Intersectionality in the Context of Capitalism, Neo-colonialism, and Neo-imperialism

When we talk about global inequality – who has wealth, who doesn’t, and why – we rarely get the full picture by looking at one factor alone. Race doesn’t explain everything. Neither does gender. Neither does class. It’s when these categories overlap and interact within larger systems – capitalism, neo-colonialism, and neo-imperialism – that the real mechanics of inequality come into view. This is precisely what Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge argue in their foundational work on intersectionality: that understanding power and oppression requires examining how multiple social divisions work together, not separately.

What intersectionality actually means 🔗

The term intersectionality was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how overlapping systems of power shape the experiences of people with multiple marginalized identities. Collins and Bilge built on this, arguing that social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and ethnicity do not operate independently – they shape one another in ways that produce entirely new forms of disadvantage.

A Black woman facing workplace discrimination, for instance, does not simply experience “racism plus sexism.” Her experience is distinct from what a Black man faces or what a white woman faces. The combination creates something structurally unique. In Collins’s intellectual framework, intersectionality is not just an academic concept – it is a practical tool for critical inquiry and social justice praxis, a way of connecting knowledge to the work of addressing real-world inequality.

The matrix of domination: how power is organized 🔗

Collins introduced the concept of the matrix of domination in her landmark book Black Feminist Thought (1990) to describe how interlocking oppressions are not random but systematically organized. According to Collins, the matrix operates through four interconnected domains of power: structural (law, economy, religion), disciplinary (bureaucratic control), hegemonic (ideology and culture), and interpersonal (everyday interactions).

Collins defines the matrix of domination as the overall social organization within which intersecting oppressions originate, develop, and are sustained. While intersectionality helps us understand a specific social location, the matrix of domination maps the broader architecture of power that makes those locations possible. Together, they show that privilege and marginalization are not individual accidents – they are structurally produced.

Capitalism and the production of racialized, gendered inequality 🔗

Capitalism does not treat all workers equally. As analysts of imperialism have noted, the capitalist system requires cheap inputs – labor, raw materials, energy – and it consistently finds those inputs by exploiting populations already made vulnerable through race and gender. This is not incidental to capitalism; it is structural.

Collins and Bilge are explicit that capital accumulation has always depended on social divisions. Scholars working in critical criminology have similarly shown that wealth accumulation through exploitation and expropriation depends on a “back story” – the gendered organization of reproductive labor, racialization as a tool for legitimizing class inequality, and the use of imperial power to enforce favorable conditions for capital. In other words, racism and patriarchy are not side effects of capitalism; they are instruments of it.

Consider the global garment industry. Factory workers in Bangladesh – predominantly women – earn wages that represent a fraction of what workers in wealthy countries receive. This is not a coincidence. It reflects an intersectional system in which gender, race, nationality, and class converge to make certain workers particularly exploitable: less likely to organize, more economically desperate, and operating in contexts where labor protections are weak or non-existent.

Women worldwide also perform the vast majority of unpaid care work – childcare, elder care, household labor. The United Nations University has noted that this invisible labor is unmeasured and unvalued by global economic institutions, yet it subsidizes capitalism by reproducing the workforce at no cost to employers. The failure to recognize this work perpetuates gender inequality while simultaneously enriching the system that depends on it.

Neo-colonialism: political independence without economic freedom 🔗

The end of formal colonial rule did not end the economic structures colonialism created. Neo-colonialism refers to the continuation of colonial-style exploitation through indirect means – economic dependence, debt, trade agreements, and cultural dominance – rather than direct territorial control.

As Britannica explains, neocolonialism is now widely understood as a development of capitalism in which transnational corporations and multilateral institutions combine to perpetuate colonial forms of exploitation in developing countries without direct rule. Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, who coined the term, argued that foreign capital under neo-colonialism is used for exploitation rather than development, widening rather than closing the gap between rich and poor nations.

From an intersectional perspective, neo-colonialism is not just an economic arrangement – it is a racialized and gendered one. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes neo-colonialism as the subtle propagation of socio-economic and political control by former colonial powers, reinforcing capitalism, neoliberal globalization, and cultural subjugation. The populations most harmed – women, ethnic minorities, Indigenous communities – have the least power to shape the terms of this arrangement.

