‘Intersectionalities, intersecting lives and realities’

By Bénédicte Allaert, WIDE
WIDE has played a key role in promotion gender equality in EU development & trade policies for many years. What has been achieved? Where are we today and where do we want to go? One thing for sure is that we have increased our awareness -both at collective and individual levels. And we need to open up to more feminist views. We need to improve our understanding of the various forms of powers (and oppressions) that intersect to affect our bodies and lives. In other words; we need to better understand the interlocking factors of domination.

In order to be able to envision alternatives to the main ideologies and forms of oppression, as well as to identify new avenues of thought and paradigms, we first need to be able to situate ourselves in the processes in which we are involved. We believe that the intersectionality approach can help us to reflect on the actors, institutions, policies and norms that intertwine to create the Europe we live in today. This includes not only its neoliberal economic policies, but also the militarization and new technologies nad the entrenched patriarchal and new imperialist agenda that threaten women’s rights and livelihoods globally and in Europe. WIDE plans to introduce and use intersectional analysis for linking the current social, economic, political and legal environment in the EU that contributes to create multiple forms of discrimination. In doing so we can structure converging experiences of oppression and privilege.

In the parallel session on intersectionality to be held this afternoon, we will start with a presentation by Patricia Muñoz. She will show the concept and approach of intersectionality to help us see how dominating ideologies and intersecting factors of oppression have harmful effects on women’s lives and sense of self-worth. Not surprisingly, her presentation will also illustrate how women living at the bottom of the social ladder bear a disproportionate amount of the burden.

We hope this presentation will help get the debate started around key questions, starting perhaps with identifying who the most marginalized women in today’s Europe are, and why. We hope that our collective intersectional analysis will enable us to come up with some elements that can be of help in the following sessions. Our aim is therefore to develop ‘holistic and powerful solutions from the places where our relative privileges intersect’.

See you at the session this afternoon!


This column has been published in Daily Visions 08-10-2008