From principle to practice

This article examines how intersectionality is articulated and enacted within a typical women’s umbrella organization – the Flemish Women’s Council – and what facilitates or hinders that process. Using semi-structured interviews with current and former staff members, we take an inductive approach that centres interviewees’ own explanations of what enables or constrains intersectional practice within the council. We find broad rhetorical endorsement of intersectionality, yet everyday routines remain largely additive: intersectional references are appended to documents centred on a ‘prototypical’ cis, white, able-bodied woman. Constraints are primarily institutional: a wide, pillarized membership, tacit expectations of unanimity, and state-linked funding and reporting templates that favour low-conflict, single-axis framing. These dynamics produce an ‘umbrella paradox’: the very features that grant access and legitimacy also dampen claims from those at the sharpest intersections. Additionally, we engage in design thinking about how to make the internal organization and processes more democratic, intersectionally inclusive and solidarity oriented

Flemish · Intersectionality · Legitimacy · Praxis · Qualitative research · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Solidarity · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender, Feminism, and Media