Feminist Issues - Race, Class and Sexuality - Nancy - 240219 - 163507

Feminist
Issues
Race, Class, and Sexuality
Sixth Edition Nancy Mandell • Jennifer Johnson

Sixth Canadian Edition
FEMINIST ISSUES:
RACE, CLASS, AND
SEXUALITY
Nancy Mandell
York University
Jennifer L. Johnson
Thorneloe University, federated with Laurentian University
Toronto
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [V0RY]
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Feminist issues : race, class, and sexuality / [edited by]
Nancy Mandell (York University), Jennifer Johnson (Laurentian
University). — Sixth Canadian edition.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-13-514668-2 (paperback)
1. Feminism—Canada. 2. Women—Canada—Social conditions.
I. Mandell, Nancy, editor II. Johnson, Jennifer (Jennifer L.), editor
HQ1206.F445 2015 305.4 C2015-906618-2
ISBN 978-0-13-359366-2
Dedication
Micah, Eli, Charlotte, Brooke, and Emily
and
Leandré, Rhys, and Maël
Brief Contents
Chapter 1 Theorizing Women’s Oppression and Social Change: Liberal,

Socialist, Radical, and Postmodern Feminisms 1
Shana L. Calixte, Jennifer L. Johnson, and J. Maki Motapanyane
Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 35
Carmela Murdocca
Chapter 3 Transnational Feminism 62
Corinne L. Mason
Chapter 4 Stitch the Bitch: #girl#socialmedia#body#human 90
Katie Warfield, Fiona Whittington-Walsh
Chapter 5 Constructing Gender, Regulating Sexuality 119
Susanne Luhmann
Chapter 6 Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture 147
Carla Rice
Chapter 7 Men, Masculinities, and Feminism 175
Christopher J. Greig and Barbara A. Pollard
Chapter 8 Violence Against Women in Canada 201
Katherine M. J. McKenna
Chapter 9 Challenging Old Age: Women’s Next Revolution 229
Nancy Mandell and Ann Duffy
Chapter 10 Mothers’ Maintenance of Families Through Market
and Family Care Relations 256
Amber Gazso
Chapter 11 Women and Education 284
Michelle Webber
Chapter 12 Health As a Feminist Issue 311
Carrie Bourassa with contributions from Mel Bendig,
Eric Oleson, Cassie Ozog
iv
Contents
Notes on Contributors xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
1 Theorizing Women’s Oppression and Social Change: Liberal,

Socialist, Radical, and Postmodern Feminisms 1
Introduction 1
Liberal Feminism: Key Historical Points, Principles, and Goals 1
Contemporary and Global Dimensions of Liberal Feminist Thought 5
Critiques of Liberal Feminism 7
Socialist Feminism 8
Defining Socialist Feminism 8
Historical Background: Marxist and Socialist Feminism 9
The Contemporary and Global Landscapes 12
Critiques of Socialist Feminism 13
Radical Feminism 14
Defining Radical Feminism 14
Sites of Oppression: Patriarchy, the State, and the Family 14
Women’s Bodies: Reproduction, Pornography, and Violence 16
Female Separation: Lesbian Feminism and Cultural Feminism 18
Global and Contemporary Dimensions of Radical Feminist Thought 19
Critiques of Radical Feminism 20
Poststructural and Postmodern Feminism 21
Defining Poststructural and Postmodern Feminism 21
Historical Influences 23
Feminist Critiques of Poststructural and Postmodern Feminism 25
Conclusion 26
Endnotes 27
Discussion Questions 28
Bibliography 28
2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 35

Carmela Murdocca
Introduction 35
Race, Colonialism, Modernity 36
v
Some Definitions: Colonialism, Imperialism, and Race 37
Race and Representation 41
Racialization 43
Race and Culture 44
Tracing Intersectionality 45
The “How” of Intersectionality 49
Some Possibilities and Limitations of Intersectionality 53
Conclusion 57
Endnotes 57
Bibliography 58
3 Transnational Feminism 62
Corinne L. Mason
Introduction 62
Globalization, Local/Global, and the Transnational 63
Local/Global 65
Transnational 66
Global Feminism and Transnational Feminism: Knowing the Difference 68
Migration 72
Representation 74
Decolonizing Feminist Thought 74
Decolonizing Feminist Research 75
Violence Against Women 77
Globalization and Violence against Women 78
Representing Violence against Women 78
Activism and Solidarity 80
Saving Other Women 80
The United Nations As a Site for Advocacy 83
Worker Solidarity 83
Conclusion 84
Endnotes 85
Bibliography 86
4 Stitch the Bitch: #girl#socialmedia#body#human 90

#Introduction 90
#Media#Ideology 93
#Nature#Body versus #Mind#Technology 93
#Social#Media 95
#Plugged-in#Girls 97
vi Contents
#Iam#Amanda 99
#Iam#Malala 104
#Backlash 108
#Cyborg 111
Endnotes 113
Bibliography 114
5 Constructing Gender, Regulating Sexuality 119

Susanne Luhmann
Introduction 119
Learning about Sex—Constructing Sexuality 119
First Thoughts on Sex and Sexuality (and on Gender Too) 120
Why Have Sex? 121
Sex vs. Gender 122
Gender Differences in Cultural Context 122
Studying Gender Cross-Culturally 123
The Coherence of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality As Heterosexual Matrix 124
Binary Gender Constructions 124
A (Brief) History of Sexuality 126
One-Sex and Two-Sex Model 128
The Perilous Route of Sexual Differentiation 128
Intersex and Human Variation 129
The Invention of Heterosexuality 131
Charting Human Sexual Diversity 132
Constructing Sexuality Cross-culturally 133
The Strong Social Constructionist View 135
Constructing Sexual Normalcy 136
Feminist Challenges to “Sexual Normalcy” 136
The Compulsory Institution of Heterosexuality 137
Heterosexual Privilege 138
Queering Heterosexuality 139
Conclusion: The Antinomies of Young People’s Sexuality 142
Endnotes 143
Bibliography 144
6 Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture 147

Carla Rice
Introduction 147
The Uneasy Primacy of Images 148
Body Projects Today 151
Contents vii
Weight and Eating 153
Eating Distress 155
Skin 157
Hair 160
Breasts 164
Conclusion: Recovering Beauty? 167
Endnotes 168
Bibliography 169
7 Men, Masculinities, and Feminism 175

The Early Writings on Men and Masculinity 175
Early Writings on Men and Masculinity: 1970s and 1980s 176
Later Writings on Masculinities: The late 1980s to the Present 180
Understanding Masculinities 181
Hegemonic Masculinity 181
Masculinity As Performance 185
Masculinities and Intersectionality 186
Class and Masculinities 186
Race and Masculinities 187
Masculinities and Disabilities 188
Sport: A Key Social Location for the Making of Masculinities 190
Conclusion 195
Bibliography 196
8 Violence Against Women in Canada 201

Introduction 201
Identifying the Problem 202
Types of Violence Against Women 204
Sexual Assault 204
Intimate Partner Violence 207
Sexual Harassment 214
Violence Against Women and Intersectionality 216
Pornography and Prostitution 220
Violence Against Women Internationally 221
Conclusion: Is it Possible to Have a Society Where Women
are Free from Male Violence? 222
viii Contents
Endnotes 223
Bibliography 223
9 Challenging Old Age: Women’s Next Revolution 229

Nancy Mandell and Ann Duffy
Feminism and Ageism 229
Theorizing Age—Feminist Political Economy Perspectives 230
Aging and Poverty 232
Other Unattached Women 235
Racialized Poverty and Immigrant Women 236
Transnational Seniors 237
The Future: Precarious Pensions and Postponed Retirement 238
Aging and Caring: Giving and Receiving Care 241
Aging: Embodiment 245
Conclusion 247
Bibliography 249
10 Mothers’ Maintenance of Families Through Market

and Family Care Relations 256
Amber Gazso
Introduction 256
Some Brief Feminist Insights 257
The Contemporary Market and Family Care Relations of Mothers 260
Mothers’ Experiences of Work-Family Conflict 266
Strategies for Managing and Sustaining Market and
Family Care Relations 270
Transnational Management of Paid Work and Family Care 273
The Role of the State: Parental Leave Policy 274
Conclusion 277
Endnotes 278
Bibliography 278
11 Women and Education 284

Michelle Webber
Introduction 284
Historical Background 284
Lower Education 285
Contents ix
Teachers and Principals 285
Students 286
Contemporary Research 289
Higher Education 293
Students 294
The Professoriate 295
Women’s Studies and Feminism in the Academy 299
Feminist Pedagogies 300
The Rise of the McUniversity 301
Conclusion 301
Bibliography 302
12 Health As a Feminist Issue 311

Carrie Bourassa with contributions from Mel Bendig, Eric Oleson,
Cassie Ozog
Introduction 311
Defining Health 311
Social Determinants of Health 313
Health As a Feminist Issue 315
Gender Equity and Bias 320
Canadian Demographics 321
Gender Equity, Social Determinants of Health and Intersectionality—
Let the Data Speak 321
Transnational Health Concerns 322
Canadian Health Trends 323
Immigrant Women’s Health 324
Indigenous Women’s Health 325
Relevant Policy Analysis 327
Intersectional Feminist Frameworks 329
Women’s Health Activism in Canada 330
Cultural Safety 332
Conclusion 334
Endnotes 334
Bibliography 335
Index 340
x Contents
Notes on Contributors
Carrie Bourassa is Professor of Indigenous Health Studies at First Nations University of

