Peer reviewed journal articles by Ashlee Christoffersen
Contemporary British History, Oct 11, 2023
European journal of politics and gender, Apr 25, 2024
sozialpolitik.ch, 2023
Researchers, policymakers and practitioners have long struggled with how to apply the Black femin... more Researchers, policymakers and practitioners have long struggled with how to apply the Black feminist theory of intersectionality. While the term intersectionality is commonly appropriated by white feminism, the first, and most difficult, step to operationalising intersectionality is to unseat the dominance of a unitary gender lens – or any other hierarchy – for understanding social inequalities. In an intersectional approach, relevant entry points and target groups are context-specific and based on the empirical evidence of where the greatest intersecting inequalities lie. This article will consider how to understand intersectionality, and how it can be applied in policy and practice. I argue that (1) addressing the needs and interests of those who are most marginalised, within the context of (2) cross-cutting issues affecting differently marginalised groups, is the most effective way to mitigate inequalities.
Social Politics, Dec 29, 2022
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021
Canadian Public Administration, 2021
Policy & Politics, 2021
The recent intensification of both intersecting inequalities and demands for change calls for an ... more The recent intensification of both intersecting inequalities and demands for change calls for an intersectional approach which can account for the complexity of factors and processes structuring social relations, risk and outcomes. Yet intersectionality is thought to be a challenging theory to apply, and represents a puzzle to policymakers and practitioners navigating policy area and equality strand silos. Based on the first empirical study internationally to explore how both practitioners and policymakers themselves understand how to operationalise ‘intersectionality’, this article establishes different ways in which the theory of intersectionality is applied in practice. ‘Intersectionality’ is understood and used in five contradicting ways in UK equality organising and policy, an integral insight because some of these advance intersectional justice while others serve to further entrench inequalities. This typology is proposed as a heuristic to analyse the ways in which intersectio...
Community Development Journal , 2020
This article explores the barriers that UK equality third sector organizations practising communi... more This article explores the barriers that UK equality third sector organizations practising community development face when seeking to operationalize intersectionality. It is based on research with three networks of equality organizations (racial justice, feminist, disability rights, LGBTI rights, refugee organizations, etc.) in cities in England and Scotland employing mixed qualitative methods. Barriers to operationalizing intersectionality including power relationships with the state, challenges relating to neoliberal austerity, and competing discourses of identity-based ‘equalities’ and socioeconomic ‘inequality’ were identified. The article argues that equality third sector organizations are significantly hampered in their attempts to operationalize intersectionality by the low status they occupy vis-à-vis the state and by neoliberal austerity contexts.
British Politics June 2019, Volume 14, Issue 2, pp 141–161, 2019
In an increasing number of jurisdictions, gender mainstreaming approaches have been supplemented ... more In an increasing number of jurisdictions, gender mainstreaming approaches have been supplemented with attention to other equality areas, including race and disability. The UK is among the most advanced countries in mainstreaming ‘equality’, with nine equality areas protected in law and a joined-up equality infrastructure. Among the nations of the UK there are, however, important distinctions in implementation of the law. In this article, we present findings of cross sectoral qualitative research (with academic, public and third sectors) aimed at understanding the progress of equality mainstreaming in the UK some years on from the implementation of the Equality Act 2010, with a specific focus on the devolved administrations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We identify areas of progress as well as barriers to change and proposed solutions for the future.
Ethics and Social Welfare Volume 12, 2018 - Issue 4, 2018
This essay explores ethical issues in researching ‘intersectionality’, focusing in particular on:... more This essay explores ethical issues in researching ‘intersectionality’, focusing in particular on: positionality in relation to topic and research relationships; and the relationship of intersectional positionality to ‘insider/outsider’ status. I argue that reflection on intersectional positionality is a key ethical consideration of social research, and propose some guiding questions for this purpose.
British Politics , 2011
Gender mainstreaming (GM) has been hailed as a ‘potentially revolutionary concept’ a significant ... more Gender mainstreaming (GM) has been hailed as a ‘potentially revolutionary concept’ a significant policy innovation, and even a paradigm shift for thinking about gender equality in policymaking processes (Rees). Despite the rhetoric about GM, there are growing concerns about its ability to realize its perceived potential. Increasingly calls are being made to evaluate GM to better understand the complexity of factors inhibiting or leading to its promotion and operationalization. In some jurisdictions, the need to move from GM to equality or diversity mainstreaming has been recognized and alternative frameworks to GM are in their nascent stages of conceptualization and implementation. The purpose of this article is to examine GM in the UK context, especially in light of recent developments in equality law and policy. In so doing, the article will present data from 30 qualitative interviews conducted between 2007 and 2008 with feminist academics, representatives from women's/equality-seeking organizations and policy decision-makers across the United Kingdom, including the devolved states. Together with textual analyses of key government documents and reports, the article seeks to illuminate some of the current tensions between gender and diversity within equality policy and to consider what their implications may be for the future of GM.
Critical Public Health , 2008
Despite Canada's leadership in the field of population health, there have been few successes in r... more Despite Canada's leadership in the field of population health, there have been few successes in reducing the country's health inequities. There is an increasing recognition that regardless of the progress made to date, significant gaps remain in comprehending fully the root causes of inequities, including the complex ways in which the determinants of health relate, intersect and mutually reinforce one another. Calls are being made to draw on the theoretical insights of critical social science perspectives to rethink the current framing of health determinants. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical project of population health by exploring the innovative paradigm of intersectionality to better understand and respond to the ‘foundational’ causes of illness and disease, which the health determinants perspective seeks to identify and address. While intersectionality has taken hold among health researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, the transformative potential of this approach in the context of health determinants is largely unexamined.
