Pandemic racism and sexism in Australia: Responses and reflections among Asian women

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, studies have emerged to address either racism or women’s issues. Studies that address the intersection of pandemic racism and sexism are lacking and the experiences of Asian women have been neglected. Drawing on interviews with 20 Asian women living in Victoria, Australia, this article aims to bridge the gap between studies of pandemic racism and the issues women faced during the pandemic. The article’s intervention is threefold, we ask: first, how have Asian women in Australia experienced racism? Second, how have their experiences of racism intersected with sexism? Third, how do they make sense of their experiences and thoughts about the future? Our analysis argues three points: first, the lack of attention to Asian women’s experiences of racism obscures the fact that Asian women can encounter racism more than their male counterparts. Second, the lack of attention to how sexism intersects with Asian women’s experiences of racism causes them the inability to make sense of their experiences and prevents them from stopping mistreatment. Third, participants’ reflections show that there is potential for women of colour in general to form coalitions based on sharing intersectionality and offer valuable insights for feminist and antiracist studies and initiatives.

Introduction: Two ‘shadow pandemics’

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, two bodies of literature have emerged to address two ‘shadow pandemics’ that have intensified: racism and women’s issues. Studies on pandemic racism have focused on culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people (Bonilla-Silva, 2020; Elias et al., 2021) with many highlighting how Chinese communities have been targeted (Barreneche, 2020; Gao and Sai, 2021; Sun, 2021). Studies on pandemic racism’s effects on CALD people have focused on the poor (Bonilla-Silva, 2020; Laster Pirtle, 2020), including vulnerable international students (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020; Martin, 2020). The second ‘shadow pandemic’ lies in the issues women have faced since COVID-19 such as female international students’ economic constraints (Coffey et al., 2021), women of colour including Black women’s burden at home and at work (Laster Pirtle and Wright, 2021), single women’s isolation (Gao and Sai, 2020), sexual minority women (Riggle et al., 2021) and sex workers (Farley, 2020), as well as increased violence against women (Dlamini, 2021; Munir et al., 2021). Studies that address the intersection of pandemic racism and sexism are lacking (but see Laster Pirtle and Wright, 2021) and few have addressed the experiences of Asian women (but see Gao and Sai, 2021).

Drawing on interviews with 20 Asian women living in Victoria, Australia, this article aims to bridge the gap between studies of pandemic racism and the issues women faced during the pandemic. The article’s intervention is threefold, we ask: first, how have Asian women in Australia experienced racism? Second, how have their experiences of racism intersected with sexism? Third, how do they make sense of their experiences and how do they see themselves responding to future incidents? Our analysis provides a window to critically examine the Asian women’s experiences of racism in Australia. They do not only experience racism but also its intersection with sexism manifested in intensified online and offline harassment during the pandemic. While some of their experiences do not include physical violence, their experiences have nonetheless intensified their fears of violence against women, in particular, while experiencing anti-Asian sentiments during COVID-19, in general. Our argument is as follows: first, the lack of attention to Asian women’s experiences of racism obscures the fact that Asian women can bear the brunt of racism more than their male counterparts. Second, the lack of attention to how sexism intersects with Asian women’s experiences of racism causes them the inability to make sense of their experiences and prevents them from finding ways to stop mistreatment. Third, participants’ reflections show that their considerations are unlike other groups of victims of racism and offer valuable insights for feminist and antiracist studies and/or initiatives.

The following section comprises a review of extant studies and activist campaigns, highlighting a gap in addressing the intersection of racism and sexism. This is followed by a presentation of the study context and the study’s method. Thereafter, we present our findings in three sections addressing: first, how the study’s participants have encountered racism and their thoughts that women were targeted more than men by racists in Australia; second, how participants experience racism and intensified harassment during the pandemic and are unable to make sense of their experiences; third, how participants reflect on what they could do better in future incidents and what they would have liked to say to their perpetrators. The final section reiterates the contributions this article makes to scholarship on pandemic racism and its effects on Asian women as well as to feminist and antiracist initiatives.