Canada. She is proud to be the successful Nominated Principal Investigator on a Canada
Foundation for Innovation Grant that funded the Indigenous Community–based Health
Research Labs at FNUniv. She is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and
Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. Carrie’s research interests include the impacts
of colonization on the health of Indigenous people; creating culturally safe care in health
service delivery; Indigenous community–based health research methodology; Indigenous
HIV/AIDS research; Indigenous end-of-life care and Indigenous women’s health. Carrie is
Métis, belonging to the Regina Riel Métis Council #34.
Shana L. Calixte is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at
York University. Her teaching and research include critical race and sexuality studies in
the history of the Caribbean Girl Guides movement. She teaches courses such as Girl
Cultures, Female Sexualities, Hip-Hop Feminisms and Reproduction and Mothering at
Thorneloe University federated with Laurentian University. She is also the full time
Executive Director of NISA/Northern Initiative for Social Action, a peer-led mental
health organization serving thousands of Northern Ontarians. Recent publications
include articles in the Journal of Mental Health, and in Difficult Dialogues About 21st
Century Girls (forthcoming).
Ann Duffy is a Professor at Brock University in Sociology and Labour Studies. Her
research interests focus on the intersections between women, work (paid and unpaid),
social inequality, and the economy. She has co-authored and co-edited a variety of books
on the sociology of work, sociology of the family and family violence. With Professors
Daniel Glenday and Norene Pupo, she is presently co-authoring a book on the crisis in
Canadian employment. Having just completed a SSHRC-funded project on deindustrial-
ization with Professors June Corman and Norene Pupo, she is also co-authoring a book on
the collapse of manufacturing in Niagara Region.
Amber Gazso is Associate Professor of Sociology, York University. She holds a PhD
in Sociology (University of Alberta, 2006). Her current research interests include
citizenship, family and gender relations, poverty, research methods, and social policy and
the welfare state. Her recent publications focus on low income mothers on social assistance
and Canadians and Americans’ experiences of midlife. Her current research explores how
diverse families make ends meet by piecing together networks of social support such as
government and community and informal supports. Another ongoing and comparative
project explores the relationship between health and income inequality among Canadians
and Americans in midlife.
Christopher J. Greig is Associate Professor at the University of Windsor, in the
Faculty of Education and Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Canada. His research
xi
is focused on historical perspectives on Canadian men, boys, and masculinities.
Feminist analyses of social, political and economic periods and contexts inform Greig’s
research, which appears in journals such as Educational Review, Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education, and the Alberta Journal of Educational Research and include
a co-edited book, Canadian Men and Masculinities: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives (2012) and Ontario Boys: Masculinity and the Idea Boyhood in Postwar
Ontario, 1945–1960 (2014).
Jennifer L. Johnson is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
at Thorneloe University federated with Laurentian University. Her research and teaching
include feminist geographical approaches to the study of social reproduction and global
economies; gender, race and racism, and feminist pedagogy. She sits on the editorial board
of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice/Études critiques sur le genre,
la culture, et la justice. Her current research explores how gender and race are socially
constructed through the spatialization of work, and in particular, the nuclear family home.
Susanne Luhmann is Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender
Studies at the University of Alberta. Her teaching/research interests and published work
concern feminist and queer pedagogies, sexuality studies, the formation of Women’s and
Gender Studies, and German cultural memory. She is currently finishing a book manu-
script tentatively entitled “Domesticating the Nazi Past: Familial Legacies of Nazi Perpe-
tration in Contemporary German Memory,” which examines representations that restage,
recover, and narrate legacies of perpetration from within the space of private and family
life in Germany.
Nancy Mandell is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, York University. She is
a faculty associate at the Centre for Feminist Research (CFR) and the Centre for Excel-
lence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS). Her research and teaching
interests include gender, aging, qualitative methods, schooling, and family. Recently she
has published on life course analysis of midlife Canadian women, senior immigrants, and
transnational family patterns, gendered and racialized forms of carework, and academ-
ic-community research partnerships. She is completing a SSHRC grant entitled “Worked
to Death,” which examines patterns of economic security among aging immigrant families.
Corinne L. Mason is Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Coordinator of Gender &
Women’s Studies at Brandon University. She conducts transnational critical-race feminist
analyses of development discourses and popular news media, focusing specifically on
representations of LGBT rights, violence against women, reproductive justice, and foreign
aid. Her work has been published in Feminist Formations, International Feminist Journal of
Politics, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Surveillance & Society, and Canadian
Journal of Communication. She is currently working a book-length project on sexuality
rights and development, and exploring the connections between race, social media, and
humanitarianism.
J. Maki Motapanyane is Associate Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies in the
Department of Humanities, Mount Royal University. She teaches courses on global
gender issues and transnationalism; colonialism and de-colonization; Hip-Hop culture;
xii Notes on Contributors

environmental justice; and liberation ecology. Her research spans the fields of feminist
theory, motherhood, and cultural studies. She has published on feminist theory, transna-
tional feminist research methods, racialized comedy in Canada, and gender in Hip-Hop
culture. She is the editor of Mothering in Hip-Hop Culture: Representation and Experience
(Demeter Press, 2012), as well as the forthcoming Motherhood and Lone/Single Parenting:
A 21st Century Perspective (Demeter Press, 2015).
Carmela Murdocca is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at York
University, where she is also appointed to the graduate programs in Sociology, Socio-Legal
Studies, and Social and Political Thought. Her work has appeared in Law and Social Inquiry,
Social and Legal Studies, the Australian Feminist Law Journal, and the Canadian Journal of
Law and Society. She is the author of To Right Historical Wrongs: Race, Gender and Sentencing
in Canada (2013) and co-editor (with D. Brock and A. Glasbeek) of Criminalization,
Representation, Regulation (2014).
Barbara A. Pollard is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University
of Windsor, Canada. Her research interests focus on critical literacy and critical pedagogy
as it is practised across educational contexts. Pollard draws on feminist and other critical
theoretical frameworks in order to explore how culture, ideology, knowledge, and identity
are linked to social justice. Her research examines factors such as gender and social class
under circumstances of oppression and resistance in the lives of students and teachers.
Pollard has presented her research at numerous peer-reviewed conferences and was
recently published in Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices.
Katherine McKenna is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Departments
of History and Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western
Ontario. Her publications in the area of gender-based violence include a co-edited
volume Violence Against Women: New Canadian Perspectives (2002) and co-authored
reports The Economic Costs and Consequences of Child Abuse in Canada (2003) for the
Law Commission of Canada and Measuring the Economic Costs of Violence Against Women:
An Evaluation of the Literature (2005) for the Division for the Advancement of Women of
the United Nations.
Carla Rice is a Canada Research Chair at University of Guelph. A leader in the field
of embodiment studies, Dr. Rice is founder and former director of the Body Image Project
at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and the National Eating Disorder Information
Centre. Her research explores representations and narratives of body and identity. Rice
has published in widely in international journals including Feminism & Psychology,
Women’s Studies International Forum, and Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies among
others. Books include Gender and Women’s Studies in Canada: Critical Terrain (2013), and
Becoming Women: The Embodied Self in Image Culture (2014).
Katie Warfield is faculty in the Department of Journalism and Communication at
Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia. She is an authority on selfies and
director of the Making Selfies/Making Self Research Project, which explicates visual
presentations of gender and subjectivities via social media. She is also the director of the
Visual Media Workshop, a centre for research and learning into digital visual culture.
Notes on Contributors xiii

She teaches classes in communication theory, popular culture, media and diversity, and social
media; and is interested in phenomenology, new materialism, gender theory, and digital
humanities. She has worked in the realms of media, cultural policy, and fashion design.
Michelle Webber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Brock
University and is affiliated with the Centre for Labour Studies, also at Brock University.
Her research interests lie in the sociology of labour, education, and gender. Her current
research is an investigation of faculty associations and the politics of accountability
governance in Ontario universities (with Larry Savage and Jonah Butovsky—both at
Brock University).
Fiona Whittington-Walsh is Chair of the department of Sociology at Kwantlen
Polytechnic University in British Columbia. She teaches in the area of media, disability,
and gender. Her research examines beauty, the body, disability and difference, media, and
popular culture. Her current research is exploring the history of disability representation
in film using participant action research methodology. She is a member of the Board of
Directors for Inclusion BC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the full inclusion of
people with disabilities in every facet of society. She resides in British Columbia with her
partner, daughters, and grandchildren.
xiv Notes on Contributors

