Discuss the significance and limitations of 'intersectionality' in social research. (Answer in 150 words)

- Discuss the significance and limitations of 'intersectionality' in social research. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Intersectionality changed what counts as a category in social research, and not yet how categories are measured.

Body

1. What the idea holds: Crenshaw's argument is that disadvantages compound rather than add: a Black woman's position is not racism plus sexism, and single-axis categories made her injury invisible.
2. Its significance for social research: It exposes the false universal: the category of women that meant upper-caste women, that of Dalits that meant Dalit men. Uma Chakravarti's brahmanical patriarchy shows caste and gender constituting each other, and Rege's Dalit feminist standpoint made that a research position. It also redirects attention to what aggregates hide: Dalit women's literacy and wages diverge from both comparison groups.
3. Its limitations: Categories multiply faster than samples allow, and no principle says where to stop. McCall showed the difficulty of holding categories steady enough to measure while treating them as constructed. It describes position well and mechanism poorly, and it is often invoked as a label rather than applied as a method.

Conclusion
Its value is diagnostic: better at showing a finding wrong than at producing the right one.