Abstract
Taking as a start Crenshaw’s point that anti-racism often fails to interrogate patriarchy and that feminism often reproduces racist practices (1991: 1252), this paper asks what are the theoretical reasons for believing that feminism and anti-racism can be regarded as fighting for the joint purpose of anti-discrimination in Europe today? And what empirical evidence may be found for such a joint approach? The paper discusses how the contemporary EU context differs from the American context, which is what prompted Crenshaw to raise the point about intersectionality, and it analyses documents and interviews from each of the two European umbrella organisations (the European Women’s Lobby and the European Network against Racism), as well as a number of their national member organisations from across Europe, within both EU and non-EU member states.
Crenshaw wrote in 1991 that: The failure of feminism to interrogate race means that resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism to interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women. (1991: 1252)
But this observation was made 20 years ago in America, and was sparked by Crenshaw’s research on battered-women’s shelters. This paper asks what are the theoretical reasons for thinking that feminism and anti-racism may be fighting for the joint purpose of anti-discrimination in Europe today? And do we see empirical evidence for such a joint approach?
Theoretically, there are at least two reasons why Crenshaw’s observation would not fit a contemporary European context: firstly, the time dimension and developments in feminist theory since the early 1990s concerning the concept of intersectionality. Secondly, the EU context, in which gender equality as a policy priority precedes racial or ethnic equality. I discuss how each element of this journey through time and space may have contributed towards a ‘joint purpose’ perspective on anti-discrimination within Europe.
While Crenshaw moves from field work on battered-women’s shelters in Los Angeles to theoretical perspectives on intersectionality, I make the opposite move, and end with a discussion of whether anti-racist and gender equality activists working within the EU context have taken on intersectionality as a tool.
Twenty years of intersectional theory
Crenshaw first wrote about intersectionality in an analysis of Black women’s employment experiences in the USA (1989), and she further distinguished between structural and political intersectionality in ‘Mapping the Margins’ (Crenshaw, 1991). ‘Structural intersectionality occurs when inequalities and their intersections are directly relevant to the experience of people in society’, whereas political intersectionality is a concept applied to ‘indicate how inequalities and their intersections are relevant to political strategies’ (Verloo, 2006: 213).
The observations that spark Crenshaw’s theoretical arguments are very much material in their consequences and it is her explicit aim to ‘advance the telling’ of the locations where these consequences make themselves felt (Crenshaw, 1991: 1242). Her argument is that ‘Because of their intersectional identity as both women and people of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, the interests and experiences of women of color are frequently marginalized within both’ (1991: 1242). This has potential implications for policy formation processes and Crenshaw argues that intersectional awareness can function as an escape from some of the unfortunate consequences of identity politics. ‘The struggle over which differences matter and which do not is neither an abstract nor an insignificant debate among women’ (Crenshaw, 1991: 1265). Feminist scholars building on Crenshaw have, through various contributions, reflected on which differences matter and which do not. I will discuss a few recent ones to illuminate how the concept of intersectionality has travelled through space and time before reaching the destination of my empirical case.
One important stop on this journey is Hancock (2007). This article is seminal in cementing that intersectionality has emerged as a research paradigm. As Hancock points out, intersectionality ‘refers to both a normative theoretical argument and an approach to conducting empirical research that emphasizes the interaction of categories of difference’ (2007: 63–64). She argues that, because intersectionality is increasingly manifesting itself as a paradigm, it becomes ever more important to unravel the normative and political consequences of using it, and to make explicit how one applies the concept.
Hancock distinguishes among unitary, multiple and intersectional approaches, the first two of which are inadequate in addressing lived experiences. The intersectional approach is preferable because, as a normative theoretical argument, it exposes the inadequacy of the ‘“Oppression Olympics” where groups compete for the mantle of “most oppressed” to gain the attention and political support of dominant groups as they pursue policy remedies leaving the overall system of stratification unchanged’ (Hancock, 2007: 68). The ability to expose such inadequacies also means that, as a body of research, it is ‘concerned even in its theoretical voice about the practical implications of its arguments’ (Hancock, 2007: 71). The link between intersectionality as a research paradigm and empirical realities is and should – according to its own standards – be close. Indeed, Hancock advocates the use of intersectionality as a paradigm which can both ‘serve as an important corrective for imprudent overemphasis on generalizability’ (2007: 74) and as an approach which can combine individual-level analysis with structural concerns and ‘produce empirical and normative results that can improve both the diagnosis of a policy problem and a prescriptive solution’ (2007: 74).
