Intersectional and Cross-Movement Politics and Policies: Reflections on Current Practices

and Debates
Author(s): Mieke Verloo
Source: Signs , Vol. 38, No. 4, Intersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory
(Summer 2013), pp. 893-915
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 M i e k e Ve r l o o

Intersectional and Cross-Movement Politics and Policies:

Reflections on Current Practices and Debates

S ome crucial social theory predicts that policies and movements that
work against inequalities can be set up to achieve equality for certain
disadvantaged, marginalized, or exploited groups but that social move-
ments and policy makers will find it very hard to escape the dominant
discourses that created the inequalities, especially if the subject position
from which they choose to fight inequalities is linked to these discourses
ðFoucault 1972; Tilly 1998Þ. Moreover, power mechanisms—such as op-
portunity hoarding by exploited or marginalized groups and adaptation to
the categorical pairs that form the basis of exploitation—will be hard if
not impossible to counter ðTilly 1998Þ.
Yet historically we see that movements and policies can achieve prog-
ress toward equality, as has been the case for gender equality ðWalby 2011Þ.
Even if it is clearly possible to highlight ongoing inequality, exploitation,
and marginalization in the globalized world, there is a long list of exploited
and dehumanized categories of people who have gained access to funda-
mental human and democratic rights over the last century, such as the right
to education, to bodily integrity, to vote, to marry, to have property, to
have equal access to public services, or to live as a family. This article does
not challenge these achievements but uses strong theoretical arguments
that predict an ongoing reproduction of inequalities to scrutinize how move-
ments and policies deal with inequalities that interfere with one another.1
Are there ongoing inequalities within equality movements and policies, and
how are they dealt with? The specific case at hand is feminist movements
and gender equality policies and how they address what Kimberlé Williams
Crenshaw ð1989Þ calls political intersectionality.
This article sets out to find strategies that in one way or another try to
counter the ongoing reproduction of inequalities within movements and
policies. It does so by drawing on academic literature and other reports of
political and policy practices, categorizing the different ways in which move-

1
The concept of interference between inequalities is developed in Verloo ð2009, 2011Þ. I
use “interference” as a broad term, as it is used in physics, to keep open the option that in-
equalities can strengthen one another, specify one another, or cancel one another out. Which
of these they do is a matter of empirical evidence.

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2013, vol. 38, no. 4]
© 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2013/3804-0005$10.00

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894 y Verloo

ment and policy strategies address intersectional inequalities, and reflecting

on their potential and their limitations. I find that current academic discus-
sion and research suggest four different political and policy approaches to
best address interference between inequalities, that is, to best address struc-
tural and political intersectionality: reactive approaches that focus on the
importance of exposing stigmatizing or marginalizing effects, pragmatic
approaches that highlight possibilities for intersectional politics within the
confines of existing political and policy instruments, substantial approaches
that call for a focus on structural change, and procedural approaches that
center on the inclusion of particular groups of political actors.
The structure of this article is as follows: In the first section I focus on
various types of gender equality policies and on more general mechanisms
of inequality production and reproduction. I then present a framework
of questions that I use to reflect on the potential and limitations of cur-
rent movement and policy approaches that take interference between in-
equalities into account. The next section presents a short overview of re-
cent developments toward intersectional politics in the European context,
highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of the possibilities and
dangers involved. The main section then presents four approaches that
have been detected in movement and policy practices. I conclude by dis-
cussing the potential and limitations of these four approaches in terms of
the conceptual questions presented earlier.

Approaches in existing gender equality policies

Equality policies are commonly believed to address social processes that
turn differences between people—in how they live, what they own, who
they are—into a basis on which one group of people exploits another or
thwarts another group’s chances of success in society. In this understand-
ing, differences are seen as the raw material of inequalities, even if the dif-
ferences involved are for the most part not seen as given but as social con-
structions resulting from historical and ongoing processes.
In the field of research on gender equality policies, the differences that
are of concern are mostly differences in social, cultural, economic, and po-
litical status between men and women. Building on Judith Squires ð2000Þ,
who categorized the various ways of understanding these differences, we
can distinguish between understandings that see the two sex and gender
categories as given and those that do not.
When gender equality policies principally accept the categories of men
and women as given, there are two opposing takes. First, in strategies of
inclusion, men and women are seen as basically equal human beings who

