Centering black women in EU equality law

Speaker: Iyiola Solanke, Jacques Delors Professor of European Union Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College.

Discussant: Rashmi Dharia, PhD candidate at Sciences Po Law School.

Since 1989, when Kim Crenshaw wrote about the structural blindspots (Crenshaw, 1989) in anti-discrimination law, the idea of intersectionality has had a significant impact in disrupting dominant discourses in general – it is now an analytical approach used across many disciplines (Hines, Taylor and Casey, 2010; Wilson, 2013; Zemore and others, 2011; Bauer, 2014; Gardner, 2005).  The concept has spread far beyond equality law and been welcomed as a general methodological approach.  

Much less progress has been made in disrupting the dominant narrative of anti-discrimination law – in EU law, intersectionality has been adapted to fit existing legal, cultural and conceptual frameworks rather than changing the frameworks themselves. As a consequence, although a successful methodological approach, intersectionality has been unsuccessful in protecting the group for whom it was designed: black women workers remain marginalized in EU law.

In her lecture, Prof. Solanke will explore how this has happened and will suggest that thinking about discrimination as stigma provides a way to approach intersectionality that locates black women at the centre of anti-discrimination law. 

Contact: events.edd@sciencespo.fr