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Feminism's Fight

Feminism's Fight

Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada Since 1970

Edited by Barbara Cameron and Meg Luxton

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

392 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 1 b&w photo

Paperback
9780774868044
Published: February 2024

£32.00

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Hardcover
9780774868037
Published: June 2023

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors

Feminism's Fight explores and assesses feminist strategies to advance gender justice for women through Canadian federal policy over the past fifty years, from the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to the present.

The authors evaluate changing government orientations through the 1990s and 2000s, revealing the negative impact on most women's lives and the challenges for feminists. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated misogyny and related systemic inequalities. Yet it has also revived feminist mobilization and animated calls for a new and comprehensive equality agenda for Canada.

Feminism's Fight tells the crucial story of a transformation in how feminism has been treated by governments and asks how new ways of organizing and new alliances can advance a feminist agenda of social and economic equality.

Part 1: Challenging Dominant Paradigms

1 From the Status of Women to Gender Justice for Women / Barbara Cameron and Meg Luxton

2 Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act: A Tool of Forced Assimilation / Shelagh Day and Pamela Palmater

Part 2: Reclaiming the Economy

3 Feminism Meets Macroeconomic Policy / Barbara Cameron

4 Never Done: The Challenge of Unpaid Work in the Home / Meg Luxton

5 Fifty Years for Farm Women: Gender and Shifting Agricultural Policy Paradigms in Canada / Amber J. Fletcher

Part 3: Reimagining Policy

6 Policy Discourses on Sexual Violence: From the Royal Commission to the (Post-)Neoliberal State / Lise Gotell

7 Responsibility and Reproduction after the Royal Commission / Alana Cattapan

8 The Royal Commission and Immigration and Citizenship: A Missed Opportunity? / Christina Gabriel

9 Securing Income, Sustaining Livelihoods: Th e Royal Commission, Social Reproduction, and Income Security / Ann Porter

Part 4: Reframing Representation

10 Strategic, Cynical, and Sinister Representation: Reconceptualizing and Recasting Women's Representation / Alexandra Dobrowolsky

11 The Royal Commission and Unions: Leadership, Equality, Women's Organizing, and Collective Agency / Linda Briskin

Part 5: Reforming Institutions

12 Equality Instituted? Gender Equity, Women's Rights, and Human Rights Commissions / Nicole S. Bernhardt

13 Federalism for the Twenty-First Century: Feminism and Multilevel Governance in Canada / Tammy Findlay

Index

Barbara Cameron is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at York University and a research associate at York's Centre for Feminist Research. She has served on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action since 2008. Meg Luxton is a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at York University. She has served as director of the graduate program in Women's Studies/Gender, Feminist, and Women's Studies and of the Centre for Feminist Research. Her publications include More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women's Work in the Home and (with Susan Braedley) Neoliberalism and Everyday Life.

Contributors: Nicole S. Bernhardt, Linda Briskin, Barbara Cameron, Alana Cattapan, Shelagh Day, Alexandra Dobrowolsky, Tammy Findlay, Amber J. Fletcher, Christina Gabriel, Lise Gotell, Meg Luxton, Pamela Palmater, Ann Porter