Hermeneutical injustice and anti-racism

CALD people suffer racism in variegated ways, whether due to nationality, ethnicity, gender and/or class. As many scholars have noted, racism is intersectional and frequently intersects with sexism (Crenshaw, 2005; Joubin, 2019; Laster Pirtle and Wright, 2021). The intersectionality of racism with sexism has been mostly discussed in studies on sexual racism, defined as ‘the discrimination between potential sexual or romantic partners on the basis of perceived racial identity’ (Callander et al., 2015: 1991). Less, however, has been said about racial fetish: one’s preference for sexual intimacy with people of a specific racial out-group (Zheng, 2016: 401). A prime example is ‘yellow fever’ where Asian women (and in some cases men) are preferred and mostly by White people due to highly sexualized stereotypes of being seductive or submissive (Fang, 2021; Zheng, 2016). Studies have also noted that men with fetishes for Asian women may be driven by an antifeminist backlash, longing to return to traditional gender roles supposedly embodied by the submissive Asian women (Lim, 2018; Zheng, 2016). We argue that the stereotypes of Asian women as weak and submissive underlie their supposed attractiveness while positioning them as easy targets for hostility. As Martin (2021: 96) highlighted in her study of Chinese female transmigrants in Australia, her study’s participants’ fears of assault were connected to the ‘sense that East Asian–looking young women could become sexual targets for non-Asian men with stereotyped preconceptions of their desirability as partners’. These participants also felt they were more vulnerable to attacks due to ‘supposedly being smaller, weaker, and more defenseless than either white women or Chinese men’ (Martin, 2021: 112).

However, studies have found that Asian women frequently struggled with their experiences of racism and sexism while exerting significant emotional labour to understand and negotiate their experiences. They experience what Miranda Fricker (2007: 147) calls a ‘hermeneutical injustice’: ‘wherein someone has a significant area of their social experience obscured from understanding owing to prejudicial flaws in shared resources for social interpretation’ – a marginalization that is driven by a White-centred experience that neglects racial dynamics from other perspectives (Zheng, 2016: 404). As Fricker (2007: 152) argued, the inability to make sense of one’s ongoing mistreatment prevents one from protesting it and finding effective measures to stop it. We hope that participants’ articulation of their experiences and the concerted effort to make sense of their experiences from both their and our perspectives can lead to effective measures to stop it.

This article addresses concerns voiced by extant intersectionality scholarship: that much intersectionality research has moved away from activism and group-based approaches centring women of colour (Kerner, 2017: 849). As Chun et al. (2013: 917) noted, intersectionality can help women of colour ‘invent and inhabit identities that register the effects of differentiated and uneven power, permitting them to envision and enact new social relations grounded in multiple axes of intersecting, situated knowledge’. Hermeneutical injustice, however, as discussed above, prevents women of colour from making sense of their mistreatment and disrupts intersectionality’s potential to help them envision new social relations. In other words, the two concepts, hermeneutical injustice and intersectionality, are useful when used together to analyse the experiences of women of colour. This approach not only identifies the uniqueness of women of colour’s experiences but also spotlights how women of colour’s perspectives may be obscured by White-centred experiences and White agendas to homogenize minorities’ experiences.

Following Crenshaw (2005), we note that antiracist activism during the pandemic has obscured gendered identities. Campaigns highlighting violence against women during the pandemic have similarly obscured ethnic identities. As Crenshaw (2005) argued, conversations about identities and their intersectionality have potential in forming coalitions. In thinking about anti-racism, recognizing the intersectional experiences of Asian women can be the foundation for Asian women and men, and for CALD women and men to unite under the banner of ‘race’ (Crenshaw, 2005). In the area of sexism, intersectionality provides a way of explaining why Asian women must abandon the general argument that the interests of the community require the suppression of any confrontation around intra-sexism (Crenshaw, 2005). Recognizing hermeneutical injustice furthers these agendas: the experiences of Asian women are unique not only because they experience intersectionality in variegated ways but also because their experiences have been made unique due to society’s mainstreaming of White-centred experiences.

The pandemic has intensified the racist and sexist experiences of Asian women yet activist campaigns during the pandemic reflect old patterns of neglecting intersectionality and hermeneutical injustice. Campaigns during the pandemic have focused mainly on two issues: racism against CALD people and violence against women. Little attention has been paid to how a specific CALD group of women experience the pandemic. Anti-racism campaigns include the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I am not a virus) started in France and #StopAsianHate started in the United States to highlight hate crimes against Asians (Lyu et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2021). Campaigns to raise awareness on violence against women include the ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence’ (UN Women, 2020) and the Help is Here campaign launched in Australia in 2020 (Ministers for the Department of Social Services (MDSS), 2020). While some organizations have recognized the intersectional nature of issues faced by CALD people (see, for example, InTouch Multicultural Centre against Family Violence), there has been little recognition of how racism and sexism intersect to shape Asian Australian women’s experiences during the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic may have intensified racism and sexism, but it also presents opportunities to rethink race, gender and future coalitions founded not only on intersectionality but also hermeneutical injustice.

