Feminism & Psychology 22(2) 240–248 ! The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0959353511415965 fap.sagepub.com eminism & sychology F P Special Feature Contribution II. ‘Race’, class and affirmative action in Brazil: Reflections from a feminist perspective Ilana Mountian Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Elena Calvo-Gonzalez Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Brazil Keywords affirmative action, Brazil, class, feminist research, gender, intersection, Latin American, psychology, race Feminist research and post-colonial studies There is a range of feminisms and developments in feminist theories in contempo- rary debates. Within these various debates on feminism (Burman, 2005; Oakley, 1998), black feminism (Mirza, 1992), Marxist feminism (Spivak, 1994), scholar feminism (Mohanty, 1994) and activist feminism (Zavos et al., 2005), a key com- ponent for a feminist reading is to consider the issue of power in research; likewise in postcolonial studies (Balibar, 1991, Gilroy, 2000). Hence feminist postcolonial per- spectives that focus on structural power argue for the need to consider intersections between gender, class and ‘race’ (Chantler, 2007; Mohanty, 1994; Spivak, 1994). As Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1996: 17) point out, ethnic, gender and class divisions ‘involve differential access to resources and processes of exclusion and inclusion’; each has its effects in different ways. There are a range of views of intersections between gender and ‘race’, in terms of politics and structures (Balibar, 1991) and the gender construction of nation (McClintock, 2004). In this article, we provide a reading which focuses on power relations (Foucault, 1998) in discourse (Parker, Corresponding author: Ilana Mountian, Manchester Metropolitan University, Elizabeth Gaskell Campus, Psychology Department, Hathersage Road, Manchester M13 0JA, UK Email: imountian@yahoo.com