Notes de cours
Gender, Diversity and Politics
- Établissement
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Complete notes based on lessons and slides.
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Gender, diversity and politicsLecture 1
Alles wat vermeld werd, staat op slides.
Exam: 5 open questions.
Lecture 2
Meyrem Almaci
No slides for this lecture. Topic: politics in an intersectional manner.
8th child of 11. Grew up in a migrant family, parents were uneducated. Meyrem grew up
“arm maar proper” in a socially economical deprived environment but with strong
societal ties in a small Turkish community. She started school without speaking a single
word of Dutch. She started wearing a veil. The kids were the bridgebuilders between the
two worlds. She was expected to do BSO but did ASO anyways behind her parents back.
Then she started Groen in Sint-Gillis-Waas since it didn’t exist yet. She focused on Banking,
where only men ruled up until then. She was a party president for almost eight years.
Billions of people left behind in the story of globalization and ow turning to populism: it’s
up to every individual to make their successes and the government should be minimal.
Now we feel we cannot tackle challenges on our own. You can only get out if we have
systemic changes, and they are occurring as we speak. We are in the middle of the fight
between the old and the new.
There is a cancel culture that works hard to have narratives on ambitious women.
Persvrijheidindex is showing it’s getting worse with freedom of speech, and the debates
on social media are having an impact on journals, because they don’t want the reactions,
so you get a self-censorship, which is the aim of those groups.
We could change our constitution. Social media should take other policies. Why is this so
important?
A board of Ministers that is gender balanced: it’s the first time right now. Incredible we
had to wait so long. Now, we need to persist and keep on moving forward, organize social
media and keep track. The old world is fighting for survival by all means. F.e. Elections in
Italy.
Lecture of one hour but not much to write about. More an inspiring story.
Latifa (We Decolonize VUB)
Graduated two years ago. Studied at VUB. She started this as a student. There’s a library
called We decolonize VUB about antiracism and anti-decolonization. It’s also about
community, getting together, organize events based on the knowledge and needs they
have. She’s not a part of the VUB but she’s working together with the students.
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,Bringing these two together
People with a certain background are reduced to that background. For example, you were
born poor so that’s your area of expertise.
Question of Prof: One of the things mentioned during the talk is the choice for the
commission and not wanting to comply with the expectations. There was a PhD about
Muslims living in Antwerp. What makes you feel represented was the research questions.
Your name was mentioned often, by whom do we feel represented? The main reason why
is because of the roots, you don’t hide them, and you don’t trade them, you stick to your
identity, but at the same time you profiled yourself the way you did.
Response: it was never a plan. When someone tells me to do A, I tend to do B. It was
something from the heart and the mind. But what in the perspective of citizens?
Identity is lasagna and not just a color. Lasagna is good because you take a spoon
full of every layer. You don’t just eat the sauce. I’m Flemish, Belgian, Turkish and
European.
Identity politics: Belgium has gender quota; we also have identity politics in terms of
regionality (Dutch speaking and French speaking). Of course, no official quota for ethnic
minorities, but there’s an informal rule (political suicide if you’re all white). We’ve seen
an evolution but has the idea changed that if we’re talking about identity, we’re not talking
about the traditional hard-core criteria about what a good politician is? Do we still see it
as separate?
ID politics is used as a weapon in order to delay the norms as they were, due to
BLM for example. They look at science, on how big companies perform with more
diverse boards, they are more successful, diversity works in an economical way.
Politics is mostly populated by elites, so they have to question their selves.
Meyrem is saying ‘I’m taking a step towards you’ and Latifa is saying ‘I’m letting you come
to me’. Is this generational, why is this?
Latifa: the ideology that in Belgium we’ve lost a lot of time explaining what racism
is, it’s structural. In doing that, you lose time to do what is needed. If we do what
we do, we have an agency now, let’s claim it to the maximum.
Meyrem: politicians have to be bridgebuilders in a diverse society. It was not a
choice to be a bridgebuilder, I became one, not by choice. And I embraced it.
Do you think quota work for racialized minorities at VUB?
The problem is: Meyrem came on her own strength and now people will see this as
an excuse, but we never talk about that. that’s why I’m not a fan of quota, it’s the
last resort. At this pace, in 900 years, maybe, according to UN. Meyrem cannot cope
with the fact that it would take another couple of 100 years. The first rights coming
under pressure are these of minorities.
Extreme right populism, the achievements and work they do: is this a real threat to the
inclusion project? All those groups asking for, fighting for social justice. How big of a threat
is it really?
