Hacettepe University Graduate School Of Social Sciences 

Political Science and Public Administration 

Political Science 

  

 

 

 

 

 

INTERSECTIONALITY, POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND GENDER: 

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS IN FRANCE 

 

 

 

 

Bilge DURUTÜRK 

 

 

Ph.D. Dissertation 

 

 

 

Ankara, 2018 



 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 
 

INTERSECTIONALITY, POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND GENDER: 

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS IN FRANCE 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bilge DURUTÜRK 

 

 

 

 

Hacettepe University Graduate School Of Social Sciences 

Political Science and Public Administration 

Political Science 

 

 

 

 

 

Ph.D. Dissertation 

 

 

 

 

Ankara, 2018 











v 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

                                                      

 

 

 

                                                               Biricik Anneanneciğim Muzaffer GÜMÜŞ’e 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



vi 
 

 
 

TEŞEKKÜR 

 

Hayatta her şey emek ister... Bu tezin her aşaması, babamın her zaman söylediği bu 

sözün ne kadar doğru olduğunu tekrar tekrar hatırlattı bana. Hayatta her şey emek 

ister… 

Ben  bu tezin asıl can alıcı noktası olan “literatüre katkı” kısmını şekillendirmek için 

Fransa’ya gitmişken BİRTANECİK ANNEANNEMİ kaybettim. Benim için çok ama 

çok değerli bir insan, yol gösterici ve öğretici olan anneannem, uzaklardan bizi izlemeye 

gittiği o gün de dahil olmak üzere sonraki sürecin tamamında yanımda oldu, bana uğur 

getirdi, işlerimin rastgitmesini ve önümdeki engellerin ortadan kalkmasını sağladı. Ben 

hep buna inandım. Ve anneannemi hep yanımda bana destek olurken hissettim. Bu 

sebeple bu tez, ilk önce anneannem için yazıldı; literatüre katkı ve siyaset bilimine bir 

küçük gelişme tanesi sağlaması sonrasında geldi… 

Bana her zaman destek olan  ve her halimle beni kabul eden ailem… Hep sevgi dolu 9 

yaşındaki bir çocuğun neşesi ve umuduna sahip BİRİCİK ANNEM; her zaman doğru, 

dürüst ve sabırlı insan olmayı öğütleyen ne olursa olsun gerçeklerden vazgeçmemek 

gerektiğini bana aşılayan ve her zaman dimdik ayakta durup gerekiyorsa ağaçlar gibi 

ayakta ölecek kadar onurlu olmayı nasihat eden CANIM BABAM; bana tüm 

huysuzluklarım, atarlarım, nazımın geçebildiği her konuda yaptığım gönül koymalarıma 

rağmen sımsıkı sarılıp “ama biz ayrılamayız ki; kardeşiz” diyen ve tezimin her 

aşamasında hep ama hep yanımda olup yerin geldiğinde benim için kendi 

gerekliliklerini  ikinci plana atmış MİNİK TAVŞANIM KARDEŞİM ve ailemizin en 

minik üyesi, tüm evin neşesi, her kucağıma aldığımda evin içinde her tarafta uçuş uçuş 

olan tüyleri ve sevgisini gösterdiği pespembe diliyle iyi ki var iyi ki minicik bir yavru 

olarak hayatımıza girdi dediğim OĞLUM FETA… Sizler olmasaydınız ben gün gelip 

yeter ya dedikten sonra bile devam etmeyi, her zorluğu atlatmamı sağlayan “Hadi Bilge, 

ha gayret!” dediğiniz anlarımı nasıl yaşar ve bugüne gelirdim bilmiyorum. Sizin bana 

verdiğiniz güç ile ben güç aldım; iyi ki varsınız ve hep yanımdasınız.  

Aile kadar yakın insanlar vardır bir de. Onlar da aslında aileden sayılırlar. Size kardeş 

kadar yakındırlar. Gözünüze bakıp içinizden geçeni anlarlar; hatta bazen sizin 



vii 
 

 
 

kendinizle ilgili farkında olmadığınız şeyin farkındadırlar. İşte benim can dostum, 

KARDEŞİM AYŞEGÜL, bu tanıma en çok yakışan... Tez sürecimde ve aslında 

hayatımın en zorlu süreçlerinde hep benim yanımda bana bir yoldaş ve destek oldu. Ne 

zaman başım sıkışsa ya da ne zaman başıma güzel bir şey gelse ben onunla paylaştım. 

Belki de az sayıda o çok şanslı insandan biriyim…  

Bir de bazı insanlar vardır; sizin yanınızdadır, hep aklınızda ve kalbinizin bir köşesinde. 

Bir şekilde yer etmişlerdir, bu uzun doktora sürecimde ben bir çok öyle insan 

biriktirdim. Hepsinin benim kalbimdeki yeri ayrı ayrı, hepsi çok değerli… Bana 

desteklerini bir gün olsun esirgemediler.  

Tez sürecimde beni en çok ilerleten zamanlardan olan tez izleme komiteleri vasıtasıyla 

tanıdığım ve pek çok şey öğrendiğim Sayın Hocalarım, PROF. DR. SİMTEN COŞAR, 

DOÇ. DR. SAİME ÖZÇÜRÜMEZ VE DOÇ DR. FUNDA GENÇOĞLU ONBAŞI’  ya 

sonsuz teşekkürlerimi sunuyorum.  

Pek tabi bana bütün üniversite hayatım ve akademik kariyerim sürecinde destek olan ve 

bu desteğine hayatımın sonuna kadar layık olmak için canla başla çalışacağıma; hep 

kendisinden öğrendiğim ve bizzat  kendi hayatında uyguladığını gözlemlediğim adaletli 

olma, iyi ve ahlaklı olma ilkelerini takip edeceğime söz verdiğim biricik yol göstericim 

PROF. DR. BERRİN KOYUNCU LORASDAĞI’na çok teşekkür ederim. İyi ki 

varsınız HOCAM. 

Son olarak bana anneannemin bir hediyesi olduğunu düşündüğüm ve Fransa’da 

çalıştığım alanda oldukça tanınan bir akademisyen olan, bana hem burs almamda 

yardımcı olan hem de akademik olarak yol göstericilik yapan PROF. DR. ERIC 

FASSIN’a saygılarımı sunuyorum.  

 

 

 

 

 

 



viii 
 

 
 

ABSTRACT 

 

Durutürk, Bilge. Intersectionality, Politics of Identity and Gender: Civil Society 

Organizations in France, Ph.D. Dissertation, Ankara, 2018. 

 

The concept of intersectionality in feminist theory, which has been embraced especially 

in parallel by third-wave feminists, is strongly contested by many belonging to the 

second wave of feminism. Considering the different historical backgrounds and their 

present-day consequences in the Anglo-Saxon and Continental European traditions, in 

each country the meaning of intersectionality could consist of different elements besides 

the quintessential elements of the concept (race, class and gender). Also, even though 

those quintessential elements may be commonly used conceptualize the term, their 

implicit meanings might differ. Intersectionality and its meaning in French context have 

been discussed by CSOs through extremely important debates over laïcité which have 

shaped the foundation of identity politics, as well as the example of Muslim migrant 

women. Debates in which CSOs advocating women’s rights over the last 20 years have 

had a particularly active part have led to a need for an analysis of the concept of 

intersectionality in the light of French exceptionalism.  

Thus, this thesis is to explore how the concept of intersectionality is articulated in the 

French context by CSOs in France with regard to specific incidents such as prohibition 

of headscarf in public schools, visibility of Muslim women in public sphere, young 

generations’ challenges to integration policy. The argument of this thesis is that French 

context constitutes an exceptional case in terms of intersectionality due to the 

determining factors such as laïcité, racialization of Islam, integration policy, 

emancipation of Muslim veiled migrant women.  Hence, the contribution of this thesis 

is to reveal how far the concept intersectionality can be stretched out in the exceptional 

case of France with regard to feminist movements in France and French republican 

values, integration policy and debates of laïcité through Muslim veiled migrant women. 

Keywords 

 Intersectionality, France, Civil Society Organizations, Identity politics, Feminism and 

Women’s Rights 



ix 
 

 
 

ÖZET 

 

Durutürk, Bilge.Kesişimsellik,Kimlik Politikaları, Toplumsal Cinsiyet: Fransa’da Sivil 

Toplum Örgütleri, Doktora Tezi, Ankara, 2018. 

 

Kesişimsellik,  feminist kuram içerisinde üçüncü dalga paralelinde ele alınan ikinci 

dalga tarafından da oldukça tartışılan bir kavramdır. Kavram, hem kadın, hem alt 

sınıftan hem de etnik ya da ırksal kimlik özellikleri sebebiyle bazı kadın gruplarının 

çoklu ayrımcılığa uğradığını belirtir. Bu paralelde kavramın üç temel ve vazgeçilmez 

değişkeni ırk, toplumsal cinsiyet ve sınıftır. Her biri kendi içerisinde alt boyutlar 

taşımakta ve her boyut farklı bir tartışma alanı oluşturmaktadır. Fransa örneğinde ise 

kavram kimlik politikası, laiklik ve feminist tartışmalar paralelinde özellikle STK’lar 

tarafından tartışılmaktadır. Son 20 yılda kadın hakları savunucusu sivil toplum 

örgütlerinin özellikle aktif olarak söz aldığı başörtülü Müslüman göçmen kadın olgusu 

üzerinden yapılan tartışmalar, bu çalışmanın temel çıkış noktası olmuştur. 

Bu paralelde tezin temel amacı, intersectionality kavramının Fransa bağlamında 

STK’lar üzerinden nasıl kavramsallaştırıldığı ve bu kavramsallaştırmanın kavramı nasıl 

şekillendirdiğinin bir değerlendirmesini yapmaktır. Tezin temel argümanı ise Fransa’da 

kavramın istisnai bir yapı gösterdiği ve bu yapının özellikle 1980’lerden günümüze 

devam eden kimlik politikaları temelinde tartışılan laiklik, Müslüman kadın göçmenler, 

İslam ve entegrasyon politikaları ile ilintili olduğudur. Bu noktadan hareketle, tezin 

literatüre katkısı,  intersectionality kavramının Fransa’da belli başlı faktörler (feminist 

hareketin Fransız değerleri ile ilişkisi; entegrasyon politikaları ve başörtülü Müslüman 

kadın göçmenler üzerinden yapılan laiklik tartışmalar) ile ilinitisini ortaya koyarak 

Feminist teori içerisinde yeni ve tartışmalı olan bu kavramın nasıl anlamlandırıldığının 

değerlendirmesidir. 