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 895

therefore should have the same opportunities to engage fully in all social,
cultural, political, and economical areas of life. This strategy wants to ex-
tend dominant values to all, irrespective of gender. It accepts the catego-
ries, as well as the dominant values, but wants to make them irrelevant.
Second, in strategies of reversal, men and women are seen to be essentially
different ðwhether because of biological characteristics or because of so-
cial experiences and life patternsÞ, and the demand is for policies to shift
from being based on the characteristics and life experiences of men to
being based on the characteristics and life experiences of women. An-
other version of this strategy is the call for equal valuation of the differ-
ent contributions of men and women to society ðWalby 2011Þ. In the
practice of European gender equality policies, the strategy of inclusion is
dominant, while there are some occurrences of a strategy of equal valua-
tion of different contributions ðe.g., in policies that grant mothers a salary
for raising their children at home for the first three years; Krizsán et al.
2009Þ.
In contrast, gender equality policies are also said to offer the option of
transforming gender categories altogether. What Squires ð2000Þ has la-
beled the strategy of displacement aspires to move beyond gender and is
rooted in postmodern or poststructuralist feminism. It aims to destabilize
the apparent opposition between equality and difference, between the strat-
egies of inclusion and reversal, and seeks to displace patriarchal gender hi-
erarchies and deconstruct discursive regimes that engender the subject.
What is problematized is not ðonlyÞ the exclusion of women, or the putting
forward of men as a norm, but the gendered world in itself. The normative
argument defending this position is that gendered identities are a product
of particular political discourses. As such, this strategy sees gender cate-
gories themselves as an essential part of the problem. In practice, it is rare
to see this strategy fully developed, although some partial appearances can
be found ðVerloo 2007Þ. In European gender equality policies, there is not
a single example of a policy that explicitly attempts to abolish gender cat-
egories.2 There are many examples of degendering in gender equality pol-
icies ðVerloo 2007Þ, but these can be seen to have a strong gendered subtext
that does not destroy the gender categories themselves.3 Elsewhere, I have
argued that in addition to a strategy of displacement, there is a simulta-

2
This has also sadly meant that trans* and intersex people have rarely, and then only
recently, been included in gender equality policies.
3
Degendering means that policies that are designed to work for gender equality are writ-
ten without using the words “men” or “women,” “male” or “female.” Examples are to have
policies that talk about “citizens who have to combine work and family life” or policies that
outline what to do with “victims” and “perpetrators” of domestic violence.

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896 y Verloo

neous need for empowerment, for the creation of social, cultural, and
political space that gives groups of women real chances to construct a
world they would consider just ðVerloo 2005Þ. While the need for em-
powerment is crucial, it remains unclear how empowerment can be aimed
for or achieved without referring to the sex and gender categories that the
strategy of displacement wants to overcome. Thus, while both displace-
ment and empowerment seem to be needed, the relationship between these
two approaches is at best unclarified and may be problematic because they
seem to take a different position on categorical identities.

Understanding category making as (re)producing inequality: Tilly

Charles Tilly’s theory of durable inequality ð1998Þ could be helpful in
furthering our understanding of how positions on categorical identities
affect the chances of abolishing inequalities. His theory primarily provides
an explanation for the preservation of inequality through the social con-
struction of categorical pairs, that is, through classifications of people into
two exclusive and exclusionary groups. Tilly sees the borders drawn be-
tween the two halves of a categorical pair as essential to the creation and
preservation of inequality.4 He describes the rise and continuous repro-
duction of inequality through four mechanisms: exploitation, opportunity
hoarding, emulation, and adaptation. The exploitation mechanism comes
into effect when people with a certain amount of power are able to create
added value through the efforts of outsiders, people who do not belong
to the exploiter’s category. Capitalism is a fine example of this mechanism
at work. The second mechanism, which Tilly calls opportunity hoarding,
is also present within groups and among people who lack power. When
members of such a group acquire access to a resource that is renewable
and could prove profitable in the long run, they will try to monopolize
the access to this resource for their own group. Tilly offers the example of
migrants’ networks and the way they marshal specific know-how about
particular professions within their network. Take, for instance, the first Chi-
nese migrants to the Netherlands, who specialized in setting up successful
“exotic” restaurants, or the Bengali migrants in Vienna, who have monopo-
lized the market for street-side magazine and newspaper sales. Both groups

4
The fact that Tilly here reinvents a wheel long spinning in gender studies is painfully
typical proof of gender studies’ isolation ðor exclusionÞ in the social sciences ðsee Butler 1988;
Brouns, Grünell, and Verloo 1995Þ. Other scholars have also pointed out the parallel but in
a way that is seemingly independent of developments in gender studies and other social sci-
ences ðKenny and Mackay 2009Þ.

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 897

share the knowledge needed for success in this foreign territory only within
their own networks. Through this opportunity hoarding and the monopoly
on specific knowledge, inequality is created or reinforced. In the case of
the United States, Dvora Yanow has convincingly shown that race and eth-
nicity became embedded into law and policy, what effects this has had, and
how those categorized by such policies also benefit from the preservation
of these racial categories, thereby revealing an American mechanism of op-
portunity hoarding ð2003Þ.
To Tilly, these mechanisms do not consciously create inequality. Rather,
the emerging inequality is simply a by-product of people’s improvised at-
tempts to stake a claim for their livelihood. This inequality, however, be-
comes more durable through the effects of two other mechanisms: emu-
lation of older, existing social categories in new settings and adaptation,
which Tilly sees as the development of daily routines based on categorical
pairs and the justification for these routines in a certain era and context.
Emulation is the copying of established, categorically based organizational
models or the transplanting of existing social relations from one setting to
another ðTilly 1998, 174Þ. An example of emulation can be seen in the
way gender inequality in families is replicated in the labor market, with its
division between men’s and women’s professions. This mechanism re-
sembles what Georgina Waylen calls “institutional layering,” whereby new
institutions are most often built atop or within existing institutions due to
a lack of means for innovation ð2009, 247Þ. Tilly believes that this emu-
lation also replicates the unequal division of labor in the home—where
women perform unpaid labor for men—within the labor market: women
ðand menÞ are paid less for work resembling housekeeping or care.5 The
adaptation mechanism’s most important characteristic is its socialization
process, through which even the least privileged develop routines based
on existing structural inequality.
Those who exploit others, or who hoard opportunities, are constantly
deciding where to draw the line between their own group and those ex-
cluded; how to ensure solidarity, loyalty, and control; and how to monop-
olize knowledge that might help them, or members of their own network,
advance. Copying categorical pairs from elsewhere not only helps make all
these decisions, it also reaffirms these pairs and, thereby, the attendant in-
equality as well.
Tilly is quite pessimistic about the chances that politics and policy might
reduce or altogether remove inequality. He suggests that nations, too, are

