Vienna +10: Speak Out
E-Consultation Survey Results

Violence Against Women: What problems of intersectional discrimination do you address in your work?

Naming Intersections

• Particularly with poor women
  • Gender
  • Race
  • Disability
• At international level as native of Africa
  • Sexual Rights
• Refugee women in my country
• Women sometimes experience discrimination for two reasons
  • They are women
  • They are single parents
    • A woman was not endorsed for ministerial appointment because she is a single parent
• Ethnicity
  • We started working with Roma women
    • They experience double discrimination
• A lot of women come over to share the problem of discrimination based on
  • Sexual orientation
  • Age
  • Single mothers
• Generally we face the victims of domestic violence
  • 65% (which is very wide in our country)
  • The trafficking of poor and migrant women also present
• Age, children or adults, married or not, single mother or not, employed or not, economically independent or not, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and race
• Intersection with illegal migrants and poor women from the provinces
• Sexual orientation; trafficking; single mothers
• Education, age,economic situation, political situation, traditional laws, etc… increases women's experience of violence
• Gender and Sexuality generally, not just in relation to sexual orientation, and discrimination based on youth status
• Women who are HIV infected, as another key example
• Age (girls even more vulnerable) Lesbians (are the closest in many of the countries we are working in)
• A race, class, colonialism
• Intersections of class, nationalism, imperialism
• Discrimination against women in the arts is very common and for film makers, poets, and other artists who deal with issues of sexual orientation or violence against women, their art can be viewed as a threat against conservative and right wing regimes
• Poverty, race, and reproductive rights
• Sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Especially in the elderly
• Social class and age are issues of discrimination
• Sexual orientation, trafficking of poor and migrant women
• The problem of intersecting caste as well as religious identities. This is also combined with trafficking in poor and migrant women, sexual harassment at the work place, in both organized and unorganized sector
• Mostly in terms of religion and class
• Though we do not focus on abuses committed against women based on their ethnicity or try to point out a certain group, ethnic identity will often be a factor of the crime
• LGBT
• Race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, disability
• Race/ethnicity; refugee/asylum seeking women; religious discourses on gender
• The inadequately housed
• ethnicity
• Sexual orientation, trafficking

