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  • Intersectionality in the Human Rights Legal Framework on Violence against Women: At the Centre or the Margins? by Lorena Sosa
  • Shreya Atrey (bio)
Lorena Sosa, Intersectionality in the Human Rights Legal Framework on Violence against Women: At the Centre or the Margins? ( Cambridge University Press 2017), ISBN No. 9781107172241, 288 pages.

This book is about international human rights norms with respect to violence against women. It is specifically concerned with finding norms relating to intersectionality to understand how vast or sparse is the protection against gender-based violence suffered not merely because of gender, but also because of race, color, ethnicity, religion, region, class, disability, sexual orientation etc. The book engages with this aim via three courses—first, setting out the theoretical and practical implications of intersectionality for violence against women; second, gauging how far these are incorporated in international human rights law; and finally, analyzing case studies of intersectional gender violence.

Lorena Sosa opens the book with a fitting thought: that violence against women in international law has primarily been understood in terms of gender. She shows, rightly so, that the category of "gender" has become increasingly problematic in that it embodies very specific understandings, including rigid boundaries between biological categories of male-female and a heteronormative character of patriarchy. Intersectionality, on the other hand, throws the diversity of experiences of gender-based violence in sharp relief. It fundamentally questions the idea that gender-based violence can be understood regardless of differences based on race, religion, caste, class, sexual orientation, disability etc. Sosa highlights the growing recognition of this idea in international human rights law in the last few decades and thus, the necessity of understanding what intersectionality is or does. Sosa offers this account in Chapter Two, which aims to serve as the theoretical guide for the legal analysis in the rest of the book. Essentially, she points to the overarching idea that while discrimination may not be fully captured by a single ground or personal characteristic, intersectionality may help appreciate interlocking systems of disadvantage. She supplements this idea with three propositions about intersectionality: that it highlights the socio-structural nature of inequality; that it is structural rather than individual; and that it creates new and different forms of discrimination. These propositions are further supplemented by a number of principles: that identity-categories in intersectionality are diverse from within; that these categories are constantly changing or dynamic; and that there is no necessary hierarchy between categories. While each of these overarching notions, propositions and principles [End Page 535] are attractive, Sosa does not offer them as either necessary or sufficient for a theoretical account of intersectionality. This though is a common complaint about intersectionality, that it lacks a certain analytical depth for being characterized as a theory at all,1 something which Sosa argues it certainly is. While I too would readily agree that intersectionality meets the standard of a coherent theory, more is required to be able to substantiate such a claim. Similarly, the justification for the typology of intersectionality theories, as divided into group-centered or dynamic-centered, may need to be spelled out. It may be that both group-based and systems-based approaches to intersectionality are equally plausible, but the natural question that arises is whether all approaches to intersectionality can be imagined as one or the other, or if there are approaches which do not necessarily fit either. The grounds-based approach of discrimination law, for example, may seem to refer to either or both at the same time—referring to certain disadvantaged groups or dynamics of disadvantage in turn or both of them together. In fact, Kimberlé Crenshaw's own work seems to do both, by referring to broader dynamics of oppression while focusing on Black women as a discrete group. Sosa's classification of Crenshaw's work as mainly categorical and lacking a systematic appreciation of the dynamics of disadvantage is thus suspect. A point often missed, is located in an important footnote in Crenshaw's 1991 piece, which is worth quoting in full:

I consider intersectionality a provisional concept linking contemporary politics with postmodern theory. In mapping the intersections of race and gender, the concept does engage dominant...

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