Preface
We are very pleased and proud to bring forward the 6th edition of Feminist Issues. Signifi-
cantly revised, the new edition provides an in-depth analysis of key issues facing women
in Canada. Politics, sexuality, social media, intimate relationships, life course challenges,
and institutional barriers are some of the issues the authors address. While the text is
aimed at the new undergraduate reader, seasoned students and practitioners of femi-
nism(s), anti-oppression, and related areas of study will also find rich and engaging discus-
sions of current feminist topics. No matter who you are, where you are or what your life
circumstances, young girls and women experience oppression and omission. Sensitive to
differences in age, gender, sexuality, language, region, and ethnicity, in this book our
authors examine both continuing and new challenges facing women.
Since the 5th edition, there has been a veritable groundswell of media interest in
feminist issues in Canada and transnationally. The continued widespread existence of
sexual assault on university and college campus campuses, ongoing sexual harassment
in workplaces, unyielding calls by Indigenous people and allies that challenge
Canadian society to account for literally hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous
women, ongoing violence against women transnationally, and genuine engagement
from feminist men’s groups in shifting dominant ideas about masculinity have all
come to the forefront of popular discussions about feminism. In order to ensure that
media interest is more than fleeting, students of feminist ideas need to continue to
build capacity for action. Whether your feminist action happens in your teaching, on
social media, at your child’s daycare, in the streets, at the kitchen table, or on the
floor of the House of Commons, we think it is important that readers continue to
have access to in-depth feminist discussion of the topics addressed in this book as a
part of their/our reason to act.
The 6th edition includes nine new authors from across Canada who have singly or
collaboratively authored new material for this introductory text. These wonderful new
contributors broach the topics of critical race and Indigenous feminisms, transnational
feminist theory, critical masculinity studies, sexuality and gender identity, violence against
women, and health. Returning contributors have substantially revised and updated five
chapters within the thematic areas of education, aging, beauty culture, mothering and
work, education, and historical trajectories of select types of feminism. Every chapter is
theoretically grounded and contains contemporary examples.
With the writing of this preface, we have also to mark the passing of our colleague,
friend, and previous contributor, Dr. Sharon Rosenberg (July 31st, 2010). We remember
Sharon as an internationally recognized, controversial, challenging, and well-loved theo-
rist of cultural and feminist studies. We also remember her as a mentor of new feminist
thinkers.
xv
As always, we have sought contributors who are both seasoned academics as well as
new-entry scholars in an effort to further collaborative research and teaching about
feminism. We have done this by reaching out to scholars in universities of all sizes across
Canada, who have deep commitments to the intellectual communities they work within.
The production of knowledge about feminism can be a minefield of politics, social
tensions, and debate, both within communities that already consider themselves “feminist”
(and there are many) and those who baldly oppose gender, racial, class, and sexual equal-
ity (and sadly, there still exist some of those as well). In other words, the production of
knowledge about feminism is messy and often partial and incomplete. One of the most
important features of this book is that authors write the material for this collection, draw-
ing upon their own original research and assessment of their fields as they stand today.
They have sifted through mountains of literature, firsthand interviews, popular media,
policy and legal documents, and records of individual/collective experiences to distill for
the reader some key ideas about their topic. Authors have been asked to present answers
to the following questions: Why is the topic an issue for feminism? Why discuss it now?
How have some of the core issues for feminists been taken up within this topic? How
would/how do feminists working on this topic define problems that exist for women?, and:
What solutions does are posed for these problems? In their answers, authors challenge our
ideas about what topics feminism can be applied to and where feminist understandings of
these issues still need to grow.
Putting together this collection of ideas, arguments, and research has been a privilege
and a pleasure. The contributors and peer reviewers of this text have been generous with
their time, constructive criticism, and written work. We thank each one of them for their
work. For one of us—Jen Johnson—work on this collection represents a full circle return
to a text that was first introduced to her as a student in 1995. Working with Nancy
Mandell, the originator and editor of this text, has been a privilege and a tremendous
learning experience. For Nancy, bringing Jen on board was an inspired choice as she has
completely revitalized the discussion and moved it in new and fascinating directions. We
each do our part in the ongoing struggles for women’s equality in Canada. We the editors
and the contributors are very proud to offer this edition as our small contribution to
these movements.
xvi Preface
Acknowledgements
Numerous people have read versions of these chapters and generously offered rigorous
and thoughtful critiques. Given their attention to peer review, we are confident that
these chapters represent the best possible versions of the contributors’ work and for this
we are extremely grateful. We thank also the seven anonymous reviewers of the previous
edition, feminist scholars from all over Canada who teach about feminism to ‘new’ audi-
ences and to those students who have given invaluable feedback over the years—we are
listening. At Pearson we would like to thank Madhu Ranadive, Matthew Christian, and
Keriann McGoogan for their guidance and timely suggestions on the composition
and framing of the collection. To Pearson’s staff and copy editors, especially Ruth Chernia
and Garima Khosla, we are grateful for your attention to detail and for bringing this
collection to fruition.
Nancy would like to welcome Jennifer Johnson on board and thank her for agreeing
to co-edit Feminist Issues. Jen’s lively sense of humour and her considerable energy and
enthusiasm for the project have made her an ideal collaborator. The sixth edition is
markedly stronger because Jen has joined the team. Nancy also thanks the people from
whom she gains strength and affection: her long time partner Lionel; her ‘boys’—Jeremy,
Ben, and Adam—and their partners—Marissa, Caroline, and Jamie—and now their
children—Micah, Eli, Charlotte, Brooke, and Emily. As Feminist Issues has grown, so too
has Nancy’s family!
Jen is very thankful to Nancy for the opportunity to join her in co-editing this text—
thank you for taking a chance on me! Working with you afforded me the opportunity to
learn far more than I ever could have on my own. I am extremely thankful also to my
research assistant, Taynia Rainville: thank you for your exceptional work ethic and ability
to ask good questions fearlessly. To Shana, thank you for your patience into the many
months of drafts and editing. My hope is that this book is one small part of shifting our
culture to allow our trio of proto-feminists: Leandré, Rhys, and Maël, a chance at living in
a more just society.
xvii
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Chapter 1
Theorizing Women’s Oppression and
Social Change: Liberal, Socialist,
Radical, and Postmodern Feminisms
IntroductIon
Although feminism has come to mean many things to many people, we prefer the words
of bell hooks who wrote: “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist
exploitation, and oppression” (2000, p. 1). Feminism begins with the premise that women’s
and men’s positions in society are socially, economically, culturally, and historically
shaped, not biologically predetermined. It is also premised on the idea that not all women
experience gender inequalities in the same way. An understanding of this unequal distri-
bution of power inevitably exposes other oppressions based on factors such as race, sexual-
ity, class, dis/ability, and nationhood (St. Denis, 2007, p. 47). Feminism is political in that
it aims to achieve gender equity in all spheres—social life, politics, economic conditions,
language, culture, and many other areas. But feminists remain unclear about how best to
achieve both general and specific redistribution of social and economic power.
In this chapter, we outline several historical and contemporary approaches to defin-
ing women’s oppression, their means for remedying this oppression, and the ways in which
each perspective judges whether equity has been achieved. The first three of these theo-
ries are decidedly modernist and challenge oppression within the framework of gender
dichotomies, while the fourth theory presented—postmodern feminism—attempts to
shatter these altogether. Although not exhaustive, this chapter follows several historical
trajectories of feminism in Western nations revealing how fundamental assumptions and
ideas about gender have emerged and changed over time.
LIberaL FemInIsm: Key HIstorIcaL PoInts,

