Get beyond the half-hearted jargon

I was once a member of a book club that broke up, as lots of book clubs seem to do, over a bunch of low-key and mostly irrelevant differences of opinion.

It is hard to get eight people to agree to read the same book. Everyone in this book club found a different book suggestion became their final straw. For me it was the suggestion that we read Lena Dunham’s book Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”.

Specifically, the final straw was when I said, “Ew, I’m not reading that; it isn’t very…intersectional” and one of my book friends replied to me something to the effect of: “Ew, stop using jargon.”

Jargon! I was indignant.

Anyway, we were both right. The book is not very “intersectional”, and I was using jargon instead of properly explaining my criticism.

I have been reminded about my book club over recent weeks for two main reasons: I’m seeing more references to “intersectional groups” in policy papers I’ve been sent and it just looks awkward; and the Waitangi Tribunal held its latest hearing on disability at the end of August and much of the claims rest on an understanding of intersectionality.

Just dealing with sexism – while important – won’t lead to equity. We must in fact also eliminate racism

The term “intersectionality” is usually attributed to Black feminist scholar Kimberlie Crenshaw, although the concept is something lots of us would have experienced before we knew the term.

It is the idea that different power structures (like white supremacy, racism, coloniali­ty, capitalism, patriarchy, ableism) interact and intersect and have com­pounding impacts on people.

This makes it different from, say, a feminist perspective that primarily looks at patriarchy or sexism to explain systematic disadvantages faced by women (as if this is a homogenous group).

In practical terms, a feminist approach to understanding workforce issues, for example, might look at how much women or gender-diverse groups are paid compared to men.

An intersectional approach would break this down further, looking at the additional impacts for women of different ethnic groups and what is happening for disabled women.

The aim is to understand how sexism, racism and ableism interact (or band together) to create more nuanced (and more pervasive) inequities. It’s this kind of intersec­tional analysis that shows us that pay equity isn’t just an issue for women.

Māori and Pacific men are paid less per hour in Aotearoa than Pākehā women (Pākehā women earn on average $31.34 an hour, Māori men $28.92 and Pacific men $27.32) and Māori and Pacific women are paid less than Māori and Pacific men, according to research published this year.¹

It’s an intersectional analysis that tells us that just dealing with sexism – while important – won’t lead to equity. We must in fact also eliminate racism.

I would like to tell you about disability, too, but we just don’t have the data.

When I read Ministry of Health or other agencies’ policy or position papers and they discuss intersectional groups, it seems awkward. In the words of my book friends: “Ew, stop using jargon.”

It seems like agencies are adopting the jargon because it has been claimed as important, without properly under­standing what is meant.

Intersectionality is a useful analytical approach for inter­rogating the different power systems in play. But it isn’t a way of describing a group of people. We don’t live our lives as “intersectional”. I also think that by focusing on groups as intersectional, you take your focus off the power structures that interact and cause multiple disadvantages for some groups of people.

This might lead you to ask inappropriate questions like, “What is it about this group that makes them want low-paying jobs?” instead of asking “What is it about racism and sexism that is going unchecked to create all these pay inequities?”

In the context of the Waitangi Tribunal and its inquiry into disability as part of the Health Services and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry (Wai 2575), intersectionality has been raised several times by expert witnesses.

Here it is used to explain the way colonisation, racism and ableism have combined to create a health and disability system that is (and has been) especially hostile to tāngata whaikaha Māori (Māori with lived experience of disability).

This, unfortunately, is illustrated well by the way tāngata whaikaha Māori are “invisibilised” in official records, with flow-on effects in health system funding, policy directives, services and more.

Using employment and workforce as an example, you can probably find Māori workforce statistics in most professions, and you might (if you’re very lucky) find information on disabled people in some parts of the workforce. But you’ll need a miracle (and certainly more than luck) to find information about tāngata whaikaha Māori in the workforce.

As a result, most of the health-workforce material I read is about building the numbers of Māori doctors or nurses or other health professionals, but silent on support to tāngata whaikaha Māori to enter the health workforce. And it’s this kind of invisibilisation that the Waitangi Tribunal must uncover and navigate.

It is, I know, a long bow to draw to liken either govern­ment policy documents or the Waitangi Tribunal to my book club, but I can’t help it.

That book club was my first encounter of a debate on intersectionality, and I forgive myself for using jargon because it was 2014 and I was still learning (and, honestly, I still am). But eight years later, I expect more than half-hearted use of jargon from public services.

Fortunately, I also have a fair amount of confidence that evidence presented through the Waitangi Tribunal is increasingly based on intersectional analysis, and that can only contribute positively to a more nuanced set of solutions addressing the intersecting power structures that create disadvantage.

Gabrielle Baker (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kuri) is an independent health policy consultant