Intersectional Problems Identified

• Rape of women
• Clearly in a society where a (white) man is only person of worth any one else becomes 'the problem'
• Women, children, handicapped, or vulnerable people such as HIV/AIDS seropositive people
• Violence against the aged is not readily addressed. Lately we have been addressing violence in same sex relationships as well as highlighting that the disabled sometimes find themselves in abusive relationships.
• One key issue for us is denial of comprehensive sexuality education, which includes a range of issues related to sexual identities and practices, in schools and in programs that reach young people
• discrimination against women who plan to have children while applying for a job, older women find work harder and have insufficient education or none at all, young women are sexually abused at work, school, and other places - it is a "normal" thing
• In our context of transition from socialism to market economy we started to work on intersection of gender, class and ethnicity
• Race, Most of Bolivians have ethnic inheritance, the prevention messages of HIV are for medium class people they are not designed for people with strong ethnic roots.
• Women, children, handicapped, or vulnerable people such as HIV/AIDS seropositive people
• Violence against the aged is not readily addressed. Lately we have been addressing violence in same sex relationships as well as highlighting that the disabled sometimes find themselves in abusive relationships.
• One key issue for us is denial of comprehensive sexuality education, which includes a range of issues related to sexual identities and practices, in schools and in programs that reach young people
• Discrimination against women who plan to have children while applying for a job, older women find work harder and have insufficient education or none at all, young women are sexually abused at work, school, and other places - it is a "normal" thing
• In our context of transition from socialism to market economy we started
• Nuestra marginacion y pobreza generalizada siempre nos lleva a un anàlisis global de la discriminacion que sufrimos, las causas y consecuencias y como deberemos afrentarlas
• In different areas. First when working on the issue of violence against young women activists, we have work on the relationship between gender and age, and a social participation. Also, in the issue of the femicide in Juarez, we stress that there are different factors that intersect in the killings, of course they are all women, most of them are poor, in 30% of cases maquiladora workers, and they are mostly young girls (70% under 29 years and most of them under 19).
• Taking away children is very often done to migrant women, poor women and other socially weak women (drug addicts etc.)
• employment discrimination against single mothers and trafficking of poor and migrant women
• I work with migrant healthcare providers, and address the issues of violence as they intersect with poverty and migration.
• Ipas has addressed abortion care as a reproductive right for migrant/refugee, adolescent, ethnic women
• We have a new project on low wage work in the USA where many of these issues intersect
• I am a technical recruiter for an IT company and my company does not hire many women. The managers often question potential candidates race, ethnicity, background etc. They will not hire anyone if she/he sounds "black". It's sickening.
• Reproductive rights. Violations experienced particularly by certain ethnicities/races (Roma and coercive sterilization; indigenous women and lack of FP access; teens and inadequate access and higher pregnancy and abortion-related deaths; poor women and inadequate access to safe abortion (esp. where illegal since wealthy women can pay)
• yes, in the sense that it is largely unacknowledged in many settings; race, poverty, etc, are seen as distinct and separate issues
• Trafficking of poor/migrant women and girls; abuse of undocumented migrants; discrimination in availability of asylum to women of color; violence against poor women fleeing persecution; discrimination/abuse of women and girls where they are considered an economic burden (dowries, etc.)
• Most definitely.... all of the above. Many of our missing.murdered women are women forced to living on the streets due to severe poverty, resulting in prostitution/drug addiction and then ending in homicide. Others have simply disappeared while walking to school, attending conferences, visiting friends and even murdered in their own homes in front of their small children
• Yes, but we often do not formally label it as such. This is a new perspective to our analysis of the issues faced by women with HIV/AIDS, poor women, women of a minority ethnic group, girls leading poor households because parents died from AIDS, undocumented women farm workers in Zimbabwe, etc.
• poverty/trafficking/domestic violence/refugees/employment discrimination and lack of political power
• Battered women who are of a lower socio-economic level than their batterers are treated worse by the U.S. family courts. Same for battered women who are non-white or non-U.S. citizens, or who don't speak English well. Same for battered women who are now in relationships with other women. These problems were all explored in our human rights report on the Massachusetts family courts.
• Our work at the WCAR and since then was to explore how specific aspects of globalization (migration, privatization, cuts in social services, rural restructuring) differentially impact racially and ethnically marginalized women, We seek to explore policy implications, as well as implications for our movements. This on-going work is a key priority for the coalition
• ethnicity and sexual violence - adivasis and untouchables in India; USA race, gender and sexual orientation and vAW in prison; expecting work on sexual violence against native american women; expecting work on DV in USA that will integrate intersectionality
• Indigenous, rural, low socio-economic status and control over sexuality and health
• We are living in a society where the status of women in general has not been recognized
• Intersection of class, caste and gender (ex. systemic institutional discrimination faced by poor women from minority communities, particularly in relation to employment and social services.)
• Rape and Discrimination against Women
• While dealing on the issue of trafficking of women and children we always address the discriminatory practices based on race, ethnicity, nationality, class and age.
• migrant workers have to face this kind of problem that they did not pay well , they suffer from sexual aharrsment ,not to treat well while sickness, refugee women were raped and could not take the pepertrator to action
• vaw in armed conflict is always an intersectional discrimination and violence. women are rape in armed conflict situations because of their ethnicity, belonging to a certain class, or group of peoples, or becaus e of their nationality, race, age or even sexual orientation. so vaw in war is one of the most intersectional violence done to women
• sexual orientation, disability and trafficking of poor and migrant women workers and employment discrimination
• access to family planning, higher rate of abortion
• especially in the field of (domestic) violence against migrant and refugee women
• in the work among women in prostitution and woming victime of trafficking
• Trafficking has a strong relationship to rapid libralisation where this has created economic polarisation and regulatory chaos. When advocating gender perpective in trade issues this inherently puts the emphasis where there is most need- ie the perspective and needs of poor women, because their poverty is interrelated with gender discrimination.
• Yes, in terms of dealing with economic rights and how economic and trade policies affect different section of society
  • It is a constant battle. Equality legislation here has been implemented in a way which makes gender one of nine equality categories, with race, disability, sexual orientation etc.
  • Frequent response from civil servants and politicians to demands for affirmative action for women is that women are only one of nine categories, in competition with other disadvantaged and marginalised groups
  • Those responsible for equality within Northern Ireland government refuse to recognise that women are half of all equality categories. Partly it's the backlash against global gains re women's equality, partly it's tied up with the wider political stalemate, where the entire equality agenda is being rolled back, linked to stalemate in peace process, if it can be described as such
  • In the area of GBV and in preventing FGM, as well as in the area of sexual and reproductive right, and in the area of socio-economic rights (access to education and to work, equality in decision making processes)
  • all the above examples given are addressed by our working groups:on VAW, Employment and Economic Development, Migrant and Refugee Women, Environment, Health and Women's Human Rights, the Girl Child, Peace
  • this is obviously a chronic problem, in western societies, issues of race and background said a lot over the possibility of any women of colour to be integrated in western societies. Dutch system excluded such women, from having fair access to work, education, health..etc
  • Most survivors of the crimes we address are disabled - at least mentally and emotionally - if not also physically. They are totally interconnected. Also, because they are disabled, and are less likely to have a solid income, their voices tend to be weaker. Therefore, we speak for them whenever we can. The other problem is that because they have limited inner and external resources, they are much more likely to be revictimized - especially since those who "owned" them are not happy that they are breaking free and beginning to think and live for themselves. They are often retraumatized. I've also experienced this. If they already have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (most do), such retraumatization not only leaves them feeling unsafe, which means they cannot heal, but it also increases their PTSD