PrIncIPLes, and GoaLs
Liberalism is a philosophy of politics and scientific inquiry developed in the 17th and
18th centuries during a period of European social change called the “Enlightenment” or
the “Age of Reason.” Liberal feminists use the core principles of liberalism to insist that
1
women be integrated into existing social, political, religious, and economic institutions in
order to achieve equality with men. Specifically, liberal feminists use liberal ideas of ratio-
nality, meritocracy, equality of opportunity, and freedom of choice as core principles on
which to achieve women’s equality.
First, liberal feminists emphasize women’s capacity for rational thought and thus their
shared humanity with men. Early feminist thinkers argued strenuously that women’s
capacity for reason was the same as that of men. Mary Wollstonecraft, in A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792) scandalized her contemporaries by refuting the widely held
idea that women were inherently simple, irrational, and emotional. Through formal edu-
cation, Wollstonecraft claimed, women can develop their innate capabilities for intellec-
tual thought and thus become better wives and mothers. Wollstonecraft’s ideas anticipated
arguments put forward by women in later centuries.
Second, liberal feminists endorse the concept of meritocracy. This principle emerges
clearly in the works of Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858) and her long-time companion, the
political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Harriet Taylor Mill argued radically for
the desirability of women to earn and have control of their own property and money that
she saw as the basis for achieving equality between the sexes. Only by earning their own
status (instead of relying upon a man for their keep) and controlling their own property
would women have a chance of realizing equality of opportunity with men in other spheres.
These two principles—rationality and meritocracy—have been particularly important
in facilitating women’s access to formal education. Early liberal feminists understood that,
without a formal education, women could not advance in social status or political
participation, and could not acquire other social and legal rights unless they held
educational credentials equal to those of men. But in 19th century Canada, women faced
many challenges in this regard. First, women who wanted further education
found themselves up against the view that educated women compromised their natural
roles as child-bearers (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). Second, some 19th century white women
who wanted an education, particularly married women, were accused of “racial suicide”
because the racial theories of the time presumed the moral superiority of white people and
women’s obligation to reproduce that “race” instead of going to university (Valverde,
1992). As well, some ethnic minorities and people of colour, such as members of the Black
communities of eastern Canada and southern Ontario, found themselves unwelcome in
white Protestant or Catholic schools. Black women were key in establishing separate
schools as early as 1830, even prior to the formal abolition of slavery in Canada. Separate
schools were not only a site of women’s education but also a form of resistance to the
racism Black people experienced from white Canadians (Kelly, 1998; Sadlier, 1994). In
Canada West (now Ontario) and East (now Quebec), female teachers proliferated
throughout the 1850s, providing what little education was considered necessary for girls,
such as writing, reading, and needlework (Prentice et al., 1996). In 1858, Canada’s first
female university students studied at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. They
studied a limited range of topics that typically included literature, languages, rhetoric,
history, and home economics (developed specifically for female students’ entry into
2 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
post-secondary education). Typically, women students were segregated in all-female
classrooms and required to sit apart from male students in adjoining rooms where they
could hear the lecture but not be seen by the men (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). By the early
1900s in Canada, through informal but highly effective networks of women graduates,
education for women came to be thought of as an enhancement of the young middle-class
woman’s “natural” qualities (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). The principles of rationality and
meritocracy were thus exercised incrementally in the fight for early access to education.
Third, liberal feminists advocate equality of opportunity for women in all areas of social,
economic, legal, and political life. This principle was critical in shaping liberal feminists’ goal
of getting women in Canada the vote. Between 1850 and 1920 liberal feminists pushed for
women’s suffrage.1 Feminists lobbied the state, held demonstrations, and staged mock
parliamentary debates to ridicule the men who upheld women’s political and legal inequality.
Suffragists used a variety of tactics to challenge the familiar dichotomy of “passive” femininity
versus the “active” and political masculinity thought appropriate for political decision-
making (Roome, 2001). Some felt that petitioning, letter-writing, and public speaking were
the best tactics to achieve their goals. The work of maternal feminist and journalist Nellie
McClung (1875–1951) in Manitoba is a good example of effective public speaking; she used
wit to ridicule male politicians in the press. Maternal feminists argue that women’s essential
role as mothers imbues them as moral and caring people who have the best interests of
children and communities at heart, thus making them well-suited to political participation.
Canadian women gained equality of opportunity to participate politically unevenly.
Although most women were granted the federal vote in 1918, this still excluded most Indig-
enous people and people of Chinese origin (Cleverdon, 1974, p. 108). After 1918 the federal
government divested itself of responsibility for granting the provincial franchise, so while
some Manitoban women could vote provincially in 1916, others, such as their Québécoise
counterparts, had to mobilize to bring 14 separate bills in 13 years to the Quebec legislature.
Finally, under the leadership of Thérèse Casgrain (1896–1981) they enjoyed success in 1940.
For Status Indian women, enfranchisement under the Indian Act required that they give up
their association with a band, their status, and any land or property entitlements, a deeply
unjust trade. Status Indian women achieved the vote in 1960 when the universal right to
vote was introduced, though this cannot be attributed to the legacy of liberal feminism.
The movement for universal suffrage was often combined with women’s attempts to
correct other social inequities such as poverty. Maternal feminists and liberal feminists
worked together along with socialist and conservative women toward the goals of social
reform and, ultimately, the vote (Roome, 2001). Led by Dr. Emily Howard Stowe
(1831–1903), the Toronto Women’s Literary Club (established in 1876) reorganized as the
Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association in 1883 when some minor rights for women to vote
in municipal elections were won (Prentice et al., 1996). In Quebec, women’s organizing
around suffrage and social problems such as poverty and health took place largely through
women’s Roman Catholic organizations, reflecting the appeal of Christian-based public ser-
vice organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the
Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Their work centred on providing shelter
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 3
and educational programs for young, single, and poor women. With the slight increase in
women’s access to formal education and legislation such as the 1884 Married Women’s Prop-
erty Act (allowing married women to hold property exclusive of their husbands’ ownership),
feminists built the capacity for their movement (Prentice et al., 1996). Social reformers and
religious organizations such as the WCTU were concerned about the state of urban dwellers,
reacting to the poverty and malnutrition of the masses that came with urbanization and
industrialization. In Western Canada, for example, where milk was more costly than alcohol,
women began to make the connections between poverty, the availability of alcohol, and the
violence of men toward women and children (McClung, 1915/1972).
While a national women’s movement advocated for the vote for women, it did not
advocate for every women to have the right to vote. Social Darwinist ideas of racial purity as
the basis for building a strong nation meant that Indigenous peoples, people of Chinese ori-
gin, and new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were viewed as biologically
inferior and denied the vote (Strong-Boag, 1998). Even social reformers argued for white
women’s superiority. Flora MacDonald Denison, a Canadian suffragist, was particularly criti-
cal of the morals of recent male immigrants (Prentice et al., 1996), while Emily Murphy
(1868–1933), one of the “famous five” women who won women’s right to take up public
offices, such as appointment to the Senate of Canada in 1929 (Cleverdon, 1974, p. 149),
wrote extensively on the threat of Chinese and Black men’s corruptive tendencies to the
moral purity of white women (Valverde, 1992). The white ribbons worn by WCTU activists
signified white racial purity as much as they did the purity of milk over alcohol (Valverde,
1992). Despite the extensive political organizing of Black women such as Harriet Tubman
(1820–1913) in the suffrage movement and of other women of colour in organizations such
as the WCTU, white suffragists and social reformers persisted in the belief that their partici-
pation was additional, not central, to its eventual success (Sadlier, 1994; Valverde, 1992).
Maternal feminists in particular embraced and applied the principles of equal opportunity
and meritocracy but felt that white women had a superior moral and racial integrity, indicat-
ing white female suitability for political participation (Roome, 2001; Valverde, 1992).
Fourth, freedom of choice is a principle of liberal feminism. Freedom of choice is
often understood as being closely related to the concept of equal opportunity, for without
the opportunity to do so, you cannot freely choose anything. For example, the question of
whether to stay home and care for your children or seek paid work is often understood as
a question of choice for liberal feminism, a choice that requires equal opportunity in order
to be exercised. The federal government had briefly empowered women to join the paid
workforce during the Second World War by investing in subsidized daycare and encourag-
ing women to join the war effort in traditionally male forms of employment (Timpson,
2001). After the war, women were encouraged by the media, religious institutions, and
school systems to go back to the role of homemaking. In addition to the existence of sexist
job descriptions and the lack of labour laws to prohibit sexist hiring practices in most
fields, the post-war welfare state did not include a national daycare program (nor has any
federal government since then), so many women had little choice but to fulfill their
unpaid roles as mothers and wives. Women, who had previously worked outside the home,
and even those who had not, became increasingly focused on exercising their freedom of
choice to engage in paid labour.
Liberal feminist principles and, in particular, equality of opportunity are evident again
in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970 (RCSW), which is a benchmark
moment of Canadian women’s rights. It is important to understand the groundswell of
activism leading up to the RCSW was not only an undertaking of liberal feminists but also
included the efforts of many involved in other inter-related struggles, such as new immi-
grant activist networks (Brown, 1989; Calliste, 2001); renewed challenges to the federal
Indian Act raised by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples; and the revitalization of Indig-
enous women’s leadership in their communities (Maracle, 2003, p. 71). Simultaneously, the
gay and lesbian liberation movement was challenging the criminalization of homosexuality
and in 1969 achieved its decriminalization (Kinsman, 1987). As well, gender-based labour
organizing was gaining strength (Luxton, 2006). These movements provided a new base of
women dissatisfied with their relationship to the state and ready to do something about it.
Strategically, the RCSW proposed a human rights framework that had equal opportu-
nity as its goal (Timpson, 2001, p. 29). Headed by Florence Bird (1908–1998), the RCSW
spent over a year touring the country receiving briefs and hearing presentations from indi-
viduals and groups that had something to say about the status of women in Canadian
society. The entire process was televised so that the nation watched; feminists were hope-
ful that the public nature of the RCSW would help them hold the federal government to
carrying out the recommendations.
Based on the input of more than 300 women’s organizations across the country and
many more individuals, the RCSW identified four major areas of importance for Canadian
women: the right to choose homemaking or paid employment; the shared responsibility
for child care among mothers, fathers, and society at large; the special treatment of women
relating to their maternity; and the special treatment of women to help them overcome
the adverse effects of discriminatory practices in Canadian society (Paltiel, 1997, p. 29).
These recommendations supported the central liberal feminist principle of equality of
opportunity for women. The RCSW made 167 specific recommendations to the federal
government as to how the social, political, and economic status of women could be
improved. Some were implemented; many more were not. For example, Canada still lacks
a national daycare program that would allow more women equal participation in the
labour force. Many liberal-feminist organizations, although recognizing that many more
issues have been added to the agenda, still use the RCSW recommendations as a measuring
stick for women’s equality with men in Canada.
contemporary and Global dimensions of Liberal

Feminist thought
Perhaps surprisingly, Canada is a global leader in supporting women’s equality in some areas
to the exclusion of others. In education it is certainly a leader in most fields. Women were
rare in Canadian university programs in medicine, the sciences, and engineering until the
1940s, when Canada’s participation in the Second World War necessitated more doctors.
Although some female physicians did practice medicine in Canada before the Second
World War, the number of female students did not immediately approach the number of
male students. After the Second World War the number of women seeking higher educa-
tion in general arts increased dramatically. Women have worked their way slowly into uni-
versities and colleges and into traditionally male-dominated areas of study, such as the
sciences and engineering, such that their numbers have begun to approach those of men or
exceed them in some fields, such as in the arts and in the study of law at some universities.
Access to education is one of the major accomplishments of liberal feminism.
As a result of high levels of education, Canadian girls and women enjoy high overall
labour force participation (62%) when you consider that in many countries women over
the age of 15 account for far less than half of the active labour force (for example, 15% in
Algeria and 40% in Italy) (World Bank, 2014). In contrast to Canada’s relatively stable
paid labour force access for women, current trends tell another story. In fact, Canada now
ranks 19th in a measure called the Global Gender Gap set out by the World Economic
Forum, where it lags behind countries that have experienced major wars and social upheavals
in the late 20th century, such as Nicaragua (6th), Rwanda (7th), or large economic crises
that have necessitated periodic mass migration, such as the Philippines (9th). Whereas in
the 1990s it ranked among the top countries in the world according to the United Nations
Gender Equality Index, Canada now ranks 23rd globally (Prasad & Freeman, 2015).
Why the change? Among many other factors, these statistical tools look at the sig-
nificance of persistent gender wage gaps as a main indicator of equality between men and
women in the prime of their work lives. Statistics Canada reports that the percentage of
women ages 25 to 54 years old in the paid workforce was 81% in 2005 and has approached
that of men, which was 91% in that same year (Statistics Canada, 2006b). Whereas wom-
en’s earnings relative to men even narrowed until the late 1990s, their average hourly
wage rate has stayed consistent at 82 to 83% of men’s average wage, where it appears to be
stuck (Drolet, 2011, pp. 6, 14). Of course, women cannot choose the average wage they’d
prefer—the male dollar ($1.00) versus the female dollar ($0.82)—so the wage gap contin-
ues to be a liberal feminist issue.
It is also quite remarkable that despite women’s achievements in the labour force,
Canada has not been able to elect equal numbers of men and women to the House of
Commons. Canada currently lags behind other Western nations with comparable
advantages in the global economy including the United States (43%) and New Zealand
(40%). By comparison, countries such as the Philippines (55%) and St. Lucia (52%)
surpass gender parity among elected legislators (United Nations, 2012). At a very basic
level, outright sexism is still actively directed at female Members of Parliament, the most
evident of these being through social media (Ryckewaert, 2015). Green Party leader
Elizabeth May noted, “Our looks are attacked more, our clothing is attacked, the notion of
sexual attractiveness and sexual violence . . . some of it is quite vile,” and MP Megan Leslie
reports tweets made by members of the public on official social media for their offices,
referring to sexual violence against female MPs of all political backgrounds: “‘CPC skank
Michelle Rempel needs to eat a dick,’ read one example. ‘Eve Adams is a skanky-ass bitch,
a younger Playboy version of Belinda Stronach’,” read another (Ryckewaert, 2015). Others
suggest these sexist attitudes extend to their daily participation in the House of Commons
with MP Laurin Liu observing that her party’s finance critic was heckled during one speech
with comments such as “learn to read” (Ryckewaert, 2015).
Unfortunately, if standards for gender equality are taken to mean that governments
should continuously protect and support gender equality, then Canada has recently been
set on a very different path. The 1990s saw repeated cuts to social funding under a Liberal
government and the eventual dissolution of the National Action Committee on the
Status of Women, then Canada’s only national feminist lobby group. In 2006 Status of
Women Canada had its operating budget reduced by 43% by a Conservative federal
government. Ironically, the responsibility of announcing and carrying out the extraordinary
cuts fell to a woman, then Minister Bev Oda, responsible for Status of Women, who also
removed the word “equality” from the agency’s main goals (Brodie, 2008).
critiques of Liberal Feminism

