Intersectionality: A Feminist Analysis

Before intersectionality, individuals were forced to assign themselves to only one identity at a time (Phoenix, 2006). As such, a black, Muslim, female with a low socioeconomic status previous to intersectionality would have had to choose one of her identities to associate with- whereas now she would be able to assign herself to each of these identities and present herself as a product of the way they mesh together. Feminist literature describes that whilst most women understood and accepted the dominance approach that describes males’ social power over women, the ‘hegemony of feminisms that is constructed primarily around the lives of white–middle class women’ was rarely discussed before intersectionality (Baca Zinn & Thornton Dill, 1996).