• The fear of being labelled gay or lesbian leads to the acting out of rigid gender roles in which assertion of male dominance through sexual harassment or sexual assault occurs;
  

• Blaming and punishing poor people for their own poverty and for society's social and economic problems reinforces the attitude that it is all right to treat people living in poverty as less than human. It suggests that the rights of poor people are less important than the rights of those who have money. Poor women's rights have always been vulnerable. They are now at risk even more with the dismantling of the welfare state. Women living in poverty do not have enough to afford adequate housing, food and clothing. They are at greater risk for homelessness, and women continue to stay in abusive relationships because they do not receive sufficient social assistance to make it a viable option to leave the relationship;

• Some women with disabilities are dependent on their partner's support, a circumstance abusers can use to reinforce their control. The abusive partner, for example, might perpetuate the myth that a woman with a disability is child-like by encouraging others to speak to him rather than to her, or never allowing her personal time with anyone, including professionals (such as physicians). His control tactics may be disguised as caring support. A woman may feel that she has no other options even if it means being abused.

• Speak out and confront oppression, since it contributes to violence;

• Recognize the ways in which we are implicated in perpetuating (forms of) oppression in other women's lives, through our race, class, sexual orientation, etc.;

• Learn, reflect on, and understand the patterns and effects of oppression in your own life and in the lives of others;

• Break the invisibility of privilege. Keep track of your own privilege. Analyze what you gain from racism, homophobia, able-ism, and what you lose from such systems of domination;

• Recognize and use the sources of power and resources available to you to work for change;

• Take responsibility for your actions.

Definitions

Classism:
A system of institutional practices and individual actions that allow a few people to control most of the wealth and power in society to the disadvantage of the majority of people.

Heterosexism:
Institutionalized policies and individual actions that promote a heterosexual lifestyle above all others. It assumes that a heterosexual pattern of loving is superior over all other patterns of loving and that a woman's life will be defined in relation to a man.

Racism:
Is to people of colour what sexism is to women. It is the assumption that one race is superior to another. It also assumes that the abilities of an individual are determined by their race.

Sexism:
An integral part of the social structure under which we live that exploits women and confers privileges to men over women.

Ableism:
Institutionalized practices and individual actions and beliefs that posit the able-body as the norm. It works to promote negative images of disAbled women, such as the myth that it is not possible for someone with a disability to have a positive and equal relationship.

Back to top

Access & Equity at the ORCC

The Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre has been committed to providing inclusive and accessible services throughout our existence. In meeting the challenges of making our services accessible to all women, we have achieved important successes in recent years. These include:

• Holding a two-day workshop in November 1999 entitled: "Training for Trainers in a Multicultural context." This workshop succeeded in facilitating an exchange of information, skills, and resources relating to sexual assault services for women of diverse ethnoracial/cultural communities;

• Conducting a preliminary needs assessment on services for immigrant and refugee women who have experienced rape in war;

• Developing a valuable partnership with the Aboriginal Women's Support Centre, enabling us to successfully provide services to Aboriginal women;

• Reviewing personnel and operational policies and procedures (i.e. the way the ORCC advertises, recruits and screens potential job candidates) thereby significantly increasing ethnoracial/cultural representation of the ORCC staff;

• Completing renovations to make the first floor of the building accessible to women with physical disabilities;

• Providing support and counselling to sex trade workers who have experienced sexual violence;

• Active outreach to community organizations who service women with disabilities.

Back to top

An Anti-Racist Feminist Approach
In the past few years we have acknowledged that despite these important steps and good intentions, the ORCC was still not representative of the community we serve. With this recognition, we've renewed our commitment to becoming accessible and equitable. Currently, we are actively taking measures to identify and challenge the structural elements of the organization that contribute to the reproduction of inequalities and the marginalization of various groups of women.As such, we have embarked on a process of transformative change through an anti-racist feminist framework.

Why Focus on Anti-Racist Feminism?
While the ORCC continues its commitment to becoming accessible to all women who are marginalized on the basis of sexuality, dis-Ability, socio-economic status, etc., we believe working through an anti-racist feminist approach will better enable us to confront all forms of oppression. This focus enables us to identify and challenge racism as a more integrated approach to achieving access and equity.

Immigrant, refugee, and women of colour in our community are at high risk of violence (Statistics Canada, 1995) because of the multiple and overlapping ways sexism, racism, and socio-economic factors impact our lives. Immigrant, refugee and women of colour face difficulties accessing information and support services to help them heal from violence. Many service providers working with immigrant, refugee and women of colour have told us that they have had little or no training in offering culturally sensitive support and services in issues related to sexual violence .This is further compounded by the lack of resources available to agencies servicing members of marginalized communities. All these factors have flagged the need for the ORCC to provide culturally sensitive and appropriate support to refugee, immigrant and women of colour who have experienced sexual violence.