It is important to understand that equality of opportunity, meritocracy, and freedom of
choice have not been advanced equitably for all women. White women in Europe and the
Americas might have seen hope in liberal ideas, but the status of Indigenous women within
their own communities was particularly compromised by those acting on liberal
democratic—but patriarchal and racist—ideas (Maracle, 2003, p. 74). Enakshi Dua outlines
many forms of political action that Indigenous, Black, and immigrant women have taken to
challenge their exclusion. These focused on women’s roles in treaty negotiations,
(sometimes armed) Indigenous resistance to colonization, resistance to racist immigration
and settlement policies, and access to democratic rights (Dua, 1999, pp. 11–12). Indigenous
people in Canada have suffered a diminished economic, political, and social status under a
significant piece of legislation called the Indian Act (1876). Among the goals of land
appropriation and racial assimilation, a major intention of the Act was for Indigenous
women and children to become subject to their husbands and fathers just as European
women were. Furthermore, Article 86 of the Act forbade Indians from obtaining a formal
education unless they gave up Indian Status and any land or property they might have
access to, making it impossible for both men and women be both “educated” and “Indian”
at the same time (Downe, 2005). Canadians viewed these measures as a path to “civilizing”
Indigenous people, when in fact it was an aggressive and nonsensical destruction of the
diverse and strong family structures already in place throughout Indigenous societies
(Stevenson, 1999). Women who enjoyed meaningful political participation and high status
in their societies before the arrival of Europeans actually had their status reversed by the
presence of European liberal democratic rule (Lawrence 2004, p. 46). Furthermore, the
implementation of Indian residential schools as a tool of assimilation (from 1884 to 1996)
meant that generations of Indigenous children experienced devastating repression of
language and culture within the formal education system. People’s experience of equality of
opportunity, meritocracy, and freedom of choice is therefore heavily mediated by the ways
in which their legal and political history are gendered and racialized.
A primary criticism of liberal feminist theory is its selectivity and privileging of the
objectives of white middle- or upper-class women. In the past, women’s equality with men
has not always been the primary consideration of women whose social class was far
removed from that of the average middle- or upper-class wife. If a person is subject to leg-
islation such as the Indian Act, arguing for gender equality with men makes little differ-
ence without racial and class equality (Arneil, 2001, p. 54). This short-sightedness is
demonstrated by the argument of some early Canadian feminists that only white women
of Canadian birth should be allowed the vote (Prentice et al., 1996).
At the same time, liberal feminism has often been written about without attention to
the contributions made by Indigenous women and women of colour whose participation
in equality-seeking activism is significant (Dua, 1999). Acknowledging the complexity of
obtaining goals for all women, such as equal access to education and political and labour
force participation, is necessary. Liberal feminist understanding of women’s oppression
and methods of social change incorporate women into existing political and economic
institutions without necessarily transforming the relations of power between men and
women within those organizations or even in society at large.
socIaLIst FemInIsm
defining socialist Feminism
Socialist feminism originates in Marxist theory and uses class and gender as central catego-
ries of analysis in its explanation of women’s oppression. Socialist feminism has several key
goals in its analyses and activism. First, socialist feminism relates the oppression experi-
enced by women to their economic dependence on men. One of the goals of socialist
feminism is therefore to advocate for women’s economic independence. In addition, social-
ist feminism provides a materialist analysis of gender inequality by identifying the relation-
ship between systems of patriarchal oppression in which women are subordinated to men,
and class relations in capitalist economic systems in which the working classes are subordi-
nated to the upper classes. A second goal of socialist feminism is to expose and challenge
the devaluation of women’s unpaid labour in the home. In doing so, socialist feminists
advocate for the acknowledgement of the value of women’s domestic work, a sharing of
domestic responsibilities in the home, and state involvement (financial and legislative) in
creating a society that is equitable and just for everyone. A third, related goal of socialist
feminism is to highlight and do away with continuing gendered pay inequality (a major
contributor to women’s financial dependency on men and the over-representation of
women among the total number of poor), as well as the gendered division of labour within
the wage labour market (which is responsible for the over-representation of women in ser-
vice industries and feminized employment). Socialist feminism uses analyses of class to
explain the ways in which social, economic, and political power is distributed in varying
amounts to members of society, and how this process is influenced by factors such as gen-
der, racialized and ethnic identity, age, sexual orientation, and ability.
Historical background: marxist and

socialist Feminism
Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) were influential in the
development of socialist feminist thought. Their Communist Manifesto (1848/1998) outlines
the relationship of human beings to the ways in which we produce and reproduce for survival
as a central factor in understanding the socio-political characteristics of any particular
historical period. Individuals consciously and socially manipulate our environments in
particular ways in order to feed, clothe, and house ourselves (Tong, 1998).
In The German Ideology (1932/1968), Marx and Engels advance an analysis of capitalist
oppression that features the family as the original site of an inequitable division of labour,
later to be reflected in the capitalist labour market. Marx and Engels argued that wives and
children constituted a “first property” for men, to whom they provided labour, and men
exerted control over the context, conditions, and environment in which this labour took
place. Although gender and the oppression of women were not a focus for much of early
Marxist thought, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884/1972),
Engels did venture an examination of the sources of women’s inequality (Somerville, 2000).
Engels linked the economic conditions of people to the ways in which the family is organized
as a productive and reproductive unit. The change in modes of production, which saw men
in charge of the domestication and breeding of animals, was, according to Engels, a major
factor in the unequal shifting of power between men and women. With men predominantly
in charge of the family, the work and the material contributions of women to the community
were devalued. Men became the owners of private property (women, land, family resources),
and inheritance tended to flow downward, from husbands to sons. Individuals and individual
units became more important than communities or collective acts.
Concern over inheritance led to the patriarchal formalization of the nuclear family
unit as a method of ensuring the passing down of private property and wealth from father
to children of his own blood (Somerville, 2000). Engels advanced this as simply a reflec-
tion of the inequalities perpetuated by the capitalist labour market, with the husband
representing the “bourgeoisie” (owners) and the wife taking the role of the “proletariat”
(workers). Therefore, the source of women’s oppression, according to Engels, lay in the
fact that they did not own or have control over private property. As such, the liberation of
women could be ensured only by the eradication of capitalism and the reintroduction of
women on an equal footing in the economic production process (Brenner, 2000).
By locating women’s oppression as rooted in capitalism, women’s economic dependence
on men is defined as the source of their inequality. Only paid work is valued within a capitalist
system that equates the value of an individual to paid work. As unpaid family workers,
women are not valued. The capitalist economic system works simultaneously with a
patriarchal socio-political system to divide and relegate certain types of work, and,
consequently, certain levels of pay, to individuals based on their gender. The result is a society
in which men are over-represented in the highest-paying professional jobs, women’s (unpaid)
domestic contributions are not regarded as work, and women are over-represented in service-
oriented jobs at lower pay. These hierarchies have an impact on women’s ability to achieve
economic independence, pay for health care, receive pensions, exercise child care and
maternity leave options, and make them susceptible to violence (among other factors).
Marx’s discussion of the process of industrialization and the concentration of the pro-
duction of goods outside the home is used by Marxist feminists to expose a shift in the popu-
lar understanding of what constitutes productivity. Working in a factory producing goods is
viewed by capitalist states as productive but cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking
care of children are not (Waring, 1999). Value is judged by wages. Women’s inability to turn
their work in home into a marketable product makes it less economically valued even
through their work is socially necessary (Tong, 1998). Furthermore, as Mariarosa Dalla Costa
and Selma James (1975) have suggested, to argue for the equal inclusion of women within
the labour force (as liberal feminists have done), without socializing or making a public
responsibility of child care and housework, will only increase the oppressive conditions
under which women live. The result is that waking up in the morning to prepare breakfast
and lunch for the kids and husband, going to the office, and returning home in the evening
only to cook dinner, finish the laundry, and clean, means a double day of work for women
(Mitchell, 1971). In order for women to be liberated, domestic labour must be equalized.
Socialist feminists, like Marxist feminists, consider capitalism a significant factor in
the oppression experienced by women. They also consider the oppressive role of patriarchy.
Patriarchy is an analytic category and system of distributing power in society that hierar-
chically ascribes importance to all things male or masculine over all things female or femi-
nine. Socialist feminists find Marxist feminism problematic in that it locates most aspects
of women’s oppression within the bourgeoisie/proletariat (owner/worker) paradigm,
neglecting the more complex aspects of relationships between women and men. Using an
intersectional analysis that considers the interplay of gender, racialized and ethnic identity,
sexuality, and age (among other factors), socialist feminists have also looked to the ways
that women participate in the oppression of other women in the context of capitalist econ-
omies. In Canada, for instance, the persistent need for child care and the government’s
failure to adopt universal child care are key reasons that so many middle- and upper-class
women rely on the exploited labour of racialized women from developing countries.
Two foundational concepts to social feminist thought are unpaid labour and the fem-
inization of poverty. In the case of unpaid labour, socialist feminist analysis has provided
important insights into the fundamental contribution of housework done predominantly
by women to the unfolding of the daily activities of individuals. Current statistical trends
on this topic are reviewed in Chapter 10 of this book (Gaszo). As housewives and workers
in the home, women contribute to the profits of the capitalist economy by ensuring that
present-day and future workers in the paid labour force, be they teenagers or adults, are
cared for in the home in ways that prepare and support them in their positions within the
paid labour force (Morris, 2000). Whether by doing family laundry, preparing meals,
cleaning, and maintaining organization in the home; or transporting household members
to and from school, work, and play, women provide an important service—not only to
their families, but also to a capitalist patriarchy that benefits from the present and future
labour of these family members. By seeing housework as women’s expression of their love
for their families, capitalist and state institutions can enjoy benefit and profits from wom-
en’s unpaid labour. These benefits include the reproduction of members of the future
workforce and the maintenance of their physical, emotional, and mental health allowing
them to continue to be productive. Despite an increase in men’s participation in unpaid
domestic work over the last three decades, 2011 Statistics Canada data indicate that
Canadian women continue to do the majority of household work and feel more time-
stressed as a result than their male counterparts (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2011).
The feminization of poverty is a term used by socialist feminists to identify the dispro-
portionate majority of women who are poor, linking their poverty to patriarchal and capi-
talist sexist and profit-based initiatives that segregate the labour market. This segregation
is carried out based on constructed notions of gender (“women’s work” vs. “men’s work”);
by devaluing labour in the home; by not factoring home work into official national labour-
based calculations such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 2; and by reinforcing
notions of household labour as a “natural” consequence of a woman’s love for her family.
Canadian women are the majority of part-time workers (Canadian Women’s Foundation)
and continue to outnumber men in the Canadian population of low-income earners
(Employment and Social Development Canada).
Since women’s responsibilities for and within the home are not recognized as “real” work,
women are not compensated by the state for reducing their wage labour to part-time work in
order to take care of children, or for losing job training and seniority upon taking maternity
leave from waged work. The relegation of women to lower-paying employment sectors, long
accepted as more suited to women’s “feminine” characteristics (teaching, nursing, cleaning,
cooking, typing), has contributed to women’s disproportionate poverty while maintaining the
wage gap between men and women. Canadian women not only earn less on average than
their male counterparts, but also continue to earn less than their male peers in full-time posi-
tions of comparable or same professional training (Morissette, Picot, & Lu, 2013).
The increased presence of women in the paid labour force and in post-secondary edu-
cation, along with the increase in single-parent homes led by women (Statistics Canada,
2012), highlight the complicated constraints that wage working women continue to
negotiate outside of adequate state and social support. It is important to note that an
increase in women’s wage labour participation is not an indication of equitable labour
relations as a whole. Statistics Canada data indicate that, despite their increased partici-
pation in the wage labour market, women continue to do the majority of unpaid work in
the home, at an average of 50.1 hours per week compared to Canadian men at 24.4 hours
per week (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2011). For socialist feminists, eradicating poverty
and the oppression of women involves not only the equal sharing of domestic responsi-
bilities between men and women, but also policies that create flexibility in determining
when and under what conditions one re-enters employment (Harman, 2000).
Poverty does not affect all women in the same way. Indigenous women, non-white
women, and women with dis/abilities are particularly vulnerable to poverty. According to
a 2011 Statistics Canada report, First Nations girls and women disproportionately live in
substandard housing compared to non-First Nations women and girls. Furthermore, First
Nations women consistently earn less than non–First Nations women in Canada
(O’Donnell & Wallace, 2011). The history of the Live-In Caregiver Program in Canada
also reflects the ways in which women’s experiences of oppression differ within the
capitalist system. The interconnectedness of “race” and racism, gender, class, and
sexuality—all in relation to labour—is visible in the disproportionately large number of
immigrant and non-white women occupying low-wage, non-unionized jobs with no
benefits (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2007). With limited childcare spaces and
a general increase in the working hours and responsibilities of employees, resorting to
privatized domestic service becomes one way Canadian women manage the responsibilities
of a household and employment in the labour market (Morris, 2002).
the contemporary and Global Landscapes

