Racism and gender discrimination

Race and gender

Racism affects women in some ways differently from men, and gender discrimination does not affect all women in the same way. Pragna Patel writing about black and minority women says that “their experiences are seen through the lens of a mutually exclusive checklist of discrimination.” They face over-inclusion and under-inclusion.

Over-inclusion means that “the racial dimension of an experience is subsumed within a gender perspective.” For instance, the trafficking of girls and women is perceived as gender subordination. The fact that certain groups of girls and women are targetted is not considered in spite of the fact that it is a combination of their gender, race and socio-economic status that makes them vulnerable to trafficking.

Under-inclusion means that the gender dimension of an experience is ignored. For instance, where forced sterilisation is seen as racial discrimination and not as sexual abuse. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s, in the United Kingdom’s immigration policies, virginity testing of young South Asian brides travelling to the UK to get married was sanctioned. The public outcry against this practice focussed on its racial discrimination dimension, but not on the fact that it was a violation of women’s bodies.

Structural racism

There are parallels between racial discrimination and gender discrimination. Race is not simply a biological or genetic classification. It is, according to Manning Marable “a way of interpreting differences between people which creates or reinforces inequalities among them.” Racism is not simply a collection of beliefs and attitudes. It is “ a strategy and a process of social and political control which functions to exclude opportunities and benefits to certain groups and serves to exclude the diversity of people’s lives and rights.” In this way, racism is similar to patriarchy.

Structural racism is present in immigration laws and policies, criminal justice systems, governance structures and health care systems. This kind of racism means that African and Latino Americans are criminalised more than other races in the United States. Juries, for instance, are more likely to convict them. Black people are more likely to be denied mortgages than white people with similar income levels.

The situation for women is compounded and sometimes measures introduced to combat one form of discrimination paradoxically reinforce another. A woman reporting domestic violence to the police might be subjected to scrutiny on her immigration status. Patel writes that “the burden that black women bear is …multiple. They are under immense pressures not to expose the wider community to institutional racism, but also, they are unable to seek redress for abuses that take place against them as women within their communities.”

Domestic violence is one area where structural racism is evident in the United Kingdom. According to Patel, black and minority women are “overpoliced,” but their experiences of domestic violence are “underpoliced.” Assumptions about South Asian culture and the need to appear sensitive to cultural differences are used as excuses by the police, who frequently fail to criminalise domestic violence in cases where South Asian women are victims. This relativist approach to human rights reinforces patriarchy.
The United Nations has organised several global spaces to combat various forms of discrimination but the space to address discrimination on the basis of race is probably more fraught than others with controversy and opposition. The credibility of the space provided by the WCAR-2001 World Conference Against Racism and WCARII-2009 Durban Review Conference was called into question after the boycott of this year’s conference by the United States, Poland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Germany, Canada and Australia. They stayed away because they thought that it would be used as an anti-Israel platform since there had been some attempts during the previous conference to equate Zionism with racism. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad – whom Israel has called a holocaust-denier - was the only head of state to attend the conference. In his address to the conference, which provoked walk-outs from European delegates, Ahmedinejad strongly criticised Israel and equated its formation with racism. His speech was condemned by the UN Secretary General.

This controversy detracted from the importance of the conference which is one of the few global forums that acknowledge the multiple dimensions of women’s oppression and seek to address them. Nevertheless, it provides a useful framework for states willing to tackle racism and xenophobia in their different manifestations.