Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and age. These factors can lead to both empowerment and oppression.

Intersectionality arose in reaction to both white feminism and the then male-dominated Black liberation movement, citing the "interlocking oppressions" of racism, sexism and heteronormativity. It broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were white, cisgender, and middle-class, to include the different experiences of women of color, poor women, immigrant women, and other groups, and aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women's differing experiences and identities.

The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. She describes how interlocking systems of power affect those who are most marginalized in society. Activists and academics use the framework to promote social and political egalitarianism. Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. In this framework, for instance, discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated.

Intersectionality has heavily influenced modern feminism and gender studies. Its proponents suggest that it promotes a more nuanced and complex approach to addressing power and oppression, rather than offering simplistic answers. Its critics suggest that the concept is too broad or complex, tends to reduce individuals to specific demographic factors, is used as an ideological tool, and is difficult to apply in research contexts.

Patricia Hill Collins, author of Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019), refers to the various intersections of social inequality as "vectors of oppression and privilege" that together form a matrix of domination. These concepts describe how people's experiences of privilege and marginalization are shaped not just by individual differences in isolation (sexual orientation, class, race, age, and so on), but also by the effect of overlaps and interactions between these differences. The impact of a particular factor, such as race, can vary based on the presence or absence of other factors, such as gender or class.

In the European Union (EU) and UK, "multiple discrimination" refers to discrimination which encompasses more than one social classification (gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, and so on). These categories, which were previously considered in isolation as defining in their own right, are now increasingly approached as different facets of a person's identity that are considered as a multidimensional whole.

Standpoint theory has been described by Patricia Collins and Dorothy E. Smith. A standpoint is an individual's world perspective. Standpoint theory suggests that societal knowledge is subjective, being situated within an individual's specific geographic location and the social conditions under which it was produced.

Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality in a pair of essays published in 1989 and 1991, within the subject of legal studies. Intersectionality originated in critical race studies and considers the way different forms of oppression (such as racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and so on) can combine and interact to produce multifaceted systems of oppression and privilege that shape the experiences of individuals. Crenshaw used intersectionality to demonstrate how these intersecting systems of oppression disadvantaged minorities in the workplace and society.