Strategies

• Yes, courses are designed to be inclusive. In work with other audiences, expanding the concept beyond women often attracts more attention and discussion.
• Again as a research and policy center intersectionality underlines our analysis and policy recommendations approach
• We help to fund programs for women in various ethnic, and underserved populations. It is imperative. Must be language and cultural specific to be able to meet the needs of our population.
• I explain the concept of intersectionality and the exponential effect because variable effects are not departmental hits on our body or psychic energies. Everything aspect of fluidity of energy is alive and movement is life.
• All of the above. Women and men are a multiplicity of identities and working with that concept, in training programs, in writing development of briefs, in doing consultancies is always key
• Convening public forum on law and order, constitutional reform, good governance, provision of shadow reports to UN human rights forum and testifying at national, regional, and global human rights processes (CRC and CEDAW)
• I use the concept mostly in my academic work on gender and ethnicity in Dutch law.
• By including it in the analysis
• Working with women of diverse ethnic and religious groups, intersex groups and sex workers
  • New staff often need educating on inter-sections
• I always include sexualities in my gender trainings/work, and am at present engaged in combating racisms (with) in our local GBV/women's movement (still largely controlled by white sisters to the exclusion of others), in collaboration with 2 local gender organizations
• We have always identified our work with domestics and low income workers as a class issue and has used the CEDAW, Beijing Platform For Action and other International instruments in our work, therefore we must give some credit to the usage of these instruments our victories.
• In the area of ethnic or religious based discrimination which intersectional analysis is critical to a correct understanding of the issues and for designing useful interventions

Perspectives on Intersectionality

• I agree with the whole concept of "intersecting identities" and all the things that are included in this definition
• We are concerned how all women are treated, but do not look at any of these additional issues as differentiating the women
• This is an integral aspect of the work of FWCC. The issue can't be looked in isolation because it is all interrelated
• We work with all women - victims of violence without taking into account race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, class, age, and other identities
• We are against discrimination against all minorities