Anahtar Sözcükler 

 Kesişimsellik, Fransa, Sivil Toplum Örgütleri, Kimlik Politikası, Feminizm ve Kadın 

Hakları 

 



x 
 

 
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 

 

ACCEPTANCE AND APPROVAL ............................................................................... i 

DECLARATION ............................................................................................................. ii 

YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI .................................... iii 

ETİK BEYAN ................................................................................................................. iv 

TEŞEKKÜR ................................................................................................................... vi 

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... viii 

ÖZET ............................................................................................................................... ix 

TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ x 

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... xii 

 

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 

 

CHAPTER II: THE CRISIS WITHIN FEMINISM & THE ROOTS OF 

INTERSECTIONALITY ..................................................................................................... 10 

2.1. DUALISM IN FEMINIST THEORY: 2ND and 3RD WAVES ................... 12 

2.2. PATCHWORK OF FEMINISM ................................................................. 19 

2.3. THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT INTERSECTIONALITY: 

THE START OF A NEW ERA? .............................................................................. 31 

2.4. IDENTITY POLITICS OF FEMINISM or MULTICULTURAL 

TENETS OF FEMINISM ......................................................................................... 36 

 

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ..................................... 49 

3.1. THE AIM, RESEARCH QUESTIONS, AND ASSUMPTIONS ............. 49 

3.2. DATA COLLECTION ................................................................................. 57 

3.2.1. Key Concepts, The Incidents, and Interview Questions ......................... 57 

3.2.2. The Universe and the Sample Groups of the Research ........................... 63 

3.2.3. Data Collection and Analysis.................................................................. 72 

3.3. DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................ 74 

 

CHAPTER IV: INTERSECTIONALITY IN THE FRENCH CONTEXT ........... 77 



xi 
 

 
 

4.1. INTERSECTIONAL ISSUES IN FRANCE .............................................. 77 

4.1.1. Public Schools: Fortresses of Laïcité ...................................................... 81 

4.1.2. “Just a Class Issue” ................................................................................. 83 

4.1.3. Intersectional Case: Veiled Muslim Migrant Women ............................ 85 

4.2. CATEGORIZED INTERSECTIONAL DIMENSIONS IN FRANCE ... 89 

4.3. CONCEPTUALIZED CSOs’ DISCOURSES WITHIN THE SCOPE OF 

INTERSECTIONAL ISSUES .................................................................................. 92 

 

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION............................................................................ 116 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 124 

ANNEX 1.  INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ............................................................. 151 

ANNEX 2.  ORİJİNALLİK BELGESİ ................................................................ 153 

ANNEX 3.  ETİK KURUL RAPORU ................................................................. 154 

 

  



xii 
 

 
 

LIST OF TABLES 

 

Table 1 - The List of CSOs in the first group within the Scope of the Research ........... 68 

Table 2 - The List of CSOs in the second group within the Scope of the Research ...... 69 

Table 3 - The List of CSOs in the third group within the Scope of the Research .......... 70 

Table 4 - The List of CSOs in the fourth group within the Scope of the Research ........ 70 

Table 5 - The List of CSOs in the fifth group within the Scope of the Research .......... 71 

Tablo 6 - Categories of Intersectional Dimensions in France ........................................ 89 

Table 7 - Conceptualized CSOs Discourses ................................................................. 107 

Table 8 - Categorized CSOs’ Discourses within the scope of race, class, and gender 113 

 

 

 



1 
 

 
 

 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

 

In 1976, the cover story of an issue of Harper’s magazine proclaimed a ‘Requiem for 

the Women’s Movement’ (Geng, 1976: 53, cited in (Hawkesworth, 2004: 963). The 

story’s summary said that feminism had undergone a ‘natural expiration’, caused by a 

disappearance of the problems of women’s experiences. The question is today whether 

feminism is dead or not. Freedman states that feminism is far from “diminishing or 

disappearing” since 1960; feminism has endured exceptional improvement and its 

establishment within political, social and cultural territories is still distinct, and she adds 

‘Contrary to the views of contemporary pundits, feminism has never been more 

widespread or politically influential than at this point in history’ and it has ‘moved from 

the margins of alternative culture to infiltrate mainstream politics’ in many countries 

(Freedman, 2006: 85). Instead of becoming a corpse, in parallel to other profound third 

wave feminist debates, intersectionality has become one of the popular concepts of 

feminism today. In an article on “The Complexity of Intersectionality”, Leslie McCall 

states that intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution to Women’s 

Studies (McCall, 2005:1771). It is not a unified body of theory but more a range of 

theoretical and conceptual tools, according to Helma Lutz, Vivar Herrera, Teresa Maria 

and Linda Supik (2013). Intersectional scholarship, especially in the US, has integrated 

the knowledge from Race and Ethnic Studies with aspects of Women’s Studies. This 

knowledge has been refined through the civil and women’s rights activism of the 1960s 

and 1970s (hooks, 1981; Pugh, 2002). And the themes and ideas of intersecting 

identities and structural social relations emerged during the early 1980s (Davis, 1982). 

As Nira Yuval Davis explains, instead of unidimensional identity politics, 

intersectionality has become a fragmented identity politics which means no longer for 

example, women or Blacks, but Black women.  Before Kimberlé Crenshaw invented the 

term in 1989 to refer to marginalised and racialised women, Floya Anthias and Nira-

Yuval Davis in their article “Contexualizing feminism: Gender, ethnic and class 

divisions” stated that intersectionality analysis relates to the distribution of power and 



2 
 

 
 

other resources in society (Anthias and Davis, 1983: 65). Philomena Essed linked 

intersectionality to what she calls gendered racism, claiming that racisms and 

genderisms are rooted in particular histories and formations of gender, race, ethnicity 

(Essed, 2001:1).  Other conceptualizations of intersectionality have created in parallel 

and in exchange with the American concept, focusing, for illustration, the role of 

nationalism (Yuval-Davis 1997) in forming the “matrix of domination” (Collins 1990). 

Patricia Hill Collins describes the matrix of domination as a proper acknowledgement 

of the interlocking inequalities. The matrix of domination can come into play on several 

levels, three in particular: the level of personal biography; the group or community level 

of cultural context created by race, class and gender; and the systemic level of social 

institutions (Collins 1990: 227). The idea is to seek a way to overcome dimensions of 

inequality such as race, class and gender as they overlap and intersect with one another, 

as articulated by Deborah King in 1988. King called for a model of analysis permitting 

recognition of the multiple forms of jeopardy that different identities can put one in 

(King, 1988). When King refers to multiple forms of jeopardy, she is not only referring 

to several simultaneous forms of oppression, but to the multiplicative relationships 

between them as well (King, 1988: 47).  Ivy Ken has described how oppression and 

multiples of oppression are produced and structured. Ken argues that sources of 

oppression begin with production, which depends on the particular social, historical, 

political, cultural and economic conditions of a society (Ken, 2007: 154). Besides the 

three quintessential dimensions, Hernandez and Rehman state that intersectionality 

theory has evolved over time to explicitly include other points of discrimination, such as 

sexuality, age, religion, disability and weight. Crenshaw then adds a distinction between 

political and structural intersectionality; the former referring to the responses of political 

institutions and the latter explaining the various ways in which intersectionality is 

experienced differently by those who face discrimination on the basis of more than one 

axis (Crenshaw, 1991).   

The aim of the thesis is to explore how the concept of intersectionality is articulated in 

the French context by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) advocating women’s rights 

with regard to specific incidents such as prohibition of headscarf in public schools, 

visibility of veiled women in public sphere, emancipation of those women from their 

Muslim culture and communities. The French case is significant to study because it is a 



3 
 

 
 

considerably different case to the Anglo-Saxon version. Even though the concept has 

been imported, its definition is quite different than in the US, since in France the 

intersectional dimensions (gender, race, and class) are interpreted within particular 

differentiated parameters and debates such as laïcité1, French Islam, and universal 

women’s rights. According to Fassin, US feminism had to define itself in relation to the 

black movement, so it is the racial question that makes it possible to understand why 

French intersectionality is different, as it is found in the context of the controversies 

over the Islamic veil (or scarf) – and in particular on the occasion of the 2004 law on 

religious symbols at school (Fassin, 2015). One group of people continue to think that 

this is only religion and claim to speak exclusively of laïcité, but others, especially in 

the new generations, are starting to see it with the guise of republican universalism, as a 

form of racism (Fassin, 2015; Delphy, 2009).  

As Elenore Lepinard states that the question of intersectionality is especially alarming 

in Europe. Undoubtedly, for the last 20 years, a particular nexus articulating migration, 

ethnicity, religion, and class has been shaping in numerous European countries that can 

shed new light on the concept and the politics of intersectionality.The role of religion in 

theorizing intersectionality in Europe is very crucial. Lepinard continues that the 

racialization of Muslim religious identities, which covers with the racialization of 

migrants and their (third and fourth era) children, has happened in portion through a 

series of public debates on Muslim and migrant women: veiling, arranged and forced 

marriages, and female genital mutilation have been examined in relation to the public 

sphere (Rosenberger and Sauer 2011), frequently with approach results detrimental to 

migrant/Muslim women’s rights and concrete lives. Within the European context, there 

is a need to conceptualize intersectionality in relation to migration, nationalism, and 

Islam (El-Tayeb, 2011). For feminist politics and the women’s movement in France, 

theorizing intersectionality is embedded within questions of laïcité and Muslim 

migrants (Lepinard, 2014: 125).  For instance, the problem is that defending universal 

women’s rights against veiling might also cause nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, 

and Islamophobia between non-Muslim or nonmigrant women and Muslim or migrant 

women. This double bind of feminist movements is the initial point of this thesis.  On 

                                                           
1 In this thesis the term Laicite will be using instead of secularism. Since the starting point of 

this thesis is the case of France, it will be considered within its original context in France. 



4 
 

 
 

the one face of the coin, the debates about promoting the emancipation of all women, 

and on the other side the debates about the fueling of discrimination against Muslim 

women and their exclusion from the public sphere are both contradictory and 

problematic in terms of intersectionality theory (Lepinard, 2014). As Davis states, the 

discourse of legitimizing these conflicts supposedly uses an intersectional analysis 

about women, Muslim women, and women who need to be rescued by the “enlightened 

West” (Davis, 2009). That is another crucial pinpoint of this thesis. 

