Abstract
This chapter is motivated by several overlapping concerns: contemplation of the role that international norms play in structuring politics and policy in domestic spheres; consideration of how one norm, in particular, intersectionality, is travelling, alongside its ongoing institutionalization; and more specific attention to the imposition of intersectionality in foreign contexts. It broaches these considerations via a comparative case study of Uruguayan affirmative action legislation and the belated gender-mainstreaming provision that was attached to it. By means of a qualitative content analysis, this chapter works through the question of how and why gender was added in the first place and what work it is meant to do. It concludes with a suggestion for taking up the privilege and disadvantage approach to intersectionality, which has the practical effect of focusing greater attention to variation within and across groups: a central intersectional goal.
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Notes
- 1.
In keeping with Uruguayan norms, I will use the terms Afro, Afro-descendant, black, and Afro-Uruguayan interchangeably.
- 2.
All transcript quotes cited throughout the article come from the following set of legislative transcripts: https://parlamento.gub.uy/documentosyleyes/ficha-asunto/110651/ficha_completa
- 3.
Some 47% of the Afro population has a primary school or lesser educational status, and more than 40% are below the poverty line, meaning that a significant percentage of both women and men remain mostly unaffected by the law’s benefits and its racial equality offerings (Inmujeres 2010; República Oriental del Uruguay 2011).
- 4.
My inclusion of these concerns should not be taken to mean that I share all of them, or share them equally. Rather the point is that if intersectionality and intersectionality-like ideas are travelling, so are the critiques of them, whether warranted or not.
- 5.
Though some would surely argue this point.
- 6.
That is, affirmative action versus gender quotas.
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Townsend-Bell, E. (2019). Timid Imposition: Intersectional Travel and Affirmative Action in Uruguay. In: Hankivsky, O., Jordan-Zachery, J.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98473-5_34
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