The move towards intersectionality acquiring paradigmatic status in gender studies can be witnessed on many fronts, also within a European setting. For example, in January 2009, the University of Frankfurt hosted a conference titled ‘Celebrating Intersectionality? Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies’. But the concept’s temporal and transatlantic journey has left some marks. This was the topic for a presentation by Davis (2009), which discussed how European feminists have not simply taken on but also changed the concept in interesting ways.
In Davis’ reading, intersectionality in the US context is most clearly associated with critical race studies and linked to the political project of uncovering the material consequences of racism. But ‘the trajectories of reception have been different’ (Davis, 2009) in Europe. Davis points to four reasons. The first concerns terminology. With the possible exception of the UK, the centrality and meaning of the category ‘race’ has been impossible to retain due to European experiences during the Second World War. Hence, Davis argues, ‘ethnicity’ has been adopted as a more appropriate concept. This altered terminology also rhymes better with the relatively more recent impact of multiculturalism within Europe, as compared with the USA, where ‘the melting pot’ predates any European conception of multiculturalism. 1
The second difference, according to Davis, concerns the number of categories applied in discussing intersectionality. In the US, focus is mostly on the triad gender–race–class (Hancock, 2007 is an example), whereas European scholars seem more reluctant to prioritize, and sometimes bring in potentially endless lists. Yuval-Davis asks ‘Do we have to be concerned that the list is limitless?’ (2006: 202), and answers ‘NO’, because an additive approach is inadequate whichever number of categories are being discussed.
Thirdly, Davis points to how European scholars have questioned the desirability of Crenshaw's cross-roads image – ‘the location’ whose telling Crenshaw wants to advance. Davis points to Yuval-Davis’ work as the most important critique; she rather dwells on the quality of the intersections (Davis, 2009). Yuval-Davis argues that ‘the question of whether to interpret the intersectionality of social divisions as an additive or as a constitutive process is still central’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 195). Her position is that an additive approach is inadequate for developing policy approaches. A ‘transversal politics’ is needed, because ‘One cannot assume the same effect or constellation each time and, hence, the investigation of the specific social, political and economic processes involved in each historical instance is important’ (2006: 200).
But, as Yuval-Davis demonstrates through examples from various policy briefs and documents, Crenshaw's crossroads image carries salience in the UN system and within certain NGOs. ‘This is problematic both theoretically and politically, as it constructs difference per se as automatic grounds for both discrimination and entitlement for defense against discrimination’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 204). Logically speaking, this would create a system in which everybody should be protected from discrimination by everybody else.
The final transformation of intersectionality during its transatlantic journey, in Davis’ reading, is a turn to focus on agency. Davis states that in the USA, intersectionality has often been used to uncover vulnerability and constraints, and has been seen as a source of disempowerment, whereas she claims that European feminists have used the concept to look for agency and disrupt static notions of intersectionality (Davis, 2009). This point is underscored by references to Yuval-Davis’ work as included above.
From the USA to the EU 2
When discussing anti-racism and gender equality in the USA and Europe, the major difference is the history of slavery within the USA. Not that Europe was not complicit or did not have slaves (Keskinen et al., 2009), but rather the overtly racialized nature of subsequent domestic history in the USA. Hence, the question of racism often dominates anti-discrimination arguments in the USA (Davis, 2009). Empirically, this is not the whole story, of course. Early abolitionists were often women (such as the white author Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) and the Black slave Harriet Jacobs (c. 1813–1897)), several abolitionists were also promoting women’s rights (such as Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)), and several Black men (notably WEB du Bois (1868–1963)) fought for gender equality. The last published an essay in 1915 on ‘Woman Suffrage’ in his magazine The Crisis, ardently urging Black men to vote in favour of extending the suffrage to American women. ‘The meaning of the twentieth century is the freeing of the individual soul; the soul longest in slavery and still in the most disgusting and indefensible slavery is the soul of womanhood’ (du Bois, 1915: 29–30). Nonetheless, historically speaking, anti-racism precedes gender equality in American politics. Hence, Amendment XV to the Constitution, adopted in 1870, states that ‘The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on the account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’ (Nye, 2006: 261). By comparison, Amendment XIX, extending voting rights to women, was adopted in 1920.
Most European countries did not go through step one above, but went directly to granting women the right to vote. 3 As a result, appeals to gender equality historically precede appeals to anti-racism in most European countries, with the exception of Britain (Squires, 2007: 161). This makes the EU context for debating anti-discrimination discursively different from that of the USA.