Based on field research, the argument of this thesis is that the French context constitutes 

an exceptional case in terms of intersectionality because the main arguments, 

discussions, and discourses about identity politics in France are on laïcité, 

discrimination, oppression, the visibility of women, the public and private sphere, and 

the daily life/routines/habitus of  French culture versus Muslim migrants’ culture. These 

issues are also related to the French feminist approach which began the sexual freedom 

of women and emancipation of women from religion in Europe in the 1960s and ‘70s. 

The perspective of French feminists about the role of women in monotheist religions 

(either Christianity, Islam or Judaism) is critical, and the impact of religion – especially 

of Islam – in identity politics in France also inspired the debates within feminist politics 

on intersectionality in the 2000s. 

In 2004, Nacira Guénif-Souilamas extended her work on the "Beurettes" by elaborating 

with another sociologist, Eric Macé, a critical discourse about the "Arab boy", the 

racialization of feminism in postcolonial France (Guénif-Souilamas, 2004). Christelle 

Hamel also published an article in 2003 which was part of her thesis in anthropology on 

the invention of rotating, “their supposed social exoticism contributes to the 

racialization of these French people that we refer once again to their origin in the name 

of equality between the sexes, playing not only on their image but also on their 

existence”. The intervention of Christine Delphy can be also considered in this quarrel, 

especially with an important article published in 2006 by the magazine Nouvelles 

Questions Feministes, declaring the point of convergence between the US study on 

intersectionality and the history of materialist feminism in France, a transatlantic 

exchange which is not foreign to its own trajectory. Many feminists were caught on the 

horns of a dilemma between anti-sexism and anti-racism, but she considers this ‘a false 



5 
 

 
 

dilemma’: the sociologist is part of a logic of intersection. Indeed, "The assumption that 

anti-racism and anti-sexism contradict is only possible if we consider that those 

oppressed by racism are all men; otherwise, this hypothesis applies only if the women in 

the group are not subject to the racist regime" (Delphy, 2009). Moreover, “It does not 

only imply that the women of the racialized group, the women neighborhoods and 

suburbs are oppressed only by sexism; it is also implied that it is oppressed only by one 

sexism: that of ‘Their’ men” (Delphy, 2009). But Christine Delphy also reminds us that:  

Patriarchy is not the only system which oppresses women in "neighborhoods and 

suburbs". They are also oppressed by racism. Oppressions do not add up to each 

other so mechanically and successively in time and space. There is no sign 

announcing: "Here you leave the patriarchal system to enter the racist system". The 

two (or more) systems of oppression coexist at the same time and in the same space 

for individuals. They combine. (Delphy, 2009) 

 

In short, the French context in the mid-2000s provides fertile ground to explore the 

ways to account for what draws, in feminism, a fracture: the ‘racial question’ has an 

effect indeed, in France but also elsewhere in Europe and beyond, on ‘sexual questions’ 

– at the forefront of which we find the two figures, inseparably racialized and gendered, 

the ‘Arab boy’ and the ‘Muslim girl’, the rapist and the veiled. Such is the challenge of 

the French translation of intersectionality; this is the reality to which the irruption of the 

concept first refers (Fassin, 2015).  

Regarding this literature in France in this thesis there are some cases which are thought 

of as parameters for carrying out a proper analysis. Those cases are categorized in terms 

of race, gender and class. Under race, the racialization of Islam is the first conceptual 

term. Under gender, it is the emancipation of all women, and lastly under class it is the 

integration problems of Muslim migrants. Hence, to give a general perspective of these 

cases, they are within the categorizations of race, gender, and class. Under the 

racialization of Islam, the debates of French Islam and its practice, the establishment of 

the Institution of the Arabic World (L’institute du Monde Arab, in 2000 the project of 

the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman – French Council for the Muslim Sect – 

(CFCM), debates about French Islam and integration, the French republic and its 

capability to accept Islam. Cases relating to the emancipation of all women include the 

debates about Muslim women’s visibility in the public sphere (through the debates on 



6 
 

 
 

the veil), and cases beginning in 1989 and every year after that in which there were 

attempts to create clashes between the different sides. In terms of the integration 

problems of Muslim migrants, cases such as the riots of 2005 or vandalism in the 

banlieues as well as a lack of education and ‘incomplete citizenship’ in terms of French 

values are considered. 

This dichotomy between the affirmation of intersectionality in practice and the refusal 

to make it significant to feminist politics uncovers the problem in which French 

women’s organizations discover themselves as they wish to be comprehensive and 

claim to practice sisterhood in spite of differences whereas at the same time denying to 

receive an intersectional approach that would recognize designs of segregation and 

inequality connected to religious identity and ethnicity in their official political platform 

(Lepinard, 2014). As Lepinard declares;  

French feminist organizations do not ignore that banning veiling might place some 

women in difficult situations, but they believe that the remedy is worth the price to 

pay because by doing so, they are in fact helping a majority of women to become 

emancipated, and they are protecting hard-won universal women’s rights. Hence, 

the lack of intersectional reasoning enables them to discard the interests of a 

minority of Muslim women in the name of enhancing the interests of the majority 

of women. Such a focus on the interests of the majoritarian group represented by 

an organization, at the expense of the interests of sub/minority groups, is common 

in activism and not specific to French women’s rights organizations (Strolovitch 

2007). However, in the French context, the prevalence of this “gender-first” 

approach is striking. Indeed, even organizations that identify as representing 

women from migrant backgrounds tend to adopt a similar positioning, some of 

them being at the forefront of the mobilization in favor of the 2010 ban (Lepinard, 

2014). 

Hence, in this thesis, to understand the concept of intersectionality in France, CSOs 

advocating women’s rights are focused on. Regarding Lepinard’s work, the dilemma of 

some feminist groups became a challenge for intersectional situtations such as the case 

of veiled Muslim migrant women.  

The expected contribution of this thesis to the literature on gender, identity politics, 

feminist theory is revealing how the term “intersectionality” articulated in France which 

is argued to constitute on exceptional case in terms of racialization of Islam, laïcité, 

integration policy, universalism and communitarianism/multiculturalism debates by 

feminist groups from different standpoints, socio-economical background.  Also another 

important pinpoint to contribute is to reveal how in the case of France, intersectionality 



7 
 

 
 

is stretched out in terms of feminist fragmentations, the role of laicité for identity 

politics in France and the tension between veiled Muslim migrant women and white 

feminists. 

The second chapter provides the theoretical and conceptual framework concerning  

main parameters of identity politics, feminist discourse (such as emancipation, the 

private and public sphere, diversity, multiplicity, and the objectification of women). 

These parameters are discussed across a large spectrum via the crucial principles of 

second- and third-wave feminism. Those two are intertwined because several branches 

of the women’s movement have been formed which would be classified both under the 

second and third waves at the same time. After explaining the intersections and main 

arguments of these two waves, intersectionality and its claims are described through 

scanning and summarizing the literature of feminist and identity politics in the so-called 

‘post-feminist’ period. The ambiguous feature of the concept of ‘intersectionality’ gives 

the opportunity to analyze it from many different perspectives which all have pros and 

cons in the feminist literature. As a theoretical framework within this research, the 

concept has been magnified through identity politics based on multicultural tenets, and 

it has been asked whether intersectionality is the proper reflection of multiculturalism 

within feminism and Gender Studies. Concurrent issues of feminism and identity 

politics have also been clarified. Then finally, the intersectional situation of France 

through the perspective of the main trends within feminism and identity politics from 

the 2000s onwards has been excavated. The structure of the concept has been 

constructed via French exceptionalism/essentialism and the principles (the main pillars 

which are fraternity, equality, liberty, and – most crucially and vulnerably – “laïcité”) 

of the solidarity and democracy of France (Scott, 1986; 2015). It has been explained 

why the perspective of the study has not only been built up on identity politics and its 

feminist contradictions, but also on CSOs advocating women’s rights and their 

importance to the discourse. Hence, the intersection of feminism and issues in identity 

politics has been pointed out via the perspectives, action and reactions of CSOs 

advocating women’s rights over specific cases which have occurred in relation to the 

main problematic of the emancipation, integration and submission of women (but not 

“ordinary” white French women: migrant Muslim-origin women) into French society. 

This theoretical and conceptual framework brings us to an awareness of how the 



8 
 

 
 

concept can stretch through the historical background and political culture of a country 

– France, in this study – and helps us to analyze the later discourse of in-depth 

interviews of CSOs for data analysis.  

The third chapter introduces the methodological framework of the thesis. Cases 

designated through the intersection of identity politics, feminist and gender issues from 

the 2000s onwards in France are explained with their consequences. Then, to determine 

related CSOs, a database2 has been used. After the categorization and elimination of 

various CSOs, 35 CSOs’ data was used. In this chapter autoethnography was explained 

as a feminist methodology of data analysis. Autoethnography is a very rich and new 

technique to figure out tiny details during the interviews. Since the main principle of 

this technique is to get the interviewer to become an outsider and insider of the 

interview while doing discourse analysis of the data, those advantages of the 

autoethnography method were very helpful. “I” indicate privileged an important 

knowledge which brings an insider account and weaved power structures’ analysis that 

an outsider cannot dismantle. That is why during the analysis process of the interviews, 

the background, culture, gender, social status and education affected the data evaluation. 

Thus here it was me as an outsider and insider of the interview who is a non-veiled 

woman, coming from a country where the majority of population is Muslim and which 

has a secular state system – even if secularism has its own definition. Incorparating the 

research as a person concedes supplying wealthy, all encompassing  insights into 

people’s views and activities, as well as the nature (that is, sights and sounds) of the 

area they possess, through the collection of detailed observations and interviews. 

Autoethnography also provided me the opportunity to follow the principles of 

standpoint feminism research techniques during the data analysis process.   

The fourth chapter, discusses the research findings by carrying out a qualitative analysis 

of how CSOs in France perceives intersectionality on the bases of intersectional cases 

such as emancipation of veiled women from their Muslim community and culture, 

visibility of religious items in public sphere, integration of Muslim population in France 

in the 2000s onwards. The aim here is to conceptualize the relationship between 

                                                           
2https://www. centre-hubertine-auclert. fr/associations It will be explained why this database has 

been chosen.  

https://www.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/associations


9 
 

 
 

different women groups’ perception of identity politics in France.  It will help us to 

interpret the position of the CSOs regarding intersectionality in France. 

