Links between different equality struggles, general antidiscrimination frameworks vs specific strate

1
Links between different equality struggles,
general anti-discrimination frameworks vs
specific strategies Concepts, Issues and
challenges for the womens movement

• Mieke Verloo
• Radboud University Nijmegen and IWM Vienna
• EWL SEMINAR
• Brussels, 26 January 2009
• Filling the Gender Equality Gap in European
  Legislation And Tackling Multiple Discrimination

2
Intersectionality?

• How to understand the links between the struggles
  for equality or justice?
• Thinking about inequalities
• Thinking about strategies to abolish them

3
Inequalities

• Our societies are ridden with inequalities along
  many different axes or dimensions
• Our societies differ in whether and how they see
  these inequalities to be important, problematic,
  in need of action
• Civil society, social movements and politics
  engage in various activities towards abolishing
  various inequalities
• The strength of these political actors varies
  tremendously

4
How inequalities relate to each other in society

• The discussion what is the most important/
  encompassing inequality in a certain context is
  inevitably political
• How the relation between different inequalities
  is conceptualized is crucial
• Some of the most important ways of
  conceptualizing the relation between inequalities
  are singling out one as the most important,
  additive, and intersectionality

5
Thinking about gender .

• The history of the womens movement shows that
  there have always been internal struggles on how
  to see and what to do with other inequalities
  than gender
• Class first wave divide between bourgeois and
  socialist women
• Sexual orientation the expulsion of lesbians
  from some of the second wave organisations and
  the emergence of the lesbian movement
• Race/ethnicity exposing racism within the
  womens movement
• And others disability, age, citizenship

6
Thinking about gender .

• Feminist theory has developed the concept of
  intersectionality to enable debates and the
  development of political practices that are
  acknowledging that different inequalities are
  constitutive of each other.
• This means that we should think about gender as
  made by and shaping class, sexual orientation,
  race/ethnicity, disability.

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Intersectionality

• Crenshaws useful distinction between structural
  and political intersectionality
• Structural intersectionality
• inequalities and its intersections are relevant
  at the level of experiences of people in society
• Political intersectionality
• inequalities and their intersections are relevant
  at the level of political strategies

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Understanding intersectionality

• Intersectionality should be understood as dynamic
  and institutional or interactive (McCall 2005
  Hancock 2007 Marx Ferree 2009).
• Rather than identifying points of intersection,
  we should see the dimensions on inequality
  themselves as dynamic and in changing, mutually
  constituted relationships with each other from
  which they cannot be disentangled (Walby 2007).
• This gives historically realized social relations
  in any place or time an irreducible complexity in
  themselves, from which the abstraction of any
  dimension of comparison (such as race or
  gender) is an imperfect but potentially useful
  conceptual achievement of simplification, not an
  inherent property of the world (Marx Ferree
  2009).

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Understanding intersectionality

• The intersection of gender and race is not any
  number of specific locations occupied by
  individuals or groups (such as Black women),
• but a process through which race takes on
  multiple gendered meanings for particular women
  and men (and for those not neatly located in
  either of those categories) depending on whether,
  how and by whom race-gender is seen as relevant
  for their sexuality, reproduction, political
  authority, employment or housing.
• These domains (and others) are to be understood
  as organizational fields in which
  multidimensional forms of inequality are
  experienced, contested and reproduced in
  historically changing forms (Marx Ferree 2009).

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Political intersectionality

• Intersectional struggles and positive attention
  for intersectionality have always been present in
  inequality movements, certainly in the womens
  movement.
• The movements that have developed around
  different inequalities have very different
  framings of what the problem is and what should
  be done about it
• They have very different levels of
  institutionalization and power
• That includes very different historical legacies
  of intersectional struggles within the movements
• These struggles are about intersectional bias in
  the movements about privileges and exclusion
  within the movements
• All this structures the patterns of possible
  alliances between movements and the possible
  emergence of an Oppression Olympics (Martinez
  19931)
• 1. Martinez, Elizabeth. 1993. Beyond
  Black/White The Racisms of our Times. Social
  Justice 20 (1/2) 2234.

