What’s wrong with intersectionality: a comparative study of the Belgian and the German women’s movements

Both the Belgian and the German women’s movements are long-standing social movements, which have been founded in the wake of first wave feminism. Both are nowadays organised in overarching umbrella organisations, bringing together many different groups and initiatives. While both Belgium and Germany have an increasingly diverse population, and while both movements embrace the idea of representing all women, their management structure, priorities, activities, practices, and discourse seem to reflect little of an intersectional approach - both seem to struggle with a shift to a more intersectional agenda. In this paper, we aim at investigating this inconsistency between the claim to represent all women and the apparent lack of an intersectional approach. To this end the paper searches to explain this – seeming – absence of an intersectional approach in the national umbrella organisations – the Belgian Women’s Council (both Flemish and French branch) and the National Council of German Women’s Organizations. We selected three policy fields that unquestionably would allow for intersectional approaches and alliances with movements organized around other dimensions of discrimination: (1) employment and social policy (class), (2) migration, refugees, and integration (race/ethnicity), (3) family and marriage equality (sexual orientation/identity). We examine empirical material of the movements to estimate to what extent an intersectional approach is detectable in their (1) political campaigns, (2) alliances, and (3) represented identities and how it gets articulated. By scrutinizing intersectionality in national umbrella organisations which function as a node between the supranational EU level and regional or local movements, we illuminate how and when exclusion and inclusion play out in movements and how intersectionality shapes (or not) alliances, practices, and discourses. The analysis shows that class and race/ethnicity resonate to some extent with the women’s movements agendas while questions of sexual orientation and sexual identity are almost absent.