Intersectionality

Most gender scholars agree that to understand historical and contemporary gender relations one must be attentive to how race, class, and other systems of power intersect with gender. The general consensus around intersectionality has emerged from an evolving interdisciplinary body of theory and practice that emphasizes the simultaneity of oppressions, the interlocking systems of inequalities, and the multiplicity of gendered social locations. Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) was one of the first to use the term intersectionality to draw attention to the marginalization of black women's experiences within single‐axis frameworks of anti‐discrimination laws, feminist theories, and anti‐racist politics. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (2000: 18) defines intersectionality as “particular forms of intersecting oppressions, for example, intersections of race and gender, or of sexuality and nation.” She goes on to say: “intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice.” Intersectionality has its roots in numerous intellectual traditions, such as socialist feminism, race and ethnic studies, and postcolonial feminisms. The various identifiers of the projects in which intersectionality is central – black feminism, womanism, multiracial feminism, third world feminism, postcolonial feminism, indigenous feminism, and multicultural feminism – suggest divergent origins and analytical foci. In this entry, the term intersectionality is used to refer broadly to scholarship that uses theoretical approaches that foreground interlocking systems of inequality. Special attention is given to the contributions of scholars who were instrumental in developing the intersectionality perspective, namely black women intellectuals from North America and women of color scholars from the “third world.”