Narratives That Represent All
What are narratives and how are they impacting social justice? Narratives, with their positive or negative portrayal of social groups, can contribute significantly to their participation or exclusion. Three partners of the Foundation are reflecting on how polarizing narratives divide society in their countries. An intersectional narrative that acknowledges the different realities and identities of the entire society is what they call for; to create an inclusive and just space with stories that represent all and allow for a constructive public discourse.
Read recent examples from Mexico, India, and the United Kingdom, as well as a brief introduction by inequality activist Buse Çetin on the importance of narratives for societies and systems.
The role of narratives in social systems
Buse Çetin, an inequality activist and artificial intelligence researcher, works in the Foundation's Program on Reducing Inequalities and explains the role narratives can play in social systems.
Narratives are stories that tell us more about people, societies and systems. They are a way of communal sense making. We exist, remember, communicate and create through telling stories. Narratives create patterns and serve as tools for navigating unknown, uncertain and new situations. Narratives can spark emotion and empathy; influence, mobilize, and also exert power and dominance.
For as much as it can create change, narratives are also the glue that upholds oppressive and unequal systems, the status-quo. Who holds power and how they use it is both embedded in and supported by dominant narratives. When dominant narratives are repeated over and over, they create systems and significantly influence rights, privileges, economic resources and opportunities, and policies.
However, we are not only the listeners, the receivers of narratives; we are increasingly creating, curating and sharing them on a daily basis through social media. In the age of increasing demands for justice and equality, narratives are invaluable ways of shifting power and making the multiple realities of diverse communities heard for systemic change.
Reconstructing the working class narrative in the UK
The Center for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) elaborates on its approach to creating inclusive and diverse narratives for the British working class in order to counter the divisive public discourse that falsely separates race and class.
In the UK, certain politicians and media outlets of the political Right use narratives about identity politics to divide the multi-ethnic working-class along race and class lines. They tell a story of the UK as a once-great sovereign nation, crippled by foreign powers; how, for years, the ‘woke’ establishment have prioritized and privileged immigrants and ethnic minorities, leaving the white working-class behind, becoming second-class citizens in their own country. They say the Left despises the ordinary working man and wants him to be ashamed of his history, his ancestors, and his skin color. The British people have to be courageous and defend their values and take their country back.
This narrative both racializes and hegemonizes the working-class as white, erasing from view the truth: from the indentured sugar cane pickers in Fiji to the ‘dark satanic mills’ of Victorian London, the British working class has always been multi-ethnic.
To make matters worse, progressives do not have an alternative story that can oppose the narrative of the white, heteronormative, imperialistic ‘in-group’ that is being defined as ‘British society’. Even more, they helped this divisive and polarizing rhetoric to flourish: firstly, by avoiding to talk about race and immigration directly for fear of backlash, leaving a void for the opposition's narrative to fill. Secondly, by continually repeating what the opposition says to counter it and thereby giving their story more airtime.
We need to break this cycle. Instead, we need our own story that reflects the multiple realities of the multi-ethnic working class. We need to use every opportunity to build solidarity around what is most important – our shared values and our vision of what kind of society we want to be. Crucially, we need to build a collective ‘we’ and be clear on who is included: people of all races, nationalities and genders.
Who forms the British working class? A polarizing narrative that invisibilizes the multi-ethnic population needs to be changed through new inclusive narratives. Artist Kruthika N.S. (@theworkplacedoodler) has captured the complexities of this issue in her illustration.
Diversifying the Gender narrative in Mexico
The civil association Cultivando Género writes about why a unilateral gender narrative does not do justice to the diverse, lived realities of women in Latin America.
In Mexico and other Latin American countries, feminist movements, organizations, collectives, and academia have called for public institutions to include the category of gender in their projects and public programs. However, social inequality does not relate to gender only, but to other social categories as well. Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic nowadays makes evident the complex structure of inequality that we live in.
As the needs for the entire population increased during the pandemic, society became louder in demanding economic support from the government, programs to reduce the closure of companies, the payment of salaries etc. At the same time, one narrative became more and more persistent. A picture that idealized the pandemic life to one privileged story: the power of being united at home.
But not all women can be at home. What about those women who work informally? Those with unpaid care work? Can they profit from the unifying narrative of being connected even during quarantine? And more profoundly, do all women need the same things? Do all women live, go through, and experience the same oppressions?
The answer is more complex than yes or no, and intersectionality can help to uncover the complexities. Every person with a feminized body, or who identifies as a woman, will go through a series of oppressions in her life just because she is a woman. And further inequalities and forms of discrimination are added when she has other characteristics, e.g. regarding her religion, sexual orientation, or class. Being subjected to multiple forms of discrimination increases the experience of being marginalized: as a woman, a homosexual woman, an indigenous homosexual woman etc.
We call for policies and programs from governmental institutions that enable a smooth and supportive environment for all women with diverse identities. For that, women have to be visible with their diversities in society. That is why the narrative has to change! We need to tell stories that represent all women, the mothers, the workers, the indigenous, the rich and the poor. And we, as women, have to do this united. An intersectional narrative is a narrative that is as diverse as it is unifying.
Visibilizing the migrant workers in India
The Indian foundation Dasra gives an insight into its work with migrant women workers, who remain invisible in India due to a singular narrative. Through joint conversations and the creation of new materials, they aim to give them more visibility in the social discourse.
In India, our strength in numbers inevitably leads to a cacophony of voices. Yet, the mainstream follows only one narrative concerning the future of India: the potential of a high demographic dividend, fast-scaling digital technologies, and infrastructural expansion. Ironically, in this labour-intensive economy, the 450-million strong workforce that runs the country remains invisible. Why? Because of systemic barriers and our collective apathy. At the onset of the pandemic, the informally employed, who make up 90% of India’s total workforce, were suddenly without daily wages. As many of them are internal migrants, this caused millions of workers to leave cities, traversing thousands of kilometres on foot homewards bound. The crisis nudged the mainstream to pick up on their concerns, but disaggregated data and conversations on migrant workers’ identities remained negligible.
‘Who’ are India’s most vulnerable workers? Why is half the population of the country barely surviving? These crucial questions are yet to be answered. The Indian law recognizes unequal power relations among individuals and communities, and therefore has provisions for affirmative action. But this is not enough. To reduce inequalities, law and policy must be backed by agile participation from development stakeholders.
At Dasra, we have launched a portfolio of initiatives centred on the invisible workers in the Indian economy, who are employed precariously and migrating out of distress. A sizeable number of these workers are women whose work is dismissed, underpaid or unpaid. In its work, Dasra is visibilizing the demographic through spotlighting how discriminations faced by migrant workers are amplified on account of their gender, caste and tribe. We are bringing together a diverse group of non-profit organizations, working with migrant women workers to understand their personas. By engaging in discussions, Dasra will document migrant women workers’ different identities, and contexts, and see how these play out in their daily lives. We will go beyond dominant portrayals that do not always recognize migrant women’s work and the structural discrimination experienced by them. Through this, we aim to bring migrant women workers, their multiple identities and realities into the mainstream narrative.
In the Support Program „Reducing Inequalities through Intersectional Practice” eleven partners from all over the globe come together for a joint learning journey on how to use intersectionality for promoting social justice. In one of their learning workshops, the partners discussed about building their own narratives to reflect their realities.