Negotiating with Intersectional Consciousness:

The article explores how grassroots women leaders in Gujarat, India, enact intersectional consciousness, the strategic deployment of intersecting identities, during the micropolitics of everyday advocacy. While intersectionality has been widely theorized as an analytical lens for understanding inequality, less is known about how activists do intersectional analysis to address immediate needs rather than advance broad policy reform. Drawing on 251 interviews with women leaders, we explore how intersectional consciousness is enacted in everyday activism, how spatial contexts shape tactical repertoires, and how its strategic use connects micro-level acts of resistance to movement continuity. We find that rural leaders employ intersectional consciousness as a survival and negotiation strategy, while urban leaders use it to build legitimacy, gain institutional access, and sustain collective claims. These findings reframe intersectionality as an action-oriented resource, advancing social movement theory by linking strategic identity negotiations to spatial context and everyday resistance.