March is Women's History Month, for those who don’t already know by now. So in honor of it being Women’s History Month, I’ll be covering topics surrounding women/about women. Many of us have heard or know what feminism is but not many have ever heard of intersectional feminism. According to Human Rights Careers, intersectional feminism is a type of feminism focused on the fact that systems of oppression impact women differently based on their race, class, ability, sexuality and other characteristics. What this means is that unlike “mainstream feminism”, intersectional feminism recognizes how many aspects of a person’s identity may change the way that said person will experience the word. Intersectionality gives people who come from different backgrounds or marginalized groups a chance to have their discrimination that they face in the world to be acknowledged.
Mainstream feminism is known to typically cater to privileged, white women and the majority of times discriminate against both women and people of color. This can be seen back during the Women’s Suffrage Movement back when the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, many women of color such as Native American, Asian American, Black Americans and Hispanic Americans weren’t given the right to vote no matter if they did or didn’t have a U.S citizenship. It’s stated that Native Americans were not even considered or allowed to be US citizens, (according to this PBS article). This further proves the point that “mainstream feminism” is rooted in discrimination against any woman of color and only advocates to white women, which shouldn’t be the case at all and further proves that intersectional feminism is beneficial to all regardless of your background.
Overall, feminism shouldn’t benefit one group of women and should rather benefit all women because in the end most women go through similar struggles that the majority of women can relate to.
Cover photo credits to the The COM Library from Flickr