London Black Women’s Project is an organisation FOR BLACK WOMEN, BY BLACK WOMEN.
We consider intersectionality as critical to our existence.
Intersectionality helps us to understand that different forms and experiences of oppression exist together and are interconnected for BME women and girls. This understanding is critical to the way we develop and deliver our services because it provides us with historical relevancy for the work we do, promotes concepts of equality and justice through transformative space that is, we must address social problems structurally, and the recovery of voice, identity and representation are imbedded in our approach. BME women and girls are represented and reflected in organisation, work and governance. We are not an add-on.
The idea that there is no hierarchy of oppression and that the lives of black women intersect and interconnect in various ways and degrees is critical to intersectionality. Most literature defines the intersection as one of race, class and gender. We acknowledge that there are other oppressions faced by women including oppression expressed as homophobia due to sexual orientation, specific discrimination faced by disabled women, oppression experienced by women of first nations and indigenous communities, and oppression against women as a result of their migrant status among other experiences of oppression and situations facing women. Within the context of intersectionality, there is scope and reference to incorporate a wider understanding of oppression along the same lines that is, there is no hierarchy of oppression.
Intersectionality is relevant to LBWP as an analytical tool, a framework and discourse for understanding oppression affecting the lives of black women and girls. It helps us to develop services so that delivery frameworks consider the intersecting realities affecting the lives of BME women and girls. Critical to this framework is that ‘the piecemeal, single issue response to VAWG’ expressed in racial terms against certain communities does not meet the needs of BME women and girls. Intersectionality suggests that a framework of holistic provision developed from the perspective of historical relevancy is best suited to meet the needs of BME women and girls experiencing VAWG.
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We are here to support women and girls. We can help with information, housing and homelessness, safe space, healing and recovery through art, advice and advocacy, keyworking and therapeutic support.
Contact Details
London Black Women’s Project
661 Barking Road | Plaistow | London | E13 9EX
T: 020 8472 0528