in ways that enable otherized groups to exercise collective agency and produce knowledge for structural change.Item The encounter between feminism and liberalism: an itinerary of “Woman”(2013-02) Detournay, DianeThis dissertation takes feminist appeals to the rights of man and the human as a critical site through which to examine the category of "woman" and its relationship to difference. Tracing how the claim for women's rights is articulated in the works of four cardinal figures in liberal feminism (Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Martha Nussbaum), this study suggests that the staging of "woman" as a sovereign, rights-bearing subject relies upon the twin concepts of race and civilization in order to constitute itself. In particular, the appeal for women's humanity is justified in the name of civilizational progress, a formulation that is predicated upon the difference of the savage--and thus race--to mark the contours of the (civilized) human. As such, the struggle to insert "woman" into the conceptual framework of natural rights emerges as inseparably bound up with the production and foreclosure of racial difference. Ending with the appeal for women's human rights that this strain of liberal feminism opens onto, this itinerary seeks to attend to the constitutive exclusions that have enabled the emergence of a universal feminist subject.Item Entanglements of Teenage Motherhood Identities: A Critical Ethnography within a Community-Based Organization(2017-05) LoBello, JanaThe social construction of adolescence as a distinct developmental stage is based on a hierarchy of age, race, social class, and gender that affords some individuals with the privileges of full participation in the United States yet positions others as subordinate within the progress of the nation (Lesko, 2012). The organization of school as an institution relies on the assumption that development occurs in linear stages where grade levels and labels such as elementary, middle, and high school predict certain characteristics found within each context. Oftentimes, teenage mothers are positioned as those subordinate or deficit within these formal systems of education as they do not “fit” into these traditional labeling practices. Negative labels such as “stupid slut”, “teen rebel, teen mom”, “the girl nobody loved” and “dropouts” show evidence of this deficit mindset (Kelly, 2000). The impact of such labels manifests themselves in perceptions of disengagement within formal school settings (Kalil, 2002; Kalil & Ziol-Guest, 2008) and the policing of aged, racial, social classed, and gendered bodies (Jones, 2007). The purpose of this critical, ethnographic study is to deeply explore the experiences of teenage mothers participating in a community-based organization (CBO) as potential opportunities to take up issues of age, race, gender, sexuality, motherhood, and social class within their ongoing identity construction and schooling experiences. This study takes a critical perspective on the social construction of adolescence in order to contribute to scholarly work that attends to how teenage mothers are socially, politically, and educationally positioned within Western schooling and society. By focusing on hybridity and the intersectionality of identities this research pays attention to the ways in which educational practices have been both disrupted and maintained discriminatory when conceptualizing what it means to educate and involve teenage mothers and their children within existing systems. Findings show that the chronological passing of time as well as the physical representation of the pregnant female figure is reflected within women’s stories as one form of oppression and/or agentic negotiation. Additionally, mixed perceptions around if and how local and alternative high schools provide space for the hybridity and intersectionality of teenage mothering identities was engaged by participants within embodied “fitting in” or “pushed out” discourses. These perceptions seek to complicate traditional practices and identities of student, athlete, and parent within formalized educational spaces. Also, Real Moms both provides opportunity for authentic senses of caring (Noddings, 2005) as well as has limitations in “protecting” participants from the risks of being vulnerable within relationship and storytelling. This study will extend the literature by looking at the ways in which teenage mothers are both disrupting and reinscribing discourses of chronological developmental stage theories (Lesko, 2002; Lesko, 2012) by attending to the multitude of social factors that influence the cultural construction of adolescence and adolescents (Vagle, 2012). Additionally, this work looks at how schools are sites for the perpetuation of social contracts that implicitly exclude or push out specific student identities, such as race, social class, and teenage motherhood that do not adhere or assimilate to existing normalized practices (Milner, 2015; Noguera, 2003). For example, the quarantining of teenage mothers into all-female alternative schools or limited participation within local schools attempts to de-sexualize female students against discourses of desire (Fine, 1993). In thinking about authentic, caring relationships (Noddings, 2005), this study also complicates the notion of creative, narrative expression as an automatic form of empowerment as opportunities for vulnerable storytelling stir up both damaging stereotypes (Edell, 2013) and self-interpretations of empowerment (Kelly, 1997). By contextualizing the lived experiences of the female teenage mothers and mentors within this community-based organization, this study thoughtfully and reflexively attends to the existing discourses of teenage motherhood.Item Entwined in the Complex Tapestry of Schooling: The Experience of Being Somali Newcomer Students in Outstate Minnesota High