Intersectionality

Abstract

Intersectionality is a paradigm that gained increasing popularity in the Anglo-Saxon scholarship for the past twenty-five years. Its conceptual genealogy and its connection with counter-hegemonic feminist theories are briefly illustrated here. It is described how intersectionality originated within the framework of Critical Legal Studies in the US socio-legal context of the 1970s. Intersectionality is presented as an analytical category to identify how the intersection of social structures (gender, sexuality, race, nationality, class and dis-ability) generates complex situations of discrimination that are maintained and reproduced at the structural, political and discursive levels. It finally emphasizes the potential of intersectionality as a tool to uncover of social exclusion unintentionally reproduced and reinforced by law and public policies and include the substantive dimension of equality.

doi: https://doi.org/10.20318/eunomia.2017.3651