Through analysing the variegated experiences of Asian women during the pandemic in the context of Australia, we espouse a feminist and antiracist strategy in two ways: first, our focus on Asian women aims to transcend the limiting categories of ‘CALD person’ or ‘woman’. Second, through discussing the rich and variegated experiences of our study participants, we aim to highlight the heterogeneity of experiences among ‘Asian women’. Our attention to Asian women’s inability to make sense of their mistreatment also deepens understandings of how obscured their experiences are in mainstream society. Understanding participants’ responses, strategies and thoughts of the future is likely to be productive in informing future feminist and antiracist initiatives.

Context and methodology

As a postcolonial settler nation, Australia is spatially and culturally dislocated as a White-majority country located in Australasia. As Ang and Colic-Peisker (2022) surmised, Australia fears the Chinese and populous Asia close to its northern shores, exacerbated lately by China’s ascent. While the ‘White Australia Policy’ is long ended and population diversity has since increased markedly, the view of Australia as a White nation endures and has emerged more glaringly during the pandemic (Ang and Mansouri, 2023; Hage, 1998). Those who cannot fit into its Anglo-White identity remain Othered as not quite belonging to the nation (Ang and Mansouri, 2023; Hage, 1998). Racism is ever-present in Australia. Depending on the political environment at the time, the targets of racism could shift from Southern Europeans (post-World War II) to Muslims (post-9/11) and more recently, since the pandemic, to Asians and the Chinese (Poynting and Mason, 2006; Tsolidis and Pollard, 2009). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, historical characterisation of the Chinese as ‘purveyors of disease’ and as outsiders in Australia have been revived (Bashford, 2004: 148). Anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism have risen sharply in Australia, like the rest of the world, facilitated by characterizations of COVID-19 as a ‘Chinese virus’ (Barreneche, 2020). Asian Australians have reported more than 400 racist attacks since the beginning of April (Chiu and Asian Australian Alliance, 2020; Koslowski, 2020). Negative sentiment towards Chinese nationals since the pandemic has also increased. The Scanlon Foundation July surveys (2020) tested Australians’ attitudes towards 10 specified national groups and found that negative responses for Chinese (47% up from 13% in 2013) was lower only than Iraqis (49%) and Sudanese (49%).

Asian-born Australians make up 9.9% of the total Australian population (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2022). Of the 10 most commonly reported countries of birth for those born overseas, 6 are Asian countries (India, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Sri Lanka) (ABS, 2022). Australians who were born in Asia are younger and more educated than Australians of other ancestry. This contrasts with people born in Europe who had a median age of 59 years (Song and Maree, 2021). In terms of education, Asian-born Australians are usually highly educated, many having used their qualifications to migrate as part of Australia’s selective migration policy that prioritizes skilled migration (Ho, 2020).

A total of 19 self-identified Asian female migrants and 1 Australian-born woman of Asian ancestry were interviewed for the project. The latter was included for comparative purposes; her data is not discussed in this article. Since this is a small study, we do not claim that the study participants’ experiences are representative of all Asian women in Australia. Rather, we hope our analysis provides a window into understanding some of their experiences. All participants identified as having Asian ancestry and were between the ages of 20 and 40. At the time of the interviews between September 2021 and January 2022, they were living in Victoria, Australia. The Asian female migrants originate from 12 countries: New Zealand, the United Kingdom, China, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Japan, Cambodia and Taiwan. Their visa statuses were varied: four are Australian citizens and seven have permanent residency. Others have temporary student or work visas. Although the category ‘Asian women’ can be problematic in aiding stereotypes and racism, we have chosen to use the term as our participants self-identify as such. We acknowledge, however, that there may be wide variations within the category including class backgrounds and sexualities. For instance, two of our participants identify as queer.

Ethics approval was sought and granted from the authors’ institution before starting online interviews. The participants were recruited through snowballing from the authors’ existing networks. The interviews consisted of semi-structured questions which focused on participants’ experiences and challenges during the pandemic, including racism, mobility issues and coping mechanisms. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. All interviews were recorded with consent, transcribed and analysed through NVivo. The authors of this study are three Asian women of Korean, Singaporean-Chinese and Han Chinese backgrounds who were motivated to pursue this study due to our own experiences of racism and sexism in Australia. While we started the research without a structured understanding of our and the participants’ experiences, we found we could analyse and interpret our findings after systematic coding and a judicious literature review that located a lacuna in studies of racism and sexism.

