Tag: policy formulation

Learning About Intersectionality

~ Kishan ~ Leave a comment

I confess I didn’t really know what this word meant until earlier this summer when I heard Dr Rhonda V Sharpe give a (virtual) talk about it. Since then I’ve increasingly come round to its importance for the political and policy research community. In this post I write up what I’ve learned about intersectionality so far.

The idea of ‘intersectionality’ is usually traced back to Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s paper of 1989. When we think of discrimination or inequality, we often think of a comparison of outcomes between two or more groups. For example, with race, we might compare educational attainment of whites vs non-whites (or BAME/BME). With gender, you might look at the gender pay gap, comparing the earnings of men and women.

What an intersectional approach tells us is that this traditional form of analysis reduces our identities to a single dimension. We have many facets to our identity: geography, age, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and so on. If we investigate outcomes through a single lens, that restricts our analysis of actual lived realities of the people we’re studying. What if performance in one outcome isn’t a result of the identity that we’re investigating, but as a result of that identity intersecting with another?

Crenshaw recognised this in light of the liberation movements in the late 20th century USA. Black Americans were calling for greater rights for black people. Women were calling for the advancement of women. Where did black women fit in? It’s not as if a bit of a push for blacks, and a bit of a push for women, would be enough to enable social progress for black women, because their bad experiences weren’t (and aren’t) just the sum total of bad experiences suffered by all women and all black people.

‘Black woman’ is its own distinctive identity. That intersection between race and gender is what Crenshaw recognised. You could go further: young vs old black women, native vs foreign-born, etc.

That seems simple enough to accept; of course we have more than one dimension to our identity. But what does this mean in practice? It can mean that simple, reductive analyses can be replaced with more complex, nuanced analyses that tell us more about actual social experiences and outcomes.

For instance, a report from the Runnymede Trust in 2017 looked at the impacts of post-2010 austerity on BME women. The investigators modelled the impacts of changes to the tax and benefits system, and public services, and both combined. This in itself is not unusual in policy analysis.

Where they go further is in disaggregating the data to look at the impacts by race, gender, income and household type – but not all at the same time, due to data limitations.

Still, they’ve come up with some pretty interesting figures, like the ones in this chart. The accuracy of the numbers per se isn’t as important as the point they’re making. Whilst we know (or could intuitively figure out) that high income households suffered less than low income households, what this brings to light is that the impacts aren’t uniform across races even within income groups.

  • In the richest quintile, households across all race categories all saw roughly similar declines in living standards, with a somewhat more pronounced fall for mixed households.
  • In the 3rd and 4th quintiles, black and white households seemed to be hit the hardest.
  • In the 2nd quintile, Asian households were hit the worst and changes to taxes and benefits affected them more than changes to public services.
  • In the poorest quintile, white households saw the smallest decline, and changes to public services affected mixed households the most.

The report authors note this may be down to BME households being more reliant on public services and differences in household composition. The hope is that such analysis enlightens future policy-making when it comes to similar changes to taxes, benefits and public services. They conclude that more data is needed and government ought to conduct this kind of analysis themselves.

What about a more recent crisis – Covid-19? I haven’t yet come across any detailed research and analysis in the UK context but have found a couple of briefings from Professors Olena Hankivsky and Anuj Kapilashrami, two health academics, from this spring.

They urge policymakers to take an intersectional approach to understanding the risks of coronavirus as well as the impacts of lockdown on people around the world. Three main features of an intersectional approach are outlined in their blog for the BMJ.

First, “intersectionality refuses a predetermined hierarchy of vulnerable groups”.

Single-dimensional analysis can tell us that older people are more vulnerable to the virus than younger ones, men more than women, and those with certain pre-existing conditions over others. The logical conclusion seems to be that older men with pre-existing conditions are the single most vulnerable group.

What’s missed is that all people over a certain age are not equally vulnerable, all men are not equally vulnerable over all women, etc.

We know that certain ailments make ethnic minorities more vulnerable than others. We also know that regardless of age, if you lack access to basic amenities such as good housing and sanitation, you are more vulnerable. The transmission of information isn’t neutral either – culturally and linguistically inaccessible information makes certain groups more vulnerable to infection and death.

Secondly, the authors point out that intersectionality necessarily rejects one-size-fits-all analysis and recognises how “a web of intersecting factors” shapes risks and impacts on different people.