The EU adopted a policy of gender mainstreaming in 1996, according to which all new laws at both EU and national levels should be assessed for their gender impact. As evaluated by Pollack and Hafner-Burton, ‘gender mainstreaming is a potentially revolutionary concept, which promises to bring a gender dimension into all EU policies’ (2000: 434). They raise three potential points of criticism regarding this law, but none of them involves any consideration of differences among women. That is, while they are critical of gender mainstreaming policy, intersectional concerns are not at the root of their criticism.
The historical primacy of gender mainstreaming policies within the EU, according to Squires, ‘raises the prospect of gender mainstreaming becoming eclipsed by “diversity mainstreaming” ’ (2007: 157). In Rolandsen Agustín’s analysis of ‘Civil Society Participation in EU Gender Policy-Making’ (2008), she argues, among other things, that ‘the focus on gender within the EU policies might vanish, since non-discrimination has to cover a number of fields at the same time’ (2008: 513). This is important because ‘There is a difference between seeing the inequalities as the same or equal to each other – and seeing them as substantially different, in need of substantially different approaches’ (2008: 513). In Squires’ reading, the ‘European turn to diversity echoes the now ubiquitous appeal to diversity across the Atlantic’ (2007: 158), which can be seen as a corporate management frame for interpreting the value of diversity.
Feminist scholars have been sceptical about this turn to diversity mainstreaming because ‘there are fears that the recognition of multiple inequalities will generate a “hierarchy of oppression” in which different equality groups fight over scarce resources and institutional access’ (Squires, 2007: 160) as exemplified by the replacement of dedicated women’s policy agencies with general equality commissions. 4 The extent to which these fears are well founded may partly be assessed by looking at the legal framework for anti-discrimination and equality policy within the EU.
Different interpretations are available. One of the more critical comes from Verloo (2006), who argues that ‘there are tendencies at EU level to assume an unquestioned similarity of inequalities, to fail to address the structural level and to fuel the political competition between inequalities’ (Verloo, 2006: 211). Verloo thus argues for the political relevance and importance of equality goals, and warns that the EU risks fuelling an Oppression Olympics where the competition consists in discursively racing to the bottom in competing for resources in terms of money and political attention. Which inequality strand will succeed in winning attention by posing itself as the most abject?
The EU constitutes an interesting case for analysing the effects of addressing multiple inequalities, because it has historically moved from focusing on gender equality policies towards policies that address multiple inequalities. This has led to the voicing of three basic concerns: the assumed similarity of inequalities, the need for structural approaches, and a focus on the political competition between inequalities (Verloo, 2006: 214). Verloo questions assumed similarities by systematically mapping out differences in terms of the origins of social categories and the norms which they are up against (Verloo, 2006: 217). She concludes that ‘[i]t seems wise to ground policy strategies not only in the similarity, but also in the distinctiveness of inequalities’ (Verloo, 2006: 222).
A less pessimistic interpretation can be found in Kantola and Nousiainen (2009), who emphasize how the EU has developed a distinct legal context for debating anti-discrimination. ‘While race and ethnic origin have been the most prominent grounds of prohibited discrimination in the USA […] EU anti-discrimination law historically targeted only gender discrimination’ (2009: 463). The history dates back to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which speaks about equal pay, but not in terms of gender discrimination (2009: 464). Labour market concerns have always been central in EU anti-discrimination policy, which is partly also true for the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, and its Article 13, which prohibits discrimination on six different grounds: gender; race and ethnicity; religion and belief; age; disability; and sexual orientation.
The Treaty of Amsterdam may be interpreted as a deepening of supranational governance in terms of enforceable rights under EU law (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009: 463). In this sense, the EU and US contexts also differ: the mere existence of enforceable rights and protection at EU level is a phenomenon of recent origin, and to some extent also of disputed legitimacy. There was no standard European norm for equality legislation prior to 1997, nor are standard solutions for how to implement Article 13 likely to develop in the foreseeable future. ‘How the member states will fill that space [created by Article 13] depends much on the states’ (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009: 473).
New legislation is only one element in a wider effort to institutionalize anti-discrimination within the EU. Kantola and Nousiainen state that taking into account the ‘long and tortuous history of European gender equality law, a much faster rate of legislative activity was shown when legislating on “new” prohibited grounds of discrimination’ (2009: 465), and ‘at the moment, the material scope of the Race Equality Directive is somewhat broader than that of gender equality directives, especially in the fields of social security and private insurance’ (2009: 465). They even argue that ‘in a relatively short period of time, a reversal of the hierarchy of protected grounds has taken place’ (2009: 466). If this is the final interpretation of the legal state of affairs, the Oppression Olympics seems prima facie to have been lost by Europe’s women. But is this the whole picture?
