intersectionality

I think that diversity issues are lost in all encompassing identity of women approaches because no one has just one identity. We are all members of different socioeconomic classes, different ethnicities, religions and family histories. Different women have different concerns. When many feminists were fighting angst women who felt trapped as housewives, they were ignoring women who had been working outside the home trying to support their families. These women were struggling with other problems, like day care, equal wages, and problems that may not even have been specific to just women such as class and race issues. We read about Asian-American, Puerto Rican, and African American women who have gender issues that were different from those that some middle class white women were fighting for. Some women felt that they didn't want even to be called feminist, even though they did care about women's rights. They said that if they had to choose sides, they would choose to fight for the rights of their ethnic group. They didn't want to leave out men in their struggle for equality and they felt that if they were to join the mainstream feminism movement that they would have to. I think the second wave would have made more progress if people had been more sensitive to the gender issues of all women. If they were truly united in sisterhood, African American women would be fighting for middle class white women's liberation from the home, and white women were fighting to get better wages and day care programs for African American women, Asian American women would be fighting to end sterilization and the testing of birth control on Puerto Rican women, and Puerto Rican women would be fighting angst stereotypes about Asian American women.