The authors highlight how homeless people and low income migrants face particular challenges beyond their demographic characteristics: environments where it’s difficult to maintain recommended hygiene and distancing guidelines. Under lockdown, poorer women, ethnic minorities, and disabled women are less likely to have (access to) support if they are stuck in abusive environments and relationships.

Finally, and somewhat provocatively, intersectionality reveals what the common experiences of different groups can reveal about the social structures that govern society.

The authors note that neoliberal globalisation provoked competition between countries over medical equipment. Within countries, nationalistic impulses led to countries shutting down borders to protect their “natives” from the “others”, prompting the vilification of migrants and ethnic minorities.

I might also add here a bit about the media. In the early stages of lockdown, journalists made much of the shift to remote working and the accompanying challenges. I remember finding this interesting at the time, since it didn’t really apply to a lot of people I know in my own area. Later, official statistics revealed that there was indeed a significant variation in remote working across sections of society: by occupation, region and age.

Vast swathes of the country were still left with little choice but to go outside for income. They faced a starkly different set of experiences and challenges. Yet the journalistic profession, itself dominated by certain intersectional identities, provided a distorted view of reality.

Where does this leave us? Well, the hope is that researchers and analysts involved in policy research engage in more intersectional analysis. For those outside government, like academics and think tankers, its about engaging in analysis that better reflects the objects of study and may lead to better recommendations. Researchers and analysts within government will find a lot of common ground with these motivations.

A more pressing concern for government, however, is that intersectional analysis can enable fairer treatment of all sections of society and policies that recognise and accept the diversity of our identities.

Regardless of whether it’s from government or not, I hope to see more intersectional analysis of social policy in the future and the light it sheds on the experiences of everyone in society.

Sources and Related Reading

Intersectionality in Theory

Intersectionality in Practice

How Progressives Could Build Back Better

~ Kishan ~ Leave a comment

Towards the end of October, Compass held an event series entitled “Build Back Better: How?”. A lot of good content to chew over from a range of voices talking about a range of ideas. In this post I attempt to weave together just some of what seem to be the most salient issues on the progressive agenda for a post-pandemic UK.

Giving People a Voice

A greater role for citizens in decision-making was one such recurring theme. In particular, Citizens’ Assemblies have gained a lot of traction in recent years, off the back of seemingly successful experiments in Ireland and elsewhere. Stuart White, an academic, talked attendees through the reasons for a CA (namely the desire to move on from referenda) and the advantages of the CA process.

The advantages include providing a route for politicians to reform the political system while avoiding the conflict of interest associated with changing the rules of the game – that is, the rules of their own game. For example, the voting system or House of Lords reform.

Picture of people in a conference room.
Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

And anything the CA recommends will be more legitimate. Not driven by party political interests but rather the national interest, deliberative democracy in the form of CAs offer legitimacy in a way that transcends partisan agendas. Indeed, once implemented, these decisions would be difficult to overturn by politicians who simply didn’t like them.

CAs also offer a way for political groups to resolve internal disputes. Think EU exit for the Conservative Party, or electoral reform for progressive parties.

Sarah Allan from Involve, who helped run Climate Assembly UK this year, offered more practical benefits of CAs. Done right, they allow citizens with diverse experiences and backgrounds from right across the breadth of society to contribute to decision-making. The participants themselves enjoy an experiential benefit of contributing to decisions that affect them. And to other citizens, CA recommendations will inherently be treated more favourably than just another policy report from the Westminster bubble.

However, I noted CAs are not without their disadvantages. Most obviously, the Climate Assembly UK’s recommendations were non-binding. Decisions ought to be made ultimately by politicians who can be held accountable at the ballot box. White offered a formula of CA + referendum on final recommendations, which might side-step the involvement of politicians altogether. Though of course it was the messiness of referenda that a CA sought to avoid in the first place…

I did note a deeper criticism could be parsed from the contribution of Amy McDonnell, a representative from the campaign for the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. Whilst supportive of CAs, she argued that Climate Assembly UK didn’t go far enough in terms of scope and scale. The CEE Bill would ask a CA to work on an earlier deadline than the government, and also consider adaptation and biodiversity loss. It made me realise setting the right question, premise, scale and scope for CAs are also important for their legitimacy.

Good Leadership

Maybe we ought to make sure we elect the kind of leaders who set the right terms of reference. There was an event dedicated entirely to leadership and what ‘good leadership’ might look like.

