Just read the background paper prepared by our Head Office for the Strategy Plan on power relations/ analysis. A paragraph caught my attention and I find it particularly interesting:
"One concrete example of why it is important to define the consequences of the complexities of peoples’ lives is presented by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her research “Mapping the Margins”. Crenshaw investigates a women’s shelter in Los Angeles, looking at their strategies for helping women who are being abused. Much of the activities were concentrated on psychological help for the women to gain the confidence to leave the person (in this research mainly husbands and boyfriends) abusing them, as well as legal help when the case reached court. However, when doing this, the shelter unintentionally neglected the needs of women of colour and lower classes in the area. Many of the women of colour were unemployed as they didn’t have any education and were coloured. They were discriminated against on the labour market due to both being women, of colour and un-educated. The same thing happened on the housing-market, making it difficult for them to get an apartment. This reality left the women very dependent on their husbands or boyfriends, both financially and for somewhere to live. Furthermore, as many their family and friends faced the same situation of unemployment because of racism and class structures, the women couldn’t rely on any of them for help. As mentioned before, the shelter also offered legal assistance to the women. However, due to racist structures in the society, very few of the complaints that the women of colour made to the police were taken seriously and very few cases ever reached court. In this way, the measures applied by the shelter for women did very little to help the women of colour to actually escape their insecure situation."
