10 | THE VOICE MARCH 2023
Celebrating Our Sistahs
Time for those in power to give Black women respect!
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LACK FEMINISTS are demanding equality laws recognise Black women with an intersectionality approach. The Equality Act 2010 treats each ‘protected characteristic’ as separate, so a Black woman who takes their boss to an Employment Tribunal needs to pick gender or race, or list them both as individual points. Critics say the law does not acknowledge ‘misogynoir’ where discrimination against Black women would not have taken place if the victim was a Black man or a white woman. MPs in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community have previously held a session looking at the need to update the law for intersectionality. Labour MPs are hopeful that an incoming government led by Sir Keir Starmer would reopen the Equality Act to enshrine misogynoir in statute. In the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s murder, thousands of women challenged the scourge of violence perpetrated against women and girls in the UK to finally be confronted. Some came forward with their own experiences of sexual assault harassment, walking home at night after
WOMEN TOGETHER: A more equal system is the key to success (Getty Images); left, EVAW director Andrea Simon is striving to achieve that
Experts call for government to end what many see as blatant discrimination. By Leah Mahon work or the man that wouldn’t listen to the word ‘no’. The government responded with an inquiry that would unravel the toxic culture in the Met and the rape review pledged justice for millions of women that had been failed by the system. However, feminists and women’s right campaigners urged the powers-that-be to include the inevitable and inextricably linked experiences of Black women to be included in the national reform. First coined in 2010, the term misogynoir was brought to prominence by American academic M o y a Bailey
– an outspoken gay, Black feminist who defined it as a “particular brand of hatred directed at Black women in American visual and popular culture”. For some, the experience is not just about being Black and a woman, it’s about being both at the same time, almost all of is experienced because of the the time. influences of race and gender at the same time can also look very different, says Miller. Therefore, Sheryl Miller, pictured below, the support given to Black woman author and gender equality en also needs to be different. “They still fall into the book activist, told The Voice that violence against women and girls of violence against women and is actually part of a bigger con- girls. It has to be looked at more broadly. The victims have to be tinuum that needs exploring. “In the media, when we think looked at with intersectionality of violence against women and and then also in terms of what girls, we think of those really we define as violence that needs high-profile cases. The one re- to be looked at more broadly, cently with Sarah Everard. It’s which is done when you start always painted around this view to look at the victims through a of the white, fragile, innocent different lens.” The official data in the UK fails woman,” she says. “It’s always through that lens, never from to cover any form of intersecthe lens of women who look tionality for how race and gender different, because they are collide in the violence against wearing a hijab or they’re women and girls (VAWG) seca different colour or a tor, despite accusations that it is racially biased. different race.” The government’s 2021 rape The way violence
VIOLENCE
review was heavily criticised for this very reason. According to the UN, 97 per cent of 18-24 year-old women had suffered sexual harassment, but in March 2016 the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) reported that public sexual harassment for Black and ethnic minority women in the UK was often combined with racism. For Black women, these experiences fed into the very stereotypes of Black womanhood that keep barriers like misogynoir in place; the angry Black woman, the sassy Black woman, the effortlessly strong one and arguably the most common, the hypersexual Jezebel. The call for Valerie’s Law, legislation that will make the police and other government bodies undertake cultural awareness training to protect Black victims
of sexual and domestic abuse, chal is one of the very first to challenge the British legal system’s treatment of vulnerable Black women and girls. Despite equality laws that are meant to safeguard protected characteristics, campaigners are experienc partly calling for the experiences of both race and gender to be written into law. Speaking on the state of violence against women and girls last year, Andrea Simon, Director of the EVAW, said: “With courage and bold leadership from those in positions of power, we can end it. What we need to see now is properly funded transformational prevention work. “This means comprehensive relationships and sex education in schools, an online safety law that protects women and girls from abuse, and multi-year public campaigns to shift the attitudes that trivialise and normalise this abuse. “We also call on government to match its rhetoric on ending VAWG with actions that support all women’s rights – including migrant women, and Black and minoritised women.”
