Working
Group on Women and Human Rights
Background Briefing
on Intersectionality
Purpose
The
paper can be used as a background briefing to the issue of intersectional
discrimination. It provides an overview of the ways in which the
UN system has recognized this issue, a definition of intersectional
discrimination and methodology to support this definition.
The UN and
Intersectional Discrimination
Central
to the realization of the human rights of women is an understanding
that women do not experience discrimination and other forms of human
rights violations solely on the grounds of gender, but for a multiplicity
of reasons, including ages, disability, health status, race, ethnicity,
caste, class, national origin and sexual orientation. Various bodies
and entities within the UN have to a certain extent recognized the
intersectionality of discrimination in women's lives. However, the
structures of the UN do not necessarily support the implementation
of such an understanding.
The
core elements of an intersectional approach have been articulated
in the Beijing Platform for Action and in the Outcome document from
the Special Session of the General Assembly entitled "Women, 2000:
gender, equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century".
The Beijing Declaration calls for Governments to "Intensify efforts
to ensure equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms
for all women and girls who face multiple barriers to their empowerment
and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language,
ethnicity, culture, religion, or disability, or because they are
indigenous people."
The
CERD Committee has adopted General Recommendation 25 on the Gender
Related dimensions of racial discrimination, which recognizes the
need for sessional working methods to analyse the relationship between
gender and racial discrimination.
The
Expert Group Meeting on Gender and Racial Discrimination suggested
that the UN human rights system, including both treaty bodies and
Special Rapporteurs and other non-conventional human rights mechanisms,
needs to develop a methodology to ensure a substantive analysis
of the violations occurring at the intersections of gender and race.
As
such the CSW, in its ongoing responsibility for monitoring the implementation
of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Report of the Ad Hoc
Committee of the Whole of the 23rd Special Session of
the General Assembly, has the mandate to develop an approach to
the monitoring of the implementation of the PFA and Beijing Plus
Five Outcomes Document which incorporates the intersectionality
of race and gender, along with other forms of discrimination. In
addition, in the realisation of the strategy to mainstream gender
as a means of securing the full human rights of all women, the CSW
has a further mandate to address the various ways in which race
and gender discrimination adversely effects women's enjoyment of
their human rights.
We
urge the Commission to incorporate the exploration of the implications
of the intersection of race, ethnicity, case, national origin and
other identities with gender in all its deliberations in order to
build consensus on the needs and uses of a methodology on intersectionality
as a critical component of its work.
A definition
of intersectional discrimination
An
intersectional approach to analyzing the disempowerment of marginalized
women attempts to capture the consequences of the interaction between
two or more forms of subordination. It addresses the manner in
which racism, patriarchy, class oppression and other discriminatory
systems create inequalities that structure the relative positions
of women, races, ethnicities, classes, and the like. Moreover,
intersectionality addresses the way that specific acts and policies
operate together to create further disempowerment. For instance,
race, ethnicity, gender, or class, are often seen as separate spheres
of experience which determine social, economic and political dynamics
of oppression. But, in fact, the systems often overlap and cross
over each other, creating complex intersections at which two, or
three or more of these axis may meet. Indeed, racially subordinated
women are often positioned in the space where racism or xenophobia,
class and gender meet. They are consequently subject to injury
by the heavy flow of traffic traveling along all these roads.
Racially
subordinated women and other multiply burdened groups who are located
at these intersections by virtue of their specific identities must
negotiate the traffic that flows through these intersections
in order to obtain the resources for the normal activities of life.
This is a particularly dangerous task when the traffic flows
simultaneously from many directions. These are the contexts in which
intersectional injuries occur when disadvantages or conditions
interact with preexisting vulnerabilities to create various forms
of disempowerment.
Elements of
A Methodology for Intersectional Analysis
Critical
to the task of addressing gender inequalities and enhancing women's
empowerment will be the development of new, and augmenting of, existing
methodologies to uncover the ways multiple identities converge to
create and exacerbate women's subordination. These methodologies
will not only underline the significance of the intersection of
race, ethnicity, caste, citizenship status for marginalized women
etc but serve to highlight the full diversity of women's experiences.
An
intersectional methodology could have four distinct components:
1.
Data Collection
2.
Contextual Analysis
3.
Intersectional Review of Policy Initiatives and Systems of Implementation
4.
Implementation of Intersectional Policy Initiatives
Data
Collection - The first requirement for intersection analysis
is the availability of reporting and evaluation data disaggregated
by race, ethnicity, descent, citizenship status and other identities.
Disaggregated data will make it possible to identify the magnitude
of impact of particular problems and policies on particular groups
of women. For example, in order to evaluate the problem of the
feminization of poverty it is important to identify the extent of
the impact of poverty on different groups of women.
Contextual
Analysis - Once disaggregated data is available, the second
task is to document the impacts of a problem that are the result
of the convergence of identities. That is to probe beneath the
single identity to discover other identities that may be present
and contributing to a situation of disadvantage. The contextual
realities could include the legacy of slavery or colonialism or
ancient animosities. For example, disaggregated data may reveal
the extent of rape of ethnic women during a situation of war, but
an analysis of the context reveals a history of inter-ethnic struggle
for economic power that created a climate of permission for the
rape among the majority group.
Intersectional
Review of Policy Initiatives and Systems of Implementation -
With disaggregated data and contextual analysis as background, policy
initiatives and systems of implementation can be evaluated for their
efficacy in addressing the problems faced by different intersectional
identities. For example, does a policy initiate addressing racial
discrimination and economic opportunity for one group of women create
further tensions with other racial or ethnic women creating a competition
and hierarchy of minorities that serves to perpetuate the domination
of a majority group. Or on the other hand, do the implementation
procedures for national machinery include a variety of strategies
that are sensitive to the different situations of subordination
of women within different groups.
Implementation
of Intersectional Policy Initiatives National machineries
and the UN systems can take concrete steps and implement plans of
action based on the data to support such work, governments need
to enable data collection, analysis and the allocation of adequate
resources for this task. In addition to the implementation there
must be mechanisms for effective review of such implementation.
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