There are a lot of new terms out there, and language is ever-evolving. We’ve gathered together a glossary of terms used in spaces where people are seeking to improve the lives of women and gender-expansive people.
Ableism: “A system of superiority and discrimination that provides or denies resources, agency, and dignity based on one’s abilities (mental/intellectual, emotional, and/or physical). Ableism depends on a binary, and benefits able-bodied people at the expense of disabled people. Like other forms of oppression, ableism operates on individual, institutional, and cultural levels.” Learn more.
Abundance mindset: The belief that there is enough of everything for everyone. An abundance mindset fosters collaboration, sharing, and trust. Learn more.
BIPOC: Stands for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. “Pronounced ‘bye-pock,’ this is a term specific to the United States, intended to center the experiences of Black and Indigenous groups and demonstrate solidarity between communities of color.” Learn more.
Capitalism: An ideology and a relatively young political-economic system designed to achieve wealth accumulation above all else, rather than to meet people’s needs or steward the land we depend on. A small owning class privatizes and commodifies formerly public lands, goods, and services so that the remaining working class must sell their labor for money to purchase what they need to survive. Grounded in a scarcity, rather than an abundance, mindset. Requires relationships of exploitation, with racism and sexism inherent features. Depends on the unpaid and underpaid labor of women and other care workers. Learn more.
Cisgender/cis: Describes a person who “identifies with the gender that they were assigned at birth. Typically, cis men are men who were assigned male at birth and feel that the words ‘man’ and ‘male’ accurately describe their gender. Likewise, cis women are typically women who were assigned female at birth and feel that the words ‘woman’ and ‘female’ accurately describe their gender.” Learn more.
Cissexism: “The belief or assumption that cis people’s gender identities, expressions, and embodiments are more natural and legitimate than those of trans people.” Learn more.
Class: “A system of power based on perceived social and economic status.” Learn more.
Classism: “The systematic assignment of characteristics of worth and ability based on social class, as well as differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class. Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated class groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant class groups.” Learn more.
Collective Accountability: “The collective needs to acknowledge its role in harm, look to its role in repairing harm and in making changes so it does not happen again... collective accountability looks like: acknowledging the community role in the situation and seeking ways to make sure it does not happen again." Learn more.
Colonialism: An inherently violent system that “occupies and usurps labor/land/resources from one group of people for the benefit of another.” Learn more.
Disability justice: A movement and framework holding that: “1) All bodies are unique and essential. 2) All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met. 3) We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them. 4) All bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation-state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them.” Learn more.
Gender: “The characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.” Learn more.
Gender-based violence: “Violence that is directed at an individual based on their biological sex, gender identity, or their perceived adherence to socially defined norms of masculinity and femininity. It includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse; threats; coercion; arbitrary deprivation of liberty; and economic deprivation, whether occurring in public or private life.” Learn more.
Gender binary: “A cultural belief that there are only two distinct and opposite genders: man and woman.” Learn more.
Gender expansive: “A person with a wider, more flexible range of gender identity and/or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system.” Learn more.
Genderfluid: “A non-binary identity embraced by people who experience their gender identity and/or gender expression as changing or shifting over time.” Learn more.
Gender identity: “Your psychological sense of self. Who you, in your head, know yourself to be, based on how much you align (or don’t align) with what you understand to be the options for gender.” Learn more.
Gender justice: “A movement to end patriarchy, transphobia, and homophobia, and to create a world free from misogyny.” Recognizing that gender oppression is linked to racism, classism, imperialism, ableism, and more, gender justice can only fully be achieved when all forms of oppression are dismantled. Learn more.
Genderqueer: “An identity label used by many people who view their gender as falling outside of the male/female or man/woman binaries.” Learn more.
Grassroots feminism: “A worldview and political practice rooted the realities and interests of women, queer, trans, and non-binary people who have been harmed by the intersecting forces of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism.” Grounded in solidarity across identities and borders, it is a “movement that brings together groups and organizations of women from the grassroots who want to work together to address the root causes of poverty and violence against women.” Learn more.
Heteropatriarchy: “A colonial construct and concept that defines both masculinity and femininity in narrow and limiting ways in order to maintain a binary distinction between male and female, dominant and subordinate. Heteropatriarchy serves to naturalize all other social hierarchies, such as white supremacy and settler colonialism.” Learn more.
Imperialism: The ideology that justifies colonialism, as well as a “set of policies or practices that extend the power and control of a nation over the political, economic, and cultural life of other areas,” even without boots on the ground. Learn more.
Intersectionality: How different forms of discrimination—like sexism and racism—can overlap and compound. Learn more.
