Translating Intersectionality Theory into Practice: A Tale of Romani-Gadže Feminist Alliance

Abstract

In Central and Eastern Europe today, there are probably no more than several hundred women who would self-identify as Romani women activists. Yet their influence is significant and growing, within and beyond the post-Soviet Romani rights movement. This essay focuses on an even smaller subset of this small group: those Romani women activists who are struggling to articulate their issues within the framework of women’s human rights and global feminism. I discuss the contradictions and challenges of supporting this work as a non-European antiracist ally who was engaged in a collaborative effort to found the Roma Women’s Initiative (RWI) in 1999. The RWI became an operational project of the Soros Foundation/Open Society Institute’s Network Women’s Program. It provided a model of intersectional feminist practice, led by Romani women in collaboration with non-Romani feminists. Romani women activists are contributing to building a truly inclusive human rights system by challenging the limitations of current frameworks operating in European civil society. They have been on the front lines simultaneously fighting ethnic hatred, racism, sexism, violence against women, educational segregation, poverty, and extreme social exclusion. They do so with limited resources, ambivalent relations with both the mainstream Romani and women’s movements, and few role models to call on before them. European Romani women’s activism is significant because it seeks to implement intersectional agendas at the level of public policy (e.g., at the level of the nation, the European Union, and the United Nations) and at the level of social movement activism.