In this module we'll be talking about intersectionality and taking an intersectional approach to GIA.
This is the first legislation that enshrines an intersectional approach. Some of you I'm sure are very familiar with the term intersectionality and some of you may be less familiar with it, and that's absolutely fine, we'll take a moment to take you through it now.
At its most basic level intersectionality refers to the ways in which different aspects of a person's identity can expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination and marginalisation. So, in the video we saw earlier, it's that “plus”, the different sorts of lenses. Another way to think about it, is the fact that as humans we all have diverse and different lived experiences, you might identify as a woman, but you might also identify as a woman of colour and or a woman with a disability and so on, and that sort of defines some of your experiences. Most of that diversity is a wonderful, beautiful thing, it should be celebrated, there's nothing wrong with that diversity.
But the world we live in, unfortunately, means there are still forms of structural discrimination and oppression. So, we have our identities that we can see here in this image, that in the white ring those social status and aspects of our identity, made up of many wonderful different things, our religions, our age, our sex, our cultural background and so forth. These intersect with the reality of our societies. So, those social systems and structures, the health system, our welfare systems, economics, education and so forth. On top of that, we also interact with, unfortunately, those structures of discrimination and oppression. So, the colonisation, homophobia, ableism, classism, and sexism, our identities sort of ‘butt up against’ or interact with those systems of oppression. So, that's what it really means when we talk about applying an intersectional lens.
It's not just about diverse lived experience. There's been a move in this sort of space to think about intersectionality becoming a little more diluted or to think about it as just diversity of experience, and that just means that we might consult with lots of different people, have lots of different voices in the room. That's really great and it's really important and it's a part of it. But we have to remember that the ultimate aim for taking an intersectional approach is actually to address the systems and structures of oppression. So, this is a theory, this theory of intersectionality was originally coined by a woman named Kimberlé Crenshaw, who is a black woman in the US, a lawyer, who was looking at the intersection of gender and race from a legal perspective, looking at the implications on legal outcomes on discrimination.
So, we want to encourage you to try and remember that when you're thinking about this work, that it's not just about having more diverse people in the room. That, that's part of it. That's part of it and it's important, but it's also about trying to think about what are the actual structures and barriers or systems, that are causing some of these problems in the first place, and how can we dismantle those.
So, the reason why this matters, you know, is because we're not all the same. Not all women are the same, not all men, and not all gender diverse people are the same. We all have different multiple identities, and we don't live single issue lives. So, for example, we know that Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised for injuries related to interpersonal violence in comparison to non-Indigenous women. So, if you're working on a policy or program or service in the health sector, or related to family violence, and you're only looking at it from a gender perspective, you would really be missing a lot of the realities of what creates barriers, or what different experiences people have.
Similarly, we know that there are high proportions of disability among people over the age of 65. Older women are more likely to be affected by lifelong experiences of discrimination when it comes to the pay gap and superannuation. We also know for example, in Australia, the fastest growing population of homeless people are women over the age of 55. So, if you were looking at a service for homelessness, for addressing homelessness, and you were looking at it only from a gender perspective but when addressing the age, the age factor, then you probably would be missing a lot of what is important, and a lot of what would be really useful for that service.
Similarly, we know that homophobia experienced by the LGBTQI+ community can lead to reluctance in accessing health services. So, if you're working in that space, but you're only taking a gendered approach and not looking at barriers related to homophobia, then you will again clearly not be designing the best service that you could be to meet the needs of all Victorians and their diversity.
So, this is what we mean, when we’re thinking about an intersectional approach. You'll see throughout the toolkit that there are some icons so you can see the icons on page six of your toolkit, and that there is a dedicated intersectional, intersectionality icon. This blue icon will indicate information to support you to apply an intersectional approach throughout your Gender Impact Assessments.
So, throughout the work I'm sure you've got millions of examples and I encourage you to think about different examples in your contexts, where you think an intersectional approach might apply or how you could better take an intersectional approach to your work. And we hope that the toolkit will also help you to further direct this work in more meaningful ways.
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