Author – Dr. Amritpal Kaur

Women’s oppression is the most widespread and the deepest form of oppression in our society. Women all over the world have been relegated to the position of the other, marginalized or colonized as they share an intimate experience of politics of oppression and repression. Based on this fact of their inferior social position, they are also called subalterns (along with Dalits).

In India, women are oppressed under a system of structural hierarchies and injustices.

They negotiate survival through an array of oppressive structures like Brahmanical patriarchy, caste hierarchy, oppressive family and marriage structures, ordinal status, relationship to men, a family of origin, procreation, and other patriarchal attributes like dowry, siring sons, kinship, community, village, market, and state.

Women are still denied opportunities for growth in the name of religion and socio-cultural practices, unnatural indoctrination, unequal and inferior status, and rigid caste hierarchy. Religious laws and expectations or personal laws enumerated by each religion often conflict with the Indian Constitution, eliminating rights and power women should legally have.

The voices of Dalit women who have been shouting in the wilderness of socio-economic oppression for centuries eventually found a collective base in the form of Dalit feminism which is an exemplary type of intersectionality.

Intersectionality is a term used to describe how different factors of discrimination can meet at an intersection and can affect one’s life. It is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities (gender, caste, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, physical appearance, height, etc) combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.

The term INTERSECTIONAL feminism was first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, an American law professor in 1989.

She explained the term as a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequalities often operate together and exacerbate each other. These inequalities (poverty, casteism, racism, and sexism) intersect with each other denying people their rights and equal opportunities. Those who are most impacted by gender-based violence and by gender inequality are also the most impoverished and marginalized e.g Dalit women, black women, young girls, girls living with disabilities, trans youth, and gender non-conforming youth. It also sees all the ways our society reproduces these inequalities, which includes the privileges as well as the harms.

It helps to explain the overlapping or intersecting social identities and their related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination. It means that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. It shows how different power structures interact in the lives of minorities.

This theory has come out of Black feminism which, like Dalit feminism, has suffered exclusion from mainstream upper class white feminist movement and marginalisation in the mainstream Black Liberation movement headed by black men.

Intersectional feminism is a form of feminism that stands for the rights and empowerment of all women taking seriously the fact of differences among women including different identities based on radicalisation, sexuality, economic status, nationality, religion, and language. It attends to the ways in which claims are made in the name of women as a class (or a privileged caste) can function to silence or marginalize some women by universalising the claims (universal sisterhood) of relatively privileged women. It is an idea that gender or women don’t just refer to a single unified concept. All women have a race, whether white, black, Asian as well as a class, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc and their experiences as women differ because of those differences.

The effects of different forms of discrimination combine overlap or intersect. Discrimination doesn’t exist in a bubble. Different kinds of prejudice can be amplified in different ways when put together. When we look at a person, there are many different facets that you need to take into consideration to understand their position, power or privilege. A girl might not simply be facing issues caused by her gender. When you dig deeper into her experience you may find she is a girl from an ethnic minority or black or Dalit who has to drop out of school to get married early or she is a lesbian struggling to be herself while living in a society that doesn’t support the LGBTQ community. The patterns of oppression are interrelated and bound together.

The different aspects of our identities intersect and produce specific situations where getting exploited becomes easier like caste-based sexual atrocities on Dalit women, where the caste identity precedes the gender of a Dalit woman. The existence of a Dalit woman is an intersectional reality between caste, class, and gender. The Dalit woman is not simply any woman, she is a woman who is also a Dalit, and being a Dalit she is also poor. It’s her low social position owing to the caste identity that directly places her in situations of exploitation where women from other castes are less likely to be present.

The specific struggles and varied live realities faced exclusively by Dalit women need to be seen through the lens of intersectionality. The oppression of Dalit women is more real and closer to political thinking. Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy can more clearly observe the conditions of the society because they are not blinded by the rewards of that society. An absolute failure of the liberal and radical feminists to see through the caste realities owing to their limited vision and narcissism, the concept of intersectionality deserves a greater acceptance. Through intersectionality, it would be easier to bring forth the peculiar experiences faced by Dalit women:-

1. Caste based sexual violence which is directed through her person towards her person towards her community.
2. Religious prostitution in the name of devdasi system where Dalit girls are later sold into prostitution in urban market.
3. Public humiliation in the form of witch hunting, parading naked and and stripping.
4. Being forced to do the most hazardous, demeaning and menial jobs and of being looked down upon because they do Dalit women as rag pickers keep the city clean and in return are treated as unclean.
5. Considered dirty and without any self respect, Dalit women are easily accessible to the upper caste men for sexual It is customary in many villages for brides to spend their first nights with the upper caste men. Such atrocities forever keep man woman relation in Dalit families troubled with their own men disrespecting their existence by considering them as impure.
6. They have to walk a long distance to fetch water and fodder which makes them vulnerable to all kinds of sexual harassment on their path of daily survival.
7. They are forced to work as bonded labourers on the fields of upper castes where young Dalit girls are easily lured by upper caste men. Dealing with unwanted pregnancies in economic starvation and unhygienic living conditions makes the experience extremely disturbing for the girls. What use are abortion or reproductive rights for Dalit women who have to undergo multiple unwanted pregnancies without any right to claim their right to choice.
8. Dalit women with a protruding bellies carrying weight, is a common sight at the construction sites which fails to create any emotional stir in most of us. Besides this they are paid less for their labour work than their men.
9. Child marriages with a fear of being pushed into religious prostitution.
10. Children of Dalit women have no secure place to spend their time after they leave for work.
11. Labour being an intrinsic component of a Dalit woman’s survival but is demeaned because of her low status.
12. Upper caste women who build their careers by hiring women from lower strata to look after their domestic and family responsibilities never support them in case of sexual harassment when their men are involved.
13. The denial of the right to choice also has a double impact on the lives of Dalit women.
14. Intentional delay or lag in the legal framework owing to the caste rigidity in the system further pushes Dalit women into the abyss of isolation.
15. Hostility on the behalf of rehabilitation centres and medical staff adds to their psychological trauma. Dalit women already suffering from psychological implications of caste have to go through further psychological humiliation after sexual harassment.
16. Being the most marginalised, they lack basic education which harbours all kinds of superstitions mostly carried out through their persons.

Intersectionality is a much-talked-about subject today. However, the concept of intersectionality in India is much older and has its roots in the Buddhist tradition. Buddha opened the doors of Sangha for all women and admitted women without considering their social attributes (virgins, married, divorced, prostitutes, rape survivors, Brahmin women, or Dalit women).

Savitribai Phule set an example of intersectionality by providing education to girls and women from all castes, classes, religions, and communities. Babasaheb through the Hindu code bill which he framed particularly for the liberation of savarna women exposed the real status of women in Indian society. He provided the right direction to the discourse of future feminism i.e intersectionality.

Intersectionality is here to stay and Dalit women talking about intersectionality for self-representation is an assertion of their right to self-dignity.

About the author – Dr. Amritpal Kaur is an Oral and Dental Surgeon, Writer and a founding member National Council of Women Leaders NCWL