Feminism
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Third-wave thinking and intersectionality The term ‘third-wave feminism’ was increasingly adopted from the 1990s onwards, becoming popular among feminist theorists for whom the concerns of the 1960s and 1970s women’s movement seemed to lack relevance to their own lives. This was both because of the emergence of new issues in feminist politics and because of the political and social transformations that second-wave feminism has brought about (Heywood and Drake, 1997). If there was a unifying theme within third-wave feminism it was a more radical engagement with the politics of difference, especially going beyond those strands within radical feminism that emphasize that women are different from men by showing a greater concern with differences between women. In so doing, third-wave feminists tried to rectify an over-emphasis within earlier forms of feminism on the aspirations and experiences of middle-class, white women in developed societies, thereby illustrating the extent to which the contemporary women’s movement is characterized by diversity, hybridity and what the US scholar and advocate, Kimberlé Crenshaw (born 1959), dubbed ‘intersectionality’. This has allowed the voices of, among others, low-income women, women in the developing world, ‘women of colour’ and LGBTIQ people to be heard more effectively. Black feminism has been particularly effective in this respect, challenging the tendency within conventional forms of feminism to ignore racial differences and to suggest that women endure a common oppression by virtue of their gender. Especially strong
in the USA, and developed in the writings of theorists such as bell hooks, black feminism portrays sexism and racism as linked systems of oppression, and highlights the particular and complex range of gender, racial and economic disadvantages that confront women of colour.
LGBTIQ: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (or ‘questioning’).
KEY CONCEPT INTERSECTIONALITY
gender-based identity but rather one in which, for instance, race, social class, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality and sexual orientation can overlap, or ‘intersect’, with gender. This implies that women may be subject to interlocking systems of oppression and discrimination, as sexism becomes entangled with racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on.
Intersectionality is a framework for the analysis of injustice and social equality that emphasizes the multidimensional ormultifaceted nature of personal identity and of related systems of domination. In this view, women do not just have a straightforward
KEY FIGURE
BELL HOOKS (BORN 1952) A cultural critic, feminist and writer, Gloria Jean Watkins (better known by her pen name, bell hooks) has emphasized that feminist theorizing must take account of intersectionality and be approached from the lenses of gender, race and social class. In her classic Ain’t I a Woman (1985), hooks examined the history of black women in the USA. Arguing that, in the USA, racism takes precedence over sexism, she advanced a powerful critique of the implicit racism of the mainstream women’s movement.
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