What is White Feminism?
White feminism refers to the centering of white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgender women’s interests and struggles in the local and global feminist movements. It represents a failure to understand how all systems of oppression are interconnected. Well-intentioned campaigning for the advancement of women’s rights may not only fail to provide for many people impacted by gender oppression, but potentially make other forms of oppression worse.
One of the ways to avoid reinforcing forms of marginalisation is to take an intersectional approach.
What is intersectionality?
Intersectionality is a framework coined by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 that recognises how different aspects of a person’s identity (e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, age) interact to shape their experiences of oppression. It was devised to recognise the unique experience of oppression that black women face; rather than the sum of racism + misogyny, black women face a new, compounded form of oppression. The term intersectionality has become increasingly widespread in the last ten years, and Crenshaw supports the use of the lens or framework to be applied to other intersecting forms of oppression.
To give an example close to home, after years of campaigning to change the law on Public Sexual Harassment, lots of the OSN team took time to reflect on ‘White Feminism’ and how intersectionality was practiced in the campaign. Learning more about ‘Carceral Feminism’ and the harms that can come to other marginalised groups through the criminal justice system, really made us reflect on if we would still pursue a campaign like ‘Crime not compliment’ if we started today. Fellow GBV campaigner Gina Martin has written about her similar experience of changing the law and feeling uneasy about it! At OSN we have changed course from campaigning through the criminal justice system to trying to impact government policy and focussing our work on prevention education.
Read more about our Culture Must Change campaign
What about tokenism?
The more widespread this term has become, the more risk there is of it being in a tokenistic way rather than being meaningfully applied to campaigning. It’s important to keep the history of the term in mind; Crenshaw used it as a way to highlight how Black women’s experiences were often excluded from both feminist and anti-racist movements. The progress that the Civil Rights movement in America had made in securing legal provisions for black people and women against employment discrimination, had failed to provide for black women.
How to do intersectional campaigning
There are many ways to practice intersectional campaigning in a meaningful way. Sisters for Justice set out the following principles:
“Acknowledging Privilege – Recognizing that not all women experience oppression in the same way and that some women also hold privilege (e.g., a white woman may face sexism but not racism).
Amplifying Marginalised Voices – Ensuring that feminism includes and prioritizes the voices of Black, Indigenous, disabled, LGBTQ+, and working-class women.
Addressing Systemic Issues – Fighting against all forms of oppression, including racism, transphobia, ableism, and economic inequality, rather than focusing solely on issues that benefit privileged women.
Challenging Mainstream Narratives – Critiquing how the media, corporations, and institutions co-opt feminism for profit while failing to support real systemic change.”
It’s vital to reflect on this in order to help the broader movement change course, but it’s worth noting that often campaigning starts from a local and inexperienced place, and it’s understandable to make mistakes along the way. That said, a willingness to reflect and to learn and grow is the only way to create a truly effective movement against GBV!
