What is Intersectionality?

Kimberle Crenshaw (1989) first articulated intersectionality as a theoretical framework in a legal studies context to address the complicated nature of oppression rooted in race and gender. She aimed to show there is no language to express how the experiences and struggles of women of colour could be explained by feminist or by anti-racist theories on their own. Over the following twenty years, intersectionality has become a central tenet of black feminist theory in the field of women’s studies. The evolution of intersectionality as a theoretical framework has drawn black feminist responses to the recognition that the intersections of gender with other dimensions of social identity are the starting point of theory (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991).

Although the concept of intersectionality has strong roots in legal studies, it has become a new paradigm in gender studies and the need for an intersectional analysis has been widely accepted among feminist scholars in the fields of women studies and feminist theory (Davis, 2008; Hancock, 2007; McBride et al., 2015; Weber, 2001; Yuval-Davis, 2006). As proposed by Crenshaw (1991), intersectionality rejects the single-axis framework and analyses how other social identities such as gender, class, ethnicity and race may intersect to shape the multiple dimensions of black women’s lived experiences. Yuval-Davis (2006) explains it in terms of the imagery of crossroads and traffic, “Intersectionality is what occurs when a woman from a minority group … tried to navigate the main crossing in the city … The main highway is ‘racism road’. One cross street can be Colonialism, then Patriarchy Street …. She has to deal not only with one form of oppression but with all forms, those named as road signs, which link together to make a double, a triple, a multiple, a many layered blanket of oppression” (Yuval- Davis, 2006, p 196). Thus, the uniqueness of intersectionality lies in “the ways in which it

conceptualizes the constitution of, relationship between, and multi-level analysis of categories of difference” (Hancock, 2007, p 71). The strengths of intersectionality are it focuses and strives to avoid fixed assumptions of identities.

Using the actual experience of domestic violence, rape and remedial reform amongst black women in the United States, Crenshaw (1991) identified three types of intersectionality – structural intersectionality, political intersectionality and representational intersectionality. Structural intersectionality refers to how social systems (e.g. patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity) and structures (e.g. laws, policies, cultures) in society that allocate resources according to the standards in maintaining privileges of white people by oppressing the rights of others, could affect individuals and groups differently. Political intersectionality on the other hand highlights how the traditional feminist and antiracist politics have contributed to the marginalisation of ethnic minority women who are often disempowered as a result of being situated within at least two subordinated groups; gender and race, neither of which alone may adequately address the needs of black women themselves. Representational intersectionality refers to how race, class, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity may influence in shaping cultural constructions of women of colour (Crenshaw, 1991). Crenshaw’s explanation of intersectionality is central to understanding the complexity of lived experiences for being women with multiple differences, in particular minority ethnic women.

The crossroad metaphor has been used to represent the clashing intersection of inequalities where two marginalising characteristics that produce various forms of disadvantages cannot be accounted for by adding together the single categories (Crenshaw, 1991). The experiences of a black woman are different from her white female or black male counterparts. Theoretically, intersectionality posits that identities, especially marginalised and oppressed identities, do not stand alone and are not simply additive. Instead of being additive, King (1988) argues that social identities are multiplicative and overlap simultaneously to determine multifaceted social discriminations. As a result, women of colour continue to qualitatively face different barriers in the workplace due to multiplicative disadvantage for being females and minority ethnic (Choo and Ferree, 2010).

Hancock (2007) asserts that intersectionality can be widely applied to explore the multifaceted relationships between social groups and structures, in varied contexts, beyond the limits of women of colour. In relation to this research, an additive approach may fail to capture the complex associations between multiplicative social disadvantage which seeks to explain how these intersections might arise and why Malaysian women of different ethnicities are under- represented in senior management. The multiplicative approach, multiplies the discriminations and produces a special algorithm (Hancock, 2007). Intersectionality is not just about race plus gender or race plus disability, it creates a new form of disadvantage. Hancock (2007) further highlights on the individual-level approaches by emphasising individual experiences and

within-group differences, which are central to this study. For instance, senior women in Malaysia who are Chinese and Indian, do not just experience being the women plus being of Chinese or Indian origin, but the fact that they are Chinese or Indian women, is a very specific category that could lead to a particular kind of disadvantage as non-Malays.

Intersectionality elaborates that socioeconomic and political conditions are not shaped by one axis of social division, but rather by intersecting multiple axes of differences. The list of differences, however, appears to be indefinite and that could lead to a weak point of intersectionality theory. For instance, the overlapping social categories and diverse complexity could be one of the challenges of doing intersectionality studies. It can be overcome to some extent through the use of categorical approaches (McCall, 2005). McCall (2005) conceptualised a continuum of three different approaches to study intersectionality – anticategorical complexity, intracategorical complexity, and intercategorical complexity.