Experiences of pandemic racism

Not all participants experienced acute racism and/or sexism. The participants had a wide range of experiences from no experience at all to physical attacks. Eight out of 20 participants experienced racially motivated verbal or physical abuse during the pandemic; 14 out of 20 participants discussed their experiences of sexism as Asian women living in Australia before and during the pandemic. Their experiences of racism match headlines from all over the world that showed the intensification of racism towards Asian people during the pandemic. Bonny (20s, student, Burmese ancestry, Malaysia-born), for instance, related the following racist incident:

My friend and I were going to the market to get groceries. And then there were two girls that were racially harassing bystanders and telling them to go back to China. And then [my friend] made eye contact with one of them [. . .] they started hassling us. And then I think out of frustration, given that it wasn’t our first racial incident, [. . .] she said, go away something like, uh, trying to stop them. And then one of them took offense to that personally, and then chased after her [. . .] and then assaulted her while I was trying to intervene and help. And her other friend was holding a glass like alcohol bottle and kind of shaking it towards me. So I took that as a potential threat to my safety.

Bonny’s racist experience was exceptionally violent. Others, like Ditya (31, nurse, Nepal-born), had less violent though perhaps not less traumatic experiences during the pandemic:

I have very weird experience. This is in Melbourne. I was just with my friends . . . we went for a drink after dinner. This man just came . . . and he asked for a lighter, so we were not even smoking at that time . . . So he came up to us and said, do you have a lighter? And I said, no. He just kept yelling at me and I said, no, and he didn’t yell at my other friends who were fairly fair, fair skinned. He just kept yelling and he said, you come from this country and that, and then you just living in our country. It was very bad, but I didn’t say anything I just walked out, because if I had answered him back. I think he would have done something . . . or molested me.

We asked whether they thought women were more vulnerable to racism in Australia. Ditya’s answer was aptly put:

Yes, I think so. because we’re always considered a weak species compared to male counterparts. That’s why, because normally we don’t speak up, most of us do, but there are people who don’t, like, even I didn’t do anything, I just walked out or I just avoided the situation, the best I can. And that’s why we are always considered the weak. The one who won’t speak up. I think women always, women are the main targets.

Ditya’s thoughts about how women were targeted more than men by racists were reflected by most of our participants. Our findings corroborate with the results of a survey on COVID-19 racism conducted with more than 500 participants (Chiu and Asian Australian Alliance, 2021). The survey found that the largest number of respondents who reported experiencing racism identified as female (60.1%), in contrast to those who identified as male (34.1%). What is particular about our findings, however, which stands out from the survey is some of our participants’ sensitivity to men that was revealed during our interviews. We found that while our questions mainly focused on exploring their experiences of racism during the pandemic, participants frequently expressed their anxieties of not just racism but also sexual harassment and violence from men, as the next section discusses.

Harassment and fears of violence

Women are not only threatened by racist violence but also sexual violence. The intersection of racism and sexism during the pandemic intensified the harassment faced by the study’s participants, causing them to engage in significant emotional labour to resist preconceived ideas about them (Zheng, 2016: 405). While participants certainly saw enough relevance between their experiences of racism and sexual harassment to have voiced them during the interview, the researchers could frequently sense their doubts and inability to articulate their experiences in terms of racism and its intersection with sexism. In the narrative below, Fiona (29, creative industry, Han ancestry, China-born) shared her experience with a ‘weird’ man who, in her words, ‘projected his anger’ at the Chinese government onto her and the ‘whole (Chinese) community’ and who went on to harass her. She also talked about online harassment:

Yeah, I felt unsafe (since the pandemic) . . . generally I would avoid men . . . You know, not trying to generalize, but White men. that’s kind of alarming . . . (recalls a White man) I think we met through some social activities. Yeah. I didn’t actually talk much at all and it was quite weird sometimes he was trying to call me at midnight [. . .]. But when I ask . . . why did you call me at midnight? And [he would say] like, oh, that was an accident . . . but that happened a couple times . . . Yeah. If you talk about harassment, actually a lot of times I feel quite harassed like especially online harassment . . . Wasn’t that many incidents, but during the pandemic, I think it increased . . . sometimes people just randomly add you on social media and then send you messages . . . and say things like you know, you are Chinese, oh [. . .] I also speak Chinese [. . .] or sometime people make you feel really uncomfortable [. . .] when I was waiting at the bus stop or when I was outside of a bar, and people just assume you are Chinese and start to talk to you in Chinese. Oh, ni hao (Chinese for hello). [. . .] but sometimes I pretend I’m a Japanese <laugh>. I would respond saying sumimase (Japanese for sorry) Oh, they said, oh, you’re not Chinese and sometimes they would walk away. I’m not quite sure why that works. Maybe because they are trying to pick you up, as Chinese, but then when they see you are not Chinese, they might feel, oh, this is a top girl <laugh>. Yeah. So not really, like, pretending I’m Japanese works, but it’s more like if you are not Chinese might not work . . . I think it might also link to, you know, the culture as well, because you know, Chinese are not so good at saying no. And usually, you follow or even, you know, just difficult to speak up for yourself . . . Cause I think, it is like, you know, easy to pick up Chinese because they know that it’s likely that the Chinese girls cannot say no [. . .] Sometimes I feel people just feel [. . .] Chinese girls are easy . . .

