ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the strengths and limitations of the intersectionality paradigm by surveying the academic history of the concept. It argues that intersectional social theory is an important analytic tool for disassembling the systematicity of oppression faced by women and girls in the global South. Philosopher Katherine Gines has proposed a corrective to the erasure of this intellectual tradition by aptly noting its existence as a distinct, "proto-intersectional" intellectual tradition that preceded its academic articulation in the late twentieth century. Proto-intersectional thought is concerned with the articulation of multiple oppressions in the lives of black women. The intersectional model of identity seeks to describe the social location of any individual in relation to the systems of oppression that shape the social construction of their identity. Race, class, and gender are constitutive of these systems insofar as they are often used implicitly to differentiate between social agents and mete out social goods unevenly, leading to structural inequities organized around social identities.
