Intersectional Feminism
Intersectional feminism takes into account the multidimensional lives of citizens and how elements of one's identity such as gender, race, culture, income, paid and unpaid work, ability, diversity, age, and geographic location impact our lived experience.
The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a groundbreaking scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. Crenshaw said that for intersectionality to empower all women it must be rooted in social justice.
At its simplest, intersectionality means considering the relationship between factors such as race, gender, and age in producing oppression, or as Crenshaw wrote, “A metaphor to understand how multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that often are not understood within conventional ways of thinking about anti-racism or feminism or other social justice advocacy structures.” If we think of the famous Audre Lorde quote, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives,” it explains that systems of oppression are interconnected and must be tackled as a whole.
WTC acknowledges the importance of applying an intersectional feminist approach to all of our work. It is an essential starting point in all discussions. An intersectional feminist lens and the use of disaggregated data must be applied in the development of all policies, programs, budgets, funding, governance, and staffing in order to better reflect the reality of our diverse communities and to address the roots of social injustice.