The term “intersectionality” was originally coined by an American Critical Race Scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. Crenshaw originally established to the term in reference to black women experiencing double discrimination (racism and sexism in particular).
In her paper, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, she evaluated the “single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law…feminist theory and anti-racist politics” and critiqued it for being overly focused on privileged members of the subordinate groups.
This term refers to a framework for understanding how different aspects of a person’s identity combine to create unique modes of disadvantage and privilege. Crenshaw’s idea behind the concept argues that different categories that define the person’s identity (such as race, gender, class and others) overlap and constitute a unique way in how inequalities persist.
