US Black women state legislators: intersectional identities and education policies

Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Examining the Influence of Changing Voices and Bodies on Legislative Spaces

“…In my research, the women recognized the power and objectification of their Black bodies in policy spaces and sought to occupy it in novel ways. In one example, the then-assemblywoman Dina Neal reflected on the role of women in policymaking spaces (Martinez, 2022b):The whole idea is to be able to shift the policy conversation and to deliver a policy conversation that’s centered around what we’re missing in it. If you know that you were a single mom who raised kids and you’re sitting on the Health Committee, you ought to be able to offer a narrative through the lens of those mothers and those women who don’t have a voice in this space and be able to deliver some significant content in how programs are run.…”

“…It encourages the use of qualitative research for social justice purposes, including making such research accessible for public education, social policy making, and community transformation. (p. 6) In my critical qualitative research, I am interested in how new policy actors are transforming policymaking spaces and creating spaces of praxis, how they were negotiating their insider/outsider status in policymaking, and how their policy ways of knowing shape policy priorities and agendas (Martinez, 2022a(Martinez, , 2022b. Critical qualitative methodologies provide a lens by which to understand policymaking, actors, and policy through a social justice paradigm.…”

“…Using qualitative methodologies, education policy researchers illustrate how mainstream policy discourse is used to maintain status quo power and further disadvantage communities of color and children (Apple, 2013;Gillborn, 2005;Martinez, 2021aMartinez, , 2022aMartinez, , 2022b. These policy forces of conservative modernization threaten to further dismantle public education across the globe (Apple, 2013).…”

“…In my critical policymaking research, I have employed intersectionality, Black feminist theory (Martinez, 2022b), Chicana feminism (Martinez, 2022a), feminist borderland theory (Martinez, 2022a), and critical race theory (Martinez, 2020a(Martinez, , 2020b, which have expanded our epistemological knowledge on how new policy entrants exercise their agency to transform politics and shape agendas that advance both their communities and policy priorities. Notably, using critical qualitative methodologies, I illustrate the ways that new policy entrants create spaces of praxis in historically excluded policymaking governing bodies and spaces, navigate insider/outsider spaces, and embody their policy ways of knowing.…”

“…As newcomers, progressive women of color, enter policymaking spaces, we need novel frameworks to understand how they approach spaces created intentionally to exclude their voices, experiences, bodies, histories, and priorities. In my research on Black women state legislators (Martinez, 2022b), I sought to understand how they embodied their identities in policymaking spaces. For this research, I drew from Nadine Brown's (2014) work on Black women legislators.…”