Schools(2015-06) Moriarty, SheilaAbstract The lives of Somali born high school students are complicated by intersections with both race and religion. They often carry refugee histories of trauma and displacement that are further exacerbated during the resettlement process. Schools are struggling to make the kinds of accommodations that will honor the Somali Muslim identity. This study uses hermeneutic and post-intentional phenomenology to look deeply at the lives of these young people. Bachelard's reverie is used to place the researcher critically within the analysis in an attempt to create a transparent and meaningful look at understanding the complexity of their experiences. Educators are called upon to recognize the hegemonic forces that marginalize these students as well as recognize how these forces are traumatic in their lives. Educators are also encouraged to adopt critical pedagogies that open themselves up to the life experiences of their Somali born students. Keywords: Somali, high school, refugee, critical pedagogy, adolescent trauma, cultural humility, intersectionality, hermeneutic phenomenology, post-intentional phenomenology, Bachelard's phenomenology of the imaginationItem Exploring intersectionality in physical activity spaces among Somali adolescent girls: implications for programming(2012-10) Thul, Chelsey MarieThul and LaVoi (2011) conducted a study in 2008, titled "Reducing Physical Inactivity and Promoting Active Living: From the Voices of East African Immigrant Adolescent Girls," to learn about barriers facing this underserved population. The purpose of the study was to explore East African (n= 12 Somali, and n= 7 Ethiopian) adolescent females' experiences with and beliefs about physical activity, and their suggestions for promoting active living. Based on the data, the girls faced barriers on multiple levels which impeded their physical activity participation. To overcome barriers the girls suggested a culturally relevant, female-only physical activity program be developed. Based on the girls' wishes, in 2008 the Girls Initiative in Recreation and Leisurely Sports (G.I.R.L.S.) program was created for primarily East African adolescent and young adult females, and implemented in a gym at the Brian Coyle Center in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thul--a participant-volunteer-consultant to the program--noticed the gym and other physical activity spaces in the neighborhood appeared to be contested spaces wherein "real and symbolic boundaries have been drawn to limit access" (Cooky, 2009, p. 260) for the participants. Specifically, Thul observed several physical activity spaces and the female participants who used them were affected by the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and cultural markers of identity. Thul, in conjunction with G.I.R.L.S. program leaders, decided conducting a spatial needs assessment and extending Thul and LaVoi's (2011) study by listening to girls' voices was imperative for understanding their experiences with, and perceptions of, the identity markers and physical activity space, as well as the impact such experiences have on future physical activity programming. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation study was two-fold: 1) to employ Henri Lefebvre's (1991) Conceptual Model of Social Space and aspects of a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach to explore Somali adolescent girls' experiences with, and perceptions of, the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and culture in perceived, conceived, and lived physical activity spaces in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, and 2) to understand the implications of the Lefebvre's model for locating and implementing future physical activity programming. Data collection included mixed methods--a quantitative participatory mapping activity (n = 30) to assess perceived space, and focus groups (n= 27) to explore the intersection of the identity constructs within conceived and lived spaces. Numerical trending of the participatory maps, and deductive and inductive content analysis of the focus groups, revealed many complex findings. The overarching finding was that physical activity spaces for Somali females are contested terrain. Perceived space mapping trends indicated males had more access to physical activity spaces than females, indoor physical activity spaces were perceived as more relevant than outdoor ones, and females have low accessibility to physical spaces. Participants' perceived space definitions and behaviors of physical activity revealed a wide ranging definition and performances of physical activity. Conceived space themes suggested an intersection of identity markers influenced a variety of gender ideologies and expectations of females, social constructions of femininity, cultural and religious beliefs and tensions, and ethnic Somali cultural norms. Together the perceived space, conceived space, and identity markers impacted an array of lived space perceptions and experiences regarding a lack of freedom, gender spatial inequality, surveillance tensions, familiarity tensions, inclusivity tensions, accessibility, and strategies for change. These findings indicate future physical activity programming should maintain its inclusivity of all females regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and culture, as well as take place in accessible, high-quality, private community locations. The findings also support the need to incorporate a wide variety of physical activities and occasionally new venues, ensure trusted, adult-female surveillance, and maintain accessibility. Above all, however, the findings suggest multi-systemic efforts must be undertaken to achieve spatial equality for physical activity among Somali adolescent girls.Item The Fight for the Right to Teach: Mapping the Terrain of the Diversity Gap" in