On 24 May, the Division for Gender Equality received Ms Djamila Ribeiro for a Gender Views session entitled "Black Feminism and Intersectionality: Why is it necessary?”
Ms Saniye Gülser Corat, UNESCO Director for Gender Equality, opened the session by welcoming the many participants and briefly introducing the guest of the day. Brazilian feminist activist, journalist and political philosophy researcher, Ms Ribeiro is one of the leading contemporary figures of black feminism.
A graduate of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, she wrote a master's thesis on the feminists Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, comparing them to the black female condition. Politically involved from an early age, MsRibeiro was also Deputy Secretary for Human Rights and Citizenship of the City of Sao Paulo between 2016 and 2017.
During this session, Ms Ribeiro first reviewed the definition of intersectionality before explaining how it affects black women and gender equality more broadly. Created in 1989, this concept and public policy tool explains that oppressions related to race, gender and classare linked and cannot be thought separately. Thus, Ms Ribeiro affirmed that in order to reflect on emancipatory outings, it was necessary to take into account these different identities and not to focus on a single identity at the risk of reinforcing other oppressions.
Illustrating her point by referring to her experience when working for the City of Sao Paulo, Djamila Ribeiro gave the example of a policy of trans-citizenship implemented by the city to think about public policies in favour of LGBT people.
At the end of her presentation, the participants had a Q&A session with Ms Ribeiro broadening the scope of the discussion on the universality of feminism, or on the existence of resistance coming from other feminist movements.