Contemporary socialist feminist analyses, particularly produced by women of colour, have
expanded the boundaries of materialist deconstructions of gender-based oppression, by
revealing the ways in which “race,” racism, colonialism/neo-colonialism, class, gender,
dis/ability, and sexuality work simultaneously to differentiate women’s experiences of
oppression. Globalization and the role of gender in transnationalism have also found a
place within the work of some contemporary socialist feminist theorists (Ault & Sandberg,
2001; Dua, 1999; Sparr, 1994). This stretching of the boundaries of early socialist feminist
theory to more adequately reflect the complexities and shifts of gender relations in a global
economy is extremely valuable. It illustrates an understanding of the connection between,
for example, an unemployed inner-city youth of colour with $200 Nike sneakers and the
employed but overworked and underpaid Indonesian woman who sews these sneakers, yet
can barely afford to feed herself (Human Rights Watch, 2002). Global economic
restructuring has led many Canadian and American companies to downsize their
operations and make use of the inexpensive labour available in non-Western countries.
This downsizing has resulted in increased layoffs, increased workloads for those still
employed, and increased part-time, temporary, low-security, low-wage, no-benefits, non-
unionized jobs, largely worked by immigrants, particularly women of colour (Morris, 2000).
Two overarching observations have been made by contemporary feminist scholars of
political economy in capitalist democracies of the global North. First, feminists have
questioned current neo-liberal policies that advocate unconstrained market economics,
which claim that open market competition on a global scale is likely to improve living
and labour conditions for marginalized groups (Cohen & Brodie, 2007). Socialist feminists
have pointed to the failure of laissez-faire market economics in pressuring large-scale
employers (through the principle of open competition) to value the labour of their
employees through improved pay, working conditions, and benefits. Instead, an oppressive
“global care chain” (Hochschild, 2000) thrives, shaped significantly by the negative
consequences of the structural adjustment programs (SAPS) and lending conditions to
which many developing nations find themselves tied. This global care chain is
characterized by the migration of women from lesser economically developed regions of
the world to the wealthiest countries. Canada, for example, remains dependent on female
migrant labour for its agricultural, sex, and domestic service industries. A complicated set
of dynamics, involving rigid immigration and labour rights restrictions, perpetuates and
compounds the vulnerability of women in these domains.
Second, socialist feminists have highlighted the transformation of the industrial
economy of the 20th century into service and information-oriented economies. Develop-
ments in technology and a shift toward information-based work has introduced greater
flexibility into the labour market, leading to what some political economy feminists
(Fudge & Owens, 2006) call “precarious work” (lack of income and job security, part-time
employment, temporary work, home work, on-call work, low wages, few benefits, and
absence of union representation). However, it is not only technological development that
is influencing labour trends and shifts. The historically feminine and domesticated work
responsibilities of women have a sharply increased presence in the paid labour market.
Indeed, political economy feminists have noted a new economy of women’s work (in
which working-class men are now also increasingly participating). Hence, the increase of
service-oriented jobs, many of which are precarious in nature, is termed the feminization of
work (Fudge & Owens, 2006). As socialist feminists indicate, responsibility for domestic
work has not decreased as more women have entered the wage labour market. The burden
of an increased number of obligations without (any or in-) adequate state support in
wealthy countries is negotiated at the expense of more vulnerable women (Thistle, 2006).
critiques of socialist Feminism

Socialist feminism’s use of a materialist analysis as the basis of its deconstruction of
oppression leaves some questions unanswered. Critiques from other feminist quarters,
such as those of radical feminists regarding the root of male dominance, propelled socialist
feminists to consider the ways in which a gender-based materialist analysis that is focused
on capitalism alone is insufficient in addressing the problem of sexist oppression. For
example, should some measure of equitable redistribution of power and wealth in society
actually occur, and economic systems find themselves operating outside of or beyond the
parameters of capitalism, gendered and exploitative social relations, as well as masculinist
approaches to the natural world and governance would not necessarily cease (Gordon,
2013). Therefore, socialist feminism has been continuously challenged to grapple with the
ways in which economics and class alone are insufficient in explaining and challenging
the problem of gender inequality and oppression. The theoretical engagement of radical
feminism with other social realities, such as family forms outside of the heterosexual,
nuclear family model (such as queer-identified, non-white, immigrant, Indigenous, and
single-parent), has also provided legitimate critiques of socialist feminist texts and forms
of activism that have used the “ideology of separate spheres for men and women” (Mandell &
Elliot, 2001) as a key component of materialist analyses of oppression.
radIcaL FemInIsm
defining radical Feminism
Have you ever wondered when women started to “Take Back the Night,” rallying for safer
streets and demanding that violence against women be stopped? These demonstrations,
along with demonstrations for abortion rights as well as anti-violence protests, sprang
from radical feminism. Radical feminists have contributed much to feminist theory by
concentrating on sexuality, control, and violence, and by making clear the ways in which
men’s power over women can be seen in all areas of women’s lives.
Many scholars attribute the rise of radical feminism to New York–based groups such
as the Red Stockings, the Furies, and the Radicalesbians, yet Canadian-based radical
feminist groups such as the New Feminists of Toronto are also important to the devel-
opment of radical feminist action in Canada (Echols, 1989). Groups like these orga-
nized around many issues through consciousness-raising (CR) sessions where women
came together to share stories of sexist oppression and gendered exploitation to dis-
cover that “the personal is political” (Crow, 2000, p. 6). The CR group or “rap session”
appealed to many women. They could share accounts of oppression across class and race
lines, link those accounts to a larger theoretical framework in order to build critical
organizing skills, and publicly air their goals. Radical feminists active in the 1960s and
1970s also used manifestos as a revolutionary method to “speak bitterness” (Freeman,
1975, quoted in Crow, 2000, p. 6). Collectively, radical feminist activities seek to form
the basis for a global sisterhood, spreading feminism internationally and building alli-
ances around concrete concerns such as violence and pornography (Morgan, 1970).
sites of oppression: Patriarchy, the state,