Teacher Education"(2016-06) Dyke, ErinRecently, there has been a resurgence in research and policy surrounding U.S. education’s demographic imperative, or the “browning” of K12 students and the “whitening” of teachers. Teacher education has largely responded to this “diversity gap” with research that supports white teacher candidates’ racial identity formation and cultural competence. Policy and reform efforts from within and beyond teacher education tend to frame solutions for the “diversity gap” as inclusion and representation (recruiting more teacher candidates of color) and/or to create more robust and critical university-based teacher education programs (against the upswing in fast-track labor market approaches to preparation). There are fewer examples that critically reflect on and explore how teacher education, as an institution, excludes and marginalizes people of color. Using a critical bricolage methodological approach that includes institutional ethnography, participatory activist research, and feminist memory work, I study the diversity gap from multiple positional perspectives within and beyond the institution. First, I draw from a year-long collective memory work study with a teacher candidate of color during the course of her program. Framed within an analysis of the ways in which neoliberal logics guide the structure and practice of institutions of teacher education, I consider the ways in which alliances and ethical practices of subversive study across institutional hierarchies can contribute to challenging the institutional reproduction of whiteness in teaching. Next, I explore the specific needs and desires for indigenous immersion teacher preparation that can support Ojibwe language revitalization from two years of ethnographic research with Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia, a non-profit organization that develops Ojibwe language texts and curriculum. I challenge the institution’s selective inertia with respect to indigenous-led efforts toward educational self-determination and illuminate tensions between “diversity gap” solutions that argue for inclusion and access without mention of decolonization. Finally, I shift to the landscape of urban education in the Twin Cities and the work of the Social Justice Education Movement, a directly democratic education union of which I am a co-founding member. While we have undertaken a variety of issues and work in social justice education, I focus in on our short-lived campaign to demand the districts support more staff and teachers of color. Racialized tensions articulated through our organizing forced us to rethink our initial demands for inclusion and broaden and challenge our collective understandings of what kind of education we were fighting for. Our collective, movement-embedded study of who engages un/misrecognized and institutionally devalued educative work further illuminates the need to re-think the category “teacher” and processes of state certification/legibility. Taken together, these three angles, or what I term “positional perspectives” enable me to argue for a paradigmatic shift in the ways in which critical teacher educators articulate the problems with and solutions for the “diversity gap” in teaching. I conclude with a series of questions and provocations to consider how teacher educators can de-link from their investments in the profession and its management of knowledge authority, and contribute more effectively to movements for decolonial futures.Item Identity profiles and psychological adjustment among adopted Korean American adolescents(2012-08) Reichwald, Reed TylerDrawing upon social identity and intersectionality theories and research, I conducted a person-centered, multi-informant study of 158 pairs of adopted Korean American adolescents (AKAA) and their adoptive parents. Using cluster analytic procedures, I examined AKAA' patterns of identification across multiple social domains (ethnic, racial, and adoptive identities). The obtained clusters were validated empirically by comparing groups along relevant variables (e.g., engagement in ethnic and racial socialization, dissatisfaction with racial appearance, birth family interest, perceived discrimination, colorblind attitudes, diversity in friendship networks) on which they would be expected to differ . Finally, I examined the association between these identity profiles and psychological adjustment, including behavioral development and other measures of well-being. Results revealed the emergence of six conceptually unique identity clusters that differed significantly on the various validity constructs measured. However, the identity profiles were largely undifferentiated with respect to behavioral development per parent and adolescent reports on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 1997). Group differences were found on broad psychological outcomes including life satisfaction, perceived school belongingness and peer competence, and school interest and motivation. Results confirm the importance of considering the collective impact of multiple social identities on a variety of outcomes.Item Individual Mask Wearing During COVID-19 Pandemic: An Intersectional Decision(2022-04-18) Pass, Brynne BThis is a content analysis of 25 newspaper articles consisting of commentary, editorials, and letters to the editor was performed to dissect what the public thought about policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I hypothesized that the public would view mask wearing as more than a yes or no choice and requires greater consideration of intersectionality in making public policy decisions. I coded for themes of “dominance” and “intersectionality”. Notably, the indicators of access, which were the most significant in the theme of “intersectionality” had 18.1% representation within the content. Alternatively, the indicator of policy, which