This question foregrounds the specific trait of European anti-discrimination legislation that it has historically been aimed at combating discrimination in the labour market. But the Commission has recently announced plans to extend protection on the grounds of religion and belief, sexual orientation, age and disability beyond the labour market (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009: 466). Such a more comprehensive frame for the right to protection against discrimination may also yield changes in combating gender inequality. This is discussed in a recent European Women’s Lobby (EWL) policy paper (Bach et al., 2009), containing a discourse of ‘closing the gap’ by letting gender equality legislation catch up.
In sum, developments within feminist theory of the concept of intersectionality indicate a way forward from Crenshaw’s dilemma. Simultaneously, while we are still waiting for the national institutionalizations of intersectionality within the EU (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009; Lombardo and Verloo, 2009), the legal seeds for this development have been sown with the Treaty of Amsterdam. Although the current interpretation may be ‘multiple discrimination’ rather than ‘intersectionality’, there is no discursive logic which bars the former from developing into the latter. That there might be legal and political impediments for such a development is another matter.
Joint purpose among anti-racists and gender equality activists in Europe? 5
Inspired by Crenshaw’s accusation of both feminism and anti-racism failing to adequately address people’s lived experiences, I analyse whether and how feminist and anti-racist activists in Europe take an intersectional approach to anti-discrimination. Data draw upon the Eurosphere project, a sixth framework project funded by the EU, the purpose of which is to ‘create innovative perspectives on the European public spheres and to identify the conditions that enable or undermine the articulation of inclusive European Public Spheres’ (http://eurospheres.org). Part of the research aim is to identify the existence of intersectional approaches to diversity among European actors contributing to the articulation of a European public sphere.
The included actors are multiple (284 organisations in the sample) and of different kinds (political parties, social movements, media and think tanks). Data consist of, among other things, organisational profiles as well as 774 interviews with leading members of these organisations, dispersed across 16 participating countries. The EWL and the European Network against Racism (ENAR) and a number of their national member organisations are included.
Organisation selection.
The organisations underneath each umbrella are heterogeneous and have divergent foci and resources. Thus, ‘ARCI is a network of 6000 local Italian associations that promote adults’ active citizenship at local level through leisure, training and cultural activities, social action and international solidarity’ (Sciortino et al., 2010: 7), whereas the Anti-Racist Centre aims to mobilize minority groups against discrimination ‘by actively involving themselves in individual cases of discrimination and racism as well as by propagating anti-racist views within the Norwegian public’ (Sicakkan, 2010: 9). Despite their heterogeneity, membership of, respectively, the ENAR and EWL networks is taken as expression of interest in combating, respectively, racism and gender inequality in Europe.
The respective national member organisations underneath the ENAR umbrella cannot be regarded as representative of the anti-racist efforts at national level in each their country of origin, as ENAR allows for direct membership of nationally based organisations, and has no requirements regarding their collaboration with other organisations from the same national setting. In theory, the nationally based members of EWL should be representative of national gender equality interests, as EWL allows only for membership of national coordinations. 7 However, the extent to which these national coordinations are, indeed, representative of national gender equality interests is not easily assessed given the data available. A previous assessment of the Danish Women’s Council’s ability to incorporate the interests of ethnic minority women in their work pointed to several difficulties (Pristed Nielsen and Thun, 2010).
The presence of intersectional awareness will be investigated by taking opposite approaches to each type of organisation. This means that I look for whether and how homepages, documents and respondents from EWL and its member organisations speak about race/racism and ethnicity, and whether and how similar evidence from ENAR and its member organisations speak about gender equality.
This confronts Squires’ argument about ‘the prospect of gender mainstreaming becoming eclipsed by “diversity mainstreaming” ’ (2007: 157), or, as phrased by one of my students, ‘that the anti-racists are piggy-back riding on the gender equality activists’. Amandine Bach from EWL, in direct response to this notion, flatly denied that there is any competition for funding between ENAR and EWL at the EU level, given that they have consultative status for different Directorate Generals. 8 She also underlined that both organisations are collaborating on sharing ideas on developing strategy plans, and emphasized how persons working for EWL had undergone training in intersectional approaches, with Verloo as teacher. Hence, part of Bach’s personal job description within the EWL covered taking an intersectional perspective on their policy developments and conferring with ENAR and other collaborators. 9 Data, indeed, document the incorporation of the language of intersectionality by a significant number of organisations and persons in the analysis, and by the EWL office in particular. The next step, obviously, goes from the saying to the doing, but more about this below.
