Women’s History Month encourages difficult conversations: race, equity and power in the US

In 1987, Congress designated March as Women’s History Month. This recognition and that of March 8 as International Women’s Day by the United Nations (in 1975) resulted from decades of activism against historical disenfranchisement and discrimination based on gender. For much of history, women throughout the world have faced systemic barriers to full participation in the civic and public life of their societies.

The United States certainly has made progress since Congress recognized Women’s History Month, but gender-based discrimination, created and compounded over centuries, unfortunately cannot be overcome in just a few decades.

{mosads}One of the most challenging current obstacles to overcoming gender inequality in the United States is the myth that our country has overcome it. Almost as soon as civil rights legislation was enacted, making gender discrimination illegal in the 1960s-’70s, there was backlash — as represented by phenomena such as complaints of “special treatment” for women that was disadvantaging men.

Another challenge is that there is not consistent agreement about the very concept of “woman.” Even setting aside theoretical questions à la Simone de Beauvoir and other feminist visionaries, there are vast differences among communities of women, including those based on race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability and so forth. And although some would have it that gender simply means “male” or “female,” many others challenge this assumption — and the latter groups have become more vocal and visible, partly because social media platforms enable more people to join public dialogues (which is not an unequivocally positive phenomenon). Gender nonconformity further confounds seemingly-obvious categories on which previous understandings of our society were based.

Those following recent debates about gender in public culture will have noticed some other discourses becoming prominent. Some may be wondering, “What is ‘intersectionality,’ anyway?” I have found myself answering this question a lot lately. Since 1999, I have been teaching, researching and publishing on the topic. Intersectional feminist stances were a defining part of my academic work as a faculty member at several colleges and universities. Starting in 2014, intersectionality became a key element in the diversity and inclusion trainings I facilitated in workplaces, community settings and other contexts as a consultant.

To answer the question, I often point people to a TED talk from late 2016 on “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who popularized the concept. This should be required viewing for all Americans, followed by well-facilitated conversations between diverse peoples about difficult topics — conversations that are long overdue about race and power in the United States.

Intersectionality is a method of analyzing identity and power (often used by feminist scholars and activists) that reveals how people experience sociopolitical privilege and oppression simultaneously. In the late 1980s, Crenshaw made a major intervention in American understandings of discrimination; in her intersectional analysis, she exposed the lack of justice available to African-American women who experienced discrimination on the basis of race and gender, while the law recognized discrimination based on only one or the other category.

Intersectional approaches recognize that people’s identities are overlapping and intersecting, as are the systems by which societies regulate their members. Political institutions — including governments, courts, schools, prisons, hospitals and others — afford people different degrees of access to rights and power based on officially-recognizable identities. Consider issues such as gay marriage and DACA, in terms of major public debates about which identities or histories entitle people in America to particular privileges. For example, one might be of the dominant race or gender but nonetheless disprivileged on the basis of sexuality or geographic origin and immigration status.

Finding the insights of intersectional feminism to be useful for recognizing and mobilizing diverse peoples, many Americans committed to social justice have taken to more actively trying to desegregate their activism to make common cause with others and enact political change.

There is not much precedent for this and so we lack of a blueprint for how to build authentic and sustainable multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational coalitions. But these are absolutely necessary if Americans want a society in which there is genuine equality of opportunity and access for all, regardless of gender and/or other identities.

Especially during Women’s History Month, but all through the year, we should use the tools of intersectional feminism to strive toward these lofty goals.

Anupama Jain is principal consultant at Inclusant, a diversity and inclusion consulting company, and executive director of the City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission. She is a visiting scholar and part-time instructor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies program.