Chapter 4 B: Intersectionality and Aboriginal Women Flashcards
The Rise of Intersectionality and Intersectional Theory
Mainstream feminism assumed it represented all women.
Access to jobs, leadership, wage gap, glass ceiling, double shift are not the most urgent needs of racialized women.
Would racism be eradicated if sexism was defeated?
Race, ethnicity, religion, immigrant status, sexual identity, disability, and social class have real effects.
Factors cannot be ranked or added up.
Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, operate simultaneously.
Intersectional Theory
Intersectionality signifies “the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation—economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential—intersect in historically specific contexts. The concept emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands.”
Indigenous Women
relations between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state are shaped by colonialism
substituted Indigenous practices with colonial structures (eg. wage labour, sedentary farming, private property)
destroyed egalitarian societies and undermined traditional gender relations
“cult of true womanhood” = piety, submissiveness, subservience were valued as ideal for women
but Indigenous women had authority, status, freedoms
missionaries worked to undo traditional norms for Indigenous women
and introduced the European family organization and gender roles
1869 Legislation the Indian Act
Indian status contingent on men’s registration
Women had Indian status only if her father or husband was a registered Indian
If not, her Indian status was relinquished
vs traditional matrilineal system
excluded Indigenous women from Indigenous identity and rights
her children lost these rights, too
repealed in 1985 more than 130,000 people, mostly women, applied to have their rights restored
Conditions of Indigenous Women
A gap between the life expectancy of Indigenous women and non-Indigenous women remains. In 2001, the estimated life expectancy for Indigenous females was 76.8 years, about 5 years less than non-Indigenous women.
In 2006, 18% of Indigenous women aged 15 and over headed families on their own, in comparison to 8% of their non-Indigenous women.
In 2006, 51.1% of Indigenous women aged 15 years and over were employed, compared with 57.7% of non-Indigenous women. Indigenous women were also less likely than their male counterparts to be employed: 51.1% versus 56.5%, respectively.
The gap in unemployment rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women is smaller among those with higher levels of education. In 2006, for women aged 25 to 54 without a high school diploma, the unemployment rate was 20.5% for Indigenous women and 9.2% for non-Indigenous women, a gap of 11.3 percentage points. For those with university degrees, the unemployment rate was 5.8% for Indigenous women and 4.6% for non-Indigenous women, a gap of 1.2 percentage points.
Statistics of Report on Indigenous Women
RCMP Report: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview, 2014.
information from over 300 law enforcement departments across Canada
Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Homicide Survey data from 1980 to 2012
164 missing +1,017 homicide victims = 1,181
exceeds previous public estimates
= ~ 16% of all female homicides — far greater than the representation of Aboriginal women in Canada’s female population.
Aboriginal female victims were most often murdered by an acquaintance (30% compared to 19% for non-Aboriginal female victims).
Only ~ 2% of Aboriginal female homicides were linked to the drug trade or gangs or organized crime activity.
The percentage of Aboriginal female homicide victims involved in the sex trade was slightly higher than that of non-Aboriginal female homicide victims — 12% vs 5%.
“As a result, it would be inappropriate to suggest any significant difference in the prevalence of sex trade workers.”
Report 3
Status of Women Canada, Action Plan to Address Family Violence and Violent Crimes Against Aboriginal Women and Girls, September 2014.
Acknowledges severity of the issues
Announces several initiatives
Criticized for being uncoordinated and inadequate
Does not support a public inquiry
Report 4
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in British Columbia, Canada, December 21, 2014.
“The disappearances and murders of indigenous women in Canada are part of a broader pattern of violence and discrimination against indigenous women in the country.”
“Canadian authorities and civil society organizations largely agree on the root causes of these high levels of violence against Indigenous women…These root causes are related to a history of discrimination beginning with colonization and continuing through inadequate and unjust laws and policies such as the Indian Act and forced enrolment in residential schools that continue to affect them.”
Social and Historical Context
“The IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) stresses that addressing violence against indigenous women is not sufficient unless the underlying factors of racial and gender discrimination that originate and exacerbate the violence are also comprehensively addressed. A comprehensive holistic approach applied to violence against indigenous women means addressing the past and present institutional and structural inequalities confronted by these women. Elements that must be addressed include the dispossession of their land, as well as historical laws and policies that have negatively affected indigenous women, put them in an unequal situation, and prevented their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.” (IACHR report, 21 Dec 2014)