Intersectional feminism: A movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and all forms of oppression. A movement that centers the voices of people experiencing overlapping oppression and focuses on the priorities of these most-impacted communities. Learn more.
Intersectional feminist leadership: Leadership that acknowledges intersectionality, centers the voices of people experiencing overlapping oppression, and recognizes that leadership looks different across cultures.
Intersex: “A general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that is outside the medical system’s binary classification of ‘female’ or ‘male’.” Learn more.
LGBTQ: Stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning. Learn more.
Marginalized genders: Genders not afforded the social, economic, and political privileges structurally afforded to cis men.
Neoliberalism: Neoliberalism is an ideology and a political-economic system holding that the free market can solve problems that the government can't. It redefines citizens as consumers, and prizes privatization, deregulation, and individual freedom. Neoliberalism has led to massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, and the privatization of public services such as energy, water, transportation, healthcare, education, and prisons. Corporations now run these, and charge rents either to people or to the government for their use. Learn more.
Nonbinary: “Typically refers to people or identities that fall outside of the gender binary.” Learn more.
Non-extractive: “Methodologies/perspectives [that] enable the construction of knowledge ‘with’ […] individuals of a particular social context, rather than ‘about’ specific individuals." Learn more.
Non-extractive partnership: A partnership that involves engaging multiple stakeholders, being open to refine or reject earlier ideas, fostering safe spaces to be emotionally vulnerable, and linking to activism and advocacy. Learn more.
Patriarchy: “A political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” Learn more.
Pronouns: Words used when speaking about an individual in the third person, e.g. she/her, he/him, they/them. Using someone’s correct personal pronouns shows respect, while using incorrect pronouns can be experienced as hurtful or even violent. Learn more.
Racial justice: “A vision and transformation of society to eliminate racial hierarchies and advance collective liberation, where Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, in particular, have the dignity, resources, power, and self-determination to fully thrive.” Learn more.
Racism: “Racism is a system that encompasses economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that institutionalize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources, and power between White people and people of Color. This system is historic, normalized, taken for granted, deeply embedded, and works to the benefit of whites and to the disadvantage of people of color.” Racism is the enforcement arm of white supremacy. - Learn more.
Restorative Practice: “An umbrella term used for strategies that help us to proactively build community and relationships and manage conflict and tensions in ways that treat humans with dignity and respect." Learn more.
Scarcity/deficit mindset: Seeing life as a finite pie, so that if one person takes a big piece, that leaves less for everyone else. That if one person wins, another person loses. A scarcity mindset leads to competition instead of collaboration, hoarding instead of sharing, and jealousy instead of feeling happy for others’ success. Learn more.
Sexism: The belief that men are superior to women.
Sexuality: “How people experience and express themselves as sexual beings.” Learn more.
Systemic Racism: “Systemic racism unfairly elevates white people over everyone else. It influences how POGMAIP [People of the Global Majority and Indigenous People] are treated by the justice system but it can also affect housing, education, health care, hiring processes, and many other things in their lives. Systemic racism is not always obvious, although it certainly can be. The Jim Crow laws were one of the most obvious examples. Systemic racism can even be unconscious and it helps create inequality.” Learn more.
Targeted universalism: “Setting universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve those goals. Within a targeted universalism framework, universal goals are established for all groups concerned. The strategies developed to achieve those goals are targeted, based upon how different groups are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies to obtain the universal goal. Targeted universalism is goal oriented, and the processes are directed in service of the explicit, universal goal.” Learn more.
Transgender/trans: “This term has many definitions. It is frequently used as an umbrella term to refer to all people who do not identify with their assigned gender at birth or the binary gender system. Some transgender people feel they exist not within one of the two standard gender categories, but rather somewhere between, beyond, or outside of those two genders.” Learn more.
Two-spirit: “A word for non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgendered Indigenous people that is used to refer to identity, roles, and responsibility. Not everyone chooses to use this word and instead chooses to use words like gay, lesbian, trans, queer, genderqueer, gender-fluid, gender creative instead, or in combination. This word is not for non-Indigenous folks to use.” Learn more.
White feminism: An ideology where the goal “is not to alter the systems that oppress women — patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism — but to succeed within them.” A feminism that ignores intersectionality and excludes women of color. Learn more.
White supremacy: White supremacy is an ideology and political-social system holding that race is real (rather than made-up), and that white people are superior and entitled to dominate all other people. It “has evolved into a totalizing system – a toxic sea in which we all swim.” Learn more.
Do you have thoughts on these definitions? Anything missing/anything you’d add? We’d love to hear from you. Please share your feedback by sending an email to cwlinfo@pdx.edu.