Many obstacles prevent women from disclosing experiences of sexual violence and getting the support we need and deserve. Obstacles such as shame, guilt, and fear of retaliation prevent many women from disclosing incidents of sexual abuse. For immigrant and/or visible minority women there are additional race-specific barriers. For example, historical racialized gender stereotypes play a role in constructing black women as promiscuous and always sexually available. Unfortunately such stereotypes impact the credibility of black women as rape survivors. Furthermore, many women fear acknowledging incidents of sexual abuse that occur within our communities. This is in part because such disclosures may reinforce societal myths of our communities as prone to violent behavior. The need to protect our communities from racist attacks may keep us quiet about sexual abuse (White, 1999).

Some basic principles to implementing an anti-racist, feminist approach will include:

• Ongoing questioning of white power and privilege;

• Creating spaces for everyone, but particularly for marginal voices to be heard;

• Dealing with questions of representation, through the active recruitment, retention and promotion of women of colour as volunteers, board members and staff. The mere representation of a range of ethnoracial differences at all levels of decision making helps the redistribution of power.

  "It is not that individuals in the designated groups are inherently unable to achieve equality on their own, it is that the obstacles in their way are so formidable and self-perpetuating that they can not be overcome without intervention. It is both intolerable and insensitive if we simply wait and hope that the barriers will disappear with time. Equality in employment will not happen unless we make it happen."

  Royal Commission on Equality in Employment

Some Challenges That Lay Ahead:

To effectively achieve the goal of becoming an anti-racist organization, we have made the commitment to openly and honestly look at the challenges we have faced and are currently facing in becoming inclusive. It is also important to emphasize that we are at the very early stages of this process and only a few, initial steps have been taken. A commitment to implementing such change involves transforming the taken for granted belief systems and structures that perpetuate inequities. As such, we recognize that this process will not be easy.

We have identified the following initial steps to help us achieve our goal of becoming anti-racist:

• Undertake a comprehensive review of ORCC's policies, practices and materials;

• Actively work to create a climate that promotes respect for, and acceptance of, the diversity of women in the organization;

• Through discussion and dialogue, examine and uncover the belief systems underpinning advocacy work and social work and the way we provide these services;

• A move away from tokenist attempts of "accepting" and "bringing in" women from marginalized communities to ensuring a sense of ownership and belongingness for all women at the ORCC;

• Allocate funds to a part-time "Anti-Racism Coordinator" staff position;

• Increase immigrant women, women of colour, and refuge women's awareness of the services of ORCC;

• Develop a peer mentoring program whereby ORCC staff and service providers working in diverse racial and cultural communities can establish lasting, professional relationships that will allow ongoing mutual exchanges of skills, information and support;

• On-going critical examination of the way different "isms" work together to oppress disenfranchised people.

  "Access, representation, inclusion, exclusion, equity. All are other ways of saying race in this country without saying that we live in a deeply racialised and racist culture which represses the life possibilities of people of colour. We have to be careful of the way those words have become bureaucratic glosses for human suffering. We have to notice how those words deceptively explain away the vulgar, privileging, power relations that whites in the country don't want to admit to or give up."

  Dionne Brand from: "Notes for Writing Thru Race" in Bread Out of Stone .

Back to top

References

Brand, Dionne. 1995. Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Recognition, Dreaming; Sex, Race, Politics. Toronto: Coach House Press.

Canadian Heritage. 2000. Racism. Stop It! Hull, QC: Multiculturalism Program.

Dei, George. J. S. 1996. Anti-Racism Education Theory and Practice. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

Statistics Canada. 1995. Highlights In Women In Canada: A Statistical Report, Third Edition. pp. 8 -10. Ottawa, ON: Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada.

White, Janelle. 1999. Spring Newsletter. San Francisco Women Against Rape's Women of African Descent Task Group.

Back to top

Recommended Reading

Bishop, Anne. 1994. Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

Canadian Council on Social Development. 2000. Canadian Fact Book on Poverty 2000. Ottawa: CCSD.

Dua, Enakshi and Angela Robertson, eds. 1999. Scratching the Surface: Canadian Anti-Racist Feminist Thought. Toronto: WomenÕs Press.

Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out.1987. Toronto: Women's Press.

hooks, bell. 1995. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt & Company.

Jordan, Judith V. 1997. Women's Growth in Diversity: More Writings from the Stone Centre. New York: The Guilford Press.

Kivel, Paul. 1996. Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work For Racial Justice. New Society Publishers.

Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldua. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

Razack, Sherene. 1998. Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Back to top