Conceptual and Contextual Framework: Intersectionality and Neoliberalism

Abstract

It is essential to assess the third wave of feminism through its specific intellectual and socio-historical milieu in order to identify points of continuity and departure with the second wave (Budgeon, 2011: 42). Accordingly, any critical analysis of third wave feminism is contingent upon a concomitant reading of intersectionality and the neoliberal context. There has been an increasing awareness of the need to recognise difference between women within the feminist movement. For some, this is a reaction to the perceived lack of diversity and more importantly, to the perceived lack of critical attention paid to diversity within both the second wave and academic feminism (Labaton and Lundy Martin, 2004; Archer Mann and Huffman, 2005). Prior to the emergence of a renewed feminist movement in the US, a call for an intersectional legal approach emerged, one that recognised muitiple and overlapping points of oppression (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991). Such an approach proffers both possibilities — the chance to undertake radical and complex analysis of power — and limitations — the danger of reducing levels of analysis to an individual rather than collective level. The risk of a resultant turn not towards intersectionality, but instead towards individualism, is heightened within a neoliberal context. For feminists, the neoliberal hegemony also presents both opportunities and obstacles.