5
See Katz, Stern, and Fader ð2005Þ for a wider analysis of the durability of inequality in
women’s employment in the United States, based on Tilly.

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898 y Verloo

subject to his four mechanisms and adds that nations can also fix categori-
cal pairs in the letter of law and are well equipped to sanction encroachers.
Indeed, even democratic states are no strangers to exploitation or to de-
termining categories of people who can and cannot hoard opportunities.
States after all are able, as the Netherlands did, to decide that “anyone” is
allowed to marry at age eighteen, except for those citizens with partners
from less developed countries, who will have to wait until they are twenty-
one and earning 120 percent of the legal minimum income. States can
also, as in the case of Austria and too many other countries, determine that
certain citizens are not allowed to marry each other, simply because they
share the same gender. All nations thus categorize their citizens, setting
grounds for inclusion and exclusion. Members of dominant categorical
groups always have more possibilities for exploitation or opportunity hoard-
ing, but even in democratic arrangements in which the effects of categori-
cal inequality are mitigated, there are seldom state-led attacks on unequal
categories themselves. Therefore Tilly deems it inadvertent but unsurpris-
ing that welfare states have often amplified inequality between the sexes
ðHaavio-Mannila 1993; Siim 1994; Orloff 1996Þ.
It was not until the broadening of the franchise within democracies that
nations explicitly attempted to fight inequality by redistributing wealth or
goods. Although these attempts were historically often advocated by so-
cial movements, Tilly does not believe these movements to be free from
the reach of categorical pairing either. Even if their aim is to contest the
unjust treatment of the “weaker” half of a categorical pair, social move-
ments still create new, or activate existing, categorical pairs themselves. In
their fight for inclusion, movements try to present their chosen category as
clearly as possible, thus excluding or downplaying other categories. Tilly’s
pessimistic views thus take the form of a critique of what gender studies
dubs identity politics. In his view, only a strategy of displacement can be
expected to bring about equality because only this strategy attacks the es-
sential building block of all his inequality-creating mechanisms: categori-
cal pairs.

Cross-movement politics and equality policies

On the basis of the different types of gender equality policies and their
different potential to address gender inequalities and bring forward gender
equality, I present the following main questions to reflect on the potential
and limitations of the four approaches found in cross-movement politics
and in early intersectional equality policies: How does each of the ap-
proaches affect equal treatment and inclusion of intersectional groups ðand

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 899

persons subject to multiple forms of discriminationÞ? How do they affect

strategies of reversal or calls for the equal valuation of different contribu-
tions? To what degree can each of the approaches displace categories that
are fundamental for reproducing inequality, and to what degree is displace-
ment visibly developed as a strategy? To what degree can intersectionally sit-
uated persons and groups contribute to empowerment, and how does this
empowerment escape the negative effects of identity politics?

Widening the scope of gender equality policies

Recently, and especially in the policies of the European Union and its
member states, there has been increased attention to inequalities other
than those based on gender ðmostly race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, age,
religion or belief, and disabilityÞ, both as separate policy concerns and as
related to gender equality policies ðVerloo 2006; Kantola 2010; Wood-
ward 2012Þ. In the context of gender equality policies, and in the wider
context of gender studies, this has led to debates about the concept of
multiple inequalities, or intersectionality ðLombardo and Verloo 2009;
Walby 2011Þ. Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality as
an escape from the problems of identity politics, to “denote the various
ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of
Black women’s employment experiences” ð1989, 139Þ. She distinguishes
between structural intersectionality and political intersectionality ðCren-
shaw 1991Þ. Structural intersectionality occurs when inequalities and their
intersections are directly relevant to the experiences of people in society.
Political intersectionality indicates how inequalities and their intersections
are relevant to political strategies and how strategies regarding one axis of
inequality are seldom neutral toward other axes.
An important part of publications and research on intersectionality is
theoretical in nature. This work largely contemplates the way different in-
equalities relate to one another and what that means for both research
into inequality and societal inequality itself.6 The developments in practice
largely seem to be centered on the quality of the equality architecture, on
whether to have administrative agencies that deal with all ðor a range of Þ
inequalities or to have separate agencies for all inequalities deemed rele-
vant in a particular context ðO’Cinneide 2002; Krizsán et al. 2009; Walby,
Armstrong, and Strid 2012Þ. There are also ongoing debates on the range
of inequalities to include in equality policies. Some member states restrict

