IWD: Addressing the Unspoken Exploitation and Silencing of Romani Women

As the largest ethnic minority in Europe, with a heterogeneous population of around 12 million, Romani people have faced deeply embedded racism and oppression for several centuries, including a 500-year-long slavery in Romania and a genocide during the Second World War. Despite many EU initiatives on equality and inclusion, in our patriarchal and predominantly white-centric society, the perspectives, needs, and lived experiences of Romani women are often overlooked or dismissed in mainstream spaces and discourses.

When I attend events on equity and inclusion, I mostly find myself the only Romani woman in the room. Am I a token? Why are Romani women's perspectives left out of mainstream spaces and discourses?

Knowledge and Epistemic Injustice

The process of silencing often starts with making access to resources and knowledge a privilege that not everyone can afford. For many Romani women, this privilege is blocked by structural barriers and biases limiting their educational and career opportunities. For example, the FRA Roma Survey shows that Romani women do not have equal access to education due to school segregation, prejudices, and persistent discrimination.

Knowledge is also often monetised, which leads to further disadvantages for those who cannot afford it. The European Network Against Racism confirmed that Romani women face economic disadvantages when information is not accessible due to lacking financial resources. Furthermore, knowledge is monopolised by those who hold the power to define what is credible and valuable. This control over knowledge production positions and guarantees power to a selected group of people in mainstream spaces to shape narratives, public perceptions, and practices to fit their interests and needs while overlooking those of marginalised voices and lived experiences, namely Romani women.

This is where epistemic injustice comes in. It is a concept introduced by philosopher Miranda Fricker referring to how certain voices are systematically undermined as credible sources of knowledge. Romani women are often silenced through testimonial injustice, where their insights are dismissed, labelled as ‘too sensitive and subjective,’ or paternalised due to deeply rooted societal biases portraying them as incompetent and unprofessional.

Romani women also face hermeneutical injustice, a type of epistemic injustice, that occurs when mainstream societal frameworks fail to understand or acknowledge their intersecting identities and the challenges that come with them. To make matters worse, discrimination is rarely understood through an intersectional perspective, which then reinforces the power structures silencing Romani women. Their experiences, perspectives, and needs are also often overlooked even in feminist and antiracist spaces as Western, middle-class, white feminist discourses are missing the intersections of ethnic and gender discrimination, while antiracist spaces tend to prioritise male voices.

The Unspoken Exploitation of Romani Women

Academic studies, civil society initiatives, EU projects, and programmes targeting Roma are not only often developed without meaningful input from the Romani community, but they also profit from knowledge production, ignoring or exploiting Romani women for their insights or treating them merely as subjects during implementation. If included at all, Romani women are often tokenised, or their expertise and insight are poorly compensated. Even when Romani women manage to climb the ladder of social mobility with affirmative actions, they continue to face biases and exploitation that hinder their advancement. Sadly, these persist and keep Romani women out of mainstream professional spaces even after obtaining higher social class and education.

The exploitation of Romani women is not easy to recognise because it is often wrapped in a golden package of supportive opportunities. This exploitation includes:

• Unpaid or underpaid contributions: Romani women are often asked to write articles, give speeches, and share their lived experiences, personal stories, and expertise for free or for a price far below the market rates. This is justified under the guise of opportunities or a noble cause, for which, according to the dominant narratives, they should be grateful. Meanwhile, others are usually compensated adequately for similar work.
• Tokenism: Romani women are invited at the last minute to ‘add colour’ and ‘humanise’ projects, events, or studies, mostly without adequate compensation or acknowledgement.
• Internships: EU institutions have a history of exploiting young Roma workers, mostly offering them underpaid internship opportunities or, at most, temporary contracts. Out of the 80 young Roma who participated in a European Commission internship programme between 2005 and 2015, no one obtained a permanent position within the Commission. Unfortunately, this is a practice that we, Roma, still experience.

Although inclusion and equity principles recognise that underprivileged people do not have the same starting points in life, especially considering the socioeconomic disadvantages from historical oppression, injustices, and inequalities, unequal resource distribution, and biased societal perceptions, it seems like the idea of ‘Nothing about us without us’ is still a cliché.

Towards True Inclusivity

In the OSF Report on the Roma Women's Forum, consultant Azbija Memedova highlighted that ‘Building a better society and integration of Roma women cannot happen by itself; it is an interactive process with at least two players— the one who has power and the other who does not. The basic precondition for a better society is the willingness of both to listen and understand.’

To achieve equity and inclusion, we therefore must go beyond representation. We need to restructure systems that marginalise and silence Romani women, acknowledge the unique intersecting forms of discrimination and challenges they face, redistribute resources and push for a changed mindset, laws, policies, programmes, and events that remove these barriers through anti-discrimination legislation and genuinely inclusive, accessible, and exploitation-free initiatives, not just in theory but also in practice.

Epistemic justice focuses on Romani women's roles in leading the narratives and producing knowledge about their experiences and needs. But for this to happen, policymakers, scholars, media, and other professionals need to take responsibility for sharing their power and creating inclusive, safe spaces where Romani women's voices are central to discussions, decisions, and solutions that affect them.

Furthermore, instead of tokenising or ‘including’ Romani women only as afterthoughts, those in positions of influence, let it be non-Romani scholars, leaders, professionals, policymakers, activists, and so on, should challenge the existing, deeply embedded, disproportionate power structures and proactively seek Romani women's perspectives, needs, and lived experiences as primary contributions.

It goes without saying that Romani women have the agency and expertise to shape narratives, produce knowledge, influence the systems affecting their lives, and be leaders advocating for change. Next time, when organising, attending, or participating in mainstream events or discussions on equality and inclusion, look around and ask yourself: Are Romani women present in the room and genuinely included in the conversation? And if not, what can I do about it?

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.