Women’s Movements, Gender Equality, Citizenship and Ethnic Diversity in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This book examines how relations between ethnic ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ women’s organisations1 in contemporary women’s movements, as well as relations between women’s movements and governments in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, have developed and are being talked about by women’s movement activists. Our focus on these relations originates from an interest in the mobilisation of white, Black, migrant, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women in separate organisations in the United Kingdom and Norway starting from the 1960s and 1970s, and in Spain from the 1970s and 1980s. The claims forwarded by ethnic majority women’s organisations at that time focused on issues perceived to be most relevant to them, and although class was considered as part of an intersectional lens on women’s inequality, at least by those on the political left, racism and ethnic discrimination were generally absent from their agenda. Ethnic minority women’s organisations emerged from the experiences of Black, migrant, indigenous, national and ethnic minority women, and their political claims centred on gender, race and ethnicity, as well as on migration issues, whilst also acknowledging the importance of class issues. Since ethnic majority women’s organisations at that time did not engage explicitly with issues of race and ethnicity in their political claims-making, ethnic minority women’s organisations critiqued them for being blind to the importance of race and ethnicity, and even ethnocentric and racist.