6
See McCall ð2005Þ, Yuval-Davis ð2006Þ, Hancock ð2007Þ, Walby ð2007Þ, and Weldon
ð2008Þ.

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900 y Verloo

their policies to the range included in the European Directives ðVerloo and
QUING Consortium 2012Þ, while other member states choose to have a
wider range than the EU mandates ðe.g., Belgium, which since 2007 has
had policies addressing seventeen possible discrimination grounds: nation-
ality; race; skin color; national or ethnic descent; gender, including trans-
sexuality; age; sexual orientation; civil status; status as nobility or com-
moner; wealth; belief/religion; political preferences; language; current or
future health; disability; physical or genetic characteristic; or social descent
½Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen en Racismebestrijding 2008, 12–13Þ.
Moreover, in practice the widening of attention to include inequalities
beyond gender has strengthened antidiscrimination policies, giving rights
to claimants on the basis of a number of grounds for redress or compen-
sation ðLombardo and Verloo 2009; Lombardo and Rolandsen Agustı́n
2012Þ. In this, discrimination is seen as taking various forms: single-ground
discrimination, when an individual is put at a disadvantage on the basis of
one inequality ground; additive multiple discrimination, if an individual
belongs to two ðor moreÞ groups that separately suffer discriminatory prac-
tices; or intersectional discrimination, based on the indivisible combination
of two or more social characteristics that create a situation that is not equal
to the sum of discriminations on separate grounds ðHannett 2003, 68Þ.
The widening of gender equality policies has triggered a number of de-
velopments that have strengthened identity politics: the question of which
categories one is seen as belonging to now matters even more, as some cat-
egories are protected, and the protection offered to different categories
is uneven.7 In Tilly’s terms, this uneven protection triggers opportunity-
hoarding mechanisms that reproduce inequality.
In this relatively new European context of multiple equality policies, it
becomes all the more apparent that gender equality policies categorize on
the basis of gender and other social and political boundaries at the same
time. While gender equality policies have always assumed attention for cer-
tain subcategories of women, they now are becoming more explicit about
it, and there is a higher demand for accountability regarding their poten-
tial to deliver results for intersecting inequalities ðLombardo and Verloo
2009; Krizsán, Skjeie, and Squires 2012; Lombardo and Rolandsen Agustı́n
2012Þ. This highlights the political relevance and salience of this article’s
questions about the potential of gender equality policies, and it demon-
strates the need for movements working for gender equality to engage in
intersectional strategies.

7
For a more detailed analysis of the unevenness in the protections offered by EU equality
policies, see Lombardo and Verloo ð2009Þ.

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 901

Decategorizing or demarginalizing in the context of gender equality

policies or strategies: Four different options
In this section I attempt to categorize the different strategies that have
been outlined to address and abolish intersecting inequalities. This over-
view is tentative and open to further elaboration and debate. For now, I
find that current academic discussion and research suggest four different
political and policy approaches to best address interference between in-
equalities. It will become clear that in most cases this interference involves
intersectional inequalities, meaning that unequal positions intersect via
more than one dimension of inequality ðVerloo 2009Þ. Where relevant I
will distinguish between approaches at the level of movement strategies
and practices and approaches at the level of policy making.
The first approach that I distinguish is reactive. It concentrates on
pointing out the degree to which strategies that are presented as address-
ing interfering inequalities are de facto counterproductive, leading to
the stigmatization of the targeted group. This approach pleads for the un-
masking and eradication of such stigmatizing distortions. An example can
be found in an analysis I conducted with Conny Roggeband ðRoggeband
and Verloo 2007Þ. This analysis of Dutch policy found that, between 1995
and 2005, the case of migrant women became an almost emblematic policy
problem. We argued that the Dutch government created and fixed in law a
new categorical pair: the migrant population and the native Dutch, or in
geological terms, as the Dutch would have it, the allochthonous and the
autochthonous. This stigmatizing and marginalizing of migrant women
and women of migrant descent was the result of the political dynamics be-
tween parties on the Left and the Right. Left-leaning political parties orig-
inally placed allochthonous women on the political agenda, intending to
address their difficulties in accessing social and economic participation in
society, but it was the right-wing parties that determined the stigmatizing
policies addressing the issue.
The new Dutch regulations for transnational marriage involving people
from non-Western countries ðdescribed aboveÞ, for instance, place women
in a vulnerable, dependent position, and emancipation and integration is-
sues become more and more individualized and culturalized. The govern-
ment essentially tells allochthonous women that it is their duty to eman-
cipate themselves from their “problematic culture”—a euphemism for
Islamic culture. This sparked a racialization process in the Netherlands,
one that falsely posits gender equality as an already realized core value of
Dutch society. Birte Siim and Hege Skeje ð2008Þ note a similar process in
Denmark, where the issue of gender equality also gained in status, be-
coming a core national value, and was thereafter used to emphasize the

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902 y Verloo

inferiority of other ðIslamicÞ cultures as embodied in migrant communities.