Starting with how the EWL and its member organisations signal awareness of differences among women, EWL’s profile until October 2010 included the phrase that ‘EWL is active in different areas such as women’s economic and social position, women in decision-making, violence against women, women’s diversity, etc.’ (www.womenlobby.org, my emphasis, accessed 1 March 2010). On 4 October 2010 the text was revised to contain the statement: ‘The current mission of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) is to work to achieve equality between women and men, to promote women’s rights in all spheres of public and private life, to work towards economic and social justice for all women in their diversity’ (www.womenlobby.org, my emphasis).
The Bulgarian member organisation states that ‘The vision of WAD is a just, inclusive and equitable society, which is accommodating diversity in all its aspects, regardless the differences in sex, social status, ethnic origin, health status, age, sexual orientation, marital status, religion’ (www.women-bg.org/index_en.html, my emphasis). And the Turkish member organisation KAMER speaks of how feminism is indispensable for ‘a world that is free of hierarchy, discrimination, and violence’ (www.kamer.org.tr/eng/default.asp, my emphasis), and the Women’s Council in Denmark lists migrant and refugee women as being among its members (www.kvinderaadet.dk).
Looking at the reverse side of the equation, ENAR and its member organisations rarely include any reference to women or gender equality in their self-descriptions on homepages. One exception was the Anti-Racist Centre from Norway, which previously stated that ‘The Norwegian Center against Racism covers such areas as research and documentation in racism, legislative reform and lobbying, women’s issues, problems of immigrants and refugees in their day-to-day living as well as racial discrimination and related matters’ (www.antirasistisk-senter.no, my emphasis, accessed 1 March 2010), but when checking again, the reference to women’s issues had been removed (13 December 2010).
However, an ‘about us’ section on a homepage may not be entirely up to date nor reflect organisational practices or the discourse and practices of members. The picture is more complicated than a brief review of homepages would suggest. First of all, some nationally based organisations are members of both EWL and ENAR, such as the Hungarian organisation NaNe, and both EWL and ENAR are members of the European Social Platform (Social Platform Members List 2009, www.socialplatform.org), through which they jointly lobby for extended EU anti-discrimination legislation (Bach et al., 2009: 10).
Secondly, when digging deeper on homepages, for example the ENAR member Türkische Gemeinde Deutschland has a long (2400 words) document available online called ‘Frauenpolitische tesen’ (gender policies), including a 10-point plan for fighting intolerance against women, and reference to a campaign on ‘Null Toleranz gegenüber der Beschränkung des Selbstbestimmungsrechts der Frau!’ (Zero tolerance for the limitation of self-determination of women) (TGD, 2007). And ENAR’s homepage includes the brochure ‘Understanding Positive Action’ (ENAR, 2007). When conducting simple word searches for ‘gender’, it generates 26 hits in 32 pages, whereas the abbreviation ‘wom’ (to include both woman/women) generates 49 hits.
A reverse search in two different EWL policy papers ostensibly with intersecting approaches – one is called ‘Integrating a Gender Perspective into the EU Immigration Policy’ (EWL, 2004) and the other ‘EWL Position Paper on Religion and women’s human rights’ (EWL, 2006) – yields the following remarkable result when conducting simple word searches 10 : ‘Rac’ (for race/racism/racist): two hits; ‘Ethnic’: one hit; ‘Migra’ (for migrant/migration): 24 hits all in (EWL, 2004) and with no hits on any of these words in (EWL, 2006). ‘Discriminat’ (for discriminate/discrimination) yields six hits, all in relation to women, in (EWL, 2004) and seven hits, of which five are in specific relation to women (EWL, 2006). The documents from ENAR and EWL cannot be directly compared, as they serve different purposes and have been written on different backgrounds. But given the titles of the EWL papers, it is striking that there are so few hits when searching for words indicating concern with racism.
However, I see several indications on EWL’s new homepage that priorities and focus have changed. The new ‘Our Work’ section includes substantial information about ‘Diversity and Anti-Discrimination’, posted in September 2010. It also contains a policy document on ‘Protecting all women from discrimination’ (Bach et al., 2009). This is a 35-page document, and conducting word searches for the same key words as above yields remarkable results: ‘rac’: 50 hits, ‘ethnic’: 16 hits, ‘migra’: four hits, and finally ‘discrimination’: 293 hits. This is evidence that the EWL discourse is changing.
