Intersectionality – helping us to become better advocates for our clients
This year WorkUP Queensland is focusing on intersectionality. Intersectionality considers how power relations arise and interact from social location including, but not limited to, race, class, gender and ability.
An understanding of the theory and how it works in practice is important to the gender-based violence sector because it may increase capability to work with at-risk populations. American lawyer and academic Kimberlé Crenshaw is largely credited with coining the term:
Women working in the field of domestic violence have sometimes reproduced the subordination and marginalisation of women of colour by adopting policies, priorities, or strategies of empowerment that either elide or wholly disregard the particular intersectional needs of women of colour. While gender, race, and class intersect to create the context in which women of colour experience violence, certain choices made by “allies” can reproduce intersectional subordination within the very resistance strategies designed to respond to the problem.
– Kimberlé Crenshaw
Intersectionality can help us to become better advocates for our clients by looking at the ways intersecting forms of discrimination shape people’s experiences of violence. It allows us to explore complexity by understanding how multiple types of oppression can act at the same time.
While it is possible to approach one type of discrimination at a time, for example, sexism, intersectionality is about exploring all the potential barriers to equality.
To be more effective in the gendered violence space, we can study intersectionality to enhance our understanding of the way violence shows up differently across class and cultural contexts. This means the experiences of victims, perpetrators and communities are shaped by their structural and social locations. Intersectionality views characteristics like race, class and gender as an intersecting process that sits within a historical context.
An intersectional lens can be applied in a ‘both and’ way, whereby we acknowledge systems of ‘power over’ and the corresponding opportunities for empowerment that spring from it. This can be seen in the various forms of activism that exist and at times, overlap across the sector.
If you are keen to take a deeper look at intersectionality, join us for an interactive and stimulating series of half-day courses to assist professionals to explore the topic of intersectionality and how to respond to diverse populations.
The four workshops will use an applied lens to specific populations including:
- Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (30 April),
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (28 May)
- LGBTIQ populations (21 June).
- Bringing it all together using a lifecourse frame (26 July)
The workshops will focus on practical applications for working with specific populations with the option to attend the ones that interest you. An applied approach to understanding theory in practice will be delivered through the lens of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse, LGBTIQ and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.
You can register for one or more of the following sessions:
Learning Objectives:
- To engage in this challenging topic to critically reflect about diverse populations.
- Participants will gain an understanding of how to bring the theory of intersectionality into their practice.
These objectives align with the Department of Child Safety Youth & Women’s revised Practice Principals Standards & Guidance
- 3.1 Services are Evidence informed.
- 5.1 Ensuring Cultural Safety
- 6.1 Services are client centred and accessible to all.
Who should attend
This is for workers in the domestic and family violence, sexual violence services and women’s wellbeing sectors.
Register: https://events.humanitix.com/intersectionality-in-action-how-to-bring-it-to-life-in-our-work