was the most significant theme of “dominance” had 33.4% representation within the content. I discuss how the results suggest that policy makers who have greater power of public policy making might utilize this power to maintain their privileged status without consideration for intersectionality experienced by others in the population that isn’t accounted for in those policies. Policy makers that are engaged in intersectional decision making are engaged in activism.Item Intersections of racial/ethnic identity and gender identity among women of color(2014-08) Juan, Mary Joyce deGuzmanLittle attention has been paid to the intersection of racial/ethnic identity and gender identity, resulting in the inadvertent exclusion in psychological research of women of color, a population with minority status in both groups. Extant research also neglects contextual complexities that may shape these women's experiences, including negotiating gender identity in the face of a patriarchal racial/ethnic group. Using both additive (quantitative) and intersectional (qualitative) approaches, the current study investigated how racial/ethnic identity and gender identity are related and their implications for psychosocial functioning. In Phase I (additive), it was expected that H1) among women of color, racial/ethnic identity and gender identity - both a) independently and b) additively - will be associated with psychosocial functioning (e.g., self-esteem, mental health, career, relationships). Additionally, it was expected that H2) women with strong gender and racial/ethnic identities will report the lowest levels of psychosocial functioning when also perceiving their racial/ethnic group as traditional and patriarchal. Only gender identity was significantly associated with increased self-esteem and better quality of relationships. In Phase II (intersectional), the study also examined RQ1) how a subset of these women of color perceive their gender and racial/ethnic identities, particularly when faced with patriarchal messages about women from their own racial/ethnic groups. Racial/ethnic, gender, and intersectional identities were all found to be low and not critical to women of color's core sense of self. Analyses also revealed potential explanations for these low identities, including lack of depth in content of identity and difficulty in articulating intersectional identity experiences. Combining these two data, Phase III (integrative; RQ2) explored ways in which women of color's perceptions about racial/ethnic identity and gender identity (intersectional approach) explain or discount findings from an additive approach, particularly with respect to psychosocial functioning. Results highlighted the complexities of how constellations of racial/ethnic and gender identity strength (e.g., high racial/ethnic and gender identities, high racial/ethnic but low gender identities) are experienced by women of color. Moreover, results revealed how these women deal and adapt to the life challenges unique to the intersection of their racial/ethnic and gender identities.Item Perceptions of Women and Gaming: Exploring Implications of Intersectionality through Quantitative Analysis of Blog Comments(2016) Petters, NoahThe goal of this study is to determine how the general gaming public perceives women in the gaming culture differently by certain visual criteria portrayed on the internet in the form of a blog. More specifically, it pursues to find out how the same perspective of women in gaming culture is received by the public, despite differences in only gender and racial representation. Under the context of intersectionality, the proceeding criteria were used to determine the perception of women in the gaming culture and issues that surround them. Comments or public reactions of blog pages were analyzed by conditions of race and gender, which then were expert coded and used to conduct a qualitative analysis of “hostility” and “acknowledgment”. The categorized reactions were then used to produce a quantitative measurement to determine the public perception of women within the gaming culture. Results indicate examination of condition (Black female, Black male, White female, White male) revealed statistically significant differences in the pattern of hostile and non-hostile responses. Furthermore, an examination of conditions also revealed statistically different patterns related to acknowledgment of a problem. Noted patterns of hostility and acknowledgement may help to further determine implications of the intersecting aspects of one’s identity in an expanding culture and industry of games.Item Power Broker or Broken Power: Violence and the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Social Standing in Medieval French and Iberian Literature(2023-11) Obernolte, BenjaminThis project takes up the question of how an individual's social situation can impact their interpersonal relationships by looking at the ways that race, gender, and social standing impact violent interactions between characters in two genres of medieval poetry, the fabliaux and the pastorela, written during the Middle Ages in France and Iberia. The theories of intersectionality, gender, genre, and the monster facilitate this study as they help the reader better understand the social dynamics within these texts. Chapter one studies Marcabru's 12th-century poem "L'autrer jost' una sebissa" and the role that race, gender, and social standing play in the interaction between the two main characters. Chapter two foregrounds femininity and looks at the lines between de-feminization and de-humanization in the fabliau "La vieille truande," and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. Chapter three turns toward the male characters and looks at how space impacts power in the Libro de buen amor and the fabliaux "Le prestre crucifie." This project's goal is to help the reader better