Intersectionality in practice? Anti-discrimination reforms in Norway

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a significant broadening of the legal protection against discrimination in Norway. Adding to a comparatively strong gender equality legislation, the protection against discrimination has been expanded through a series of legal regulations to cover ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, disability and age, quite in line with recent EU developments and with the gradual strengthening of the international human rights regime. A major concern regarding these reform processes is the extent to which multiple and/or intersectional forms of discrimination are adequately addressed. In this article we examine the position of intersectional framings in recent legislative and monitoring reforms, and through the judicial practice of the new monitoring agencies. Multiple ground complaints constitute a minor, but increasing part of the cases handled by the Norwegian Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud and the adjudicating Equality Tribunal. A closer examination of selected cases shows how there is a scale of possible conceptualizations of the ‘discrimination problem’ at hand which is open in the sense that cases of multiple discrimination could move into an area of intersectional problematic.