Intersectionality Meets Gender and Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Scientific and Educational Policy Aspects

While the intersectional approach is currently one of the most elaborate in scientific terms in contrast to approaches such as diversity and heterogeneity, up to now, intersectional perspectives have found very little entry into pedagogical and educational policy discourses within ECEC in Germany. The question of “How intersectionality should be taken into account in educational policy and pedagogy?” remains largely unanswered and often proves to be challenging. At the same time, there is an increasing tendency in the elementary field to view difference categories together under the label of “social differences” and then mostly in the affirmative logic of diversity approaches. In this case, the educational policy focus thus remains tied to the addition of such differences. Furthermore, the subsumption of several difference categories also contributes to a de-thematizing of singular categories, such as the significance of gender, for instance. In this contribution, the relevance and added value of an intersectional perspective within ECEC is discussed from a scientific and educational policy perspective in terms of the potentials and limitations by using the gender category as an example.