‘We are in Complete Agreement’: The Diversity Issue, Disagreement and Change in the European Women's Lobby

Abstract

This article analyses how leading members of a social movement organization talk about a controversial topic and looks at how the leaders relate to internal disagreement. By using the issue of women's diversity as point of departure, the article shows how European Women's Lobby (EWL) leaders engage in boundary making vis-à-vis multidimensional equality claims. The interviewed leaders identify women's issues as a majority issue and contrast them with minority issues and women's diversity. It is suggested that the arguments applied by the EWL leaders are similar to those historically articulated when issues such as women's emancipation were marginalized within the traditional class-based labour movement. The presence of diverging opinions among the leaders with regard to how this controversial issue should be framed is subsequently used as an empirical illustration of the dynamism in movement claims. The conclusion of the article suggests that multidimensional equality claims are controversial and disputed within the organization, but that differences in opinion among the leaders coexist and form part of a continuously on-going framing process.

Keywords:

• European Women's Lobby
• diversity
• disagreement
• frames
• SMO

Notes

1. The issue of universalism has been broadly debated (see, for instance, Olson, 2008), but for the purpose of this article I understand the Universalist notion as a stance that focuses on what is common and defines justice as a majority claim within a movement.

2. EUROSPHERE is a sixth framework project funded by the EU which aims to ‘create innovative perspectives on the European public spheres and to identify the conditions that enable or undermine the articulation of inclusive European Public Spheres’ (http://eurospheres.org).

3. Politically, the term ‘diversity management’ emerged on the EU agenda parallel to ‘gender mainstreaming’, thus denoting equality measures or discrimination based on ‘other’ grounds than gender (Squires, 2005). The subsequent shift from a pursuit of ‘equality’ to a broader emphasis on ‘equality and diversity’ has by some been interpreted as a positive policy response to the theoretical concern for ‘intersectionality’ (Squires, 2005). Others have interpreted the term more sceptically because of its roots in corporate human resource management and perceived it as a term related to economic productivity rather than social justice (Squires, 2005, p. 378).

4. See http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cf/ict2010/person.cfm?eventid = ict2010&personid = 29037 (accessed 28 February 2012).

5. The concept of intersectionality is widely used in academia (see, for instance, Lombardo & Verloo, 2009). Crenshaw has been particularly central in theorizing the concept as an escape from the problems of identity politics. She has applied it as ‘the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experience’ (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1244). In line with its status as ‘all purpose anti-hero’ (Bickford, 1997) ‘identity politics’ is criticized for political fragmentation and essentialisation also by feminist scholars advocating for intersectional approaches (Phoenix & Pattynama, 2006).

6. See http://www.womenlobby.org/site/module_cate.asp?DocID = 5&v1ID = &RevID = &namePage = &pageParent = &DocID_sousmenu =  (accessed 12 February 2010).

7. Of course, diversity is far from the only question dividing women's organizations in Europe. For example, divisions between radical, socialist and liberal feminists have been present for decades (Brah & Phoenix, 2004).