Tag Archives: intersectionality

Reporting

America’s Unaddressed Feminist Issues

My article for the School of International Service

Editor’s Note: Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, SIS professor Antoaneta Tileva authored this piece reflecting on several of the feminist issues she feels are currently going unaddressed in America. At SIS, Tileva teaches courses on identity, gender, class, and culture. 

In her beautifully succinct yet expansive definition, bell hooks writes that feminism is “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” Her seminal book, Feminism is for Everybody (2000), establishes feminism as a movement for everybody and every body. Patriarchy—or institutionalized sexism—affects people of all genders. Feminist issues are not just “women’s issues.” Feminism today is concerned with intersectionality–looking at the intersections of class, gender, race, religion, and the way they shape people’s experiences.

Let’s look at abortion rights through this intersectional lens. While abortion access has been labeled the feminist issue of this election, with most Americans favoring abortion rights, a conversation centered strictly on bodily autonomy misses the wider impacts.

Increasingly restrictive laws majorly affect maternal and women’s healthcare outcomes. Maternity care “deserts”—defined as areas where access to maternity health care services is limited or absent—limit access to birthing services but also pose challenges in securing early and continuous prenatal and postnatal care.

A shortage in OB-GYNs means that mothers have to travel greater and greater distances to get treatment, but it also means that women can’t get preventative, routine healthcare and that infants can’t get postnatal care. States with more restrictive abortion policies have higher total maternal mortality, measured as death during pregnancy or within one year following the end of a pregnancy. This is within the wider context of the US maternal mortality rates which remain consistently higher than those of other wealthy countries.

For the second straight year, fewer students in MD-granting US medical schools are applying for OB-GYN residencies in abortion-restricted states. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, applicant numbers in those states decreased by more than 10 percent. The explanation for this is that residents know they will simply not be trained on how to offer comprehensive maternal care, which includes performing abortions in cases such as high-risk patients for whom pregnancy may be life-threatening, or patients who experience ectopic pregnancy or incomplete miscarriage.

Furthermore, maternal healthcare is not the same across class and racial lines—Black women are more than three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.

Some other feminist issues of this election include affordable/universal childcare, the wage gap, and, yes, also the war in Gaza.

The US stands out among advanced economies for its lack of universal childcare. This has not always been the case. During World War II, the government successfully established Lanham Centers to provide childcare for working women. On December 9, 1971, President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA), which would have created federally-funded public childcare centers across the US Influenced by Pat Buchanan’s trip to the Soviet Union and his resultant panic over childcare centers representing a communist turn, Nixon essentially stymied any progress on this issue. Funnily (or perhaps not so), even in his old age, Buchanan doubled down, stating, “Mothers should be home with ‘cake and pie’ at 3 p.m.”

The 2024 State of Parenting survey found that only approximately 40 percent of participants feel supported by their employer. A lack of affordable childcare costs the US economy $122 billion annually.

The wage gap remains, with women, on average, earning 84 cents on the dollar to what a man makes. For Latine, Native, and Black women, the gap is more like a chasm than a gap.

The war in Gaza is also a feminist issue. According to recent estimates, since October 7, 70 percent of civilians killed in Gaza have been women and children and nearly a million women and girls have been displaced.

Ultimately, these “feminist” issues are everybody’s issues. Feminism is not about representation alone—it is not enough to have people of certain identities in leadership roles.

Reporting

A More Equitable Future

My article for Kogod School of Business

Professor Stacy Merida, Kogod’s new assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, describes her mission to shape a more inclusive Kogod community.

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What do diversity, equity, and inclusion look like in a university setting? Who are the stakeholders of diversity initiatives? These are challenging questions, and the Kogod School of Business’s new assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Stacy Merida, is finding answers. Merida, who teaches music entertainment industry classes in Kogod’s business and entertainment program, accepted the position in January 2021. She is leading the school not only in learning what these terms mean to its students, faculty, and staff but also in implementing meaningful changes based on input from the entire Kogod community.

Merida has a broad view of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that not only comprises demographic characteristics like gender, race, and ethnicity but all dimensions of a person’s identity, such as immigrant and first-generation status, economic background, education, and more. Of course, some of these characteristics are more salient to people’s identities, and some, because they are more visible to society, affect how people are treated more than less readily observable traits.

“One of our strategic goals is to cultivate a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Kogod culture where every individual, regardless of background, has the full opportunity to flourish and thrive,” says Merida.

The daughter of a civil rights leader, Merida has been passionate about social justice since her childhood in Alabama. And that passion has driven her throughout her career. Her PhD dissertation examined cultural competency and proficiency in higher education administration. She serves as a board liaison for diversity and inclusion at the Music Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) and represents American University as a committee member on the GRAMMY Museum’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility affiliate committee. Her most recent initiative was reaching out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic and Tribal Universities to join the MEIEA through free membership.

In her new role as assistant dean, she will implement several initiatives that include creating a DEI task force, DEI fellowships, policy and procedure reviews, ongoing training, and surveying faculty, students, and staff. Her goals include ensuring students and staff reflect the diversity of our global society and transforming the faculty’s makeup to reflect the diversity of the student body. Another major goal is improving the academic outcomes for students from underrepresented, low-income, and other marginalized groups, in addition to securing transparent and more equitable outcomes for staff and faculty.

