This week I chanced upon a brilliant webinar organised by Harmony Alliance.
It featured: Jatinder Kaur, Faduma Jama, Laura Vidal, and Dr Trish Mitra-Kahn and ‘unpacked the power of language and challenged the framing of ‘complexity’ as something only relevant to particular manifestations of violence; highlighting the potential that this approach has to ‘othering’ individuals and communities.’
The discussion was moderated by Sana Ashraf (Senior Policy Officer, Harmony Alliance) and @maria.dimopoulos (Chair, Harmony Alliance).
There were countless points made of such value. I am in awe if the collective brilliance of these contributors whose professional and cultural experience informs essential systems review.
My key takeaways from the conversations included:
Experiences of violence across all cultures are complex but in rendering experiences of CALD women a factor of their cultural norms, reinforces the tired dichotomy of ‘us and them’, when in fact the premise of GBV is premised on shared paradigms of power and toxic masculinity.
Ergo, honour killings in the east are the intimate partner murders in the West- across borders and fuelled by the same issue.
Fixation on labels and categorisation of women’s experience of violence at the expense of actual intervention needs to be called out .
Culturally sensitive and responsive training for frontline workers -not online, but in person- should be mandatory
The human right to an interpreter for a CALD women in crisis should be a non negotiable entitlement
‘Invisibilisation’ is the muting, othering and diminishing of women’s humanity by the system; an organisational reaction demanding the invisibility of marginalised women survivors in order to maintain their insignificance.
Thank you Harmony Alliance, for this exceptional webinar. #endmisogyny #endpatriarchy #endviolenceagainstwomen #endfamilyviolence #diversitymatters #intersectionality #representationmatters #tasneemchopra #crossculturalconsultant
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