As part of the series of Public Lectures: 'Intersectionality, space and conflict: transforming identities and gendered group boundaries'

Speaker: Professor Dagmar Schiek, Queen’s University Belfast

(School of Law – Jean Monnet ad personam Chair of the Centre for European and Transnational Legal Studies)

Abstract

A growing trend in socio-legal literature argues that intersectionality may be useful for sociological or political analysis, but should be replaced by other concepts for legal analysis, such as capacious notions of gender equality, for example. This paper argues that intersectionality is necessary to adequately focus Anti-discrimination Law, through giving adequate recognition to each dimension of inequality in specific discrimination cases. The practical value of the concept of ‘nodes’ (Schiek 2011) will be demonstrated through analysing three pending cases before the ECJ: in 2 cases concerning exclusion of women on the grounds of wearing a headscarf AGs Kokott and Sharpstone do not use intersectionality, thus de-recognising the gendered and ethnic aspects of the exclusion, while AG Kokott uses intersectionality to support the claims of a male homosexual couple relating to pensions.

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