Intersectionality

WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?

Intersectionality is the process by which individuals’ identities overlap and intersect with social contexts in ways that impact how they are viewed, understood, and treated.

Intersectionality is a concept that aims to describe how an individual’s identities intersect with social contexts in ways that shape their experiences. According to intersectionality theory, our identities are generated not only on an individual level but also on a social level. We understand and manifest ourselves in relation to the environments, communities, cultures and social systems / structures in which we live and interact, and these environments, cultures, social systems / structures have been shaped by historical events.

Therefore, our experiences are informed by both our personal identities and histories as well as the social histories that have shaped the shared systems / contexts in which we interact. We can observe that power imbalances exist within our social systems. People experience discrimination or privilege as a result of these power imbalances, and they experience discrimination or privilege differently depending on their overlapping identities.

The following short videos (click on the links below to access them) provide animated visuals and accompanying audio explanations of the meaning of intersectionality that may be useful:

“Intersectionality” by the Stigma Action Research Lab

“What is Intersectionality?” by the Center for Prevention MN

“What is intersectionality” by Queer 101 on The Advocate Channel

Origins of the term Intersectionality

The term intersectionality was originally proposed by law professor and human rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw to address concerns she had with anti-discrimination laws in the United States’ justice system. These laws required that, to legally prove someone was experiencing discrimination, each form of discrimination that an individual faced had to be proven separately from one another (e.g. racism had to be proven separately from sexism).  Crenshaw argued that these aspects of people’s identities can’t be separated out; an individual’s experiences are shaped by all aspects of their identities simultaneously. She describes intersectionality as:

“a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigration status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just a sum of its parts.”(Steinmetz, 2018)

Click on the video link below to hear Professor Crenshaw speak about the origins of the term intersectionality.

Ted Talk Video Clip of Kimberle Crenshaw

Intersectionality as an Interdisciplinary Concept

The term coined by Crenshaw to critique fragmentation within the justice system has been adopted by scholars in other disciplines as a valuable concept for understanding: the complex overlapping qualities of identity AND how inequality may be experienced differently by different people when their complex identities intersect with social systems and contexts.