Fiona’s response revealed hermeneutical injustice. The inability to see the link between racism and sexism towards Asian women reduced her response to one that pretended to be another kind of Asian woman. While denying her own nationality might have helped at that moment to avoid potential or further harassment, Fiona’s ‘strategy’ does not address the core issue: the intersection of racism and sexism targeting Asian women in general. The fact that Fiona thought being Japanese, instead of Chinese, might have prevented uncomfortable conversations and potential racism, is a notable revelation in itself, but it also poses a prejudicial flaw in understanding harassment. Fiona’s narrative also showed her perspective that in the eyes of others, such as White men, a hierarchy of Asian women and their corresponding ‘easiness’ exists, where Chinese women are deemed ‘easier’ than Japanese women. Although this hierarchy of ‘Asian women’ may exist, however, as Winnie (30s, Korean ancestry, New-Zealand-born) pointed out below, which kind of Asian woman she is does not matter to the Anglo-dominated Australian society, she is stereotyped for being an Asian woman that ‘don’t belong here’:

I didn’t see myself within the limits of race and gender, but the wider society did [through] a discriminatory lens [. . .] I look as I do an Asian woman and I’m often very confident and vocal about opinions and my view of the world. And I have found number of instances where, it doesn’t go with social expectations, and it just creates, feeling of, I think there’s that, you don’t belong here . . . And I mean, in that context, it doesn’t even matter that I’m Korean or Japanese, Chinese, like the, [there is] the [stereotypical] notion of an Asian woman or young Asian women in Australian society. I think how I perceived myself and how I was perceived, there was definitely a gap.

Similarly, Jane (26, media industry, Han ancestry, China-born) articulated that she felt ‘confirmation of [her] otherness’ through the harassment she encountered. Jane has become worried about being attacked by men due to several online and offline incidents since the pandemic including one who shouted at her in public. She shared her intensified experiences of online harassment:

I think most of the time we spend during this pandemic was online . . . there’s also been experiences online that make me feel strange and I don’t know how to respond to them. So since the pandemic started, there have been times that like different people, I don’t know who they are, but different people, sometimes it was fake account. Sometimes it was real account try to add me as friends on the social media platforms and also all of them, like most of them are men. And some people are just like verbally harass me like, Hey, beautiful. That sort of creepy message. Or send you some porn pictures on the social media platforms . . . I don’t want to look at those things. Like, I don’t think any woman should be exposed to this type of content, in any situation if they don’t ask to. And don’t even mention these calls were mainly made by men or white men . . .

In Jane’s case, we see that her sense of hermeneutical injustice is expressed in how she can only describe the online harassment as making her ‘feel strange’ and not knowing how to respond to them. The pandemic’s restrictions on movement led many to turn to the online sphere for connection. For Jane, as an Asian woman, however, her increased use of social media during the pandemic involved more experiences of online harassment which intensified her fears of physical attacks. Her further comments below illustrate her fear of being physically attacked by men, indicating her awareness of how her gender makes her more vulnerable to racial attacks as racism entangles with sexism:

Oh, I think white men would be a big, big, big thing in my consideration, but I think to be accurate it’s men in every demographic. For attacks, men would just like get punched by somebody in the face. For me, for women, I think it always involves sexual violence. I really, really feel like the fear in my heart. Like, I can’t imagine like how to cope with it if it actually happens, but I had imagined that like every time and I walk down the street at night only by myself cause before it was a curfew . . . I have, every time I walked out straight, I would imagine that. And I would just come up with a like solution package for myself. Like if I got caught by someone, what I should do. And should I pretend that I just allow him to do that and then find a chance to escape or I should just sit, attack back and bite him or do whatever I do, lots of those type of imagination.

The insecurity felt by Fiona and Jane during the pandemic intensified due to an increase in harassment. Their experiences suggest that Asian women could be more vulnerable or feel more vulnerable to racism and sexism. The hermeneutical injustice Fiona and Jane endured was profound. Jane struggled to make sense of her experience of harassment, saying that there ‘has been experiences online that make me feel strange and I don’t know how to respond to them’. Similarly, Fiona could only use the word ‘weird’ to articulate her experience and the man who harassed her, rather than labelling him ‘racist’ and/or ‘sexist’. Their experiences are tightly linked to their positionality as Asian women: their appearances are stereotyped by others such that they seem like easy targets, whether sexually and/or racially. As Jane aptly put, ‘if I don’t look like this, if I’m from a different background, probably I don’t have to take all these’.