Going beyond the surface level of doing word counts, any accusation regarding ‘The failure of feminism to interrogate race’ (Crenshaw 1991: 1252) falls flat on its stomach when scrutinising this policy document (Bach et al., 2009). Close examination reveals that attention to multiple discrimination and intersectional approaches to it are core in this document. It repeatedly mentions intersectionality (31 times in 35 pages), and gives a detailed definition, part of which is: ‘An intersectional approach to promoting equality calls for differentiated responses to different types of oppression, inequality and discrimination’ (Bach et al., 2009: 32). Equally important, the paper repeatedly calls for concerted action by gender equality and anti-racist activists alike (Bach et al., 2009: 26–27), and emphasizes EWL’s collaboration with anti-racist and women’s diversity organisations, including collaboration with ENAR and other members of The Social Platform (Bach et al., 2009: 10). Issues such as discrimination on the grounds of disability, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation are repeatedly mentioned, often with concrete examples of the effects thereof, and the policy paper specifically calls for ‘closing the gaps in the European Union’s hierarchy of rights’ (Bach et al., 2009: 4), in the sense of expanding protection from gender discrimination also to the field of education and media (Bach et al., 2009: 7). The gap is to be closed by advancing the level of protection against gender discrimination, not by criticizing the proposed level of protection in the Anti-Discrimination Directive: ‘The proposed Anti-Discrimination Directive is welcome: indeed it is long overdue […] ensuring an individual’s ability to pursue complaints on all of these grounds is also an essential part of protecting all women from discrimination’ (Bach et al., 2009: 8).
While we may be sceptical about difference between discourse and practice, I would argue that publishing policy documents and other texts on homepages also constitutes a type of practice. The transformative potential of writing documents may, of course, be questioned. As Ahmed puts it, the risk is that ‘You end up doing the document rather than doing the doing’ (2007). The example she gives is how a document documenting an organisation’s racism became a measure of good performance, becoming ‘a fetish object’ (2007: 597). As Ahmed points out, we need to focus on how documents are taken up, and whether they block action by being seen ‘as evidence that we have “done it” ’ (2007: 599). On the other hand, documents can also facilitate action, when they are used by practitioners to challenge people within the organisation ‘by showing they are “out of line” with the direction of the organisation even if this line is imaginary’ (2007: 603). Bach et al. (2009) is, as a minimum, evidence of changes in the practice of document writing at the EWL secretariat. The next discursive terrain I enter is less obviously constitutive of empirical realities. Yet I present a selected corner of interview data from the 32 respondents holding prominent positions within the eight organisations in the sample.
Respondents have been exposed to the same questionnaire, from which a few questions are included here. Answers cover both quantifiable elements, entered into tick boxes by coders subsequent to interviewing, as well as quotes and summaries. Regarding quantifications, it is important to note that data cannot be regarded as statistically representative and several methodological concerns exist. 11 Nevertheless, a few quantitative indicators will be presented to offset the qualitative aspects of the analysis.
The first question is ‘Which groups are relevant today for defining a diverse society?’ Respondents were presented with lists including 17 predefined categories and the option to name others. ‘Ethnic groups’ were considered highly important (mentioned by 25 of 32 respondents), and almost equally so by members under the EWL and ENAR umbrellas. ‘Religious groups’ come in second, with some overrepresentation of ENAR members. Then there follow ‘gender groups’, with only a slight overrepresentation of EWL members, and, in fourth place, ‘disability’, and a shared fifth place for ‘generation’ and ‘sexuality’, all three of these being fairly evenly dispersed among ENAR and EWL members. The only other group to have obtained more than 10 answers is ‘migrants’, primarily considered relevant by ENAR respondents. The main conclusion is that ethnic groups are considered overwhelmingly important. Another key observation is that ENAR members cumulatively return 97 answers, whereas the EWL members return 74 answers. However, I take Bach’s comment to heart, when presenting these results for her and other stakeholders, that ENAR has always been speaking ‘the language of diversity’ (which is also the language of the EUROSPHERE project and hence its interview guide), whereas the EWL and other women’s organisations have historically been speaking ‘a language of rights’. 12
Respondents were further asked the question ‘Is ethno-national diversity a (dis)advantage for society?’ Two conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the answers. First, that ethno-national diversity is overwhelmingly considered an advantage for society. This is hardly surprising, given the profile of the organisations. The second conclusion is less self-evident. Looking at the identified advantages, respondents from ENAR and its member organisations are much more prone to seeing advantages than the EWL members. Hence, they jointly list 19 positive answers about diversity, whereas the ENAR members jointly list 46. Perhaps Bach’s point about ‘speaking the language of diversity’ may apply in this case as well.