International debt is one of neo-colonialism’s most effective tools. When Global South governments borrow from the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, the conditions attached – known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) – typically require cutting public spending, privatizing state assets, and liberalizing labor markets. Between 1980 and 2015, Southern countries paid over $4.2 trillion in interest to wealthier nations, far exceeding the total development aid received in the same period. When governments cut healthcare or education spending under these conditions, it is women who disproportionately absorb the loss – stepping in as unpaid caregivers when institutions retreat.

Neo-imperialism: control without occupation 🔗

Neo-imperialism extends the logic of neo-colonialism by encompassing cultural, military, and economic influence over sovereign states. Unlike classical imperialism, it does not require territorial occupation. Instead, it operates through military alliances, trade agreements, media dominance, and the enforcement of economic compliance.

Cultural neo-colonialism shapes how communities understand gender roles, family structures, and social norms – particularly when Western NGOs or institutions promote frameworks that do not align with local histories or Indigenous identities. This represents a form of epistemic control: determining which ways of knowing, which identities, and which social arrangements are considered “modern” or “legitimate.” For Collins and Bilge, this cultural dimension of domination is inseparable from the economic and political ones.

Military interventions also carry deeply intersectional consequences. When powerful states intervene in others, it is women, children, and ethnic minorities who are most severely affected – facing displacement, loss of income, increased violence, and the erosion of rights – while having the least say in post-conflict reconstruction. Neo-imperialism, in this sense, reproduces the same racialized and gendered hierarchies that capitalism depends on.

Accumulation of wealth through racialized and gendered structures 🔗

The link between capital accumulation and social hierarchy is not new. Critical scholars have demonstrated that racialized deprecating tropes – sustained through institutional and normative work – maintain deteriorated class statuses and reproduce systems of labor exploitation. Race and gender do not just describe social positions; they actively construct the conditions under which labor can be extracted cheaply.

The United Nations University points out that patterns of wealth today are built on foundations of colonial oppression, and that contemporary economic systems are organized along class lines with profits extracted by a small transnational elite. Intersectional analysis reveals what purely class-based analysis misses: that this elite benefits not only from ownership of capital but from the racial and gender structures that keep labor cheap, compliant, and divided.

Building solidarity across social movements 🔗

For Collins and Bilge, understanding these intersecting structures is not merely an intellectual exercise. Collins and Bilge argue that intersectionality as a tool for analysis allows researchers and activists to understand how power relations are “intertwined and mutually constructing.” This understanding is essential for building movements that are capable of challenging multiple forms of oppression at once.

Research on social movements and intersectionality shows that women of color have long responded to the matrix of domination across civil rights, women’s, and labor movements at local, national, and transnational levels. Single-issue organizing – focused solely on race, or solely on gender, or solely on class – consistently fails to address the structural simultaneity of oppression. Movements that recognize this, and that build coalitions across different struggles, are more capable of challenging the systems that produce inequality at its roots.

The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa is one historical example. Its eventual success was inseparable from its recognition that dismantling racial segregation also required challenging the economic system that depended on cheap Black labor, confronting the gendered dimensions of apartheid, and building international solidarity. Contemporary movements – from climate justice to labor rights to racial justice organizing – are increasingly adopting this intersectional approach, recognizing that their struggles are structurally linked.

Scholars studying environmental and disability movements have found that intersectionality helps activists understand how systemic oppression affects groups differently, and that “many different struggles for justice are interconnected and require solidarity between movements.” This is the core political implication of Collins and Bilge’s framework: that durable social change requires coalitions that do not treat race, gender, class, and global economic structures as separate concerns.

What do you think? If capitalism actively uses race and gender to maximize profit and maintain cheap labor, what would a genuinely intersectional economic system look like – and is it achievable within existing global structures? And considering that neo-colonial debt arrangements disproportionately harm women and marginalized communities, how should international financial institutions be held accountable for the gendered and racialized consequences of their policies?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Hill_Collins
2. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Intersectionality,+2nd+Edition-p-9781509539673
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8127482/
5. https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/13299_Chapter_16_Web_Byte_Patricia_Hill_Collins.pdf
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_of_domination
7. https://www.climatevanguard.org/publications-briefs/defining-imperialism-colonialism-and-neo-colonialism
8. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/61/6/1612/6276757
9. https://unu.edu/iigh/blog-post/what-we-mean-colonialism-coloniality
10. https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism
11. https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/introduction.htm
12. https://iep.utm.edu/neocolon/
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism
14. https://sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/intersectionality
15. https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.12885
16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2023.2234828