Stereotypes, size and culture

For participants who have experienced racism and/or sexism in Australia, we asked: given a safe environment, is there something you would have liked to say to the perpetrator, or do? Unlike studies such as Hickey (2016) who found that her Aboriginal interviewees in Australia generally agreed that it was good to confront the racist perpetrator, most of our participants expressed otherwise. Audrey (40s, accountant, Indian ancestry, Malaysia-born), for instance, said that it was ‘probably a bad idea’ to confront her perpetrators. Lorrie (30, teacher, Han ancestry, China-born) emphasized the large size of her perpetrators relative to hers and said she would not respond to her perpetrator as ‘I am afraid of getting physically hurt’. As Asian women, most participants felt they were vulnerable to perpetrators, whether due to looking youthful or small size. Diane (40s, education aide, Chinese ancestry, Singapore-born,), for instance, talked about how Asians look more vulnerable than the mainstream Australian population, presumably White people with Anglo-European ancestry. She articulated that she feels more vulnerable than her Asian husband, due to her size: ‘I’m not tall. I’m at 1.5 [m]. I’m not even above 1.6, like consider more in [relative to] the local context’. Diane also said that if a racist incident happened to her, she ‘will run because I’m so small’, instead of confronting the perpetrator. Fiona also communicated to us on how her youthful looking appearance can be a bane both at work and in public. In particular, she noted how ‘it is harder to stand up as a Chinese female’ who looks ‘young’ and ‘it’s hard [to] be really projecting that kind of a strong image to fight back’. Instead, she discussed how she needs to be ‘subtle’ and ‘leverage the resources available rather than [fight] just by yourself. Cause absolutely feel unsafe to fight by myself’. Stereotypes of Asian women as weak and submissive as well as cultural orientations to avoid confrontations also made participants feel more vulnerable. Sunny (20s, student, Chinese-Malay ancestry, Singapore-born), for instance, experienced a racist assault on the streets of Melbourne. She responded below to the question of whether she felt more vulnerable to racism than other groups of women. Sunny felt that stereotypes of Asian women being weak and submissive cause many to think they are ‘easier to attack’. At the same time, Sunny acknowledged that culturally, she was also taught to ‘not attack others and avoid confrontation’:

I think people of color are all vulnerable to racism in their own ways, but I think the situation currently has a lot of ire directed towards the Chinese, and therefore Asians due to the virus and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). A lot of people generalise Asians as being Chinese first [. . .] and this already sets off some fear within me because I’m already expecting a certain attitude to be used against me when I’m outside [. . .] they assume all Asians are Chinese . . . I think the stereotype of being weak and submissive has long existed even within Asian culture itself, where many only think that Asian women given our sizes are smaller and easier to attack. We’re often presented even in Asian media, and even storybooks, to be weak women who can’t fight for themselves, both mentally and physically [. . .] I’ve been brought up to not attack others and avoid confrontation when necessary, this isn’t the case with the attacker. So in their eyes, we’re currently a lot more vulnerable and easier as a people of color to attack.

Sunny’s response pointed to how people of colour are all vulnerable to racism and it was just this moment ‘currently’ that racism is directed towards the Chinese and Asians. Importantly, Sunny points out how mainstream media often portray Asian women as ‘weak’, and that this not only affects others’ perceptions of Asian women, but also how Asian women think of themselves as non-confrontational. Her perspective may shed some light on hermeneutical injustice: Asian women’s experiences of racism and sexism are not only obscured from understanding due to the privileging of White-centred experiences, their potential strategies to fight racism and sexism are also obscured since they are more often portrayed as ‘weak’ than as people who can fight for themselves. Like Sunny, Diane and Tanya’s (35, student, Han ancestry, China-born) responses below provide insights into how their experiences parallel and diverge from other minority women:

Diane:

I do feel vulnerable to racism as an Asian person but I do not think I feel ‘more’ vulnerable than others. I believe the vulnerability is also the sense of inclusion within the community in where I live or work. For instance, I am one of three families at the court I live in who are of Asian descent, most of my neighbours do not make contact with us since we moved into the court about a year ago except for the other two Asian families . . . The misconception of Asian women as submissive is not quite present at my place of work but I had heard of friends who worked in an environment with predominantly Asians colleagues do experience internal discriminating and bullying as the Asian superiors have a tendency to bully younger colleagues due to hierarchical (hierarchies of seniority) and sexism issues.

Tanya:

In terms of vulnerability with racism, in comparison to the Aboriginal communities, I would say depends. We experience racism from different perspectives. If for independent living and financial affordability, I don’t. However, in terms of social [societal perceptions] and land orientations, yes.