Jamie Driscoll, Metro Mayor of North of Tyne, pointed out that a lot of what we hate to see in our politicians – needless hostility, aggression, constant need to undermine each other – owes a lot to the system in which they operate. Our House of Commons has been designed specifically for the two major parties to face off against each other. Our party system itself encourages tribalism. Our media thrives on conflict, so are only too happy to facilitate us-versus-them discourses.

A complete overhaul of this environment is probably setting our sights too high right now. In the meantime, however, we could try to change our expectations of our leaders. We should encourage politicians who are willing to admit when they’re wrong, willing to work with others, and show compassion and empathy. The ‘chest-thumping toxic macho culture’ of Westminster got a lot of mentions across all events, but so did Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, illustrating what might be possible.

Picture from NZ news source with the headline reffering to Jacinda Ardern's response to Christchurch attacks
Prime Minister Ardern’s response to terrorist attacks received widespread attention (source)

Practically, this would mean a lot more reaching out to communities and the third sector. At the national level, this could mean involving advocacy organisations in CAs, but also a greater role for third parties (academics? advocates? trade unions?) in regular policy development. But perhaps more pressingly, central government should be willing to devolve to, and work with, local government.

And even at the local level, there is scope to reach out. The borough of Barking & Dagenham has invested heavily in a social infrastructure that incorporates third sector organisations linked to community residents, quite contrary to traditional bureaucratic structures. Council Leader Darren Rodwell explained this allowed them to respond much more quickly, and comprehensively, to the coronavirus pandemic than the levers pulled by central government. Surely this example is worth emulating by councils elsewhere?

A Domestic and Global Vision

An event based on globalisation underscored the point that any party – not just progressive ones – need to have a global vision as well as a domestic one. This is a corollary of living in an international system where decisions in other countries, or at the international table, impact us here (and vice versa). In no area is this more urgent than climate action, which also had its own panel.

Picture of a globe with a face mask
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Domestically, this year we have seen all sectors of society – communities, businesses and government – engaging in rapid, complete change in operations. The emergence of Mutual Aid groups, factories churning out PPE, and a partnership of fiscal and monetary policies to stabilise employment were just some of the examples given by Andrew Simms, Coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance. If we can muster up so much momentum, so quickly, in the midst of a lockdown, just imagine what we could do for the climate?

A renewed progressive vision for the country can go further. The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill charts a blueprint more ambitious (and more substantive) than our current strategy. Attendees also heard from representatives from two intriguingly simple yet radical campaigns. One wanted to reclaim public space from corporate advertisers, to replace ads with whatever local residents would like to see more of instead. The other campaign wants to remove all cars from city life – even electric ones!

But decarbonisation and climate mitigation is a global crisis – in cause and effect. In truth there are some things we have little control over (political leadership in the major polluters for instance) but there are certain things we do have control over: our soft power, the values we demonstrate, and our leadership by example. Examples include the carbon budgeting method and the statutory Net Zero target.

A progressive vision for the world would have to be much more radical, in the literal sense of the term: going to the core of the international system and reforming it root and branch. Existing international organisations in their current incarnations – the UN, IMF, et al – have a sketchy record in facilitating climate action, or indeed other progressive causes. And they’re distant from the citizens of the world, even the citizens of the major powers which are accused of manipulating them for their own purposes.

Graphic showing European countries hold disproportionate voting power in the IMF.
Based on 2015 data. Is this democratic? (source)

Whether reformed or overhauled, a progressive international system would require organisations which allowed more countries a say, as well as a more direct say for citizens. The academic Dena Freeman asked attendees to imagine a global parliament, for example, or the ability to petition for a particular issue akin to Citizens’ Initiatives. Such massive changes must necessarily be accompanied by a greater awareness of the international system and global citizenship education.

This is where I might get quite sceptical. Educating the public is easier said than done for issues of everyday relevance, let alone global politics. But I noted a sound-bite from Lisa Nandy MP, Labour spokeswoman for foreign affairs: “globalisation isn’t working for working people”, referring to the unexpected political developments we’ve seen in recent years. Maybe this sort of imaginative thinking is exactly what would allow people to ‘take back control’?

Plenty of food for thought all around. I look forward to seeing how the narratives around these ideas evolve as progressive parties start eyeing the next election. And of course I equally look forward to writing about these ideas in greater detail in the future.

Links to Event Recordings