Helga Eggebø ð2010Þ finds similar processes in Norway.
What at first was only a question of religion and national background
has, in Dutch politics ðoften explicitlyÞ and policy ðlargely implicitlyÞ, be-
come more and more a question of race, with the “Muslim” label as the
defining quality of that race. David Theo Goldberg remarks that this is a
specifically European form of race construction, and one with historical
resonance: “The figure of the Muslim, alongside that of the Jew, has his-
torically bookended modern Europe’s explicit historical anxieties about
blackness” ð2006, 344Þ.
Although the government now states it wants to discourage any nega-
tive branding of allochthonous people, the government itself contributes
heavily to this branding through its categorization and through the differ-
ent demands made of allochthonous and autochthonous citizens ðYanow
and Van der Haar 2012Þ. Exposing the government’s counterproductive
efforts as well as those political viewpoints that contribute to inequality
would be an important part of any effective intervention, and academia in
particular could contribute to such a process. The reactive approach is also
used by movements and organizations that address the interference be-
tween inequalities. A good example of such a group is NextGENDERation
ð2004Þ, whose manifesto, “Niet in onze naam!” ðNot in our name!Þ, rejects
any cooperation with xenophobic political parties. These parties may claim
to fight for gender equality, but NextGENDERation believes that their ul-
timate aim is the exclusion of migrants and therefore does not believe that
they can ever be potential allies in the struggle for gender equality.
The other three approaches I have identified have in common that they
call for demarginalization, going a step further than diagnosing what the
problem is and how it was created. The first one is a pragmatic approach,
suggesting that complex interferences between inequalities do not neces-
sarily require complex new policy instruments or measures. Margaret L.
Satterthwaite ð2005Þ convincingly shows that the specific problems of
women migrant workers can be adequately tackled with existing policy
instruments. Her work meticulously reconstructs the problems migrant fe-
male domestics can face, and her list is long: exploitative terms of work,
pay, hours, and contracts; restrictions on freedom of movement; labor mar-
ket discrimination against women at home and abroad; dangerous and de-
grading working conditions; gender-based violence in the workplace; gen-
dered forms of racism and xenophobia against women migrant workers; and
restrictions on migrant women’s ability to organize for their rights.
Satterthwaite’s approach, which we might call applied intersectiona-
lity, places existing human rights treaties side by side with these prob-

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 903

lems, showing that all of the problems can be addressed using existing
treaties. The five treaties she uses are the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the International Cove-
nant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the International Cove-
nant on Civil and Political Rights; the Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination; and the Migrant Workers Convention. She con-
cludes that a specific treaty on the rights of female migrants is not necessary
since the current treaties should suffice, providing that they are inter-
sectionally applied. Of course, her study does not prove that applying in-
tersectionality will always work, but it convincingly shows that this option
should not be overlooked and that actors involved in fighting the inter-
sectional inequalities of migrant women workers have potential agency
within current laws and regulations.
The applied intersectionality approach is of interest to all polities, in-
cluding the member states of the European Union and the European Union
itself, all of which are struggling with how to tackle inequality, especially
given the interference between different inequalities. The EU member states
currently deal with this issue in different ways: some have dozens of laws
addressing inequalities in various contexts, others only have a few; some
have instigated one overarching institution meant to monitor all inequality
issues, others have separate institutions for the inequalities they have deemed
relevant. All this makes Europe a kind of laboratory for comparative re-
search ðKrizsán, Skjeie, and Squires 2012Þ. As part of the QUING ðQuality
in Gender Equality PoliciesÞ project, for instance, a comparison was made
between the Netherlands and Belgium, simply asking whether the fact that
these countries have different kinds of institutions set up for equal treat-
ment makes a crucial difference to people who find themselves the victims
of intersecting inequalities ðVerloo et al. 2012Þ.8 In which institutional ar-
rangements are migrant women or other groups suffering from intersec-
tional inequalities better off? The answer in this analysis is that in both coun-
tries some progress has been made in paying attention to intersectionality.
Yet neither integrated institutions ðsuch as those in the NetherlandsÞ nor
integrated policy ðas in BelgiumÞ suffices to adequately tackle intersec-
tional inequality since in both cases there is a need to adapt the institutions
and to actively change existing routines and interpretations. Although ac-
tors matter in the sense that their creativity and engagement can make a
difference, they do face barriers; the existence of separate administrative
bodies, fragmented laws, and uneven protection in particular seem to con-
stitute barriers to fully applying intersectionality in practice.

