The term intersectionality has become commonplace within DEI and academic conversations. But where does the term come from, what does it really mean and how can organisations make better use of the idea?
This blog will take you through the origin story of ‘intersectionality’ and a new publication by its author, as well as the latest report by racial equity charity Action for Race Equality. By better understanding the origins of the term intersectionality, organisations can understand what intersectionality means for people, and how language associated with race and difference has evolved in expressions of self identification.
Where does ‘intersectionality’ come from?
In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw, current Professor of Law, UCLA & Columbia Law School, was conducting research into black women who sued their employers because they were subject to gender discrimination and race discrimination simultaneously.
In America in the 1980s the majority of jobs available to black applicants were only offered to men. Conversely, the roles available for women were exclusively given to white women. When facing complaints, organisations would justify their exclusivity by arguing that they did offer equitable job opportunities for all; they employed both men and women, black and white. It just so happened that black women were never selected through the application process.
If cases of discrimination ever reached the courts, the judges struggled to conceptualise the obstacles facing black women. Was this a race issue, or a gender issue? As a legal scholar, Crenshaw was interested in using a metaphor to help explain how discrimination does not simply occur along one axis or another. Using the analogue of an American road intersection, Crenshaw explained how, just like intersections that criss-cross each other, so too race discrimination, class, gender, or sexuality discrimination can ‘criss-cross’ or ‘intersect’ each other.
The origin of the term ‘intersectionality’ began as a remedial framework for judges to understand what black women were experiencing in America. Since then, the term has been popularised and proliferated across academia, professional workplaces and across popular discourse.
What is happening now?
The idea of ‘intersectionality’ is not as new as some may assume, and it has undoubtedly had a huge impact on the types of conversations we are able to have about how race, gender, class and sexuality operate in combination. Many organisations now use intersectionality as a way to help frame their own safeguarding and support programmes for their employees.
Today, intersectionality shapes conversations around race without the term even needing to be used. A new report by the charity Action for Race Equality (ARE) shows how readily we now conceptualise an individual’s multiple characteristics and the complexities of their background. The report, ‘If Other, please specify’, is a UK wide racial terminology survey using five focus groups across a range of locations in England. Using a framework underpinned by intersectionality, ARE critiques how racial classifications are utilised in data gathering surveys, and explores the politics of naming, and the harms caused by misclassification.
The report found that commonplace racial classifications fail to reflect how many black, Asian and mixed‑heritage people self-identify. Participants rejected being labelled “Other” and called for systems that respect specificity, lived experience, and the politics of racialisation. Respondents of the ARE surveys often rejected broad categories (e.g., ‘black,’ or ‘Asian,’) in favour of more precise descriptors tied to heritage, migration, or culture. However, they also showed a widespread discomfort with being categorised as “Other”, which participants saw as erasing identity and reinforcing power imbalances.
The report frames terminology as part of the racialisation process, wherein naming shapes who is recognised, who is marginalised, and how institutions understand inequality. This has a direct implication for data systems because ethnicity categories are essential for identifying and helping combat structural racism. The introduction states, ‘Terms that may once have been considered neutral can become culturally unacceptable. It is useful for everyone to be aware of how language and behaviours change … Alongside race, appropriate language needs to be found to accurately represent people’s gender; sexuality; disability or health conditions; religion, class, and other intersectional lenses,’ (own emphasis). Racial terminology is a blunt tool that can erase as much as it uncovers, and communities want agency over self‑description. Institutions must consider their adaptability to these changes, recognising that this conversation goes beyond semantics and represents power, policy and structural discrimination.
How can intersectionality help us prepare for the future?
Looking across to the Trump Administration and their planned breakdown of DEI and broader gender and racial legal protections, there is an understandable concern for the future of human rights and battles for structural equity across America. Attacks on the UK Equality Act and developments in the dialogue around immigration has increased the sense of unravelling for DEI projects in the UK.
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s latest book, published May 2026, called ‘Backtalker: An American Memoir’ traces the American Civil Rights Movement and the author’s family background. Crenshaw encourages people to, quite literally, ‘talk back’ about the ways people argue that the world cannot change, and she offers a form of creative resistance to the logics that tell us the world is okay the way it is. Her narrative against complacency and acceptance emerges from a distinctly American context of discrimination and segregation, and calls for people to reject illegitimate racial barriers to equality.
Like ‘intersectionality’, ‘talking back’ offers us a new way of thinking, and in turn, a new way of investigating, shaping and changing current structures of inequality we see in the world around us. By opening a dialogue and asking questions, organisations can better understand and communicate around these important and complex topics.
Action for Race Equality was founded in 1991 to champion fairness, challenge race inequality and pioneer innovative solutions to empower young people across education, employment, and criminal justice. They lead programmes to strengthen and increase the sustainability of black and Asian civil society and business organisations.
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