The fifth chapter summarizes how the concept of intersectionality can be understood by 

French CSOs advocating women’s rights. It reveals the future prospects of how further 

studies might be like.  



10 
 

 
 

CHAPTER II 

THE CRISIS WITHIN FEMINISM & THE ROOTS OF 

INTERSECTIONALITY 

 

In order to understand recent issues in feminist theory, we need to take a quick 

flashback to the different waves of feminism. According to Julia Kristeva, the core 

principle of different periods of movement of women and feminism is in the sense of a 

Hegelian dialectic which is “the universal – the particular – the individual” (Kristeva, 

1986: 32). In this context, first-wave feminism states that the abstract universal rights 

known as the rights of man should be extended to women. Second-wave feminism 

claims that women are different from men and that their particularities be respected. 

Third-wave feminism, a type of post-feminism, emphasizes the singularity of each 

individual against both the particular and the universal (Kristeva, 1986: 53). Kristeva’s 

individualism moves feminism beyond equality to a singularity. She states the project in 

the trilogy “Female Genius” as ‘a call to every woman’s singularity’ (Kristeva, 1986; 

Tong, 2013: 91).  

Considering this refined summary of Kristeva, each wave of the feminist movement has 

represented its own particular power struggle. First-wave feminism argues that man and 

woman are equal and have the same universal rights; the second wave has certain 

breaking points from the first (Weedon, 1999; Kristeva, 1986; Delphy, 2000; Allwood 

and Wadia, 2013:26). This era was different to the era of the first wave’s concerns. 

Women’s particularity and difference from men needed to be underlined. The socio-

economical situation and existence of woman was based on sexual freedom. The 

‘emancipation of women’ and getting ‘their’ own freedom was a stony road to head off 

from. Thus, second-wave feminism brought the term gender onto the stage, which 

slowly became the main term within its arguments (Bryson, 1999:52; Bunjun, 2010:26). 

From another point of view, third-wave feminism has its own arguments emerging from 

cultural differentiations between particular women’s groups.  

In this context, it is essential to emphasize that the second wave (in the West) has been 

about the rights of individual to political and religious freedom, choice and self 



11 
 

 
 

determination. Until the arrival of second-wave feminism, liberal expression 

consistently spoke of ‘man’3(Weedon, 1999:28; Harding, 2012a:56; Lutz, 2011). As 

bell hooks emphasized in detail, “feminism which is a liberation struggle, must exist 

apart from and as part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms” 

(hooks, 1981). In this study, there is considered to be a need to understand that 

patriarchal domination shares an ideological basis with racism and other forms of group 

oppression (religion, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation… etc.), and that there is 

no hope of ending this oppression while these systems remain in one piece (Young, 

2005). This acquired knowledge should repeatedly inform the direction of feminist 

theory (hooks, 1981:22). Additionaly, the main purpose of this study goes in parallel 

with the explanation that the emergence of feminism is based on the roots of black 

feminism, which takes the refusal of racism and sexism as discreet and separate forms 

of oppression as the main principle (Benhabib, 1998:22; Benhabib, 2006:56; 

hooks,1981; Collins, 2009).  

Hence, in this theoretical chapter, the main principles of second and third waves are first 

going to be exposed and then it will be explained how the movement changed and what 

the main transition parameters are. The main pillars and concepts of the movement at 

various particular time periods are going to be explored.  

Thus, this theoretical summary will allow us to see how the feminist movement is 

evolving while maintaining its power struggle. Regarding second wave, the main 

principals of Marxist, Liberal feminisms are going to be mentioned through universality 

and public versus private relation. Then the transition from second to third will be 

summarized. After that third wave is going to be explained via standpoint, 

multiracial/multiethnic, women of color, postcolonial and global, black and white 

feminisms as a section named ‘patchwork of feminism’ because the main arguments of 

second and third waves are integrated to each other as a patchwork. One piece from 

(e.g. diversity) is related to another (e.g. universality). It is difficult to draw a linear line 

in history of feminist theory when there are numerous connections, disruptions and 

                                                           
3The French Revolution proclaimed “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” while the American 

Declaration of Independence of 4th July 1776 insisted that “all men are equal that they are 

endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable Rights, that among these are “Life, Liberty 

and the pursuit of Happiness”(Weedon, 1999:13).  



12 
 

 
 

rediscoveries. Hence there might have some overlaps of the arguments in 2nd and 3rd 

waves. It is going to be continued on with intersection of multiculturalism and feminist 

theory. 

2.1. DUALISM IN FEMINIST THEORY: 2ND and 3RD WAVES 

First-wave feminism was a period during which feminists largely argued from a 

position completely attached to liberalism (Fraser, 2013; Mansbridge, 1999; Oliver and 

Walsh, 2005). The second wave of feminist thought is a feminism that is hyphenated, 

with a different theoretical structure but unified under the commitment to sameness, 

equality, universality and scientific understanding (Collins and Chepp, 2013; Fraser, 

2013; Lloyd, 2005). Third-wave feminism begins by questioning these basic premises, 

yielding up instead ideas like difference, particularity, embodiment, multiplicity, 

contradictions, and identity. With a destabilization of the dualities inherent in the 

second wave, it has moved from culture/nature to public/private to man/woman (Evans 

and Williams, 2013; Tomlinson, 2013:79) The bases of this critical shift can be found in 

realizing the importance of the motto “the personal is political”, which questioned not 

only the public divide, but also the scientific distance mostly assumed between culture, 

mind and subject versus nature, matter or object (Rodriguez, Lytle and Vaughan, 

2013:289).  

Beginning with the first wave, dualisms (private/public and culture/nature) remained 

unchallenged. In many ways, the very first wave of feminists who fought for civil rights 

on behalf of white middle- and upper-class women took on the women’s role in the 

private sphere. Indeed, they used the ideal of ‘motherhood’ to further their claims that 

women were more bonded to the cultural and civil realm than men. It was exactly the 

private sphere in which women earned the right to contribute to the political sphere in 

the form of their votes (hooks, 1981:78; Collins, 2000:8; Davis, 2008).  

Second-wave feminism continued to realize the dualities built-in in modern political 

theories but opened up space to which women gained access (Bowleg, 2008). Not only 

was the 'cultural realm' under attack, but now too the 'public realm' of work and politics 

was equally being challenged for its exclusion of women (Werbner, 2013). The goal, 

therefore, was particularly to get white middle-class women into the spheres of both the 



13 
 

 
 

political and cultural realm, so as to make them equal with men and no longer to leave 

them classified as marginalized, or 'the other', by their association with the natural or 

private spheres (Werbner, 2013). The means of this movement and therefore 'equality' 

would be varied according to different schools of hyphenated feminist thought (Bryson, 

1999:67; Bunjun, 2010). The main objective of second-wave feminism was about 

'reproduction'. Reproduction in terms of both childbearing and childrearing is central to 

the traditional political definitions of 'natural' and 'private' and therefore outside the 

boundaries of political theory (Tong, 2013; Lloyd, 2005). As feminists made inroads 

into both the theoretical and practical worlds of politics (the cultural and the public 

realm), it was recognized that the spheres being vacated by many women (the private 

and natural) were becoming difficult to sustain in their existing forms. As feminists 

encouraged women to leave the former spheres, the movement simultaneously created a 

need to reconstruct the latter. Challenging the fundamentals of dualisms, particularly 

liberal feminism under the second wave of feminism has argued that as certain groups 

of women move into the public/cultural spheres, at the same time men have moved into 

the private and natural spheres (Tong, 2013; Mohanty, 1997). This was partially 

successful. Instead of men filling the vacated spaces poor women of color were a better 

choice (Lorber, 2012; Gopaldas, 2013; Haslanger, 2013). Because second-wave 

feminism, in all its theoretical manifestations, claimed for itself a universality of both 

historical cause and the goals for the potential future, its adherents have believed that it 

could both accommodate and transcend individual differences, by uniting women in the 

goal of entering the cultural and public realm (Moi, 2001; Lloyd, 2005). This would 

only be achieved, however, if feminists brought down these barriers as a unified force 

(Scott, 2005; 2007; Costa, 2014). For this reason, second-wave feminism was associated 

with the ‘universal’ goals, that is to fight for ‘all women’s’ interests.  

The public and private divide acts as a distinguishing segregation allowing us to 

understand different dimensions of women’s worlds. This is because of the strong links 

between women’s experiences and their social location, which creates most of the 

differences of women groups. The construction of a public and private realm by 

political theory has thus been violated by feminists on both sides, by means of which 

women have been eliminated from political life whilst collectively being subjected to its 

authority (Dhamoon, 2013: 89). The response to this elimination can be put in a phrase 



14 
 

 
 

adopted as the women's movement motto, in the 1960s and ‘70s: “The personal is 

political.” This call influenced the political agenda for the analysis of the private and 

public spheres and a greater understanding of how authority works in all conditions of 

both women's and men's lives. Its analysis varies by extremes in accordance with the 

views of different types of feminists under 2nd wavist category (Dhamoon, 2013:92). 

Liberal feminists have tended towards trying to add women into the public sphere, 

while the traditional family was protected in the private sphere (supplemented by state 

intervention in the form of childcare and elderly care; in other words, as women enter 

the public sphere, the public realm must take greater responsibility for their needs in the 

private sphere). Simultaneously, they have claimed that issues which have been seen 

commonly as 'private' must be subject of public laws: for example, domestic violence, 

sexual assault or child abuse. Generally, the socialist, liberal and radical feminist 

response to the private/public divide has been questioned by women of color and 

lesbian feminists, who both say that the “universal claims, both about the private and 

public sphere made by these feminist groups continue to exclude the reality of them” 

(Arneil, 1999: 75-76).  

During this period, as many feminists have questioned the relevance of white middle-

class liberal feminist conclusions regarding the nature of the public and private divide to 

other groups of women, there are specific questions also raised about the Marxist or 

socialist analysis of the productive/reproductive divide (Smith, 2010). Hence the dual 

system of Hartmann and Mitchell which analyse both production/reproduction in terms 

of patriarchy (gender relations) and capitalism (class relations) ignores any other 

explanatory factors. Race, in other words, or the reality of women who face obstacles 

other than class and gender is simply not addressed (Mitchell, 1995; Butler and Scott, 

1992). As Angela Davis comments about the tendency of Marxist feminism: 

To extract the greatest possible surplus from the labor of the slaves – the Black 

woman had to be released from the chains of the myth of femininity… In order to 

function as slave, the black woman had to be annulled as woman… The sheer force 

of things rendered her equal to her man (Davis, 2008).  