and the Family
Radical feminists argue that the key to deconstructing women’s oppression lies in discov-
ering an explanatory theory. In the earliest attempts to theorize women’s oppression, radi-
cal feminists identified sex oppression as the first and most fundamental oppression from
which all other areas of repression sprang (Crow, 2000, p. 2). By sex oppression, radical
feminists mean that women’s oppression is based on the relations of domination and sub-
ordination between the sexes, in which women are seen as a sex class whose sexuality is
directly controlled by men. Radical feminists insist that, in order for women to understand
their inferior roles in patriarchal society, they must look at how men have come to hold
and wield power over women in all social relationships.
Radical feminists identify three main areas that shape women’s oppression: the state,
the family, and motherhood. Unlike liberal feminists who focus on the legal status of
women, radical feminists theorize from women’s everyday lives. They believe that patriar-
chy, a “sexual system of power in which the male possesses superior power and economic
privilege,” is what shapes everyday life and what specifically affects women, for the benefit
of men (Eisenstein, 1979, p. 17). Patriarchy, they argue, is constituted in and through
various social structures and is reproduced and activated in everyday relations, having
impacts on a global scale. It can be found in all aspects of society, including the state, the
family, and other institutions, such as schools, the media, and religious institutions. In
order to free themselves from the “Father Land” of patriarchy, an autonomous social, his-
torical, and political force created by men for their own benefit, women must resist and
undermine this system (Daly, 1978, p. 28; Donovan, 2000, p. 156).
Radical feminists argue that the state (which includes political institutions, the legal
system, and elected representatives) is founded on, and is emblematic of, male interests.
Therefore, radical feminists believe that entrusting women’s liberation to the state will
result in their being taken for granted. Although the state assumes objectivity as its norm,
in practice, “women are raped by the state just as they are raped by men” (Andersen,
1997, p. 359). Engaging with the state through state-sponsored initiatives is seen as futile.
Violence against women has not diminished despite considerable state-funded initiatives.
Male power and control also resides in the family, which represents another site of
oppression for women. Radical feminists see the sexual, social, and economic energy
women provide to reproducing the family as sustaining their oppression. Ideologies of
romance and love and heterosexual marriage function as “opiates,” keeping women
drugged and under male control. Romantic love, beauty, dieting, and other cultural
practices are seen as tools used by patriarchy to uphold and support heteronormativity,
keeping women reliant on men’s sexual attention and affection and by making women
promote and service the desires of men (Firestone, 1970, pp. 131, 146). Ti-Grace Atkinson
(1970), an early radical feminist, stated that love, as an institution of male power and
control, supports violence and also “promotes vulnerability, dependence, possessiveness,
susceptibility to pain, and prevents the full development of a woman’s potential” (p. 117).
Traditional mothering ideology and practice also come under radical feminist scrutiny.
As Rich has argued, mothering under patriarchy is an exploitative responsibility (Rich,
1976). The seeming naturalness of motherhood and its institutionalization has become a
normative obligation for women in patriarchal society. In the 1960s and 1970s, radical
feminists pointed to the idea that women were supposed to be on the mothering job
24 hours a day, every day, with no outside contacts (Tong, 1998, p. 83). Patriarchal order
dictates that women’s ability to mother becomes conflated with their worthiness as
women. If you are not a good mother, you are not a good woman (Kreps, 1973, p. 236).
Radical feminist analyses of motherhood have been critiqued, especially by feminist
theorists who have formulated mothering as an empowering feminist enterprise. Many
feminists have reclaimed motherhood as an important step in the formation of their
feminism. As Andrea O’Reilly (2000) states, “[t]hough I had identified myself as a feminist
for a number of years; motherhood made feminism real for me and radically redefined it”
(pp. 182–183).
Women’s Bodies: Reproduction, Pornography,
and Violence
Many early radical feminist theorists looked to women’s reproductive roles to discover the
root problem of women’s oppression (Firestone, 1970). Biology separates the sexes, a divi-
sion that relegates an enormous amount of reproductive labour to women. As women
nurture and care for children, men are free to participate in public life and in social insti-
tutions, where they can acquire power, privilege, and property which emboldens their
superior social status (Hamilton, 1996, p. 20). This seemingly “natural” sexual division of
public from private labour (men in the public, women in the private) means that women
are at the mercy of their biology (Firestone, 1970). Within this sexual division of labour,
women’s bodies become objects, passed down from father to husband, placing the owner-
ship of their sexuality squarely in the hands of men (Hamilton, 1996, p. 65). According to
radical feminists, the only way to end women’s oppression is to end these types of exploit-
ative relationships.
In order to dismantle patriarchy, some radical feminists call for a re-evaluation of
women’s reproductive roles and an elimination of the traditional family. Women had little
control over their reproductive functions because abortion was illegal in Canada until
19883 and birth control was hard to acquire in the early phases of the women’s movement
in the 1960s and 1970s. Many, therefore, suggested that freeing women from the “tyranny
of reproduction” and relying on technological advances would diminish clearly marked
and oppressive gendered differences (Firestone, 1970). As a remedy, some radical femi-
nists believed that in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and eventually cloning
would separate women from their wombs, therefore breaking the oppressive tie of women
to biology. Others countered that although women would be liberated from reproduction
through new reproductive technologies, these new techniques would only lead to male
control as men tended to own the technologies. Margaret Atwood’s famous novel The
Handmaid’s Tale (1985) tells a story of a dystopian future where women become uniquely
defined and controlled by their reproductive roles.
Radical feminists question the meaning of masculinity and femininity, arguing that
masculinity is linked to dominance and that femininity is linked to subordination. These
unequal relations of power are eroticized in traditional heterosexual relations in which
women are positioned as objects of male pleasure, constantly available, constantly ready,
and constantly scrutinized. Anne Koedt (1970), in her well-known article “The Myth of
the Vaginal Orgasm,” says that a male defined view of sexuality assumes women can only
achieve orgasm through male penetration and that those who cannot must be frigid.
Clearly this model ignores women’s needs and desires (MacKinnon, 1989).
In popular media and online pornography, the male gaze further constructs women’s
sexuality and structures male and female sexual relations. As a result, many young people
define their own ideas around sexuality and sexual relations only through these sources.
Some radical feminists think that male violence against women stems from an intake of
violent pornography, making it acceptable to see women as purely objects of sexual
gratification rather than as mutual players of love and intimacy (Tong, 1998). Popular
feminists such as Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues (1996), argue that these
relations of power can be linked to global violence against women, such as incest, honour
killing, and rape as a war crime.
Radical feminist theories have been successful in providing a framework for
understanding what is and is not considered criminally obscene in Canada. In 1992, a
landmark Supreme Court decision in Butler v. the Queen brought into debate the definition
of what constitutes criminal obscenity (Donald Butler was arrested for selling hard-core
pornographic videos in his Manitoba store). Catherine MacKinnon (1946–) and Andrea
Dworkin (1946–2005), two very famous radical feminists from the United States, along
with the Canadian organization Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF),
were instrumental in shaping the Canadian obscenity law. These anti-pornography
proponents used earlier radical feminist ideas that viewed pornography as essentially
violent and degrading to women and a facet of the patriarchal order. The court found that
any images that portrayed “degrading” sex, especially of women, could be criminalized
(Cossman, Bell, Gotell, & Ross, 1997, p. 18). This was seen as a victory for many anti-
pornography feminists, who insisted that these images were detrimental to women.
According to the 1992 decision, the goal of outlawing certain types of material and
defining them as obscene was to protect people, most notably women, from harm. What is
considered pornographic and what is considered obscene is decided through one simple
test: whether or not images are degrading to women. Obscenity laws were no longer seen
as a matter of public morality or decency, but were evaluated according to questions of
harm, especially harm to women (Cossman et al., 1997).
This 1992 judgment also affected gay and lesbian materials in unforeseen ways. What
is considered “obscene” in a homophobic society, critics argue, often means demonizing
images, ideas, and texts that transgress the normative bounds of heterosexual sex. Many
gay and lesbian bookstores across Canada (for example, Little Sister’s Book and Art Empo-
rium in Vancouver and Glad Day Books in Toronto) maintained that Canadian customs
officials were more heavily scrutinizing, seizing, and destroying shipments intended for
their stores, searching for contraventions to the 1992 ruling. A small victory occurred in
2000 when the courts agreed that customs officials were overwhelmingly heavy-handed in
their appraisal of lesbian and gay material (McCann, 2007a).
Radical feminist theorists have also spoken strongly against rape, seeing it as a crime
resulting from, and maintaining, male power. If domination and subordination are the basis
for unequal sexual relations between men and women and if these unequal sexual relations
go unchallenged, what is the difference between sex and rape? (Brownmiller, 1976;
Dworkin, 1974; MacKinnon, 1989). If women and men are not equals in society, and if
men wield power over women, then loving and sexual relationships between the two are
always mediated by unequal power exchanges, where one person (man) controls the other
(woman). Radical feminists conclude that women cannot experience their sexuality as
pleasurable, because sexuality is male-coded and controlled. How then, they ask, do women
construct their own sexuality? What would woman-defined sexuality look like?
Female separation: Lesbian Feminism
and cultural Feminism
Lesbian feminism sprang from radical feminists’ desire to discover and value women’s
contributions to society. Lesbian feminists shifted the debate from analyzing and react-
ing to male structures of power to focusing on how passionate bonds between women
can foster a politics of emancipation. Lesbianism connotes sexual relations between
women. But it also represents a political stance, a support system that allows women to
turn to other women to escape from an oppressive male-dominated world. Lesbian
feminists argue that every culture is infused with phallocentric social and cultural val-
ues forcing women to live lives geared toward men and heterosexual and monogamous
pairings (Rich, 1980). In part, women are taught that self-worth comes from hetero-
sexual marriage and mothering. The idea of compulsory heterosexuality—where
women are understood to be naturally sexually oriented toward men—restricts women
socially and economically. Originally, alternatives to this model, such as lesbian sexu-
ality, were not well received by mainstream society and cast aside as deviant (Rich,
1980, p. 4).
Lesbian feminism suggests that the main way women can resist male domination and
power is to refrain from having sexual relations with men. Arising from this idea is the
famous slogan “feminism is the theory and lesbianism is the practice.” Or, as Catherine
MacKinnon said, “feminism is the epistemology of which lesbianism is ontology” (quoted
in Heller, 1997, p. 22). Adrienne Rich, a well-known American lesbian feminist,
advanced the idea of the lesbian continuum in order to operationalize that slogan. In
order to separate lesbianism from being solely a sexual relation between women, Rich
(1980) described a continuum, a position of compromise where all relations between
women (friendships and caring relationships such as elder care) can be placed within the
definition of lesbian and lesbian feminist politics. Not all feminists were comfortable with
Rich’s suggestion that lesbian be adopted as a political slogan. In Canada particularly,
homophobic responses led to the ejection of many lesbians from feminist organizing
groups, as some believed that the prominent presence of lesbians would undermine the
movement (Grant, 1998; Ross, 1995).
Radical cultural feminists, successors of radical feminists in the 1970s and 1980s,
banded together and mobilized around what they see as women’s uniqueness: their
femaleness. Cultural feminists espouse a “politics of disengagement,” a breaking out of a
male-dominated society by providing women-only cultural spaces (Adamson, Briskin,
& McPhail, 1988, p. 192; Donovan, 2000, pp. 255–256). By concentrating on the
positive features of women-only cultural spaces—care, sympathy, and nurturance—
women would be able to promote and celebrate these relationships. Often seen as the
“separatists” in the feminist movement, cultural feminists believe that valuing women
demands a woman-centred culture, where goddesses are worshipped, and bookstores,
co-ops, and centres—run by women for women—can counter the negative effects of a
male-dominated society.
Global and contemporary dimensions of radical
Feminist thought
Radical feminists argue that the sexual dominance of men over women stretches around
the world. Globally it is estimated that 79% of all human trafficking is done for the purposes
of sexual exploitation and that the majority of those exploited were women and children;
18% were trafficked for the purposes of other labour (United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime 2009, p. 57). Despite the adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (United Nations, 2003) that 117
out of 167 member nations have signed, human trafficking persists. The Protocol seeks to
“suppress, prevent and punish trafficking in persons specifically women and children”
(Dozema, 2005, p. 62). With 44 000 victims of trafficking being identified in a single year,
an estimated 20 million more may have been missed (United States Department of State,
2014). This complex and illegal industry generates an estimated US$7 to 12 billion per
year (United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM], 2007; Valenta, 2007).
Radical feminists often focus on sex trafficking over other forms of human trafficking and
argue that these industries thrive on an international capitalist system based on sexist and
racist ideas about women and sexuality. The sex industry and sex tourism are profitable
international businesses founded on exploiting women and girls (Barry, 1984).
Radical feminists believe an international or global feminism is needed in order to
combat sex trafficking. Global feminism would link actions of women around the world in
challenging patriarchal and sexual exploitation of women that crosses state and national
borders (Barry, 1995; Jeffreys, 1999; Morgan, 1984/1996). Global feminist views of
prostitution and human trafficking have been heavily influenced by radical feminist
thought and have played a pivotal role in some countries’ adoption of laws that criminalize
the purchasers of sex (primarily men) and recognize the sellers of sex as victims (Jeffreys,
2009). Although cross-border movement often comes to mind, it is important to note that
a large portion of victims are often trafficked regionally or domestically (United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime, 2009, p. 57), making this an issue that women’s organizations
also act locally upon. In comparison to other countries, Canada is not considered to have
high rates of sex trafficking (United States Secretary of State, 2014) but radical feminists
have agitated for it to adopt much tighter legislation and policy that attempt to combat
these problems. Inevitably, recent contemporary shifts in Canadian laws on trafficking
and prostitution have come to reflect deep conflicts between sex worker advocacy groups
and radical feminist opponents of sex trafficking.
In 2007, some Canadian sex workers4 sought the outright decriminalization of prosti-
tution in Ontario on the basis that existing laws force sex workers into dangerous and
criminalized environments and inhibit sex workers from seeking resources they are other-
wise entitled to. In 2010, the challenge launched by Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch,
and Valerie Scott enjoyed partial success at Ontario’s Superior Court. It was then appealed
and sent to Canada’s highest court where three provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code
were struck down. These included: s. 210 (keeping or being found in a bawdy house),
s. 212(1)(j) (living on the avails of prostitution), and s. 213(1)(c) (communicating in
public for the purpose of prostitution). The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the
three laws as unconstitutional because they violate section 7 of (the right to security of
the person) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada v. Bedford, 2013).
Radical feminist organizers responded with swift intervention at the level of the then
federal Conservative government. They partnered widely with organizations such as the
Native Women’s Association of Canada, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and others. Their inter-
ventions made a lasting impression that resulted in the development of a new law on pros-
titution that criminalized the purchasers of sex, but not the prostitute, Bill C-36. Although
sex worker organizations and women’s legal and health organizations also intervened, argu-
ing for the complete decriminalization of prostitution as a harm reduction approach to sex
work, these were largely excluded from the development of new legislation.
Radical feminist ideas have provided a theoretical framework for understanding wom-
en’s everyday lives and continue to be relevant to contemporary theorizing. Organizations
such as The Sisterhood Is Global Institute (sigi.org), Women Against Pornography (WAP),
Always Causing Legal Unrest (ACLU), and the RadFems conference in the United States;
popular media interveners such as Europe-based Stop Porn Culture (stoppornculture.org);
and journals such as Off Our Backs continue to uphold radical-feminist theoretical tenets.
Taking up similar topics to those of 40 years ago, contemporary radical feminists remain
committed to providing an analytical framework around women’s oppression as a result of
patriarchal domination. It is significant that even after the advent of Slutwalk (Teekah,
Scholz, Friedman, & O’Reilly, 2015), which has connected these issues for new generations
of young feminists, many women and allies still gravitate to “Take Back the Night” in order
to demand safer streets and harsher penalties for sex offenders.5 Across Canada in the 2010s,
a spate of public accusations of sexual assault against male celebrities and public figures,
including music and radio celebrities, football players, and even some Members of Parlia-
ment, seems to have re-ignited popular interest in the issues highlighted by radical feminists.
critiques of radical Feminism