Their responses all suggest solidarity among minority women is possible: Diane explained that she does feel vulnerable to racism but not more so than other groups of women. Tanya’s response reflected that people of colour all experience racism but ‘from different perspectives’. Diane’s response also reminded us that while racism may not occur in predominantly Asian environments, discrimination can still occur due to sexism and hierarchies of seniority. In a similar way, other participants reflected on how racism could come from a variety of perpetrators. While White men were mentioned in both Fiona’s and Jane’s narratives, Fiona indicated that she was more wary of ‘elder’ White men. Audrey suggested that she was more cautious of ‘young Caucasians’ who are ‘not educated’ and ‘probably haven’t been abroad to another country’. Tanya noted, however, that it was not only the lower classes of men who tended to target Asian women but also people of other classes. Unlike Rzepnikowska’s (2019) study of Polish women in the United Kingdom who identified racists as ‘white, young, anti-social, British male with a low social status’, Tanya noted that the White man who deliberately bumped into her on a relatively empty tram was ‘very clean’, well-groomed and dressed like an office worker. She also discussed her fears of teenagers with ‘darker skin’ who may be from ‘Aboriginal or African backgrounds’. Unsurprisingly, White women as racist perpetrators were also discussed. Audrey recalled a racist incident where a White woman had deliberately pushed a pram into her several times at a shopping mall. Similarly, Penny (35, Han ancestry, Taiwan-born) singled out White women as perpetrators of racism at her female-dominant workplace: ‘there are women who suffer because of women. you are also a woman and I am a woman, but ethnicity becomes the biggest difference’. Certainly, while White female perpetrators can hardly be called ‘sexist’, we note that so long White women view Asian women through racist lenses of weakness and submissiveness, they reproduce and contribute to Asian women’s experiences of racism and sexism.

The participants’ reflections on their perpetrators show that the demographic profile of racists and/or sexists is not restricted to any particular ethnicity (White, Aboriginal or African), class (working class or professional) or age group (teenagers or in the 50s) in Australia. Racism and sexism do exist in most modern societies, including within Asian Australian communities themselves (Seet, 2021). While ‘White men’ stood out as potential perpetrators by some of our participants, they also noted that White women or Asian men were perpetrators of racism and sexism (Dunn et al., 2004; Dunn and Nelson, 2011).

Thoughts of the future

While most participants would not confront their perpetrators, some thought they would report the incident to the police in future. Ditya, for instance, felt she should have spoken up to the men who yelled at her (see first section) and asked her friend to call the police. She also thought that she would ‘maybe get someone, the bystanders to help, maybe just control him or just tell him off’. Fiona also felt that she would have liked to make a report to the police. She felt she ‘should have done more, but sometimes, when things happen, you didn’t really have the avenue or the channel for you to report’. Like other participants, she also expressed her frustration with how one would report passing incidents:

if it happened on a bus and after you get off the bus, who knows how to, how you track and even though you report, but then how to follow it up. And sometimes, you know, people were driving their car and of course you cannot stop them.

Others, like Bonny, reported her racist attack to the police but found that the police were racist too when they made racist remarks about her attacker who had Aboriginal ancestry. Bonny reflected on Australia’s greater demographic context when she said that her attacker ‘was probably a product of the environment that white Australia has done as well. So we were both victims, [she was] just lower in the food chain victim wise’. Participants also discussed their strategies to avoid potential racists. Tanya, for instance, said she was cautious of men especially on public transport due to a previous racist incident at the start of the pandemic. Audrey also developed certain strategies such as timing her shopping to decrease her chances of bumping into ‘young Caucasians’ and preferring to order food online – popularized from the pandemic – rather than in person.

The study’s participants also expressed a desire to voice their opinions, given a safe environment. While Audrey would not confront her perpetrator, she felt that if given a safe environment, she would have spoken to her perpetrator about equality. She thinks education is essential for anti-racism and anti-sexism:

I would say, look, I’m just, another living being. I have feelings I have pain equally. Doesn’t matter what color we are. It’s the same pain [. . .] You know, we are human, We are same species. And I’ll probably ask what, What are you worried about that I’m being here? You know, are you worried about that I’m going to attack you or are you worried about that I’m going to damage you in some way, because you know what, I’m not [going to] . . . It has to be an education around it, practice at school, you know, that’s why I would say everybody get educated.

