Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in a 1989 article in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. She examined DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976), in which Black women sued over a seniority system. The court rejected their claim because GM had hired white women and Black men, so it found no sex or race discrimination. Black women fell through the gap between the two categories.
The idea built on earlier Black feminist thought. In 1851, Sojourner Truth challenged a women's rights audience to recognize Black women. The Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist group in Boston, wrote in its 1977 statement that systems of oppression are interlocking. Crenshaw gave this insight a name and a legal framework.
Intersectionality is now used well beyond law, in research, organizing and policy. It explains why Black women face a larger pay gap than either white women or Black men, and why Black women die from pregnancy-related causes at much higher rates than white women. The term has also become a political target, and critics often misdescribe it as a ranking of victimhood. Crenshaw describes it as a tool for seeing how overlapping systems shape people's lives.