 

Also hooks adds in her critique of liberal feminism that while African-American men 

and women were often equal in terms of the labor they did outside of the house, women 



15 
 

 
 

were still more responsible either within their own families or their master’s households 

(hooks, 1981; Arneil, 1999: 71). The point here by Davis and hooks is that black 

women were dominated by their masters in the public sphere and their husbands in the 

private sphere (Davis, 2008). Therefore, the consequences of the 

production/reproduction theories of Marxist feminism have affected the division of the 

public and private sphere. Nancy Harstock uses the Marxist ideology to look into this 

idea further and argues for the development of a “feminist standpoint” based on the 

possession of women and leading to a form of knowledge superior to that available to 

either white or black men (Harstock,1985:89; Bryson, 1999:22-23). Another 

approach/criticism of second-wave feminism was by Betty Friedan (1966), “white 

middle- and upper-class women were housewives not because sexism would have 

prevented them from being in the paid labor force but because they had willingly 

embraced the notion that was better to be a housewife than to be a worker” (Friedan, 

1966). As has been mentioned before, women often worked in exploitative, low paying 

jobs, which was the case for many women from all areas (Allwood and Wadia, 2010).  

When ‘class’ cracked open the second-wave feminist’s claims to ‘universality’, the 

diversity of women’s groups was born. In general, through second wave feminism the 

liberal, Marxist, socialist and radical feminist response to the public/private divide has 

been challenged by both women of color (Harstock, 1985) and lesbian feminists who 

argue that the “universal claims, about the public and private sphere made by these 

groups of feminists continue to exclude their reality” (Arneil, 1999: 75-76). According 

to Barbara Arneil (1999), ‘public versus private’ claims would not only give us the 

power relations between ‘women’ and ‘men’ through gender inequalities, but also the 

power relations within women (Lorde, 1984; Davis,1981). “As wives, secretaries or 

assistants to white men, white women are physically integrated around centers of 

power” (Arneil, 1999:69) Also Audre Lorde makes the point that such closeness to 

power is an illusion, because “white women face being trapped into joining the 

oppressor sharing power” (Davis, 1981; Crenshaw; 1989; 1991; Lorde, 1984). “Women 

of color never had this possibility. It is sometimes extended to us not as an invitation to 

join power but being the other. Whereas for white women there are a wider range of 

choices.” (Lorde, 1984).  



16 
 

 
 

The relationship between white men and white women is different in comparison to the 

relationships between white or black men and women of color (Davis, 2008). White 

women, as a result, experience a highly private, individualized sense of control. Hurtado 

and Henley argue that this intimate relationship to power is why second-wave feminists 

have developed a closeness to psychoanalytic theories (or individualistic psychological 

frameworks) to respond to social problems in a way that women of color have not 

(Hurtado, 2003; Hurtado and Sinha, 2008). Hurtado concludes: “As a result the “white 

women” movement is the only political movement to develop its own clinical approach 

– feminist therapy – to overcoming at the interpersonal level” (Hurtado, 2003). For 

women of color on the other hand, who do not have, demographically, the same 

intimate interaction with white men, goals and strategies differ. Feminists of color may 

resist the notion, for example, that psychoanalysis is the solution to their problem; such 

an approach would depoliticize and individualize their concerns (Young, 2005). 

Similarly, society treats these groups differently, Hurtado claims: “When white women 

rebel they are thrown in mental institutions, when black women rebel they get locked 

up: this difference is due to how far each group is from the centre of power.” (Hurtado, 

2003; Hurtado and Sinha, 2008; Arneil, 1999:70, Benhabib and Cornell, 1987).  

Regarding the transition from second- to third-wave feminism, to understand the 

“evolution” of the feminist movement and the clustering of women groups’ interests, it 

is crucial to consider the differentiated women groups and their dynamics in third-wave 

feminism. Hence, the answer of what third-wave feminism is varies: Synder contends 

that third wave woman's rights presents a strategic reaction to three major hypothetical 

challenges to second-wave women's liberation: the category of women debates about 

(started by women's activists of color) that smashed the thought of a shared women's 

encounter or character; the conclusion of terrific stories through the decay of Marxism 

and the rise of poststructuralism, deconstruction and postmodernism inside the 

foundation; and the sex wars that broken the bound together political stand of woman's 

rights on numerous vital women's activist issues (Synder, 2012; Bilge,2008; Lloyd, 

2013:128). In short, the third wave responds to the debates of the 1980s that hobbled 

feminist theory and practice. Synder names the third wave “feminism without women” 

(Synder, 2012; Lorde, 1984) because it answers to the "women category" debates of the 

end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s that started with a criticism of the 



17 
 

 
 

contention of the second wave that women share something in common as women: a 

common set of experiences and a common gender identity (Synder, 2012).  

It is suggested that the root of feminism lies in second wave feminism, where it was 

shaped by the political climate of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. The ‘third wave’ suggests 

the era of feminism rooted in and shaped by the political climate from the mid ‘80s to 

the new millennium (Kinser, 2004: 132). Whereas within the 1990s the express ‘third 

wave’ was regularly utilized by youthful journalists who articulated themselves a ‘new 

generation’ of women's activists (Findlen, 1995; Walker, 1995), numerous faultfinders 

have pointed out that, earlier to the development of distinction along generational lines, 

black and lesbian women's activists conveyed the dialect of contrast to declare their 

claim women's activist personalities and to lay claim to their interesting encounters, 

varying as they did from prevailing women's activist debates of the time (Dhamoon, 

2013). Third wave woman's rights is intrenched in “the questions raised by women's 

activists of color and lesbian and strange scholars almost the nature of personality, the 

meaning of ‘gender’ and working through a few of the inconsistencies inspired by such 

questions” (Arneil, 1999:192). Orr follows the ‘definitional moment’ of third wave back 

to the terrain of ‘race’ within the early 1980s. 

Third-wave feminisms have come to question the diversity and cultural differences of 

women groups during the period of second-wave feminism. As well as the categories, 

the dualisms integrated in political theory and the role of gender politics, race, class and 

religion are included in third-wave discourse (Evans and Williams,2013; Delphy, 2000; 

Allwood and Wadia, 2013; Lepinard, 2014:7) At the same time, third-wave feminists 

have questioned the values attached to the cultural realm over the natural, the public 

over the private and the assumed duality of man/woman but also the duality of ‘white 

women’/other women groups (Synder, 2012; Bastia, 2014) . The earliest roots of 

second-wave feminism can be found when feminists began to revel in their role as 'the 

other' or ' an outsider', rather than setting as their goal getting 'inside' either the public or 

the natural realm (Tong, 2013; Shields, 2008:39). The much-needed reaffirming of the 

categories of nature, sexuality and motherhood provided feminists with an opportunity 

to celebrate the differences between men and women. This was in spite of longstanding 

political thought to the contrary (Costa, 2014; Williams, 2014; Butler and Scott, 1992).  



18 
 

 
 

According to Arneil, third wave woman's rights was born as a ‘new body of thought. It 

was unmistakable from second-wave feminism distinguished by convictions of 

personality, distinction, inconsistencies and embodiment’ (Arneil, 1999:255). Third-

wave woman's rights appears signs of shortcoming with past women's activist 

hypothesis challenging the dualisms related with the ‘Western way of life’ (Moi, 2001; 

Mohanty, 1992). Second-wave feminism viably challenged and shook the 

establishments of dualisms such as nature/culture and private/public, in which women 

were seen as a depreciated ‘other’ (Collins and Chepp, 2013:62). From the point of 

view of third-wave feminism, this approach is eventually restricted insofar as this 

technique holds a dualistic structure that's mapped onto the categories of man and lady, 

but with a political point to coordinated ladies into standard structures and social 

educate (Krook, 2011). Third-wave feminism is characterized, to begin with and first, 

by a deconstructive drive that looks for to challenge the development of these categories 

and to demand on beginning from the viewpoint of different contrasts instead of from a 

position that advocates equivalence (Tomlinson, 2013; Scott, 1996; Benhabib and 

Cornell, 1987). This can be a circumstance that begins by affirming contrast in two 

ways. To begin with of all, contrast is imperative to the degree that third-wave feminism 

looks for to transport the accentuation in feminist hypothesis absent from approaches 

which puts correspondence or equality within the center to a perspective in which the 

distinction of ladies from men or ‘otherness’ is associated. (Scott, 2005; 2007). It is in 

this sense that the starting for third-wave feminist discourse is the specificity of 

women’s encounters. The moment perspective of contrast comes from the 

acknowledgment that beginning from the encounters of women includes working with 

the abundance of contrasts that make these encounters, which hence third-wave 

feminism ‘embraces the differing qualities, as well as contrasts in aspects among 

‘women’, at last straddling both ‘one’ additionally the ‘other’’ (Arneil, 1999:186). 

Third-wave feminists properly deny the universalist claim that all women share a run of 

common information, but they don't arrange of the concept of ‘experience’ through and 

through (Springer, 2012). Women too see to their individual encounters to pick up 

information that how the world works, looking to develop profound accounts around 

how things ought to be. Actually, individual stories constitute one of the most hallmarks 



19 
 

 
 

of third-wave feminism and the development has not moved beyond this genre over 

time (Lorber, 2012). 

Numerous third-wave stories endeavor to appear the gaps between the reality of 

women's lives and prevailing discourses. A few third-wave feminists, for instance, 

utilize their own knowledge developing up in multicultural or inter-racial families to 

embody how the politics of gender, race, and class play out in people’s lives (Weiner-

Mahcus, 2006). By involving female primary parts in conflicting or inventive ways, 

third-wave feminists unsettle essentialist stories almost passive women and dominant 

men and also shape new identities into the intersection of competing narratives. (Lutz, 

2011).  