Jane would also have liked to speak to their perpetrators, if given a safe environment. Jane’s words, pessimistic as they are, gave insights into her thoughts that education and the media play a big part in racism and sexism. Indeed, the Australian media’s portrayal of Asian women are highly sexualized (Kuang, 2021). She also wanted to appeal to the personal, human side of her perpetrators:

I guess the message I would have wanted to make clear is they should stop doing this no matter what it is for. And if I had the chance, I would really like to know how they have been educated in Australia. I want to know what sort of education and information environment had made them feel it is ok to treat a Chinese woman like this. I also found most of the men who have harassed me were aged above 50. I don’t know if they would eventually realise I am probably on the same age with their daughter or granddaughter. And I also have families who love me deeply and don’t want me to get hurt in any instance. It is painful to think so, but sometimes I feel maybe it’s already too hard for them to see me as a human as I don’t look like their ‘own people’.

Conclusion

Asian Australian women during the pandemic encounter racism and/or sexism in varying degrees. Their experiences, however, are eclipsed due to prejudicial flaws in our shared resources for social interpretation; flaws maintained by extant literature and campaigns which focus either on racism or sexism and not the intersection of the two. The lack of attention in the academic and public sphere on how racism and sexism intersect contributes to participants’ hermeneutical injustice. The inability to make sense of their experiences along the lines of racism and/or sexism prevents them from identifying and protesting mistreatment and thereby finding ways to stop racialized sexism. Participants’ reflections on their experiences, however, offer insights for academia and the public for future feminist and antiracist studies and/or initiatives: we learnt that unlike other victims of racism, Asian women tend to avoid confronting their perpetrators and may be more afraid of White men. While the White-other binary may be a dominant theme during the interviews, participants also show awareness of racists and sexists from other demographics, although such experiences may be sidelined. The dominant White-other binary, we suggest, is also a prejudicial flaw that causes hermeneutical injustice. As researchers have established, the perpetrators of racism can be of any race and may even be co-ethnics (Hough, 2022; Tsuda, 2022). While the Chinese/Asian victim versus White perpetrator framing has some element of truth, understanding racism and sexism based on this framing alone obscures greater insights into racism and sexism and can contribute to hermeneutical injustice. Indeed, this misunderstanding was present in some of our participants’ experiences. The racial assault on Bonny and her friend, for instance, made headlines and was initially framed by media coverage as a case of White perpetrators versus Chinese international students. In truth, neither Bonny nor her friend originated from China, and Bonny did not have any Chinese ancestry. The attacker was an Aboriginal woman.

On countering racism and sexism, participants showed a desire to voice their opinions and proposed a more proactive and responsible role for education and the media. Pandemic racism compounded with existing sexism in Australia cannot be separated from the anti-immigrant sentiment against the growing Asian-born populations in Australia in the past two decades (Biddle et al., 2019; McCallum, 2019). Among them are Asian women in diverse sectors and international students who will join the future workforce. In order to reduce hermeneutical injustice, this growing population in Australia must be empowered and fairly represented in politics, media, business and society. Rather than portraying Asian Australian women as victims, fair representation and empowerment are far more likely to address the deeply embedded issues of racism and sexism in Australia. However, other than reporting future incidents, participants focused on their avoidance strategies rather than things they could proactively do to tackle racism and sexism. We argue that this lack of action is linked to the hermeneutical injustice they face. How can one protest and act to stop mistreatment if one cannot identify their experiences of mistreatment?

Finally, participants’ reflections suggest that there is potential for minority women in general to form coalitions based on sharing intersectionality in encountering racism and sexism. Bonny, for instance, reflected on the White Australia context and suggested that her Aboriginal attacker was also a victim, only that her attacker was ‘lower in the food chain victim wise’. Indeed, other minority women such as Aboriginal women also suffer the intersection of racialization and sexualization, although this intersection is founded more on white assumptions of Aboriginal sexuality as ‘primitive’ and less sexually repressed than being weak or submissive (Asian women stereotypes) (Robert, 2001). The stereotypes of Asian women as weak or submissive are tightly linked to what participants felt were their specific ‘disadvantages’: small stature, youthful appearances and non-confrontational cultures. Participants acknowledged, however, that they are just as vulnerable to racism as other minority women. As Sunny pointed out, people of colour are all vulnerable to racism and it was only the current ‘moment’ that Chinese and Asians are targeted. Returning to concerns voiced by intersectional scholars that much intersectionality research has moved away from activism and group-based approaches centring women of colour (Kerner, 2017: 849), we argue that combining the lenses of intersectionality and hermeneutical injustice is useful: campaigns against racism and sexism can increase their focus on the intersectional experiences of Asian women to enable victims to have shared resources for social interpretation. Only when their social experiences are not obscured by White-centred experiences can they identify, protest and stop mistreatment. The ability to identify their intersectional experiences will also foster greater potential for solidarity with other women of colour with intersectional experiences.