*5.3. Intersectional Analysis: Gender and Race and/or Ethnicity*

Collecting and disaggregating data beyond gender identity and race and/or ethnicity has been found to be critical for intersectional education equity. For instance, in the United States context at the postsecondary level, men outpaced women in college access and bachelor's degree attainment from the inception of U.S. higher education in the 1600s until roughly the year 2000. Around 2000, women surpassed men in both college access and completion, with 10% more women earning bachelor's degrees than men [42]. Now, in both the U.S. context and around the world, women comprised roughly 60% of the overall postsecondary enrollment in the United States in 2021 [43], and recent research suggested that men, across at least 18 other countries, are less likely to access and complete their K-12 and higher education than women, continuing the global trend of inequitable education gaps between men and women [44].

However, integrating both gender and race and/or ethnicity into data collection and analysis reveals even starker, more critical equity gaps. For instance, Sáenz and Ponjuan (2008) highlighted the improvement that Latinx college students had made in accessing U.S. higher education over prior decades, yet Latinx men had the lowest high school graduation rates of men across all ethnic groups [45]. These researchers also found that over 60% of postsecondary credentials were earned by Latinx women [45]. After analyzing large educational datasets, Sáenz et al. (2015) set out to fill these educational equity gaps by establishing Project MALES, a research-to-practice mentoring program that provides specific mentoring and education interventions for young men of color to improve their access to and success within schools at both the secondary and postsecondary level [46].