Third-wave feminism has been understood as contradictory, sometimes responding to 

multiple different issues. Some academics claim that third-wave feminism’s goal is to 

subvert and reclaim notions of femininity (Groeneveld, 2009; McRobbie, 2009). The 

third wave is mostly connected to intersectionality and women of color (Labaton and  

Lundy Martin, 2004), because according to this idea, the oppression of middle class, 

heterosexual, white voices has been analyzed (Henry, 2004). The influence of 

postcolonialism and poststructuralism has also affected the third wave (Hernandez and 

Rahman, 2002; Bobel, 2010; Hines, 2005; Dean, 2010; Budgeon, 2011). Third-wave 

criticism is directed at post-1970s and second-wave activists and a very specific 

generation, which is generation X (Zack, 2005; Redfern, and Aune, 2010; Baumgardner 

and Richards, 2000; Shugart, 2001). The reason that the third wave is not defined is that 

that respects its existence (Walker, 1995; Siegal, 2007; Finley and Reynolds and 

Stringer, 2010); hence, we need to avoid representing third-wave feminism as 

monolithic.  

2.2. PATCHWORK OF FEMINISM 

Standpoint feminism is based on the perspective of social locations. Its focus on 

standpoint, the view of the world where you are physically, emotionally, mentally, and 

socially – is a major theoretical contribution and springboard for action (Harding, 2005; 

2012a; 2012b). Although women’s voices were the original source of standpoint theory, 

the concept has been successfully used by women and men of diverse classes, racial and 



20 
 

 
 

ethnic groups, nations and cultures to make their values and accomplishments visible to 

the dominant society.  

Additionally, as it has been explained above, women’s viewpoints are privileged in 

order to counteract the dominance of men’s perspectives. But since women’s “social 

locations” differ depending on where they live, their education, job, economic status, 

marital and parental status, religion, racial and ethnic group and sexual orientation, their 

perspectives will differ (Lorber, 2012:197). As Donna Haraway says, all knowledge is 

partial, dependent on social location, and situated somewhere (Haraway, 1988:600). 

Therefore, knowledge produced from women’s perspectives is not homogeneous, (nor 

is men’s from their perspectives). In addition to individual social positions, racial 

categories, ethnicity, religion, social class, age and sexual orientation intersect with 

gender to produce varied life experiences and outlooks (Harding, 2012a; 2012b; Smith, 

2012). Body capabilities are also an important experiential influence. There may be a 

common core to women’s experiences – perhaps because they share similar bodies – but 

standpoint feminism cannot ignore the input from social statuses that are as important as 

gender (Bowleg, 2013).  

Through standpoint feminism, we may call it another tendency under 3rd wave, women 

of color (black/white or the Other) challenged white feminists to recognise differences 

among women (Donovan, 1985; Donovan, 2012; Eisenstein, 1977). The theories of 

standpoint feminism and social location politics had been constructed, but there do not 

always make women prior. Multiracial/multiethnic feminism states that it is not 

acceptable to check just one social status instead of looking at race, gender, social class, 

and ethnic vulnerabilities. Either picking up one social status or adding them one after 

another is not acceptable (Lorber, 2012: 232; Donovan, 2012). Their interface is 

synergistic – together they construct social locations which are oppressive in order to 

understand the results of multiple systems of domination. In the work of Patricia Hill 

Collins, this is named the “matrix of domination” (Collins, 1989). The knowledge of 

women and men in different locations of society are the grounds for the worldviews and 

the politics of activists, and the social location of a woman and a man of same social 

class, ethnic, racial, and (even) religious status differs (Collins, 2009). If disadvantaged 



21 
 

 
 

women succeed in gaining equality with men of a disadvantaged group, they may still 

have not been very successful.  

Hence, that is multiracial/multiethnic feminism, with its roots in the history of 

disadvantaged groups, argues that the major social statuses of a society produce a 

complex hierarchical stratification system. By teasing out multiple strands of oppression 

and exploitation, multiracial/multiethnic feminism shows that gender, racial categories 

and ethnicity are intertwined social structures (Roth, 2004). How people are gendered 

differs according to whether they are members of dominant or subordinate racial and 

ethnic groups. Social class is also an especially crucial dimension, given the wide 

differences between the poor and the rich throughout the world (Haslanger, 2013).  

Multiracial/multiethnic feminism makes a politics that interweaves gender with the 

continuum of dominance and subordination inferred from other social statuses. It 

contends that feminist political activism can now not be based as it were on gender but 

must consider racial identifications, ethnicity and social class as well (Haslanger, 2013; 

Lutz, 2011). The battle for justice and acknowledgment incorporates men, but the 

viewpoints, politics and cultural commitments of women of different racial and ethnic 

groups take priority. Since other critical social statuses intersect gender as a social 

status, multiracial/multiethnic feminism challenges a entirely parallel gendered social 

arrange. 

Multicultural feminisms highlighted women’s differences which had previously been 

ignored (Crenshaw, 1989).  Elizabeth Spelman suggested the causes for this jigsaw 

failure (Spelman, 1990) and stated that many feminist scholars, especially liberal 

feminists, went down the wrong way. In their aim to demonstrate that women are men’s 

full equals, they focused women’s similarity to each other as well as women’s 

equivalence to men (Spelman, 1990). According to Spelman, oppressing people by 

ignoring their differences and emphasizing their similarities is possible. If one group is 

underlined as more human, more important than the other, the differences among them 

will be deeper than ever. On the other hand, to highlight women’s solidarity does not 

mean the disappearance of hierarchy: class is the ultimate way to make women equal.  



22 
 

 
 

Through the energy of multiracial/multi ethnic feminism, global and postcolonial 

feminists highlight that “the oppression of women ignore one part of the world is often 

affected by what happens in another, and that no woman is free until the conditions of 

oppression of women are eliminated everywhere” (Young, 1997; 2005). More precisely, 

these academics focus on the world’s division of nations into alleged First World 

nations which are industrialized and market-based, found in the northern hemisphere 

and Third World Nations which are economically developing nations positioned in the 

southern hemisphere (Anzaldua, 1987). Global and postcolonial feminists mainly study 

how this state of affairs disempowers and shortchanges Third World women (Davis, 

1992). According to Davis, First World feminists are largely concerned with gender 

issues related to sexuality and reproduction, however, Third World feminists underline 

that economic and political issues are lodged at the center of their worldview (Synder, 

2012: 309). They emphasize that their oppression as Third World nations/peoples are 

mostly higher in priority than their oppression as women.  For this reason, Third World 

women discard the tag feminist (Evans, 2015). As an alternative, they use other terms to 

define themselves, including Alice Walker’s term ‘womanist’ (Walker, 1995; Tong, 

2013: 215). Walker explains “a womanist is like a Black feminist or woman of color 

dedicated to the survival, and unity of entire people” (Walker,1995). Many First World 

feminists largely accept as justified Third World womanists’ criticisms of themselves. 

Considering many Third World womanists, many First World feminists think of 

feminism as a dynamic movement rather than as a static doctrine. They pursue to 

maintain feminism as the progression whereby women from all around the world confer 

their cohesions, and differences in an effort to secure the two long-term goals below: 

 

i) As a right freedom of choice, the control of their own lives within and outside 

of their home. The reason of control over lives and bodies is crucial to 

guarantee a sense of dignity.  

ii) The amputation of all dimensions of inequity, and oppression through national 

international, social and economical situations (Tong, 2013). The reason why 

the association of women in national liberation fights, in plans for national and 

local development, and comprehensive struggles for revolution (Werbner, 

2013). For global, and postcolonial feminists, the economical, and the political 



23 
 

 
 

are unified. In the privacy of one’s home affects their lives in the larger social 

order (Hancock, 2013). Economical and political justice should be as important 

as sexual, and reproductive freedom (Hancock, 2013; Donovan, 2012). Emily 

Woo Yamaski claims that point: “I cannot be an Asian American on Monday, a 

woman on Tuesday, a lesbian on Wednesday, a worker/student on Thursday, 

and a political radical on Friday. I am all these things every day” (Tong, 2013). 

 

Besides the variety of different oppression of women in their own lives; global, and 

postcolonial feminists emphasize the connections between the various kinds of 

oppression women experience throughout the world. Charlotte Bunch describes the 

connections between local, and global feminism in detail: 

 

To make global feminist consciousness a powerful force in the world demands that 

we make the local global, and the global local. Such a movement is not based on 

international travel, and conferences, although these may be useful, but must be 

centered on a sense of connectedness among women active at the grass roots in 

various regions. For women in industrialized countries, this connectedness must be 

based in the authenticity of our struggles at home, in our need to learn from others, 

and in our efforts to understand the global implications of our actions, not in liberal 

guilt, condescending charity, or the false imposition of our models on others. Thus, 

for example, when we fight to have a birth control device banned in the United 

States because it is unsafe, we must simultaneously demand that it be destroyed 

rather than dumped on women in the Third World. The kind of consciousness that 

global, and postcolonial feminism demands clearly requires great sensitivity to, and 

awareness about the situations of women in nations other than one’s own (Bunch, 

2001).  

 

 

Beside the interconnection between women, global, and postcolonial feminists do not 

aim to sweep women’s differences under the rug (Lutz, 2011). On the contrary they 

assess that women cannot unite as equals until women accept and point out their 

differences (Ackerly and McDermott, 2011). According to Audre Lorde, a feminist in a 

room with different women groups from all around the world attempts to minimize the 

differences from them. Lorde says that is a threat to sisterhood, instead of focusing on 

the manyness of women: even the black women focus on women’s oneness (Tong, 

2013). Lorde emphasized that it is precisely this type of behavior that clarifies some 

feminists’ incapability to forge that kind of unions to create a better world:  

 



24 
 

 
 

Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest 

reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. 

Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities 

between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the 

necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that 

interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged, and equal, can the power to 

seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage, and 

sustenance to act where there are no charters (Lorde, 1984).  

 

Lorde also explains that just because one women has not suffered oppressions more 

harmful to body, mind, and spirit than the ones she has suffered, it does not mean that 

woman should ignore what the other has suffered. Nor does it mean she should keep her 

counsel for fear of offending others (Ackerly and McDermott, 2011). On the contrary, 

to refuse to reveal one’s self to others is to adopt that others are not accomplished of 

coming to terms with one. It is to say, “Although I think I have what it takes to 

understand others, I doubt that they share this ability. To think in such a fashion is the 

height of arrogance in global, and postcolonial feminists’ view” (Spivak, 1988).  