Diversity, as the word connotes, is about difference. But it is not about eliding or ignoring that difference. Rather, it is about ensuring that difference doesn’t lead to inequitable outcomes.

“There are distinct differences between equality and equity,” Merida explains. “Equity involves giving people what they need to be as successful as non-minoritized groups; conversely, equality is to treat everyone the same.”

Diversity is valuable in all areas but especially important in business. When a company has a diverse culture, it welcomes more viewpoints, allowing it to reach a wider audience. According to a McKinsey & Company report, “Companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams were 33 percent more likely to have industry-leading profitability.” Google recently completed a study, Project Aristotle, that identified psychological safety as one of the most important factors of a high-performing team. Employees feeling included and able to be their authentic selves at work frees up their minds and energy to focus on their performance.

“Diversity is extremely important in the business community where different perspectives are and should be highly valued,” says Merida. “Organizations that value diversity and inclusion strive to provide a space where all members are respected. If a system or structure perpetuates inequity and inequality, we should encourage one another to challenge this system or structure.”

Merida is also acutely aware that no one holds just one identity. The term intersectionality, coined by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, describes how individual characteristics like race, class, and gender interact with each other to form how someone sees—and is seen by—the world.

“Our students will find themselves working with employers, coworkers, and clients from diverse backgrounds,” explains Merida. “By experiencing diversity, we are laying the groundwork for all to be comfortable working and interacting with a variety of individuals of all nationalities.

“However, efforts in this space are nothing new as Kogod is ranked no. 9 by the recent Bloomberg Newsweek Diversity Index for its long-term commitment to diversity. I am exhibit A, as the creation of my position only exemplifies the continuation and broadening of Dean Delaney’s and the DEI committee’s visionary leadership. We are intentional in being the guiding example for our students, faculty, and staff.”

Merida’s new role is a testament to the hard work she and the Kogod community continue to engage in to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive business school that prepares students not only for successful careers but to be thoughtful, compassionate, and engaged citizens of the world.

Reviews

Book Review: You Exist Too Much: A Novel by Zaina Arafat

My review of the Washington Independent Review of Books

Love addiction is vividly brought to life in this exceptional debut.

Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much is an engrossing character study of a young, bisexual Palestinian American woman. Much more than an exploration of intersecting lines and identities, the debut novel revels in their clouding: “Ambiguity was an unsettling yet exhilarating space…I enjoyed occupying blurred lines.”

This is not a book about isms, however; it is squarely centered on its unnamed protagonist, whose voice is enthralling. Oscillating between prescient self-awareness and oblivion, she transports readers into her rich emotional realm. Her identity is beautifully captured when she travels to Palestine with her mother, who “knows the rules instinctively, in that part of the world, and I only learn them by accident.”

While she fits in (mostly), she also doesn’t: “Anytime I heard of another Arab girl’s engagement, it snapped me out of my gayness.” Her parents’ fraught relationship is also wryly captured: “If my mother was Hamas — unpredictable, impulsive, and frustrated at being stifled — my father was Israel. He’d refuse to meet her most basic needs until she exploded.”

While the book engages with both the narrator’s heritage and her queerness, it is ultimately a story about love addiction. Lest you groan in anticipation of high doses of schmaltz or wince at the prospect of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” being stuck in your head (sorry, not sorry), the novel’s brilliant exposé on a real psychological condition will leave you, well, addicted and wanting more.

Arafat’s description of the protagonist’s stint in a rehab program to treat her anorexia and love addiction is one of the best accounts of the rehab experience I have ever read. The writing is precise, keen, and relies on observation and no pathos, which is somewhat odd considering the subject matter. It is also well-researched. Arafat reveals love addiction for what it is — codependency, which she defines as “the inability to have a healthy relationship with the self.”

The protagonist is in love with being in love, which puts her on a never-ending Don Quixote-like quest in pursuit of the feeling. And much like Quixote, she is chasing chimeras:

“When love addicts develop a relationship with the object of their affections, they stop seeing who that person actually is, but instead focus on a fantasy image.”

Arafat captures why this addiction is particularly damaging, rejecting anyone’s glib dismissal of it as a made-up disorder. The protagonist’s emotional gyrations are captured powerfully: “I had been clinging to her I love yous like a refugee clings to a threatened nationality.”

The author writes about other characters in the rehab program with compassion and depth, too. There aren’t many books about recovery from this particular addiction — less flashy, perhaps, than drug or sex addiction — which gives the book a bright spark.

You Exist Too Much tackles bisexuality with equal care. The title is what the protagonist’s mother says when her daughter comes out, and its interpretation is rich in ambiguity: The Palestinian mother would never have had the permission or space to be anything but heterosexual. She interprets her daughter’s orientation as a demand for the right to live free of old constraints. But the phrase is also an incisive commentary on the daughter’s fixation on unavailable objects of affection and her lust for a life filled with emotional highs.

This novel is truly captivating. I read it several times over and found something new each time. Arafat’s writing extracts emotion from every word and builds vast psychological landscapes. One of the best releases in 2020, it cements Zaina Arafat’s position in the ranks of Carmen Maria Machado and Lydia Yuknavitch. I cannot wait to see what she will offer readers next.