Intersectionality is a critical lens for examining the interaction between various parts of a person’s social identity, particularly within systems of discrimination. These identity categories include sex, ability, age, orientation, religion, immigrant status, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, and class; according to intersectional theory, these categories do not exist discretely but rather overlap to produce unique nexuses of oppression and/or privilege.

Intersectionality’s history in the US originates in the work of Black women; its underlying ideas can be seen even in Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” which pointed out the ways in which society did not treat supposedly universal standards of femininity as applying to Black women. Similar critiques emerged in response to mid-20th-century social movements like the civil rights movement and second wave feminism. Because these movements focused on racism and sexism, respectively, they often overlooked the particular challenges that Black women faced. In the 1960s and 1970s, texts such as The Black Woman, the essay “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” by Frances Beal, and the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black Feminist Statement” outlined the fundamental ideas of intersectionality. Other women of color, including Chicana and Latina women, Indigenous American women, and Asian American women, produced similar critiques in the 1970s and 1980s.