Stereotypes in Anti-Discrimination Law: Commentary

Abstract

The concept of stereotypes offered by Elena Ghidoni and Dolores Morondo Taramundi represents a significant conceptual contribution to existing legal debates on equality and non-discrimination, particularly to critical anti-discrimination law. A few precisions in the proposed concept, however, may help to understand even better the function and workings of stereotypes. This commentary is thus an invitation to explore in more detail the asymmetric workings of stereotypes, including the role that power asymmetry plays in selecting, valuing and attributing group characteristics, behaviours, spaces and roles as well as the group hierarchies that result from this selection, valuing and attribution. The commentary is also an invitation to further analyse the features inherent in stereotypes, which would serve to naturalise, rationalise, normalise and/or render invisible power hierarchies. Finally, the commentary encourages Ghidoni and Morondo Taramundi to reflect on the ways in which their concept of stereotypes may work out in practice in the legal reasoning of courts.