This panel explores the challenges posed to public law by current contestations over intersectional identities. It picks four contemporary debates in human rights and equality law which demonstrate some of the key challenges in addressing the structural oppression of those who belong to multiple disadvantaged groups. It analyses their claims of diversity accommodation, individual and...
Women‘s Human Rights: From Progress to Transformation (An Intersectional Response to Nussbaum)
This article asks ‘the intersectional question‘ about women‘s progress. The purpose is to understand whether the successes of the women‘s movement and women‘s human rights have improved the conditions of women who are disadvantaged not only because of their sex or gender but also disadvantaged by their race, colour, caste, religion, region, disability, age, sexual...
The Gender of Islamophobia: Intersectional Discrimination and the ‘Islamic Headscarves’ Jurisprudence
Rising Islamophobia in public discourses on national identity, immigration and terrorism has made religious discrimination a pressing issue, often crystallising around the headscarf question. Women wearing Islamic veils regularly confront sexist and racist stereotypes, entangled with culturo-religious animosity. This form of intersectional discrimination has however not been challenged by courts. The US landmark case Abercrombie...
The Paradox of Intersectionality in Europe
The theory of intersectional discrimination arose to highlight the legal subjectivity of black women through centralisation of the specific discrimination they endured at work and elsewhere. Although designed to give political voice to this group of workers who were eclipsed in discrimination law, the breadth of the intersectional vision was not limited to these women....
The Multiple Layers of Romaphobia: Intersectional vs. Constructivist Readings of Discrimination
‘Reasonable anti-Gypsyism‘ in the EU rests in practices and measures designed to conceal discriminatory intent. Political discourse portrays the Roma as a threat to public security and welfare, and ultimately to EU integration. Anti-Gypsyism can be conceptualized as intersectional discrimination against Roma subgroups based on a combination of grounds, such as race or ethnicity, nationality,...