It is a feminism that has historically also been part of European imperialism, and continues to play a role in justifying imperial interventions in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq – the assumption being that Western powers are able to ‘liberate’ women even if that liberation involves military intervention. More importantly, the liberal assumptions that underpin this approach simply cannot be used in feminist praxis in other contexts, where gender and feminism have different legacies, histories, and struggles. In the words of Audre Lorde, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. For women outside of privileged locations in the West where neoliberalism and imperialism continue to play a large role in producing and reproducing patriarchy, concepts that have their history in imperial centres are seen as unlikely to act as tools for meaningful change.

Intersectionality

African American feminists were the first to argue that mainstream feminism did not – and could not – represent their experiences. They insisted that their realities were far more complex than this: they were women, but they were also black, poor/rich, urban/rural, educated/uneducated, and so on. All of these aspects of their identities combined in order to create a spectrum of realities. The emphasis on contextualizing women’s realities was a direct critique to the claim of a universal feminism. At first, the ‘triple oppression’ notion was created, which argued that Black women suffer from three different oppressions: class, race, and gender (becoming the holy triad of feminist studies). Other identities such as sexuality and disability followed later. This was to take apart the notion of a universal woman, and bring to the forefront the idea that ‘woman’ is a contested notion with vastly different experiences and subjectivities.

This led to the theory of intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1990s. Crenshaw often used the imagery of a crossroads to explain intersectionality:

Intersectionality is what occurs when a woman from a minority group tries to navigate the main crossing in the city … The main highway is ‘racism road.’ One cross street can be Colonialism, then Patriarchy Street. She has to deal not only with one form of oppression but with all forms, which link together to make a double, a triple, multiple, a many layered blanket of oppression.

A focus on these intersecting structures of oppression clearly matters to how we think about political economy. For example, in her 1989 paper ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’ Crenshaw demonstrates how an intersectional lens enables us to unpack labour market discrimination. She begins her analysis by citing a legal case in which five employees were prevented from suing General Motors for discrimination specifically as black women; the court would only accept claims of either race or sex discrimination, neither of which applied as white women and black men had been treated according to the law.

The basic premise of intersectionality: a way of complicating feminist research in order to look at different layers of identity and how they combine to produce experiences

Intersectionality became a highly debated approach within the social sciences and feminism, and spurred a number of debates about how the theory should be defined or put into practice. But what remained constant was the basic premise of intersectionality as a way of complicating feminist research in order to look at different layers of identity and how they combine to produce experiences. This process inherently included a focus on power relations and voices that are usually marginalized. It is essential to remember that intersectionality arose as a direct response to the exclusionary nature of much of liberal feminism, hence the emphasis on the function of power, and its ability to include/exclude.

Intersectionality can be a powerful tool with which women in the Global South and women of colour in the Global North can reclaim a feminist project that has often excluded and objectified them. Many of these contexts have a long history of debating and discussing gender issues in the public and private spheres. However, when colonialism brought first wave feminism to these contexts – which imposed a foreign understanding of gender and feminism onto society – it became difficult to navigate a way forward given the extreme violence of colonial rule. Colonial feminism either became the dominant form of feminism or became deeply intertwined with local variations.

This became problematic following the process of decolonization, as many saw feminism as a foreign import – which it, strictly speaking, was. In many of these contexts, women and men active in feminist organising were already thinking intersectionally. Gender was seen as connected to nation, race, religion, class, and so on, and liberation meant liberating the collective rather than just the individual. This, however, sometimes had the effect of completely marginalising gender oppression, through the side-lining of revolutionary women in the formation of postcolonial nation states for example.

Carrying out research and activism from an intersectional perspective allows us to decentre liberal feminism. This would mean no longer locating the ‘start’ of the feminist project in first wave feminism in the West, but to see women’s activism as a process that has happened across many places at different times. It would mean acknowledging the importance of other systems of oppression that have been downplayed by liberal feminists, such as race, religion, class, and imperialism. Finally, it would mean an explicit focus on power relations. In essence, using an intersectional approach is one way of reclaiming the feminist project and making it a project all women can be part of.