8
See also http://www.quing.eu.

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904 y Verloo

Another demarginalization approach, in contrast, is rather more sub-

stantial or structural. This approach argues for intervention in the prin-
ciples and categories that underlie policy settings or movement strategies,
not just intervention in the measures taken on the basis of long-standing
ðoften sexist, racist, or homophobicÞ social, cultural, and political goals or
in the decisions movements and organizations make about new activities.9
A structural approach instead pleads for a kind of equality mainstream-
ing to alter societal structures that fix inequalities of various natures. These
structures almost always make distinctions between citizens. A historical
example would be the fact that in many places in Europe the right to vote
was once directly related to a certain minimum income. More contempo-
rary examples are the breadwinner principle in social security, higher in-
come standards for people of migrant origin who wish to marry someone
from a non-Western nation, or limiting access to in vitro fertilization pro-
cedures to women who are heterosexual or married. Inequality policies
cannot be effective if they merely stop discrimination by individuals. In-
equality can only truly be addressed if all parts of society are examined for
existing measures that enable exploitation or opportunity hoarding, for
the transfer of categorical pairs to other domains, and for the justifications
and adaptations involved in producing inequality ðTilly 1998Þ. One exam-
ple hits quite close to home: if we want to change the unequal gendered
division of high-power positions at universities, demanding rigorous equal-
ity in selection procedures will have less of an effect than changing the net-
works through which candidates are scouted. Only when we truly under-
stand the gender-specific ways in which the chances to be considered for
these positions are hoarded can better interventions be planned ðfor more a
detailed analysis of this, see Van den Brink, Benschop, and Jansen 2010Þ.
All European nations ðalongside many on other continentsÞ agreed to
implement gender mainstreaming when they took part in the Beijing
Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. This agreement entailed
that, before introducing any new policy or legislation, they would perform
studies to make sure the new policy or law would not contribute to gen-
der inequality. Fourteen years later, if there is one thing that has become
clear, it is that this approach, apart from being substantial and possibly
revolutionary, is utopian at best and extremely difficult to implement, to
say the least ðVerloo 2001; Walby 2005; Meier and Celis 2011Þ. To in-
troduce and implement something akin to equality mainstreaming or
intersectionality mainstreaming, as some argue for ðVerloo 2006; Lom-

9
This reasoning is parallel to Ange-Marie Hancock’s ð2009Þ argument for an untradi-
tional intersectional analysis of the 2008 US election.

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 905

bardo and Rolandsen Agustı́n 2012Þ, is therefore an ambition with simul-

taneously great potential in terms of content but low potential in terms of
its chances of realization.
One of the rare attempts at designing a form of mainstreaming that
includes multiple possibly intersecting inequalities is the evidence panel
model designed and tested in Wales ðParken 2010; Hankivsky and Cor-
mier 2011Þ. The multistrand approach in these evidence panels is intended
to engage with all relevant stakeholders, setting out a process of collab-
oratively mapping existing inequality, envisioning desired futures, road-
testing possible scenarios, and monitoring and evaluating outcomes. This
approach has been partially tested in Wales in the field of social care ðwith
only the first two steps undertakenÞ. The fact that it has only been tested
in part illustrates once more the problem of making such ambitious struc-
tural approaches viable.
There is also an occasional example of a handbook that outlines how
to address intersectionality in the development of violence prevention. Olaf
Stuve et al. ð2011Þ present a comprehensive handbook for the European
context with online tools for intersectional peer violence prevention. This
handbook provides a range of tools for trainers and social workers working
with adults and young adults. On the basis of expert interviews, the authors
identified intersections of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality as
crucial for dealing with peer violence, and these are the main focus of the
tools presented across a policy cycle, namely, the identification of needs and
the development and evaluation of new policies. As befitting a handbook,
its tone is optimistic and the demands comprehensive. There are no ac-
counts yet of its actual application.
The last approach for demarginalizing that I identified is procedural,
which does not focus on what to do but on how to actually shape the po-
litical process and on who should have a voice in this process. This approach
can be seen as a plea for a deepening or renewing democracy. At its heart,
this approach pleads for the inclusion of other often marginalized groups
in the decision-making process, often within the framework of delibera-
tive democracy. It remains to be seen, however, whether marginalized
groups can truly be heard in our current democratic system; power strug-
gles taking place outside the political system cannot be put between brackets
ðFraser 1990Þ.
Aside from questions about the possibilities, backgrounds, and conse-
quences of democracy renewal, the question I deem most relevant here
is the possibility for agonistic struggle in democracy ðSchmidt-Gleim and
Verloo 2003; Rummens 2009Þ. On a practical level, this implies attention
to the degree to which groups within civil society have the chance to con-