understand the power dynamics in their 21st-century life through the study of medieval texts; therefore, the project closes with a discussion on ways that the author has incorporated this work into his work as a teacher in secondary education.Item Race and Rurality: Intersections of Inequality in the Field of International Human Rights Law(2023-05) Smith, Madeline RThis report is an analysis of the human rights situation for rural Persons of African Descent, with a specific focus on how race and rurality intersect and lead to unequal human rights outcomes. It consists of data analyses from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as well as literature reviews from experts in the fields related to this topic.Item Stereotypes and Prototypes: The Causes and Consequences of Intersectional Invisibility(2018-06) Williams, AllisonAlthough sociologists and legal scholars have posited that the marginalization of Black women stems from disadvantage that emerges at the intersection of race and gender (Crenshaw, 1989), psychologists have only recently begun to generate individual-level theories to help explain this phenomenon. One such theory is the intersectional invisibility model (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), which suggests that the non-prototypicality of Black women, in terms of both race and gender, leads to invisibility and subsequent marginalization. Newer research, however, suggests that non-prototypicality should be considered not only with respect to race or gender, but in terms of the relationship between these two social categories, as Black individuals are considered more masculine than—and Asian individuals more feminine than—White individuals (Galinsky, Hall, & Cuddy, 2013). Indeed, studies have found support for the invisibility of Black women, who are non-prototypical in terms of their gendered-race prototype (Sesko & Biernat, 2010) and for the invisibility of Asian men, who are similarly non-prototypical (Schug, Alt, & Klauer, 2015). The proposed studies are an attempt to reconcile the intersectional invisibility model with gendered race theory by examining whether it is the perceptions of non-prototypicality that lead to invisibility (Study 1), identifying possible mechanisms for this relation (Study 2), and finally, examining whether non-prototypicality and subsequent invisibility indeed lead to marginalization as predicted by the model (Study 3).Item Student Experiences and Educational Outcomes of Southeast Asian Female Secondary School Students in the United States: A Critical Quantitative Intersectionality Analysis(2018-04) Jang, Sung TaeThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between Southeast Asian female students’ multiple identities (race or ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class [SES]) and their schooling experiences and educational outcomes. It also seeks to identify school organizational characteristics that mediate the effects of the convergence of multiple marginalized identities on Southeast Asian female students’ experiences and educational outcomes. This study used restricted-use data from High School Longitudinal Studies 2009 provided by the National Center for Education Statistics, and employed multiple regression, logistic regression, and linear mixed effect modeling. Math achievement scores of Southeast Asian students were significantly higher than those of other race or ethnicity groups, except Other Asian/Pacific Islanders, regardless of gender. However, Southeast Asian females’ intention to pursue higher education was significantly lower than that of Southeast Asian males as well as being the lowest among all female students. Furthermore, the influence of SES on Southeast Asian female students’ math achievement scores was not statistically different from the average impact of SES on math achievement scores for all students. In terms of students’ schooling experiences, Southeast Asian female students are less likely to hold gender stereotypes regarding males’ superior math abilities than are other race or ethnic groups. In addition, Southeast Asian female students perceived a higher degree of positive interactions with math teachers (i.e., teacher’s expectation, teacher’s treatment in terms of respect, and teacher’s fairness). Focusing on math teachers’ teacher quality measures (i.e., years of teaching experience, a graduate degree), Southeast Asian students’ math teachers did not have significantly different teacher quality compared to that of their white counterparts. Finally, the effect of SES on the quality of interactions with math teachers was positive for Southeast Asian female students. This pattern was not unique to Southeast Asian high school girls; that is, higher SES had a similarly positive association on the quality of interactions with teachers for other race or ethnicity groups, except Hispanic students. This study also found that the school organizational characteristics used in this study did not mediate or differentiate the intersectionalities related to Southeast Asian female students. In other words, the patterns described above held regardless of schooling context. Although the model minority stereotype toward Asian students suggests that they are the most likely to pursue higher education, this study reveals the limits of the myth. It demonstrated that Southeast Asian females have the lowest intention (among females) to pursue higher education even though they had good schooling experiences, earned among the highest grades in high school, and did not consider boys to be better at math. The findings reveal a larger systemic failure to consider the specificities within the Asian population, which limits the provision of adequate support for Southeast Asian females to realize their full potential through their future academic careers. Implications for policy and leadership are discussed.