Romani Men’s Perspectives on Gender Relations, Gender Politics and the Romani Movement

This Paper explores the roles of Romani men in Romani feminism/gender politics. Romani feminists often voiced a criticism towards some Romani men activists concerning the intersections of gender and ethnicity. These men state that Romani women have to “choose the fight against racism over the one against sexism, so as to not ‘fragment’ the movement” or even to “choose between their ethnicity and their gender”. These and similar statements on gender and gender politics within the Romani movement, however, usually belong to political positions related to big power organizations. We are seeing no platforms or occasions when other Romani men speak their minds on gender relations and gender politics. Since young Romani men are rarely invited to speak or show up for gender related events or participate in the debates on the topic, we would like to put some efforts in bridging this gap. We are interested in the Romani movement and the relationship of different social groups within the movement (around categories of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, generation, and class). Besides the articulation of the political level, we wanted to find out young Romani men’s positions when it comes to gender (in)equality in everyday life practices, and the relationship between the two. The main goal of the chapter is to address the contradictory situation where the Romani feminist activism struggles for survival while Romani men of the movement are said to be more open for politicizing gender and Romani women.