Analysing the Prisms of Intersectionality through African Feminisms

Intersectionality is one of the most influential advances in the theory, research, and practice of gender and diversity scholarship. It is considered instrumental to study the reciprocities of gender and other categories of various identities and how these are produced, reproduced, and perpetuated as part of systems of power and inequality. These systems of power and how it sustains privilege and, in turn, disadvantages people, especially women in everyday life. Intersectionality is relevant to African feminisms because African women experience a range of challenges unique to their social identity, such as political and economic suppression, racial discrimination and gender oppression. Intersectionality as an analytical tool can be utilised to examine how context and history

inform the multiplicities of identities that African women may experience in a society such as systems of racial oppression, apartheid or colonialism, or systems of gendered oppression, like patriarchy.