About the Project

This project responds to a growing recognition of the challenges faced by Black and South Asian women in relation to welfare provision. As one of The Runnymede Trust’s most recent reports states, ‘Black and minority ethnic people in Britain continue to face extensive and persistent inequality…accordingly, universal policy or systemic changes need particular delivery to reach BME groups.’ (Khan, 2019). The British Medical Journal has reported, for example, that women from ethnic minorities face endemic structural racism when seeking and accessing healthcare (BMJ, 2020: 371). Black women are approximately four times more likely, and South Asian women are approximately twice as likely, to die during childbirth compared to white women in Britain (Limb, 2021). There are also similar disparities in neonatal infant mortality.

These welfare inequalities have meant that Britain’s Black and South Asian population have, on average, shorter lifespans, higher rates of unemployment, higher rates of homelessness, face higher rates of neonatal mortality, and there is a notable racialized award gap in systems of education. While the literature on mainstream feminism has expanded in recent decades, the lives, roles, and activist traditions of intersectional feminism in Britain and its global activist networks has received scant scholarly attention. Black and South Asian women stand on the margins of social policy research and in histories of feminist and social activism.

The project foregrounds intersectional feminist responses to welfare disparities that impact Black and South Asian women. It draws together relevant public and private archives, oral history testimony, and transcontinental research material. In doing so, it offers important new insights into how both the welfare state and intersectional feminist activism have approached structural welfare inequalities and ultimately shaped welfare citizenship.

Dr Nasar will be working with a project team in order to explore the transnational connections and networks of women’s activism.

Key Themes