First, anticategorical complexity offers a deconstruction and rejection of social categories such as gender and racial/ethnicity. It focuses on how concepts, terms and categories are constructed. Second, intracategorical complexity focuses on “particular social groups at neglected points of intersection” (McCall, 2005, pp 1774) and enables an understanding to differentiate within different identity groups. Intracategorical complexity seeks to highlight the diversity of women’s experiences, even amongst women who share similar gender and nationality but experience different facets of suppressions such as age, sexual orientations, racial, ethnicity, privilege and class. Intracategorical complexity looks at various identity categories and at the neglected points of intersection “in order to reveal the complexity of lived experience within such groups” (McCall, 2005, pp 1774). This approach falls in-between the anticategorical and intercategorical. It is typically associated with qualitative rather than quantitative methods in the social sciences. This enlightens us that intersectionality perspectives may not be entirely compatible with quantitative methods because quantitative data requires clear categories. Finally, similar to Hancock's (2007) focus on individual-level analyses within group differences, intercategorical complexity which is the approach favoured by McCall (2005) requires multi-group studies to address the links between inequalities and the categories within society.

McCall (2005) suggests that the strength of this intercategorical approach provides insights into the complexity and diversity of the experiences of social relations within the social groups. It also strategically maintains a critical stance towards a comparison of analytical categories which are selected in advance and most likely involve quantitative study. My study, however, is based on qualitative research from an intercategorical perspective with Malay, Chinese and Indian women. This enables an understanding of how these multiplicative disadvantages are theoretically framed within everyday social constructions. This attention to the intersection of dynamic processes of how gender intersects with other axes such as ethnicity is relevant with

the perspectives of this thesis which theorises how women’s privilege and oppression is produced and experienced differently within different ethnic backgrounds in the same geographical location (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

While the intersectionality term has gained the most currency in academic writing, to some extent, many theorists would have raised questions whether it is a theory, methodology, or research paradigm (Rodriguez, Holvino, Fletcher, and Nkomo, 2016). Davis (2008, p 68) noted that “controversies have emerged about whether intersectionality should be conceptualized as a crossroad (Crenshaw, 1991), as ‘axes’ of difference (Yuval-Davis, 2006) or as a dynamic process (Staunæs, 2003)”. For example, according to Ferguson (1998), intersectionality has focused on marginalised subjects instead of generalising the theory of identity. Nash (2008) critiques intersectionality for being ambiguous in its definition and questionable in its empirical validity on making use of black women’s lived experiences rather than other ethnic minority women as the main focus of subjects. “This unresolved theoretical dispute makes it unclear whether intersectionality is a theory of marginalized subjectivity or a generalized theory of identity” (Nash, 2008, p 10). She further argues that intersectionality should be used to explore privilege and penalty, which will be addressed later in this study. This suggests that other axes of identity appear to have the possibility to intersect at multiple levels, contributing to social injustice and inequality regimes (Acker, 2006; Healy, Bradley, and Forson, 2011).

Research into inequality, dominance and oppression must take into account the intersections of, at least, gender and ethnicity. For instance, the work of Collins (2000) helps to contextualise how identities such as race, gender and class are mutually constructing systems of power. It demonstrates how social constructions can be used to theorise a concept called the matrix of domination within the macro level of oppressions which allows us to see that both disadvantage and privilege are used to describe various social analytical categories attached to the system of power. Collins (2000) argues that a different marginalisation perspective produces valuable knowledge as it may vary from one research context to another. It allows us to take account of multiple social categories rather than focusing on one dimension of social difference. In relation to this research, the way in which the social world is experienced will differ for men and women according to their ethnic group, and within ethnic groups according to their gender (Cooper, 2002; Healy, Bradley and Forson, 2011). The purpose of my research is to demonstrate how this unfolds in the specific context of Malaysia.

Having explored the arguments, the analysis of the intersectional paradigm has captured three comparable purposes. Firstly, it is grounded in women’s activism as women of colour (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Secondly, it highlights the need amongst feminist scholars to pay attention to the different but also overlapping social categories (McCall, 2005). Thirdly, it has encouraged researchers to examine the fluidity and variability of a matrix of domination that occur within multiple social practices (Collins, 2000). The data collected for this thesis presents

the experiences of being oppressed as women and struggling to succeed in a multicultural country with a strong patriarchal system (see Chapter Five to Eight).

My research employs a combination of Crenshaw's (1991) structural intersectionality and patriarchy, McCall's (2005) intercategorical complexity and matrix of domination within the macro level (Collins, 2000). This frames the research focus on how gender and ethnicity meet at a crossroad of women’s careers in senior management. This theoretical framework ensured that data collection and analysis was conducted in ways that highlighted the range of experiences within different social categories amongst senior women managers. The section below provides a critical review of extant research on gender and ethnicity to justify the contribution of these two social categories to the intersectional lens and explore career experiences of Malay, Chinese and Indian senior female managers in Malaysia.