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906 y Verloo

tribute, more or less directly, to the design or implementation of policies

to fight inequality. Data from the QUING project ðKrizsán et al. 2009Þ
reveal great differences among how various EU member states refer to
groups of people in their legislative and policy documents, and there are
also differences in the voice and standing given to civil society groups de-
pending on the policy issues being studied. Across issues, the references
to involving civil society in consultation processes are lowest in discussions
of nonemployment ðpolicies that legitimize nonemployment as an exception
to the routine expectation of employment, such as pension and leave regula-
tion policiesÞ, followed by discussions of intimate citizenship and gender-
based violence. Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu ð2010Þ, building their
analysis of intersectionality on the politics of institutional policy rather
than on identity, show how in both the United Kingdom and France the
newly established equality institutions operate through a logic of separa-
tion that “severely curtails the institutional space available for ethnic minor-
ity groups to make complex and intersectional social justice claims” ð517Þ.
In the United Kingdom, the logic works through the treatment of various
marginalized minority positions as independent and unconnected, while
in France the logic separates antidiscrimination and integration to similar
effect.
Another aspect of the discussions of and contributions to this approach
attempts to understand the competition between movements—the term
used is the oppression olympics ðMartinez 1993Þ—and studies the possibil-
ities and problems inherent in forging coalitions between different move-
ments. Cross-movement politics is severely hindered by the opportunity-
hoarding mechanisms connected to category making. Elisabeth Cole ð2008Þ
believes that inequality interference causes both movements and policy mak-
ers to pay attention only to those people who, but for one characteristic—
gender, class, or sexuality—would be privileged in status. Her research not
only considers intersectional inequality but also includes a focus on privi-
lege as well as disadvantage and discrimination. Research has since shown
that competition between movements is certainly problematic and that in-
equality interference causes inequality to arise even within these move-
ments. Identity politics can clearly further boost the negative effects of com-
petition. Convincing findings have been presented by Dara Z. Strolovitch,
who analyzed the policy advocacy of US organizations that represent mar-
ginalized groups. Combining quantitative analysis of original data from a
survey of organizations with information from in-depth interviews, she
found that organizations are substantially less active when it comes to issues
affecting disadvantaged subgroups than they are when it comes to address-
ing issues that affect more advantaged subgroups. In spite of sincere desires

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 907

to represent disadvantaged members, organizations downplay the impact

of such issues and frame them as narrow and particularistic in their effect,
while framing issues affecting advantaged subgroups as if they affect a ma-
jority of their members and have a broad and generalized impact. Conse-
quently, issues affecting advantaged subgroups receive considerable at-
tention regardless of the breadth of their impact, whereas issues affecting
disadvantaged subgroups do not ðStrolovitch 2006Þ. However, her study
also found that some organizations do speak extensively and effectively on
behalf of intersectionally disadvantaged subgroups of their constituencies.
What distinguishes these organizations from those that fail to provide ef-
fective representation of intersectionally disadvantaged groups is a set of
principles and practices that Strolovitch ð2007Þ labels “affirmative advo-
cacy.” Affirmative advocacy principles and practices recognize that equi-
table representation requires proactive efforts to overcome entrenched bi-
ases persisting against marginalized groups and to create decision-making
rules that elevate issues affecting disadvantaged minorities on organizational
agendas.
Movements are always shaped by their alliances and the connections they
make when acquiring the means to advocate their cause. Back in 1987,
Judith Adler Hellmann showed that, in the case of the Italian women’s
movement, different alliances at local levels caused organizations to take
their activism in very different directions ð1987Þ. She makes it clear that
alliances are rooted in both the material ðe.g., spaces to hold meetingsÞ and
the discursive ðsharing certain ideasÞ. Framing—that is, the specific way a
movement or policy defines the problem, how it came into being, and who
is responsible for its resolution ðVerloo 2007; Lombardo, Meier, and Ver-
loo 2009Þ—is a crucial element in the formation or obstruction of alliances
since overlapping problem definitions form the discursive basis of any alli-
ance ðFerree 2009Þ. Divergent framing often works to obstruct alliances.
Davina Cooper ð2004Þ provides a powerful example of how disagreement
over the “problem” of the dichotomous character of gender hinders any
cooperation between the women’s and transgender movements. In cross-
movement politics, identity politics is a negative force. According to Cole
ð2008Þ, successful coalitions are not based on shared identities but on shar-
ing a similarly marginalized relationship to power.10 She also notes that ef-
fective coalitions address power differences within the movements them-
selves. Cole cites as a best case scenario the American March for Women’s
Lives, which at first was only planned to address abortion and the right to
choose but later, in a successful attempt to include African American women,

10
This echoes Iris Marion Young’s ð1995Þ concept of seriality, inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre.

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908 y Verloo

was broadened to address a larger set of reproductive rights ðthe right to

have children, to retain custody, etc.Þ, changing the makeup of the organi-
zation in the process.
A recent study on the intersection between class, gender, gender iden-
tity, and sexual orientation in the 15M movement in Spain also focuses on
factors that are important in shaping the potential joint framing of social
problems.11 Using an analysis of documents produced by the movement,
participant observation, discussion groups in Madrid and Barcelona, and
interviews, Marta Cruells and Sonia Ruiz ð2012Þ conclude that two orga-
nizational factors play a crucial role. They show that the systematic par-
ticipation of certain ðgroups of Þ activists is a key factor in producing in-
tersectional frames and discourses, explaining the presence and absence
of discourses in terms of the presence or absence of activists ðe.g., gender
identity and sexuality activists and frames present, religious- and ethnic-
group activists and frames absentÞ. The presence or absence of certain
ðgroups of Þ activists is in turn produced by the openness or closedness of
what Cruells and Ruiz call “nodes,” organizational formats for different
kinds of assemblies within the 15M movement. Hence, the main questions
of studies in the procedural approach concern the factors that produce
different coalition potentials, thereby overcoming a focus on identity pol-
itics.

