Professor Penelope Simons and former Faculty of Law doctoral student Dr. Melisa Handl, alongside their co-author from Dalhousie University, Professor Sara Seck, were recognized earlier this year for their research on these issues. The three authors were awarded the Business and Human Rights Journal’s (BHJR) Best Scholarly Article Prize for their paper “Gender and Intersectionality in Business and Human Rights Scholarship” (Business and Human Rights Journal, Volume 7, No. 2).
The paper considers the need to move beyond gender and women’s rights analysis to address more complex forms of discrimination and oppression in research on business and human rights (BHR) issues. Applying an intersectional lens can help to expose the complex and intersecting forms of discrimination people may face based on gender, race, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness and socio-economic status, among others. It helps to centre the voices of those who are marginalized, to problematize structures such as the state and the neoliberal capitalist system and to question norms that fail to challenge or disrupt these power structures. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. Here, the authors explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, could offer to critical BHR scholarship in terms of exposing the complexity of gender oppression and discrimination in the context of business activity, identifying and challenging structures of power that protect and facilitate business, and being wary of state and business attempts to co-opt intersectionality for their own purposes.
The BHJR selection committee praised the excellent article, specifically lauding the authors for their “insightful and critical analysis of four germane elements of intersectionality that challenge some core assumptions about BHR”. The committee further noted the authors’ innovative and sophisticated, yet accessible analysis, stating that the article’s major contribution to the BHR literature lies “in the insights and tools that it presents for future BHR scholarship. It has the potential to be a seminal article that significantly influences subsequent literature in the developing BHR field.”
The Business and Human Rights Journal is a publication of Cambridge University Press. Click here to read more about the Prize and to see past winners.
Congratulations to Professor Simons, Professor Seck and Dr. Handl!