" To approach poverty in relation to the mechanisms of intersectional inequality which generate and intensify it (racism, classism, heterosexism, age, geographical location)." Muñoz p.45
In Intersecting Violences Patricia Muñoz highlights an analytical framework that expands the meaning of poverty beyond economic determinants to incorporate social, political and cultural dimensions. Prejudice and stigma against poor women, women with disabilities, women who are HIV positive and lesbian women are common attitudes throughout Latin America. This ‘structural intersectional vulnerability analysis’ (Muñoz p.30) makes visible the discrimination against women who are disabled and have different needs and who are possibly more vulnerable to violence than able-bodied women. Their type of disability and their reliance on others for support also affect their access to services and to justice for crimes committed against them (blind women, for example, may not be able to physically identify their aggressors.)
Muñoz also refers to studies that describe how lesbian women are affected by VAW differently from heterosexual women, and also to the shadow report on Global Rights (2006) that criticises the Honduran government for failing to protect the human rights of lesbian women. In the era of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, sexuality and sexual rights have come out of the shadows and become more central as a development and human rights issue. Women’s sexual rights to bodily integrity, to consensual sex and to have intimate relationships of their own choosing, are often denied to lesbian women and transgender people who face discrimination, social exclusion, ostracism and violence as a result of their sexual identity.
In this section we provide examples of three organisations
working in different ways to address stigma, exclusion and to support
women organising around these different identities.
VAW at the crossroads of identity and discrimination |
FEMUCADI
Nicaragua  |