Moving to another indicator, respondents were asked ‘Which groups’ claims are more important than others?’ and ‘Why should policymaking give priority to the claims of these groups?’ These questions are interesting in terms of probing whether members of the two different types of organisations recognize each other’s claims as valid and relevant for policymaking. I focus on replies to the latter question, as they implicitly contain reactions to the first.
The most striking element is the number of respondents who speak about the non-hierarchy of grounds for discrimination, namely 10 out of 29. 13 This notion is completely consistently advocated by all respondents from the ENAR secretariat, who give amazingly similar answers: ‘We try not to hierarchy the discrimination’, ‘We have always advocated the non-hierarchy of grounds’ and ‘That comes to the hierarchy of discrimination grounds […] you can’t really rank them’. 14 While indicating a high degree of internal consistency at the ENAR secretariat, this repeated mentioning of ‘hierarchy’ may also signal a spill-over effect from anti-discrimination scholarship. Both Squires (2007) and Kantola and Nuisiainen (2009) speak about hierarchies of discrimination.
A related answer is that policymaking should simply prioritise any group in need, thus arguing for inclusion/consideration of all grounds. This is particularly widespread within TGD Germany, where four out of five respondents give such replies, for example: ‘I would very much like deprived people to be considered primarily, regardless of their way of life, race and religion’ and ‘Every group that experiences discrimination has to be considered’. Similar views are shared by two respondents from WAD Bulgaria. Whether these approaches are intersectional in Hancock’s sense is an open question, but there is at least one example of an intersectional approach, from a KAMER respondent in Turkey: ‘We essentially base our policies on the multiple identity of individuals.’
In addition, there are several replies which are clearly unitary and prioritise either gender (five) or ethnicity/migrant identities (two). And there are some which are multiple, including both of these categories and/or others (five). Respondents who openly prioritise gender all come from women’s organisations, one from the EWL secretariat saying: ‘Of course I am in favour of diversity, but I am not in favour of diversity if gender is not taken into consideration.’ Another from WAD Bulgaria says ‘I don’t put the same focus on gender diversity and other types of diversity. Gender division is more universal’ and a member of the Women’s Council in Denmark says ‘I think gender is completely key’. This prioritising is, however, questioned by another respondent from the Council: ‘As a starting point, there should be no categories which take precedence. Some say gender cuts across, and perhaps this is true, but turning it into the most important – I wouldn’t go so far’. This rejection of gender as a policy priority indicates that gender concerns are – at least sometimes – articulated as meriting priority. The Turkish organisation KAMER, however, is where we find most outspoken support for prioritising gender (2 out of 4). The strongest example is the following: ‘I always believe that women’s demands must be given priority. Sexism exists and if this problem is solved, most problems will be solved, because half of the world is comprised of women’.
Whereas those who prioritise gender all come from women’s organisations, the two respondents who prioritise ethnic or migrant identities come from the EWL secretariat and TGD Germany, the former adding that migration is also a women’s issue, the latter highlighting the religious (Muslim) identity of migrants in Germany.
Among those naming several groups and taking a multiple approach, one person from the Women’s Council in Denmark lists gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, age and sexual orientation. Three out of five who list various specific groups come from the Anti-Racist Centre Norway. Two of them are specific in prioritising gender and ethnicity together,
15
one saying: So gender has been highly prioritized, and I think that is correct and I think we should continue doing that, and I also think that ethnicity is, I think those two are relatively, are something that should be prioritized more than other things […] And it is clear that this does not mean that people with disabilities or other minorities, that they should not get help or be protected by the law, but it is about the fact that some things, gender and ethnicity are very basic and it is important to get this properly in place in our society.
Summing up, the overwhelming majority either rejects a hierarchy of discrimination grounds or thinks that policymaking should be encompassing. There is, however, a minority of respondents who are ready to point to specific groups. Among these, it is interesting that only respondents from women’s groups prioritise gender. Particularly respondents from the ENAR secretariat, but also its member organisations (TGD Germany and the Anti-Racist Centre Norway) are internally very consistent in their replies. In contrast, respondents from the EWL secretariat and the Women’s Council in Denmark are far from each other, advocating the priority of gender concerns, other types of social identity or the non-hierarchy of grounds. Questions of policy priorities on group rights seem to be an unresolved issue within the EWL member organisations.
We also asked questions related to European policy developments, including ‘What further positive or negative developments do you expect with regard to the impact of European integration on ethno-national diversity?’ and ‘What further positive or negative developments do you expect with regard to the impact of European integration on gender equality?’
