Intersectionality - when gender, race and class meet
In 1976, five black women sued General Motors for discrimination. They had been denied jobs in a division that had never hired black women, though they had hired white women and black men. The federal court dismissed their case, because they could not combine their race and sex discrimination claims into one. The court held that black women were not a distinct protected class. They had to choose to sue either as women, or as black people. But their discrimination sat at the intersection.
This case, DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, exposed what became the foundation of Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on intersectionality. While intersectionality is not a system of power in itself, it looks at how systems of power interact. In this article, I'll be looking at Crenshaw's tripartite framework on intersectionality and review where the law is today for all women who carry multiple identities.
Understanding intersectionality
Kimberlé Crenshaw defines intersectionality as a framework for understanding the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape lived experience in ways that cannot be fully captured by examining either category in isolation.
She first critiqued the single-axis framework dominant in anti-discrimination law that treats race and sex as mutually exclusive categories and thereby erases Black women whose claims do not fit neatly within either classification. She later clarified that intersectionality is a methodology for analyzing how multiple structures of power converge, and that it can and should extend beyond race and gender to include other factors such as class and sexuality.
The tripartite nature of intersectionality
Crenshaw elaborates intersectionality along three dimensions: structural, political, and representational.
Structural intersectionality describes how overlapping systems of racism, sexism, and class subordination converge to shape the lived conditions of women of color in ways not reducible to either system alone. For example, Black women’s unemployment rates cannot be explained solely by racism (which affects Black men differently) or sexism (which affects white women differently). The harm is compounded and distinct.
Political intersectionality captures the ways in which feminist and antiracist movements, each organized around a single axis of identity, marginalize women of color whose experiences do not align with the priorities of either agenda. Feminist advocacy has historically centered white, middle-class women’s concerns e.g workplace discrimination in professional contexts or reproductive choice. Civil rights advocacy has centered Black men’s concerns e.g police violence and mass incarceration. Women of color, whose lives include both sets of issues, fall outside both movements’ core agendas.
Representational intersectionality concerns the cultural and discursive construction of women of color, including the stereotypes and narratives that render their experiences of violence and discrimination less visible or less credible. The “angry Black woman” stereotype, for instance, makes Black women’s workplace complaints seem less legitimate, framing them as temperamentally difficult rather than justifiably aggrieved. Cultural narratives about who counts as a “real” victim of violence e.g narratives that center white, middle-class women, mean that violence against women of color is systematically underreported and under-enforced.
Gender Essentialism
Angela Harris cautioned that feminist legal theory could replicate a similar error by treating “woman” as a unitary category, abstracted from race, class, and other dimensions of lived experience. Harris called this tendency gender essentialism, which is the assumption that women can be understood “as women,” independent of the social structures that shape their realities.
Intersectionality, then, is best understood as a corrective to that instinct: a reminder that gender never operates in isolation. The question that follows is whether contemporary doctrine reflects that insight, in other words, whether courts now recognize discrimination as something that can occur at the intersection of race and gender, rather than along a single axis.
The Law and Intersectionality
Although early courts rejected combined race-and-sex claims, appellate doctrine gradually moved away from rigid single-axis reasoning:
In Jefferies v. Harris County Community Action Association (5th Cir. 1980), the court held that discrimination against Black women could be actionable under Title VII even if it did not affect all women or all Black employees, effectively recognizing a race-and-sex subclass.
In Hicks v. Gates Rubber Co. (10th Cir. 1987), the Tenth Circuit clarified that evidence of racial and sexual harassment must be considered together when experienced by the same plaintiff. You can’t just split them into separate claims.
In Lam v. University of Hawaii (9th Cir. 1994), the Ninth Circuit explicitly rejected a “divide and conquer” analysis that fragments identity categories. The court said plaintiffs don’t have to prove each basis of discrimination independently; the combination of factors can be what motivated the harm.
In Shazor v. Professional Transit Management (6th Cir. 2014), the court acknowledged that stereotypes directed at Black women may be distinct from those directed at either Black men or white women. This was a recognition of what Crenshaw called representational intersectionality.
In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), while the Supreme Court did not use the language of intersectionality, its clarification that Title VII applies whenever sex is a but-for cause, even in combination with other traits, strengthens the doctrinal foundation for intersectional claims.
Where We’re Still Failing
Despite this progress, significant gaps remain. Courts have mostly figured out race-and-gender intersectionality for Black women. But other combinations are still largely invisible:
Class and gender: Poor women face compounded barriers that middle-class women don’t, e.g lack of access to childcare and inflexible work schedules. Yet courts rarely treat class as a relevant axis of analysis under Title VII.
Disability and gender: Women with disabilities experience distinct forms of discrimination, but courts often treat disability discrimination and sex discrimination as separate inquiries. The frameworks don’t easily combine.
Remedies: Even when courts recognize intersectional discrimination, damages are often calculated as if the harm were reducible to a single category. The compounding doesn’t get valued.
Statistical proof: To establish discrimination, plaintiffs often must show they were treated differently than “similarly situated” employees. But who is similarly situated to a Black woman? If the employer treated white women and Black men favorably, courts may conclude there’s no discrimination even though the employer systematically excluded Black women. It’s the DeGraffenreid trap all over again.
The Work Ahead
Intersectionality does not ask feminism to fragment itself. It asks feminism to see more clearly. Crenshaw’s framework reminds us that systems of power rarely operate in isolation, and Harris’s critique of essentialism cautions us against mistaking one woman’s experience for all women’s experience. The evolution of the law suggests that courts have begun, slowly and imperfectly, to recognize that discrimination can operate at the intersection of race and gender. But legal recognition is not the end of the work.
The takeaway is not that feminism has failed. It is that feminism must remain attentive. When we speak of “women,” we should ask: which women? When we analyze inequality, we should ask: through which structures? Solidarity does not require sameness. It requires awareness. If you're interested in further learning on intersectionality, you can watch Kimberlé Crenshaw's TED Talk below.