It’s a real threat, it’s easy to fight without rules at all. You can attack people on traits
they cannot change (the fact I’m a woman, or Turkish) and you can keep
delegitimizing people. Reductionism is close to essentialism. The fight of extreme
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, right is easier when the era is shifting, rapid and violent changes. It’s easy to find a
lot of false prophets, who exploit anxiety of people. Politics is much more about
emotion than it is about rationality, the mind. People are not rational beings, and
politics today is hysterical. There is so much fear, people are looking for a sense of
belonging, it’s easy to exploit those emotions by politics, where you use classic
feminists where you say the problem is not us, you use racism to try to beat sexism,
it’s not men, it’s Muslims. Then again, the men as a box, not the structures
underneath that are patriarchal. The new fascist struggle really hard and get into
fierce discussions when you call them fascists. The people not interested in politics
are the ones voting for extreme rights.
We see it in politics, we’ve referred to Italy, USA, Poland, Hungary, countries where there’s
backlash already happening or about to happen. What about the university? Do you
experience the backlash?
Latifa: yes, not as much as you would expect. When people don’t pay your wage,
there’s only so much they can say. Some events are for black women only and then
I get the note I’m polarizing. But I don’t work for VUB. Extreme right has become
mainstream which is scary.
Meyrem: everyone needs a sense of belonging. Why do I have to explain myself if
I’m going to a Turkish wedding? It’s tiring not to be able to be yourself.
(Ghettofication).
What is a hopeful evolution in your experience?
Latifa: the fire the students have, they are claiming their space, some people are
listening.
Meyrem: Now, even internationally, there’s a lot of new people that weren’t there
before, that cannot shut up and people are trying to cancel them. They take up a
leading role, they are telling and paving a path of what they believe should change
in society. It’s difficult to cancel them all. Something has shifted, extreme right is
using the narratives against us, such as woke. The new ideas are established from
below. There is a change in position. There are more voices, more possibilities to
connect. Change of an era is always a period of turmoil.
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, Lecture 3: political theory
Preparation of this course:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZjb5zynkB4: about benefits coupled to
your marital status.
- https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/critical-race-theory-mari-
matsuda?rq=Matsuda%20: distinction between the individual and the system. We
need to work on the individual level but also tackle systemic institutional issues.
There are notes under the slides made by Prof.!
We will zoom in on some big theories that underpin quite a few of the other classes that
will follow. We’re not only interested in the female bodies but also the female minds in
politics. One of the goals of gender quota is to change political agendas and generate more
attention for women’s issues. When they get into parliament, and then say, ‘and rightly
so’, if they then say ‘I’m not representing women’ once elected. Then we end up where we
started. There is a tension. If they wouldn’t do the job, nobody would. It became an extra
burden put on them. then you have these tricky situations where political parties and
voters put expectations on you, the media does as well, and how do you deal with that,
especially thinking about getting reelected? They do represent ethnic minorities by not
representing them!
Today’s topic: political theory. A very basic definition of politics: it’s resolving conflicts
regarding who gets what, when and how. What: not only material goods, such as wages,
but also immaterial goods, like who has the right to education, marry, vote. Also, this issue
is that politics is not only resolving who gets what when and how, also occurring in your
family, student house, it’s everywhere. When talking about institutions, the formal ones,
this implies there are informal institutions as well. The formal ones are the written rules
of lawmaking for instance. Informal ones are the norms, habits, values. When talking
about institutions of formal politics, don’t think of buildings alone, but we’ll come back to
this. we also talk about how we think things should be done.
Political theory is that branch thinking about how things should be done in answering the
question who gets what when and how. The ideal, how things should be. The key concept
in that body of thought about how it should look like is the concept of the good life. This
is full citizenship, having access to all rights and obligations, that is the good life, the best
way one can live. Political theory discusses what that good life looks like and who is
qualified to be considered as a full citizen with full rights and all obligations coming with
it. who is entitled to that good life and how should that be organized? This is a value-based
activity, it’s about an ideal, you have to make explicit what the values are that constitute
that ideal, such as solidarity, and this needs to be enacted through practices, this can be
done in various ways, such as quota, putting it in the constitution. There are also different
understandings of what equality actually is. Do we understand equality as something at
the start, equal opportunity, or is it at the end, the outcomes? Two examples of how values
van be differently implemented and interpreted. The outcomes can be very diverse. Also,
what is considered as the ideal? This evolves through time because political theorists
build upon each other and are confronted with different realities and this is how thoughts
evolve, about what the good life is. This is very abstract, which is why we see examples.
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