 

Continuing on with black feminism and white feminism,  Patricia Hill Collins, bell 

hooks, and Audre Lorde, who were American feminists, began to call the women of 

color and other minority women in the U. S. the victims of “multiple jeopardy” (Llyod, 

2013).  Focusing on African-American women, bell hooks stated that sexism, classism, 

and racism are not divisible in real life, as if in theory they are divisible (hooks, 1981). 

hooks mentioned that any oppression situation might not be discarded in favor of any 

other one.  As Young describes, “oppression is a many-headed beast capable of 

regenerating any one of the heads temporarily severed from its bloated body” (Young, 

2005). Frye continues “the whole body of the beast is the appropriate target for those 

who wish to end oppression’s reign of terror” (Frye, 2005). hooks firstly refers to black 

women as needing to rebel the negative sexual stereotypes about black females that 

have arisen from white supremacy (hooks, 1981; 2005). She claimed that “white racists 

who viewed black women as sexually promiscuous animals caused large numbers of 

black women to react in one of two extreme ways. Some black women became overly 

modest prudes, obsessed with matters of bodily cleanliness, and purity. In contrast, 

other black women decided to capitalize on their supposed sexiness” and also hooks 

commented, “Who may have believed themselves to be always the losers in a world of 

sexist feminine competition based on beauty could see the realm of the sexual as the 



25 
 

 
 

place where they [could] triumph over white females” (hooks, 1981). She advises the 

black women to emancipate themselves from the white women’s shadows and continues 

by saying that black women and black men must stop internalizing the negative image 

of black men. hooks also stresses that otherwise black women won’t be liberated to 

respect themselves, that is, to be fulfilled of blackness (hooks, 1981).  

In a style as direct as bell hooks’s style, Audre Lorde noted “as a 49 year old Black 

lesbian feminist socialist, mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an 

interracial couple, she claimed the term multiple jeopardy very well, because she mostly 

saw herself as a group member of defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain 

wrong” (Lorde, 1984; hooks, 1981). Lorde continues;  

The way to overcome one’s marginalization, is not to pluck out some one aspect of 

[oneself ], and present this as [a] meaningful whole, as if one can become a “first-

class” member of society simply by fighting racism or sexism or classism or 

homophobia or ableism. Rather, the way to overcome one’s marginalization is to 

integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources 

of my living to flow back, and forth freely through all my different selves, without 

the restrictions of externally imposed definition. (Lorde, 1984).  

 

 Lorde told all women need to struggle against the oppressor, even the little one within 

themselves (Lorde, 1984). The priority was to build up a society where everyone was 

equal, and where differences did not mean inferiority but uniqueness (Lorde, 1984). 

Later, the ideas of Lorde, hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins suggested that in the U.S., 

black women’s oppression was consolidated along three interdependent layers: 

economical, ideological and political. First, the economic layer of black women’s 

oppression pushed black women to “ghettoization in service works” (Collins, 2000).  

Second, the political layer ignored black women’s rights, and would not view them as 

equal to all white men, nor many white women. Third, the ideological dimension 

imposed a “control system” on black women, helping to justify white men’s and white 

women’s power on them. Collins commented to hooks observations that “from the 

mammies, Jezebels, and breeder women of slavery to the smiling Aunt Jemimas on 

pancake mix boxes, ubiquitous Black prostitutes, and ever-present welfare mothers of 

contemporary popular culture, the nexus of negative stereotypical images applied to 

African-American women has been fundamental to Black women’s oppression” 



26 
 

 
 

(Collins, 1999)”. Collins declares that ideological dimension is much more powerful 

and efficient maintaining black women’s oppression than the other two dimensions. She 

underlined that the existence of these forms of oppression, which are gender, race, and 

class, need ideological justification (Collins and Chepp, 2013). For that cause, Collins 

calls black feminists and women to emancipate themselves by deconstructing white 

stereotypes, which was also the call of hooks as well (Collins, 2000; Tong, 214-216).  

The “history of oppression” has had a close relationship to black feminism. Some acts 

have been reclaimed from history by black feminists (Harding, 2012b:50; Weedon, 

1999:162-163). According to black feminists, activists crucial in these other histories 

are positive narratives of historical agency and self-definition of in the face of racist 

stereotypes and Eurocentric narratives of history (Harding, 2012a:47; 2012b; Weedon, 

1999:162).  

This ‘re-theorizing difference’ has brought new questions. For women of color, the 

social marking of difference is part of everyday life (Phoenix, 2004; Lorde, 1984; 

hooks,1981; Crenshaw, 1991). It can take many forms, from the negative stereotyping 

of everyday racial abuse to a romantic, often primitivist, celebration of black and Asian 

female difference which reaffirms deep-rooted racist stereotypes (Benhabib and Cornell, 

1987; Bastia, 2014). Yet, in both cases racism defines, contains and controls (Phoenix, 

2004; Lorde, 1984; hooks,1981; Crenshaw, 1991). One of the key issues for black 

feminism has been the assertion of the right to redefine the meanings of difference. This 

has meant contesting long-established assumptions and stereotypes and asserting new 

meanings (Tomlinson, 2013). In the face of mainstream white scholarship which has 

consistently defined black women as different – often in racist ways – and excluded 

them (Fanon, 1986), a key focus of black feminism has been to identify and challenge 

the negative images of black women’s difference that have persisted since slavery 

(Weedon; 1999: 166). Another has been to reconceive this difference, locating it in 

historically separate experience which has produced different positive cultural traditions 

following the process of black feminism that Foucault emphasizes as “reverse 

discourse” (Foucault, 1980). In black feminism’s strongest forms, Afrocentrism works 

as reverse discourse. It reverses the meanings and values commonly found in 



27 
 

 
 

Eurocentric history, refixes the meaning of blackness and offers apparently authentic 

forms of subjectivity (Foucault, 1980).  

Additionally, Patricia Hill Collins takes a more differentiated approach to Afrocentrism, 

advocating a meshing of theory and lived experience which can acknowledge and 

respect differences without fixing them outside history or contemporary social relations:  

Individual African-American women have long displayed various types of 

consciousness regarding our shared angle of vision. By aggregating and 

articulating these individual expressions of consciousness, a collective, focused 

group consciousness becomes possible. Black women’s ability to forge these 

individual, unarticulated, yet potentially powerful expressions of everyday 

consciousness into an articulated, self defined, collective standpoint is the key to 

Black Women’s survival… For black women the struggle involves embracing a 

consciousness that is simultaneously Afrocentric and feminist (Collins, 2000:26).  

 

To clarify white feminism appropriately, we might clarify what ‘whiteness’ implies and 

to what extent it would be alluded to as ‘white feminism’. Hence, other than the 

concepts of race and racialization, whiteness as a concept sits at an intersection between 

historical privilege and identity, something that incorporates a modern dynamic but 

which is not universally shared in (or can be removed to) how numerous white people 

encounter their identities (Phoenix, 2004; Nash, 2014; Wolff, 2016). That's to say that 

“whiteness as a location of privilege is not absolute but rather cross-cut by a extend of 

other axes of relative advantage and subordination; these do not delete or render 

insignificant race privilege, but rather arch or alter it.” (Frankenberg, 2001:76; Meer, 

2014:152). In addition, in considering approximately whiteness there is regularly a 

tension between its study from contexts marked by historical segregation and 

somewhere else where whiteness has either “(i) functioned as a banal repository of 

white majority conceptions of the given identity of societies or (ii) ordered social 

relations in colonial states occupied overseas” (Hage, 1998; Hewitt, 2005).  

The last few years have finally seen ‘whiteness’ emerge as a theoretical and political 

problem, ripe for analysis, deconstruction and transformation. The emergence of 

whiteness as a largely invisible norm has a long history which is also the history of the 

development of modernity the scientific search for knowledge and the colonial projects 

of subduing, Christianizing and “civilizing” other cultures (Spivak, 1988; Wolff, 2016). 



28 
 

 
 

The establishment of the authority of whiteness as the signifier of civilization and the 

advancement served to divert consideration from the economic and political interests 

which spurred colonial extension.  

The major emancipatory discourses which created within the Western world within the 

wake of Enlightenment – liberal humanism, Marxism and feminism – were, at the same 

time, universalist in their aspirations and Eurocentric in their presumptions and 

practices (Lutz, 2011). They assumed that white Western societies and social orders 

were the foremost progressed whereas at the same time absorbing racist generalizations 

of individuals who were not white (Terry, 2015:56). They further failed to recognize the 

significance of structural racism to their projects (Fanon, 1985; Lutz, 2011:87; Terry, 

2015). As Fannon remarks that skin color and phenotype are among the most important 

signifiers of difference in contemporary Western societies (Fanon, 1986). In racialized 

thinking these physical characteristics of individual bodies serve as the guarantee for 

racial classification. Race is often assumed to be natural, yet race, as we think of it 

today, is very much of a product of modernity (Weedon, 1999:164; Fanon, 1986; Amin 

2002; Keith, 2005). It continues even today with different forms of discrimination. 

These racist stereotypes have meant that women and men of color continue to face 

ingrained, centuries-old prejudices that construct their  ‘otherness’ in negative and 

exotic ways – apparently the core idea of orientalism was based on this exoticization of 

the ‘East’ which is here in the manner of women/men of color (Ackerly and 

McDermott, 2011). 

Racist ideas and imagery take two main forms. There are those that define difference 

purely negative and those that, in fixing the nature of ‘Others’, celebrate their difference 

from a white Western norm (Smith, 2010; Saidman, 1995; Wolff, 2016). This latter 

celebration most often takes the form of “primitivism”. In “primitivist”4 discourses, the 

white world’s ‘Others’ are seen as closer to nature, more authentic and less 

contaminated by modern industrial society (Donovan, 1985). Like many discourses on 

women, primitivism variously sees non-Western, non-white ‘Others’ as more spiritual, 

more intuitive, more physical, more sensual and more sexual. The obverse of this is that 

                                                           
4This term will be using frequently during the analysis chapter. In order to identify the rituals 

and duties of Islamic culture as an imposition on Muslim women, they were often declared 

‘archaic’ by ‘white feminist’ organizations.  



29 
 

 
 

they are defined as less rational and less sophisticated than their white Western 

counterparts (Weedon: 1999:153).  

This manner placed white people at the top of its scales of racial difference, seeing them 

as the most advanced of the different races. In mainstream discourses of race are silent 

about the status of whiteness as a socially and historically changing construct and its 

role in the perpetuation of racist assumptions. One consequences of this failure to 

recognize the racialized nature of whiteness is that race and racism come to be seen as 

the problem and responsibility of people of color. The issue has been voiced powerfully 

by Audre Lorde;  

Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit 

from oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it 

is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressor their mistakes. I am 

responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. 

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our 

humanity. (Lorde, 1984:114-115).  

