Collaborating on Combating Discrimination? Anti-Racist and Gender Equality Organisations in Europe

Abstract

This chapter is about trans-European collaboration among civil society actors, who may or may not be construed as having diverging goals. Specifically, it looks at the discourses and collaborative practices within and between two European umbrella organisations: the European Women’s Lobby [EWL] and the European Network Against Racism [ENAR]. The chapter takes its starting point in the fact that previous research has frequently highlighted the inability of EWL to include considerations of women’s diversity (Hoskyns, 1991; Pudrovska and Ferree, 2004; Rolandsen Agustín, 2011; Williams, 2003). But there is little previous research on the reverse side, looking into whether diversity organisations, like ENAR, also focus on gender. The failure of feminism to interrogate race means that resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism to interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women (1991: 1252). Hence, the chapter begins with a re-evaluation of previous assessments of EWL’s ability to incorporate claims stemming from diversity issues; and proceeds by making a first assessment of the extent to which ENAR includes gender equality concerns in their work.