‘Addressing Issues of Intersectionality Through the Gender Lens: Women are still unequal’

‘Addressing Issues of Intersectionality Through the Gender Lens: Women are still unequal’ Presentation at the Athena Annual International Conference in Budapest 1-3 June 2007 Barbara Bagilhole Loughborough University LE11 3TU UK B.M.Bagilhole@lboro.ac.uk

European Union: Perceptions and Attitudes Table 1 Perception of discrimination on the basis of … Rare Widespread Ethnic origin 30% 64% Disability 42% 53% Sexual orientation 41% 50% Age 48% 46% Religion or beliefs 47% 44% Gender 53% 40%

European Union Perceptions and Attitudes Table 2 Would you say belonging to certain groups is a disadvantage? Disadvantage Being disabled 79% Aged >50 77% Ethnic minority 69% Homosexual 62% Religious minority 39% Woman 33% Man 4%

My Fantasy Women 82% of Members of Parliament 94% of judges 93% of senior police officers 91% of editors of national newspapers 87% of professors 92% of skilled trades Men 80% of secretaries 89% of nurses 86% of primary and nursery teachers 98% of apprentices in early years care and education 44% of men work part time (receive 40% of women’s full time hourly rate)

Facts Dilemma for feminists. • Women’s very real gains and political achievements • Discourage culture of victim-hood and defeatism • Women and girls have a stronger presence in schools, HE and FE, the labour market and the political system. • On the other hand, women worldwide face systematic disadvantage in public and private spheres. • Not all women have benefited to the same extent - class and educational differences more marked.

Continuity of Disadvantage: Litany of gender injustice continues • Gendered domestic division of labour and time skewed firmly in men’s favour. • Occupational segregation, greater concentration in pt work and the gender pay gap - low paid. • Women more likely to be poor and carry main burden of managing poverty. • Domestic violence stunts lives of many women. • Glass ceiling - differential gendered access to top jobs • Women are under-represented in parliaments and governments.

Women’s cup half full or half empty? • Nonsense to suggest that we are living in a post-feminist world in which issues of gender inequality have been comfortably resolved

The Construction of the Category of ‘Woman’ • Woman who is or should be equal to a man– EQUALITY • Woman who is different from a man –DIFFERENCE • Deconstructed woman who disappears in a myriad of multiple subject positions – DIVERSITY

First 2 were the dominant models • Gender = socially constructed • Women = caring, intuitive, emotionally literate, peace-loving either essential qualities of women as a sex or from socialisation into gender caring responsibilities.

More Recently • Deconstructed model of woman. Post-structuralism - deconstruction of binary oppositions such as woman/man, in face of multiple and fluid identities that make up each individual, undermined the notion of woman. Threatened EO with loss of subject?

Intersectionality to the Rescue? • Way of avoiding fragmentation threatened by diversity and overwhelming of the category woman by other factional or politically more strident interests. • Focuses on the inter-relationships between different social divisions – as either reinforcing or counteracting each other.

Need for Re-construction or Re-categorisation of ‘Woman’ • Critical stage in evolution • Dead end for feminism/EO. • Disconnected from egalitarian politics of justice and redistribution. • A politics of solidarity in difference?

Intersectionality to the Rescue? Potential opening for continuing equality policy - acknowledges re-categorisation of women whilst recognising matrix of diverse axes of domination.

Impetus from black feminists • Rather than suppress differences in the name of sisterhood, ‘we can be sisters united by shared interests and beliefs, united in our appreciation for diversity, united in our struggle to end sexist oppression, united in political solidarity’. (Bell hooks)

Political strategy • Democratic process that ‘can on the one hand look for commonalities without being arrogantly universalist, and on the other affirm difference without being transfixed by it’. (Yuval-Davis)

Can Intersectionality be a Springboard for Social Justice? • EO at a theoretical impasse as an emancipatory project? • Fundamentally difficult for EO if only deconstruct groups, but do not reconstruct them in some way. • Lapse from political realities

Can Intersectionality be a Springboard for Social Justice? • Evidence of diverse (in)equality between and amongst different socially disadvantaged groups - also common patterns of continuous disadvantage.

Can Intersectionality be a Springboard for Social Justice? • Alerts us to need to fine tune policy in a more sophisticated manner than in the past, once assessed impact on people with more than one social differentiation that creates disadvantage.

Can Intersectionality be a Springboard for Social Justice? • The more positive and affirming post-modern approach is one which accepts some universal social anchors for positive action for women, but does not deny diversity and local specificity.

Can Intersectionality be a Springboard for Social Justice? • Need to move to an intersectional perspective where women become the anchor for more complex, trans-issue analysis and therefore a way forward in the future.

‘Addressing Issues of Intersectionality Through the Gender Lens: Women are still unequal’