The Sociology Book

92

women as the “sisterhood” masked

what she saw as the “opportunism

of bourgeois white women.”

hooks says that the situation is

more complicated than the second-

wave feminists recognized. Worse

still, these women helped maintain

an intersecting network of

oppressive forces that impacted the

lives of working-class women of

color: white women have been

complicit in perpetuating white

patriarchal domination.

In 1989, US lawyer Kimberlé

Crenshaw described the criss-

crossing forces of oppression as

T

he “second-wave” feminists
of the 1960s to 1980s
presented a far more
formidable and thoroughgoing
challenge to male domination than
earlier feminists. Their broadening
agenda included issues such as
legal inequalities, sexuality, rape,
the family, and the workplace.
But the US feminist bell hooks
criticized the feminism of the 1980s
in particular as representing the
view of privileged white women.
In Feminist Theory: From Margin
to Center, published in 1984, she
claimed that an emphasis on

“intersectionality.” She likened this

to a place where traffic flows in four

directions. Discrimination, like

traffic, may flow in one direction or

another. If an accident happens at

an intersection, it could have been

caused by cars traveling from any

number of directions—sometimes

from all directions. If a black

woman is harmed because she

is “at the intersection,” this may

have been caused by sex or race

discrimination, or both.

As a lawyer, Crenshaw found

that black women in the workplace

were discriminated against on both

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Feminism and

intersectionality

KEY DATES

1979 The Combahee River

Collective, a black feminist

lesbian organization in the

US, claims it is essential to

consider the conjunction of

“interlocking oppressions.”

1980s US economist Heidi

Hartmann says that in the

“unhappy marriage” of Marxist

feminism, Marxism (the

husband) dominates feminism

(the wife), because class

trumps gender.

1989 US law professor

Kimberlé Crenshaw uses

“intersectionality” to describe

patterns of racism and sexism.

2002 German sociologist

Helma Lutz claims at least 14

“lines of difference” are used in

power relations, including age,

gender, skin color, and class.

White women have been complicit

in this imperialist white-supremacist

capitalist patriachy.

White women...

...do not

experience

the same

intersectionality

of oppressive

forces as black

women, so may

not recognize

them.

...do not wish

to be seen as

“unfeminine”

(a fear of breaking

away from

patriarchy’s

gender roles).

...have a

vested interest

in exploiting

class and race

privileges,

so they can be

freed from

“dirty work.”

BELL HOOKS