Anti-oppression policy

1. Policy overview

The equality, diversity and inclusion policy at QU-01 states our legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 and how we meet them.

Equality frameworks do not name power, they do not require anything to be given up, and they permit an organisation to hold impeccable policies while the same people continue to carry the same costs. Anti-oppression starts from the position that oppression is organised rather than incidental, that it is reproduced through ordinary decisions about who is hired, believed, credited, paid and protected, and that interrupting it requires those decisions to change rather than requiring a statement to be issued.

2. Analysis

We work from a Black feminist praxis, which holds that racism, patriarchy, capitalism, disablism, homophobia, transphobia and immigration control operate as an interlocking system rather than as separate axes, and that the harm produced at their intersection is distinct rather than additive. Applied to our own organisation, three consequences follow.

The first is that the domestic and sexual violence sector has extracted the expertise of Black and minoritised practitioners, particularly Black women, and has consistently declined to resource, credit or promote it. We were founded in response to that, and we are capable of reproducing it internally if we do not attend to it, because the pressures that produce extraction are financial rather than attitudinal.

The second is that oppression inside small organisations is rarely enacted through hostility. It appears as the allocation of invisible labour, as whose ideas are attributed and whose are absorbed, as who is asked to hold the emotional consequences of a difficult session, and as whose access requirement is treated as an inconvenience.

The third is that the people most exposed to this are the least able to raise it, because the same conditions that produce the harm also produce the risk of being labelled difficult for naming it. A policy that relies on the affected person complaining will therefore not work, and this one does not rely on that alone.

3. Employment and engagement

Recruitment follows SG-05 and uses structured, evidenced processes, and we advertise where practitioners of colour and disabled practitioners will actually see the advert rather than only where we have advertised before.

Rates are published rather than negotiated. Negotiated rates reward the confidence that class and race distribute unevenly, and publishing removes that entirely. Associates are paid at the same published rate for the same work whoever they are, and no person is asked to work unpaid as a route to paid work.

Adjustments for disabled staff, associates and volunteers are made on request, without requiring a diagnosis or an occupational health report where the adjustment is straightforward, and the cost is treated as a cost of doing the work rather than as a favour with a budget attached.

Invisible labour is named and allocated deliberately. Note taking, room holding, emotional aftercare, community liaison and the work of explaining our analysis to people encountering it for the first time are real work, they fall disproportionately on the same people, and they are either paid or shared explicitly.

Attribution is recorded. Where a framework, a piece of material or an idea originates with a named person, they are credited in the material and in any onward publication, and this applies to associates as much as to directors.

4. Delivery and client work

We retain the analysis under commercial pressure. Where a client asks us to soften a session, remove the naming of racism, or present structural violence as an individual matter, we decline, and we would rather lose the contract than deliver training that leaves practitioners less able to see what is in front of them.

We protect our own people inside client organisations. Racism, harassment or hostility directed at an associate by a client’s staff is raised with the client rather than absorbed, and where it is not addressed we withdraw from the contract. An associate who experiences this is supported under HS-03 and is never asked to complete the delivery in order to protect the relationship.

We take the same position with participants. A learner who directs racist, transphobic, disablist or otherwise discriminatory conduct at another person in the room is addressed in the moment and, where necessary, removed under QU-05, and the facilitator is supported in doing that rather than left to manage it alone.

Where our consultancy identifies practice inside a client organisation that is harming minoritised survivors, we report it plainly in our findings, using the language the evidence supports, and we do not agree to remove or soften those findings as a condition of sign off.

5. Internal harm

We proceed from the expectation that it will, because every organisation reproduces some of what it opposes, and an organisation that believes itself exempt simply does not hear about it.

A person who experiences or witnesses discrimination, racism or any other oppressive conduct within the organisation may raise it with a director, with the board, or externally under CA-04, and may do so without using the complaints procedure if that route feels unsafe. Where the concern involves a director, it goes to the board or to an external investigator appointed for the purpose, and the person raising it chooses which of those routes they prefer.

The response is directed at what happened and what allowed it rather than only at whether the conduct meets a legal threshold, because most harm of this kind does not. The person affected is asked what outcome they want and that is used to shape the response, and where we depart from it we say why. The response can include acknowledgement, apology, a change in practice, a change in who does what, training, disciplinary action, or the ending of an engagement, and repair without consequence is not repair.

Nobody experiences detriment for raising a concern of this kind, and any suggestion that they have is itself investigated.

6. Founder accountability

We Are Frieda is currently an organisation in which one Black woman holds nearly every function, and that carries two risks this policy has to name.

The first is that the organisation’s anti-oppression commitment is personal and not structural, which means it does not survive their absence. The systems, the published rates, the attribution practice and the escalation routes in this policy exist to move it from a person into a structure.

The second is that there is no internal route through which the founder’s own experience of racism, from clients, commissioners or the sector, can be brought and supported. The external supervision arrangement at HS-03 applies to her as it does to associates, and the board holds responsibility for asking about this at each meeting, because otherwise nobody will.

7. Monitoring

The board reviews this policy annually against evidence rather than intention, covering the composition of staff, associates and learners, the pattern and outcome of concerns raised, whether published rates have been applied consistently, adjustments requested and made, attribution in published material, and any contract we declined or withdrew from on the grounds in section 4.

Where the evidence shows a gap, the response is a change with an owner and a date. A commitment to continue monitoring is recorded as no response at all.

Scope

Directors, employees, associates, sessional trainers, volunteers, contractors, learners and client engagements.