Intersectionality and the Future of Feminism | A Conversation with Anna Cavaliere
On Monday, March 9, scholars and legal experts gathered at the University of Ferrara for the “Equality and Difference(s)” laboratory; a workshop that focused on how feminist legal theory addresses the intersections of multiple identities and contemporary forms of discrimination.
In an interview with Professor Anna Cavaliere, a speaker on the workshop panel, we discussed the importance of using intersectionality to redesign legal frameworks and whether the laboratory can have an impact on supporting authentic social dialogue.
Is gender equality still a major policy issue today? And How does intersectionality help us create better laws for all women worldwide?
To address how intersectionality helps us confront gender, we must first use it to frame the problem. We need to understand how gender inequality manifests today, and frankly, how it has always manifested. Inequality does not operate solely on the matrix of gender. A person is not discriminated against simply for being a woman, a man, bisexual, or any other identity you might imagine. Rather, discrimination also occurs based on race, class, or whether an individual has a disability.
Intersectionality allows us to read all these forms of discrimination together. I like to use the image famously employed by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe intersectional discrimination: a traffic accident. When an accident occurs in the middle of an intersection, it is not always easy to determine which road caused it or where the primary fault lies. Gender discrimination works the same way. It is not always simple to discern if a person is being targeted based on gender alone or due to other elements. Often, when multiple layers of discrimination act upon the same subject, the experience becomes truly debilitating for that individual.
What are the tangible outcomes of these activities in terms of implementing the intersectional perspective within feminism?
I believe the activities currently defined as the “third mission” of the university (those that are neither traditional research nor teaching, but belong to the university’s third purpose) are vital. I would call this the university’s “social mission,” which involves its relationship with the public sphere. These activities are highly useful for reflecting on gender equality, a topic where scholars should not just deliver lectures but must also be receptive to the impulses coming from society.
I think the right approach is the one we have piloted here: a dialogic approach. However, it must be an authentic dialogue, not a rhetorical one. A rhetorical dialogue is one where one party assumes absolute knowledge and simply wishes to bestow it upon others. Dialogue fails under those conditions. It succeeds only when we are genuinely open and willing to challenge our own thinking after listening to others. This is a logic I try to apply in the classroom, but I find it particularly effective in these social mission activities. It prevents gender discourse from becoming an elitist conversation, or a mere hobby for academics. That is not its purpose.
How do you see the future?
It is very difficult to provide an analysis or a forecast of the future. Even an author like Kant, who believed humanity was in a constant state of progress toward the better, knew that time is a chaotic system influenced by countless variables.
If there is hope for feminist thought, I believe it lies precisely in the intersectional approach.
Paradoxically, this does not stem from hegemonic feminism, but from “other” feminisms. For example, we still have much to learn from Latin American feminism. The struggles for women’s rights flourishing in contexts very different from the West restore my confidence that the path for women’s rights has not been cut off. It may have suffered a setback, but it has not stopped, and it can be resumed. We must remember that when we talk about women’s rights, it is a matter of both the recognition of legal rights and the redistribution of material resources within society.
How do you think the expansion of authoritarianism (and neoliberalism, state policies, etc.) is affecting the path of feminism globally today?
Feminism today is under attack from several directions. There are, obviously, right-wing and reactionary policies that attack feminism because they believe women’s rights should be questioned. In fact, they point to women’s rights as a cause of social unease and envision a “better” society that is not founded on the recognition of rights. This is one attack feminism must confront.
But there is another attack, which comes from a line of thought that appears progressive: neoliberalism. It uses key words in the feminist movement like freedom, independence, and empowerment, but it frames all these concepts in a hyper-individualistic key. It transforms the feminist struggle into an individual battle rather than a collective one, and in doing so, effectively deactivates it politically.
The final question: to achieve a lasting impact, should we focus our energy on legislative reform or on grassroots education in schools, families, and among women?
All educational agencies must participate in the feminist cause. It is impossible to think that we can use the law to recognize women’s rights without that being preceded by cultural work.
The case of violence against women is symptomatic of this. We cannot expect to combat violence against women by resorting only to the tools of criminal law. In our legal system, criminal law is the “ultima ratio”, or the final resort. The legislature should only turn to it when there are no other tools available. The primary tool for protecting women’s rights is education. In my view, this education requires introducing a culture of gender equality into schools, alongside an “education in affectivity” (emotional literacy). This is indispensable in a country where rates of violence against women are so high. Clearly, love and affection for a woman are still being confused with the pretense of ownership over her.