Instead, hooks emphasises focusing on sexist exploitation at large-including heterosexism, hierarchical gender-sexual roles, and sexual exploitation-as it occurs across the intersections of race, class, and gender. In India, where caste dynamics involved in violent atrocities such as the events that took place in Hathras last year are habitually overlooked in favour of a hollow focus on crimes against all women that eventually benefits none of us, such a definition does not have much meaning to begin with. She questions the popular definition of feminism as a movement to make women the social equals of men, citing it as reductive and dismissive of the prevailing social reality, given that men across race and class lines are not equal. One of hooks’ most momentous contributions is her approach to defining the diverse movement that feminism is. The history of the feminist movement in India may have been markedly different from that in the west, but hooks’ analyses of gendered social divisions in her book From Margins to Center (1984) find enough parallels in contemporary India to serve as a guide for strengthening the way we visualise and practice intersectionality in our own context. Hooks started writing on the overlapping roles of race, class, and gender in oppression as early as 1981-eight years before the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by fellow Black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw-and is recognised as widely influential for the ushering in of Third Wave Feminism.īell hooks started writing on the overlapping roles of race, class, and gender in oppression as early as 1981-eight years before the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by fellow Black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw-and is recognised as widely influential for the ushering in of Third Wave Feminism. Women of colour began to emerge to prominence as activists and theorists in this period, seeking to reclaim the feminist movement from the narrowly defined goals of the decades past. One of the most important voices to emerge from this time is that of Gloria Jean Watkins-better known by her pen name, bell hooks, which she fashions in lowercase to emphasise her ideas over her identity.Īlso read: A Brief Summary Of The Second Wave Of Feminism

Towards the end of the 1980s, the Second Wave of Feminism-kickstarted in the United States in the 1960s-came under widespread criticism for focusing exclusively on the emancipatory concerns of middle-class white women.

Bell hooks and education