The most striking result is that none of the respondents believed future European integration will have no effect on ethno-national diversity. Secondly, most thought that European integration would strengthen diversity within member states. Indeed, this is the only answer given by respondents from the secretariats of, respectively, ENAR and EWL. Quotes and summaries make it possible to give a few illustrative examples: from EWL, ‘the EU has a key role to play to ensure fundamental rights are respected, for ethnic minorities’ and ‘the European constitution put gender equality as something really important and I think that they will do the same with diversity and ethnic diversity’. This type of answer is also prevalent within WAD Bulgaria and the Anti-Racist Centre Norway, where three out of five respondents in each organisation think that European integration is likely to increase diversity within member states.
However, some answer that it is rather nation states’ ‘national culture and identity’ that will be strengthened. Such answers are found within WAD Bulgaria (two respondents), the Women’s Council in Denmark (one), KAMER Turkey (one) and TGD Germany (two). But the viewpoint is most forcefully expressed within ARCI Italy, where two out of three respondents feel that European integration lead to a strengthening of national sentiments, exemplified by the following: The European paradox is that now, just in the moment in which European states make a transfer of sovereignty to Europe and citizens must understand national identity is only a part of their identity, there is a reactionary drive and a fear wave.
Most replies, however, are complicated and difficult to categorise. The question offsets diverse considerations, for example that the admission of Eastern European countries poses a specific challenge for protection of minority rights, worries about increasing contrasts between being an EU and a non-EU citizen, or that increased mobility will lead to exchange of knowledge, and diminishing importance of territorial claims. The most important conclusion remains that all believed European integration to have some effect on diversity.
Moving to the complementary question of effects of European integration on gender equality, five types of answers emerge: (1) no answer; (2) improvements for gender equality; (3) no effect or ambiguous effects on gender equality; (4) no improvements or even deterioration for gender equality; and (5) the question is considered a matter for the EWL to answer. Most respondents who have not answered (eight out of nine) come from ENAR and its member organisations. Respondents from the ENAR secretariat either do not answer 16 or reply that ‘you should go to EWL to ask them’.
Turning to the impression of improvements for gender equality, this is where all the Bulgarian and Turkish replies fall, as well as three out of four Danish replies. Nationally based women’s organisations seem to find that EU gender equality directives support their efforts. This is underscored by looking at quotes, here one from WAD Bulgaria: ‘I expect that the EU policies will accelerate gender equality in Bulgaria’. We find a similar evaluation from a Turkish respondent: ‘The state did not even care about gender, it was not thinking about it … But in the process of EU harmonization they had to make certain laws. This is a positive thing. We are working with all our might to see that those laws are implemented’. And from yet another historical and political context, a respondent from Denmark states, ‘If we hadn’t had the EU and if we hadn’t had some directives in the area of gender equality, then I am afraid that [the development] would have been even slower in Denmark’. It seems that the closer the lobby organisations are to the decision-making power at EU level, the less certain they are of a positive outcome.
Conclusion: From writing to doing intersectionality
Analyses of documents and interview statements from gender equality and anti-racist activists in Europe indicate growing awareness of the implications of intersectional theory. At the level of the umbrella organisations, EWL and ENAR do collaborate, do exchange information, do participate in some of the same conferences and do lobby the EU for improved anti-discrimination legislation together. Priorities are certainly negotiated, but the presence of any bell jar on either part cannot be easily detected. At the transnational level, these organisations are certainly ‘doing the documents’ and seemingly also ‘doing the doing’ (Ahmed, 2007).
The question is whether these changes filter down to the member organisations at national level, and whether writing about intersectionality also affects their practices. Reviewing the documents, it is the gender equality organisations which do best in indicating awareness of intersectionality, whereas interview evidence from both types of organisations indicates such concerns. However, interviews with anti-racist activists reveal more inclusive understandings of diversity and less willingness to hierarchy specific equality concerns as compared with the gender equality activists.
This paradox points to the complicated relationship between discourse and practice. Relating to the title of this paper, one may ask whether doing documents about intersectionality actually translates into tools ‘in the hands of’ activists? Looking at the nationally based activists, the active usage of intersectionality as a tool consciously used in the work of the organisations seems limited at best. However, the indications that the activists may be ready to take up this tool are in place qua the focus on it in documents and interviews. Of course, ‘our task must be to refuse to read such documents as doing what they say. That is not to say that they do not do important work. They do. Indeed the fact that they fail to describe the organisations is what makes them useful as tools: practitioners can use documents to “show” the gap’ (Ahmed, 2007: 607). The tools have been placed in the tool boxes of a number of these organisations, and are ready to be picked up.