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Political intersectionality

• The policies and laws that have been developed
  around different inequalities also have very
  different framings of what the problem is and
  what should be done about it
• They have very different historical legacies of
  institutionalization of policies addressing
  different inequalities and intersectional
  struggles, resulting in very different levels of
  institutionalization and power
• There is always intersectional bias in the
  policies and laws addressing inequalities,
  inequality policies are often creating new
  privileges and new exclusions
• The current European developments create a
  momentum and a need for reflection on the
  possible and desirable strategies to deal with
  structural and political intersectionality

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A closer look at how intersections are seen

• In terms of when and where intersections matter
• In terms of what movements and politics have
  taken up

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Table 1. Comparing four social categories that
are linked to inequalities (Verloo 2006)
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Comparing political and policy activities as
connected to four social categories (Verloo)
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Intersectionality in theory and practice

• There is more than we see
• It is a useful exercise to think how our
  understanding of gender is made through our
  understanding of class, sexual orientation,
  race/ethnicity.. age, disability
• The differences in how movements, citizens and
  politics see the range of positions across
  inequality dimensions, the origins of the
  categories made, the locations that are most
  important, or the mechanisms that (re)produce
  inequality are best seen as historically made
• It is useful to wonder about these differences,
  not because they are true, but because they
  structure possible alliances

16
Intersectionality in theory and practice

• It is even more useful to keep in mind the
  differences at the level of political
  mobilization
• in the degree to which inequalities have
  translated into political cleavages,
  institutions, in the range of their goals, their
  claims, and their political strategies

17
Current developments at European level

• The new EU Directives fix a particular
  understanding of inequalities
• A widened set of inequality categories that get
  attention
• Sex, racial or ethnic origin, age, religion or
  belief, disability and sexual orientation
• Denying intersectionality, talking about multiple
  discrimination
• A shrunk understanding of ways of dealing with
  inequalities as compared to gender equality
  policies
• Gender equality policies in the EU currently do
  include attention for the level of social
  structures and institutions the level of states
  or EU institutions, and for the private sphere
• The EU approach to multiple discrimination lacks
  all this.
• The main problem causing inequality is seen to be
  discrimination, to be addressed by equal
  treatment, preventing discrimination, and some
  positive measures

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Current EWL strategies

• Since the beginning of this debate the EWL has
  been asking the EC to ensure a uniform protection
  for all grounds of discrimination, including a
  strengthening of European gender equality
  legislation in order to avoid a hierarchy of
  rights between the different grounds of
  discrimination.
• EWL has also stressed the need of gender
  mainstreaming in any new EU anti-discrimination
  directive.

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Thinking about strategies

• Differentiating between different strategies
• Equal treatment no unequal protection
• Positive action and targeted activities
  differentiation useful?
• Mainstreaming differentiation useful?

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Thinking about strategies

• How to think about differentiation?
• Use ideas on the different range of positions
  across inequality dimensions, the different
  origins of the categories made, the different
  locations that are most important, or the
  different mechanisms that (re)produce inequality
• Be very much aware of different ideas in
  movements and interest groups, of the differences
  at the level of political mobilization, the
  degree to which inequalities have translated into
  political cleavages, institutions, in the range
  of their goals, their claims, and their political
  strategies
• Be aware of the privileged position of gender in
  terms of institutionalization

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Calls for action so far

• Expose and fight intersectional bias
• Reframe and stretch existing legal provisions and
  policies (Sattertwaite 2005)
• Equality mainstreaming
• Deliberation? Or struggle?
• No answer yet to whether single bodies or
  separate bodies work best, yet differentiation
  seems key

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This means pioneering work ahead

• Looking forward to the discussions!

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References

• Hancock, Ange-Marie 2007. When Multiplication
  Doesnt Equal Quick Addition Examining
  Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm.
  Perspectives on Politics, 5(1) 63-79.
• Marx Ferree, Myra 2009. Inequality,
  Intersectionality and the Politics of Discourse
  Framing Feminist Alliances, in Emanuela Lombardo,
  Petra Meier and Mieke Verloo. The discursive
  politics of gender equality. Stretching, bending
  and policy making. Routledge
• McCall, Leslie 2005. The Complexity of
  Intersectionality. Signs Journal of Women in
  Culture and Society, 30 (3) 1771-1880.
• Satterttwaite, Margaret L. 2005. Crossing
  Borders, Claiming Rights Using Human Rights Law
  to Empower Women Migrant Workers, YALE HUMAN
  RIGHTS DEVELOPMENT L.J. pp.1-66.
• Verloo, Mieke 2006. Multiple Inequalities,
  Intersectionality and the European Union.
  European Journal of Womens Studies, 13(3)
  211228.
• Walby, Sylvia 2007. Complexity Theory, Systems
  Theory, and Multiple Intersecting Social
  Inequalities. Philosophy of the Social Sciences,
  37( 4) 449-470.