Peer reviewed book chapters by Ashlee Christoffersen
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
Bristol University Press eBooks, May 23, 2024
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Peer reviewed journal articles by Ashlee Christoffersen
Peer reviewed book chapters by Ashlee Christoffersen
A second contextual reading of the ‘difference turn’ places it in a larger intellectual programme of postmodernism and poststructuralism, a programme that is critical of, among others, essentialism generally, singular fixed identity, and the possibility of collective political agency.
The following paper will draw on two testimonial texts by Latin American women activists to .... . In a longer version of this paper...? offer a critique of hegemonic poststructural / postmodernist contemporary Western feminist theory, a critique that draws on the experience and analysis of very ‘differently’ located women. I argue that despite Western feminism’s so-called difference turn, in fact what these differences mean and their implications for any kind of feminist praxis is not only largely unexplored but problematically theorised. While my focus will be the ‘differences’ of ‘class’ and ‘nation’, this is not to suggest that other ‘differences’, including race / ethnicity, ability, and sexuality, could not form the starting point for similar critiques. However, as I will demonstrate below ‘class’ and ‘nation’ are both very salient concepts in thinking about the particular writings that will be highlighted here. Moreover, as the predominant model under which feminist praxis is envisioned, and as a particularly important concept to think about when discussing the relationships between feminist theory and women’s activism, ‘solidarity’ will form the focus of my final section. I further argue that the lenses of ‘class’, ‘nation’, and ‘solidarity’ through which I will analyse the writings that will be presented here, are best understood from an anti-racist Marxist , rather than a poststructural, feminist perspective. My aim is not simply to compare the uses of these concepts in poststructural feminist theory and the writings of Latin American women activists; rather, I aim to challenge the peripheralisation of anti-racist Marxist thought within contemporary Western feminist theory by not only demonstrating its salience for this particular analytical project but also for thinking through women’s “differences” and their implications. As Teresa Ebert argues, ‘As long as… [postmodern] feminism…follows the feminist imperative of praxis … [it] is pulled into debates over the actual conditions of the lives of women’ (1995: 116). My motivation for this paper lies in a desire to see changes in feminist pedagogy in order that it not only re-engages with women’s activism, but addresses the challenges posed to its epistemologies by the ‘differences’ that motivate that activism.
Again and again, theorists and activists representing various schools of feminist thought try to come up with a hegemonic definition of “authentic” female sexuality, the ways it is (or should be) experienced and its acceptable representations.
These are old debates but as even the current conference demonstrates, they have continuing relevance today although terminology has shifted. We don’t hear about the “sex wars” anymore but new terms, like for instance “sexualisation” and “pornification”, especially of childhood, have entered public discourse.
Our concern in this paper is to outline and critique the persistent anti-porn position among UK feminist groups; to offer a critique of dominant sex-positive attitudes as lacking a racialised class analysis; and to offer some thoughts toward a more useful and relevant perspective on women’s diverse sexualities, a perspective that moves beyond a binary.
Our point of departure is the conviction that an anti-porn feminist politics has in several instances hijacked the name of ‘feminism’ in the UK in recent years.
For instance the ‘London Feminist Network’, a name indicating a broad, inclusive feminist politics, takes a specific anti-porn position, authorising it as the only valid feminist stance.
Moreover, a specific anti-porn feminism influenced government policy under New Labour, partly by New Labour feminists themselves including Government Equalities Office Minister Maria Eagle , and is currently influential to government policy on so-called ‘sexualisation.’
As Gayle Rubin wrote some twenty seven years ago, “The anti-pornography movement and its avatars have claimed to speak for all of feminism. Fortunately, they do not” (29).
We welcome the fact that because the word “feminism” is not a trademark and “anti-porn feminism” is not the only collocation permitted, in 2011 some women come up (the horror!) with concepts such as “feminist porn awards”.
However, our main criticism of so-called ‘sex-positive’ feminism is that it often is uncritical of capitalist frameworks, as well as of the concept of choice, and can advocate an untenable libertarian entrepreneurialism as a solution to emancipating women’s sexual desire.
This essay is concerned with the way in which maintaining the health of the population, far from being a purely benevolent endeavour on the parts of states and other public health institutions, or even an endeavour suited to states’ interests, is not only about maintaining health as such. It is also about allowing some to die. These processes need not be understood as contradictory. Indeed, it may be argued that they codetermine one another. First, I will present Foucault’s account of biopower and the rise of a hegemonic biopolitics. Second, I will examine how, from this perspective, maintaining the health of the population entails allowing some to die, and the ways that those who are not ‘made to live’ are at the same time disposable and necessary to sustain biopower. Finally, I will examine the contradictions in the post-war public health regime that illustrate the value of applying this critical perspective, rather than viewing health provision as unequivocally ‘good’.
This book examines the use of intersectionality in UK policy and practice, with a specific focus on NGOs, outlining five distinct interpretations of intersectional practice and their implications.
Drawing from extensive fieldwork with a diverse range of equality organizations, this book offers invaluable insights into how policy and practice can be organized in more (and less) intersectional ways.