 

View from a white perspective, the invisibility of whiteness as a racialized category in 

the Western world often makes it difficult for those white people who benefit from 

racism to realize their part in maintaining the status quo. This has been the case with the 

women's movement. As second-wave feminism developed, the emphasis placed on 

patriarchy, shared oppression and sisterhood tended to render questions of race invisible 

(Bastia, 2014; Bilge, 2008). It took vocal protests by black women and other women of 

color to begin to open eyes of white women to their complacency where race was 

concerned (Ackerly and McDermott, 2011).  

There have tended to be some common responses by white feminists to the question of 

racism: 

i) A liberal refusal to see racialized difference. This finds expression in assurances 

such as: “I am not prejudiced. Color does not matter to me. We are all the same” 

Implicit in this response is the assumption that racism is an individual rather than a 

structural phenomenon that pervades all social institutions and practices;  

ii) A response to racism among white women with a disabling sense of guilt which 

often leads to inaction. In order to move beyond guilt, white women need to 

address their own privilege. They need to recognize their role in perpetuating racist 

social relations, either actively or passively via the failure to take racism seriously 

and challenge its effects;  



30 
 

 
 

iii) Another reponse is to recognize racism as a problem that affects women of 

color but to see it as a “black” problem rather than one that should be fundamental 

to the lives of white women. This is often justified by statements such as “Of 

course I abhor racism but I have no right to speak for women of color”. Missing in 

this analysis is the recognition that racism is grounded in a binary relation of 

difference in which whiteness is the dominant term. Racism functions by 

privileging whiteness. To fail to question this privilege is to leave intact the binary 

oppositions on which racist discourse is founded. The idea that racism is a “black” 

problem marks a position from which women fail to see that the meanings of 

whiteness, too, are not naturally given but rather discoursively produced within 

hierarchical power relations;  

iv) the fourth reponse to racism which remains much less widespread is the 

conscious recognition of racism as a structuring force in both the material practices 

shaping societies and the production of individual subjectivities, whether white or 

of color (Weedon, 1999).  

 

From this position racism is understood to have both individual and structural 

dimensions which are often invisible from the privileged position of whiteness and as 

such require conscious problematization by white women. The history of white 

women’s failure to confront racism is a long one. In her history of black women and 

feminism, bell hooks points out: “how white women have often been complicit in black 

women’s dual oppression by racism and sexism” (hooks, 1981). 

As Audre Lorde contends that racism the conviction within the inherent prevalence of 

one race over all others and in this manner the right to dominance sexism, the 

conviction within the inherent prevalence of one sex over the other and subsequently the 

right to dominance (Lorde, 1984: 115) and proceeds with Barbara Smiths, the reason 

racism could be a feminist issue is effectively clarified by the inherent definition of 

feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice of liberating all women: women 

of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, 

and old women as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. 

Anything less than this can be not feminism, but simply female self-aggrandisement 

(Smiths, 1983b:61). 

Lorde includes that by and huge within the women’s movement nowadays, white 

women center upon their persecution as women and disregard differences of race, 

sexual orientation, class and age. There is a pretense to a homogenity of involvement 

covered by the word ‘sisterhood’ that does not in fact exist (Lorde, 1984:116). 



31 
 

 
 

Subsequently, gender is rarely the only noteworthy naturally grounded signifier of 

social and cultural distinction. In racist societies, where whiteness is hegemonic, skin 

color and phenotype are inevitable markers of difference (Strolovitch, 2007). In any 

case much a person might need to elude racial categorizations and be seen just as a 

person, s/he finds her/himself kept by white societies’ implicit and explicit definition of 

whiteness or racial otherness. These definitions are not simply the property of 

prejudiced people, they are basically inhering within the discourses and institutional 

practices of the societies concerned (McCall, 2005; Dill and Kohlman: 2012: 157-58; 

Lorde, 1984: 67) 

Racism not only classifies certain groups of women as “different” on the basis of 

phenotype and skin color, but also as inferior. Skin color and phenotype matter because 

racist discourse and practices make their protagonists self-define as ‘better’ (Strolovitch, 

2007). White supremacist practice has systematically defined people of color as 

different in a negative way. Black feminism is a response both to these racist definitions 

of blackness and to the devaluating of women of color on the basis of their difference. 

Black feminism is thus a challenge to exclusion from a predominantly white women’s 

movement and the refusal of white feminists to acknowledge the centrality of racism 

and recognize how it creates material differences in black women’s lives (Williams, 

2014; 189).  

2.3. THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT INTERSECTIONALITY: THE 

START OF A NEW ERA?  

Firstly, to apprehend the main arguments of intersectionality and its relation with gender 

and feminism, it needs to be explained by the origins of the intersectional approach and 

the core parameters of standpoint feminism, which are the grassroots of 

intersectionality. As has already been explained in this chapter, standpoint feminism 

claims that women’s experience and knowledge need to become the center of the 

feminist movement. As Patricia Collins Hill focuses out, experiences are not just 

individual, but moreover common to the individuals of a group that offers a sense of 

identity. When a group’s experiences outline the production of knowledge and set 

political agendas, that group has the capacity to utilize its power (Collins, 2000). Most 



32 
 

 
 

racial and ethnic groups in a heterogeneous society do not have such control; their 

experiential life-world views do not become part of the mainstream. Standpoint 

feminism needs to incorporate all of these perspectives into its production of 

knowledge. In order to include diverse perspectives in science, she suggests using 

intersectional analyses: This approach means;  

Choosing a concrete topic that is already the subject of investigation and 

trying to find the combined effects of race, class, gender, sexuality and 

nation, where before only one or two interpretive categories were used 

(Collins,2000: 278).  

Considering the starting point of standpoint feminism, the concept of ‘intersectionality’ 

has been rooted in black/women of color movements. Over the past two decades, the 

term intersectionality, as a theoretical approach and a critical feminist research, has also 

been used by many scholars of gender (Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005:177; Hancock, 

2007). As early as the beginning of 1980s, those scholars discussed the ideas of 

identities that intersected, and structural social relations (Davis, 1982; McCall, 2005; 

Lloyd, 2013:126; Bilge, 2013). Intersectionality symbolizes the overlapping and 

multiple stages of oppression that affect an individual's life (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991). As 

a term, it works by exploring themes mostly related to identity politics and can be 

understood through the narratives of those of other identities (Yuval-Davis, 2006). In 

the feminist movement, Crenshaw was the one to give this name to situations of 

multiple oppression, but the use of the approach has been growing day by day (Lutz et 

al., 2011:3).  

According to Yuval Davis, there are different approaches to the framework of 

intersectionality. Essed, Crenshaw and Harding especially focus on the particular 

positions of women of color, while others (such as Brah, Maynard, Anthias and Yuval 

Davis) have constructed their discourse in more general terms, applicable to any 

grouping of people, advantaged as well as disadvantaged. This expands the area of 

intersectionality into a major analytical tool that challenges hegemonic approaches to 

the study of stratification as well as reified forms of identity politics (Crenshaw, 1991).  

Also another pushing force or descent of the concept ‘intersectionality’ as explained 

earlier in this chapter is ‘black and women of color movements’. As bell hooks argues 

“perhaps the most important principle in black feminism is the refusal to see racism and 



33 
 

 
 

sexism as discreet and separate forms of oppression” (hooks, 1981; Frye, 2005; Young, 

2005). Black feminists insist on seeing the two as interrelated (hooks, 1981; Weedon, 

1999:161). Also, women of color have opened the way to moving beyond binaries 

towards intersectionality in the meanwhile. Anzaldua declares that: 

Racist definitions of difference remain trapped within sets of binary oppositions in 

which one term is privileged over the other: white over black, First World over 

Third World. The oppositions also presuppose that a person is either one thing or 

the other. In recent writing, influenced by postmodern thinking, attempts have been 

made to deconstruct race and develop new ideas of hybridity as alternatives to the 

binary oppositions which structure racist ideas of difference (Moraga and 

Anzaldua, 1983:175).  

 

Additionally, she mentions her own history, experience and place, to state that ‘new 

mestizas’, women who are ethnically and racially mixed, are in a situation to challenge 

and go beyond the binaries that structure heterosexism, ethnocentrism, racism, and 

sexism (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991).  

Regarding the changes of the direction of the feminist movement, today the very fact 

that there are feminism and black feminism is an indictment of a body of thought that 

treats the particular standpoint of particular group of women as universal and 

marginalizes the experience of women of color as an optional extra in much the same 

was that male ideologies have marginalized all women (Bryson, 1999:32).  

In spite of the fact that hooks, Lorde and Collins happened to be African-

American/black feminists, their thoughts about the multiple sources of oppression of 

women of color were voiced with equal strength by Latin American/Hispanic feminists 

(Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Ofelia Shutte, Maria Lugones), Asian-American 

feminists (Elaine Kim, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Ronald Takaki) and Native American 

feminists (Anne Waters, Bonita Lawrence, Donna Hightower Langston). At first, these 

so-called women of color looked for their freedom in their color – within the truth that 

their skin color was not white. But afterward, they started to wonder whether the term 

“women of color” was truly a term of freedom or whether it was, at root, a camouflaged 

term of oppression. (Lewis and Process, 2003; Body, Scott and Smith, 182; Anzaldua 

1987; Mohanty, 2003) 



34 
 

 
 

1980s identity politics focuses on the oppression of a specific group of women: black, 

Hispanic, Native American, lesbian and many others – in the case of the US (Weedon, 

1999:168). One important feature of identity politics is the sense of solidarity and 

positive identity that it offers to marginalized groups, forming a basis from which to 

develop strategies for contesting specific forms of oppression (Haslenger, 2013). The 

essential of the idea is that the nature of identity politics has tendency to define identity 

(or multiple identities) in particular fixed ways which ultimately work to exclude many 

of others. In a strong criticism of identity politics in the black feminist context, Heidi 

Safia Mirza suggests that:  

Identity politics, a political ideology that consumed the 1980s, was based on the 

premise that the more marginal the group the more complete the knowledge. In a 

literal appropriation of standpoint theory, the claim to authenticity through 

oppressive subjecthood produced a simplistic hierarchy of oppression. The 

outcome was the cliché-ridden discourse which embodied the holy trinity of “race, 

class and gender” (Appiah and Gates, 1995), within which black women, being the 

victims of “triple oppression” were keepers of the holy grail.  

The solution within this conceptualization of oppression was to change personal 

behaviour rather than wider structures. In a time when what should be done was 

replaced by who we are (Bourne