Conclusion: The potential and limitations of the four approaches

This article began by highlighting the limited possibilities of policies ad-
dressing the ðreÞproduction of inequalities, arguing that there are power-
ful mechanisms that prevent equality policies from being effective in push-
ing equality forward and that lead them to reproduce or sustain inequality
instead ðTilly 1998Þ. The questions resulting from the theoretical reflection
in the first sections of this article were: How does each of the approaches
affect equal treatment and inclusion of intersectional groups ðand persons
subject to multiple forms of discriminationÞ? How do they affect strategies
of reversal or calls for the equal valuation of different contributions? To
what degree can each approach displace categories that are fundamental to
reproducing inequality, and to what degree is there a visible development

11
Similar to the Occupy movement in the United States, the 15M movement, which draws
its name from its starting date on May 15, 2011, presents a broad network of claims for social
justice and radical democracy as well as the intense convergence of struggles for equality
ðCruells and Ruiz 2012, 5Þ.

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 909

of displacement as a strategy? To what degree can intersectional persons

and groups contribute to the empowerment of intersectionally situated
persons and groups, and how does this empowerment escape the negative
effects of identity politics?
The first approach, the reactive approach, joins Tilly in calling for an
analysis of how exactly this happens and in transferring the information
about the results of such analyses to policy makers and movement activists
so they can be resisted. A reactive approach could be useful in policy mak-
ing as part of an intersectionality impact assessment ðLombardo and Ro-
landsen Agustı́n 2012Þ or any evaluation of previous policies by policy in-
siders or outsiders. Under conditions of dedemocratization in Europe
ðVerloo 2011; Walby 2011Þ and governments opposed to equality for cer-
tain groups ðsuch as Muslims and RomaÞ, such reactive exposure of stig-
matization and marginalization could aim to trigger a spiraling sequence
of events that might improve social justice and human rights ðRisse and
Ropp 1999Þ. Within movements, this approach could also be helpful as
part of a reflexive evaluation of previous and current practices. As the reactive
approach is an oppositional one, it can afford to choose any of the three
equality perspectives and can choose a fundamental focus on categorical
displacement. While this appears to be a strength, its oppositional charac-
ter means that this approach has no easy link to implementation or trans-
lation into action and therefore can only be empowering if groups that are
affected by intersectional inequality are involved in the analysis.
It is harder to assess the merits of the three approaches that attempt
to counter inequality-reproducing mechanisms, partly because they put
different sets of stakeholders in the spotlight and partly because they are
based on different goals. For the pragmatic approach, the stakeholders are
lawyers, legal advocates, and legislators, who are given an alternative to the
endless splitting of laws to treat different inequalities and the infinite mak-
ing of subcategories. It would seem that this approach will resonate more
with inclusion perspectives than with displacement or reversal perspectives.
The pragmatic approach is based on stretching existing laws and regulations
so that intersectional inequality, in the form of justice for intersectional
categories of people, can be addressed. As such it is vulnerable to the dis-
cursive dynamics of “stretching” that can be negative ðwatering down the
focus on gender or another inequalityÞ or positive ða more intersectional
development of gender; Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009Þ. Classic
power mechanisms, such as preexisting resources or decision-making ac-
cess, can be expected to determine whether the outcome will be positive
or negative. Given the dominance of nonintersectional equality institu-

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910 y Verloo

tions and laws, the power conditions will not necessarily be favorable for
intersectional outcomes.
For the structural approach, the stakeholders are civil servants and pol-
icy makers but also researchers who could expose the ways certain policies
are based on categories that might be eliminated or neutralized in future
policies and explore and outline how that can be done. Whether this ap-
proach can actually deliver on its structural character will largely depend on
the ambition and power of the stakeholders. As with gender mainstream-
ing, which is also seen as a structural approach, policy reality can be ex-
pected to be watered down compared to the original visions. In a techno-
cratic form, empowerment is unlikely, while in a more participatory form
ðsuch as the evidence panelÞ, empowerment seems a possibility.
For the procedural approach, a wider set of stakeholders comes into
view. When it comes to democracy renewal, politicians and active citizens,
as well as nongovernmental organizations, are on the demanding side,
while policy makers and legislators can scrutinize the regulations and rou-
tines of democratic practices for how they channel certain categories in
and others out of democratic deliberations and struggles. Cross-movement
politics are deeply embedded in political opportunities and therefore also
shaped by the possibilities they have. To make progress they would need
not only the attention and motivation of movement activists ðwho could
have a stronger sense of intersecting interestsÞ but could also profit from
opportunity structures that would offer fewer incentives for competition
and more for cooperation across movements. Here, too, further research
could analyze the interplay between the incentives incorporated in certain
policies and the decisions made by movements addressing various inequal-
ities. Such research could be very beneficial to creating more productive
cross-movement politics, thereby decreasing intersectional inequalities. A
crucial element seems to be that cooperation and alliances are facilitated
by shared framing and therefore also by a focus on issues rather than iden-
tities. Insofar as movements are strongly identity based and focused on the
empowerment of groups that face discrimination based on their identities,
strategies of inclusion are more likely to be pursued and to succeed, while
strategies of reversal, which prioritize one identity, seem difficult to com-
bine with an intersectional focus, and strategies that displace categories
seem unlikely to be incorporated if identity is a strong base.
Department of Political Sciences and Institute for Gender Studies
Radboud University Nijmegen
and
Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna

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 S I G N S Summer 2013 y 911

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