THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:FEMINIST THEORIES
4.3. INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY
104 In his book titled Gender and Power, Connell (1987, p.79) demonstrates how gender is a concept of power, by showing men’s benefits arising from the overall subordination of women. Connell argues that being a man conferred some power.However, Connell arguesthat not all men share this powerequally, and not all were individually exploitative (Connell, 1987, p.79). Connell (1987, p.107) gives examples of transactions involving gendered power:
Mr Barrett the Victorian patriarch forbids his daughter to marry; parliament makes homosexual intercourse a crime; a bank manager refuses a loan to an unmarried woman; a group of youth rape a girl of their acquaintance.
However, he notes that actions like those listed are not intelligible without the socialstructure (Connell, 1987). In certain societies gendered power also manifests itself through male dominance in society – that is patriarchy.I discuss this concept later in this chapter.
105 women are subordinated. According to feminists of colour (see, for example, the work of Collins, 1990; Davis 1981; hooks, 1984; Mohanty et al., 1991; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983; Smith, 1983) and many white feminists, experiences of class, gender, sexuality and so on cannot be adequately understood unless the influences of racialisation are carefully considered. For this reason I also draw from this theory to analyse ukuthwala cultural practice.
Intersectionality is a methodology of studying “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations” (McCall, 2005). Intersectionality theory seeks to understand how various biological, social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, ability and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality.
Ritzer (2007, p.204) maintains that an example of intersectionality theory might be “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity”.
Like Crenshaw (1994), Collins (1998) argues that cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society such as race, gender, class and ethnicity (Collins, 1998, p.42).
Feminists argue that an understanding of intersectionality is an important element of gaining political and social equality and improving our democratic system. For example, socialist feminism primarily sees the oppression of women in terms of the subordinate position women hold in relation to patriarchy and capitalism (for example, Eisenstein, 1979; Mitchell, 1990; Roberts & Mizuta, 1993). For these feminists capitalism is an extension of a mode of production that reinforces patriarchal power and creates the sexual division of labour between women and men.
Drawing from the historical background of intersectionality, the concept came to the forefront of sociological discourses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in conjunction
106 with the multiracial feminist movement as part of a critique of radical feminism6 that had developed in the late 1960s and was known as ‘revisionist feminist theory’. This revisionist theory challenged the notion that ‘gender’ was the primary factor determining a woman’s fate, and came from the realisation that feminists have used gender as the central organising category of analysis to understand and explain the unequal distribution of power between men and women. The movement led by women of colour disputed the idea that women were a homogeneous category sharing essentially the same life experiences (hooks, 1984; Mohanty et al., 1991). Recognising that the forms of oppression experienced by white middle-class women were different from those experienced by black, poor or disabled women, feminists sought to understand the ways in which gender, race and class combined “to determine the female destiny”
(hooks, 1984). According to McCall (2005) intersectionality theory within sociology addresses specifically the experiences of people who are subjected to multiple forms of subordination within society.
However, Nash (2008, p.1) exposes and critically interrogates the assumptions underpinning intersectionality by focusing on four tensions within intersectionality scholarship: the lack of a defined intersectional methodology; the use of black women as quintessential intersectional subjects; the vague definition of intersectionality; and the empirical validity of intersectionality. She encourages both feminist and anti-racist scholars to grapple with intersectionality’s theoretical, political and methodological murkiness to construct a more complex way of theorising identity and oppression (Nash, 2008, p.1).
6Radical feminism views the oppression of women in respect of patriarchy (a system that valorises men over women), and this is manifested in sexuality, personal relationships and the family. For these feminists, male power is manifested in male-dominated institutions such as work, religion, home, culture, etc. (see, for example, the work of Daly, 1978; Echols, 1989; Harne & Miller, 1996).
107 Nash’s views concur with that of McCall (2005), who claims that the emergence of an intersectional perspective has introduced new methodological problems in research and thus limited the range of methodological approaches used to study intersectionality. In the conclusion of her paper McCall states that the major restriction within feminist research on intersectionality, besides its philosophical and theoretical problems, has to do with methodology. However, I have just discussed the intersectionality theory here to highlight that the concepts which I discussed earlier are not each independent but intersect. In fact, the main theoretical underpinning for this study is African feminism(s), which I discuss below. However, before discussing African feminism(s), I first introduce the term feminism(s).