From the Academy to the UN and Back Again: The Travelling Politics of Intersectionality

Abstract

The concept of intersectionality has travelled far afield since articulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw over twenty years ago. In early analyses, Crenshaw demonstrates how the oppression endured by women of colour is more nuanced than law recognises. Figuratively speaking, she explains, these women stand at the intersection of not simply the categories of race and gender, but of multiple social orders. Intersectionality has since informed analyses across the humanities and social sciences. In fact, Patricia Hill Collins acknowledges intersectionality as an established 'knowledge project' in its own right, centred around the three interrelated concerns: how race, class, gender and sexuality are interlocking systems of power; how social identities and problems take shape within these systems and come to reflect them; and how remedies to these issues are also often imbued with problematic power relations.