[WA-News] Double Discrimination: Women and Race

[Jennifer Radloff]

>Double Discrimination: Women and Race
>by Sonia Randhawa
>
>The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The
>slightly better off Dominican Republic has a native Haitian population,
>but also houses a shifting population of migrant workers from Haiti that
>works on the sugar cane plantations. According to information presented at
>a 'Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions: A Human
>Rights Hearing', both men and women suffer discrimination.
>
>Women, however, face double discrimination, according to the testimony
>presented by Solange Pierre, once due to race and once due to gender. This
>double discrimination, termed 'intersectionality', affects those who are
>discriminated against in more than one way. The hearing from women
>delegates from various communities at the NGO Forum on the World
>Conference Against Racism in Durban was a series of vivid examples of
>women who suffer disproportionately because of a mixture of racism and
>gender discrimination.
>
>Solange Pierre told how her first experience of racism came at nine years
>of age, when she was kicked out of national day celebrations, as Haitians
>have no place in such celebrations. Nationalism is equated with
>anti-Haitianism. Doctors who help Haitian mothers bear children are fined.
>Haitian children are not allowed to attend school. She told tales of
>vicious rape, a mother forced to abandon her two young children, one aged
>15 days, the other aged two years. The younger child died, while the
>two-year old went missing. The mother, a human rights activist, ended up
>in a mental institution.
>
>In another incident, 50 migrant workers illegally coming into Haiti were
>stopped by the police. Solange told their story.
>
>"The people who were sneaking these migrants into the country, they tried
>to run away. At that point, the military started shooting at the bus and
>they kept on shooting and shooting. And among this group of the victims,
>there were two pregnant women, one of whom was seven months pregnant. The
>woman kept screaming, 'Please, I'm pregnant, please'. And she asked him to
>please protect her. Then he looked at her and he shot her stomach and said
>'Finally we have eliminated another Haitian'."
>
>Other cases of double discrimination were reported.
>
>Roma, often termed gypsies, are still a little understood community. Roma
>number 12 million globally, with 700,000 believed to be in Serbia. The
>majority is illiterate. They marry and die young, living isolated from the
>rest of society, unable to fill out official forms, use public transport
>or make their way round urban areas outside Roma settlements.
>
>But the Roma women, according to Vera Kurtic and Slavica Vasic, both Roma
>women themselves, suffer a double discrimination, once due to their race
>and once due to their gender.
>
>Slavica, for example, related the story of Sevdija, who was sold by her
>parents at the age of 13, married to an alcoholic three years older than
>her. She was pregnant at 14. When the time came for her first child to be
>born, she was sent away from the first hospital she approached. She was
>accepted at the second hospital she approached. During labour, however,
>the mid-wife started screaming at her, telling her to shut up, that she
>had enjoyed having sex, so shouldn't be screaming now. Racism and sexism
>combined to ensure that Sevdija delivered her next four children at home.
>
>Vera explained that child marriages and discrimination against women are
>considered necessary. Gender discrimination is told to take a back seat
>until the problems caused by racial discrimination can be solved.
>
>The problem of double discrimination, or intersectionality, is faced by
>women, in different forms, across the world. Women from the US, Malaysia,
>Nepal and the Congo told their stories, each one pointing to the need for
>women's issues to be addressed alongside the issues of racism.