Glossary

Women of Color in Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation The Race Across the Pond Initiative: Women of Color in the Healthcare System Series

GLOSSARY

Equality: Principle providing that all people in a society are treated equally by the law and that the rights (civil rights, freedom of speech, equal access to social goods and services…) and opportunities are the same for all without distinction.

Equity: Equity is based on the concept of distributive justice and fairness and acknowledges that different individuals or groups need different support to reach similar results. Equity acknowledges the obstacles faced by individuals and groups due to physical, social, economic, political, and/or historical disadvantages (race, gender, socioeconomic situation, religion, geographic location, disability, etc.) and provides them with the exact resources, means, and opportunities they need to succeed.

Health Equity: “Absence of unfair and avoidable or remediable differences in health among population groups defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically”. (World Health Organisation).

Social Determinants of Health: The social determinants of health (SDH) are the “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These forces and systems include economic policies and systems, development agendas, social norms, social policies, and political systems. ” (World Health Organisation) 

Intersectionality: Sociological concept and analytical framework used to explore the interdependence between different forms of oppression and discrimination one person can experience simultaneously in society, with regards to social categorizations (race, gender, class, disability, religion, etc.). The concept was coined in 1989 by Kimberle W. Crenshaw, a US civil rights activist, and legal scholar.

Minority Groups: A minority group is a group of people who, because of physical, cultural, political, religious, or other characteristics and beliefs, do not have equal access to power, wealth, resources, and services compared to a dominant group. A minority group is a group of people “singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination”9 , based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, sex, religion, or other criteria. A minority group is not defined by its number in a society.

9 Wirth Louis (1945), “The Problem of Minority Groups” , in Linton Ralph, The Science of Man in the World

Crisis, p. 347.

Women of Color in Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation The Race Across the Pond Initiative: Women of Color in the Healthcare System Series

Racialized Groups: Although race as a biological and essential category does not exist, race as a socially constructed category does; and so racialized groups. Racialized groups are groups of individuals in a society that are affected by the process of racisation and face different forms of oppression, discrimination, and domination.

Racialization: Political and social process of producing categories and ascribing to individuals and groups subjective natural or inherent characteristics and assigning them to a position and role in society. The French sociologist Sarah Mazouz describes the concept of racialization as “the notion used by the social science researchers to highlight the racial hierarchies production mechanisms” (loose translation)10 .

Racisation: (French word without direct translation in English) Notion developed by the French sociologist Colette Guillaumin describes the process of domination of a group over one or several others, based on racial characteristics to maintain a continued position of domination and social, political, and economic privilege. The concept of racisation provides a sociological framework to understand how society-enforced processes assign to one or more groups a social, political, and economic position of inferiority, marginalization, and social exclusion.

10 Sarah Mazouz, 2020, “Race” , Ed. Anamosa; p. 48