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Kimberle Crenshaw, a civil rights advocate and academic, in a video elaborates upon a case that led her to develop the concept of intersectionality. Reading a legal opinion, she found the case of a black woman named Emma DeGraffenreid, who couldn’t get a job in a factory and filed a discrimination case against the employers. The interesting thing was that the employer in question hired both women and black people. Naturally, DeGraffenreid’s case was dismissed.

Looking closely, Crenshaw notes how the employer hired black men for manual labour and white women for receptionist roles. DeGraffenreid could have got the first job if she was a man and the latter if she was white. It was a case of double discrimination that the court failed to see.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Curiously, Crenshaw recognises it not as a law or a policy problem but as a naming problem. She explains that the judge at that time could not see the discrimination DeGraffenreid was facing because there was no name to make it visible.

This led her to frame the idea of intersectionality, which gives us a framework to understand how several socio-political identities intersect to create a unique experience of discrimination or even privilege. If naming something can influence people’s perception of a thing or a phenomenon, then naming it correctly can change how people view, engage and treat something.

This has been the rationale behind changing the name of the condition hitherto known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS).........

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