Since the 1980s, feminist critique of essentialist assumptions
about gender increasingly has employed an intersectionality
perspective to understand gender in relation to
other social identities, such as race, class, ethnicity and
sexual orientation. In contrast to models that suggest for
each minority status there is a simple accumulation of
disadvantage, such that the Black woman is doubly
disadvantaged compared to the Black man, the intersectionality
framework emphasizes the qualitative differences
among different intersectional positions. For example, “the
very meaning of manhood may vary when applied to one’s
own racial group as compared to another group; similarly
the meaning of a given racial category may vary for men
and women” (Mullings and Schulz 2006, p. 5).


In sum, the construct of intersectionality has assumed a
significant position in thinking about gender. As the
foundation for theory it promised a more accurate and
tractable way of dealing with two issues. First, it promised
a solution, or at least a language for the glaring fact that it is

impossible to talk about gender without considering other
dimensions of social structure/social identity that play a
formative role in gender’s operation and meaning. In the
U.S., the most obvious, pervasive, and seemingly unalterable
are race and social class. Second, intersectionality
seemed a generally applicable descriptive solution to the
multiplying features that create and define social identities.
It is not race-class-gender, but also age, ableness, sexual

orientation, to name the most salient.


In Europe, religion and ethnicity are the most obvious, pervasive and seemingly unalterable social dimensions which play a role in gender's operation and meaning.

The very meaning of Muslim varies for women and men.

Identity is experienced by the individual themself. -> ingroup distancing is a mechanism that Muslim women associate personal meaning to their disadvantaged categories and