The objective of Workpackage 4 is to achieve a better understanding of the impact of gender on the experience of racial discrimination, the use of resources and the way complaints are processed. To address this question, we analysed 158 complaints lodged n France to the institutions authorised to receive them. An approximately equal number fo complaints from women and men were collected for effective comparison.
Since adoption of the European Council Directive 2000/43 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, each EU Member State has been invited to designate a body to promote equal treatment, entrusted to provide assistance to victims of discrimination in pursuing their complaints, conduct independent surveys and publish reports on any issue relating to discrimination. The directive also stipulates that associations or organisations having a legitimate interest may engage in a judicial and/or administrative procedure on the complainant's behalf.
The history of migration in France during the twentieth century explains the diversity of socio-cultural groups within French society, with populations from Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal), Africa (North and Sub-Saharan), and Eastern Europe (Turkey, Romania, Baltic countries, Russia). Public policies were put in place to integrate all these groups by facilitating access to French nationality.
An overview of concepts, Policies and Issues identified within the Implementation of Anti-Discrimination Legislation within the European Union
- December 2008
By Czarina Wilpert
In collaboration with Isabelle Carles and Olga Jubany
An abundance of literature addressing anti-discrimination legislation has been published within the European Union since the implementation of the new EU directives referred
to in this overview. There have been a number of official documents and studies commissioned by the EC also publications by researchers, lawyers and other academics
as well as the numerous NGOs in the field.1 Many are addressed the issues of the implementation of the Anti-discrimination laws, the potential for the application
potential of the concept of multiple discrimination whether as an additive concept or as a unique group configuration (intersectionality) within these EU laws.
In collaboration with Isabelle Carles and Olga Jubany
There has been a burgeoning literature on multiple discrimination and the interaction between different axes of discrimination or intersectionality as well as the absence or inadequacy of legal measures to deal with these issues. Much of this literature focuses either on theoretical aspects or on a single country situation with some consideration of differences between two countries. An example of the latter is the comparison of different attitudes towards and systems of multiple discrimination in the UK and Canada or UK and Germany (Moon 2007). Often the analysis of these differences is based on a comparison of significant case studies. Though this is important in furthering our understanding of how multiple discrimination is treated in different states, there has
been little attention paid to investigating how multiple discrimination, and especially gender and race, is experienced by a large number of individuals in a range of countries with different histories of migration and anti-discrimination policies and strategies.
Even less literature is available on the methodological issues of conducting comparative or cross-national research across a large number of states as is the objective of the Genderace project. Thus in WP5 we firstly address some general aspects of crossnational
European research as they apply to this project and then outline the issues, problems and procedures to be followed. In the methodology session (Deliverable D05)
held at Middlesex University in London on 20-22 May 2008, we presented some of the key considerations relevant to the application of concepts (definitions provided in the
WP6 glossary) and methods to be used in the subsequent empirical research (WP4, WP7 and WP8).
