“The way that equality has worked in the UK is that it looks at different equality areas in silos. We have discrimination laws that focus on race; we have discrimination laws that focus on sex… so what happens if you fit in both those categories? For instance, if you are a black woman, if something happens to you, if you experience discrimination, you have either to go and argue that it was race discrimination, or you could argue that it was sex discrimination, but you can’t argue that they both happened at the same time. You can pursue two separate cases, but you can’t actually say they were happening concurrently or that the particular kind of sexism or racism you experienced was affected by your race or gender, whichever the other one is,” Moosa said.
“Seeing Double advocates look at women “in the round” [as a whole person] so as not to try to isolate the different aspects of women—as if there’s only ever one thing at one time (because there never are). You’re always everything [an ethnic minority and a woman] all the time. Different identities might come to the fore in different situations, but to pretend that those other identities just blanket don’t exist because you’re experiencing one kind of discrimination or another is not actually how it plays out for women,” she said.
Some of the legal and social context for what is currently happening in the UK is not applicable to the States. But something that we can all realize is women’s rights is an important fight for everyone, no matter where you are from, Moosa said.
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