Strategically radical feminists insist that the category of “woman” is needed for women to
truly rally around, for if we do not, how do we then establish a basis for feminist action and
organizing (Thompson, 2001, p. 69)? Charges of “essentialism” haunt radical feminists as
they are brought to task for generalizing about the fundamental nature of each sex. First,
discourses of victimization pervade radical feminist theory. Theoretical writings by radical
feminists assume that men are inherently violent and aggressive, while women are nurtur-
ing and caring. Where are the spaces for resistance? Many postmodern feminists claim
that radical feminist theory suffers not only from essentialism but also from romanticism,
ethnocentrism, and historicism (Mandell & Elliot, 2001). They argue that definitions of
patriarchy and women given by radical feminists are homogenizing and limiting and do
not account for the diversities offered by class, race, sexuality, age, history, and other
aspects of women’s lives that make them unique and multiple.
Many women of colour challenge white radical feminists on their imperialist and
universalizing notions of women under the banner of “global sisterhood,” in which
women of colour and Third-World women are often cast as “backward” and in need of
“saving.” Black American feminist Angela Davis has taken white radical feminists to
task for writing about non-white communities as deviant, writing about Black men and
rape, and naturalizing the myth of the Black rapist, so prevalent during and after slavery
(Tong, 1998, p. 223). Others also argue that the radical feminist attacks on the family
are Euro- and ethnocentric and undermine the importance of family for many non-white
people. As Linda Carty states, “[f]or Black people and people of colour, the family served
as protection against, and a central source of resistance to, racist oppression” (Carty,
1999, p. 42).
Transgender feminists argue that gender becomes politically problematic when it is
defined through biology alone (MacDonald, 2000, p. 289; Stone, 1991). They respond in
part to radical and cultural feminists who question the “dangers” of transgendered people in
general and of transsexual women in particular, invading women’s spaces and bodies.
Rather than broaden their ideas about gender, a vocal minority of radical feminists consider
transsexual women to be committing violence: Janice Raymond (1998) says, “Rape . . . is a
masculinist violation of bodily integrity. All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing
the female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves . . . Rape, although it
is usually done by force, can also be accomplished by deception” (p. 308). This idea
underpins resistance to the inclusion of trans people in some types of feminist organizing.
Not all self-proclaimed radical feminists uphold transphobic ideas, but are perceived as
doing so on the basis of high profile cases such as that of Kimberly Nixon. In 1995 the
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter refused to let Nixon, a transsexual woman,
become a rape crisis counsellor out of the conviction that being born a woman is the basic
and primary definition of being a woman (Wente, 2000). Initially, Nixon was awarded
$7500 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal on the basis that she had been discriminated
against. The case was appealed and finally taken to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007,
where it was refused a hearing (McCann, 2007b). On this landmark case and so many
instances of trans people’s rights activism since then, radical feminism has largely failed to
work through its essentialism, sometimes garnering the largely pejorative term TERF (a
trans-exclusive radical feminist) (Goldberg, 2014).
PoststructuraL and Postmodern FemInIsm

defining Poststructural and Postmodern Feminism
Poststructural and postmodern feminist approaches seek to move beyond what are per-
ceived to be the grand narratives of modernist perspectives on women’s oppression offered
by Liberal, Socialist, and Radical feminism. Specifically, postmodern feminists tend to
concentrate on the nature and function of power in interpersonal relationships and in our
societies more broadly. Postmodern feminist analysis involves the deconstruction of assumed
“truths,” including the deconstruction of identities assumed to be stable such as that of
“woman” and “man.” Instead of assuming that sex (female/male) is a fixed biological iden-
tity, postmodern feminism deconstructs sex (and our assumptions about biology), placing
all of human identity in the domain of social construction. This means that in postmod-
ern feminist theory, all identities and any “truths” are regarded as already implicated in, if
not products of, a person’s culture. It also means that postmodern feminism seeks to chal-
lenge sexism and gender-based oppression by questioning all dominant cultural norms and
accepted truths, including taken-for-granted norms of feminist thinking and practice.
Postmodern feminism challenges the idea of analyzing social relations according to
simplistic oppressor/oppressed models: for example, men oppress women, the rich oppress
the poor, white people oppress Black people, and so on. Rather, postmodern feminists
suggest that people in positions of vulnerability are not in a permanent state of victimhood.
We are invited to reject the idea of utter victimhood, and encouraged to consider and
recognize the many ways in which the oppressed have the capacity for and often exercise
their own oppositional/alternative gaze, voices, and forms of resistance. In considering the
issue of power, we are also asked to think about the ways in which power is not something
people hold in measurable quantities. Those in positions of power may exercise certain
forms of power even as they embody a marginalized identity marker (e.g., a gay white man
who benefits from the privileges afforded by whiteness and maleness at the same time as
he experiences homophobia, a heterosexual black man who experiences daily racism even
as he benefits from straight male privilege), and members of marginalized groups can
exercise agency as well as power over others in certain circumstances (e.g., women who
are invested in patriarchal ideology in ways that support their own oppression or the
oppression of other women).
An important example of this is postmodern feminism’s engagement with sex work.
The landscape of contemporary postmodern feminism and its global dimensions reveals an
on-going set of debates surrounding the international realm of sex work, where “choice,”
autonomy, and victimhood remain key points of contention (Dozema, 1998, 2002;
Kempadoo, 2005), as discussed in the previous section. Postmodern feminist perspectives
consider sex work as neither a wholly empowered choice or form of sexual expression, nor
a completely victimizing and inherently oppressive experience. While a radical feminist
perspective might argue that objectification and the predominance of women in the sex
industry in the context of sexist heteropatriarchal culture makes the exchange of sex for
money fundamentally oppressive, from a postmodernist view, there is nothing inherently
oppressive in the exchange of sex for money. Sex work can be a subversive alternative to
heteropatriarchal sexual scripts that serve to direct women’s sexuality toward the gendered
norms of monogomous marriage (Scoular, 2004). Postmodern feminism contemplates the
multiple points of meaning making related to a subjective experience, as well as the possible
points of agency for sex workers. Postmodern perspectives on sex work resist the broad
stroke meta-narrative of victimization and oppression that modernist feminist approaches
present, yet must simultaneously contend with a context of unequal relations between
gendered human beings and countries, a context that visibly places women, children, and
a range of marginalized people in a position of marked vulnerability to sexual exploitation.
Historical Influences
Although they are often used interchangeably, there are some distinctions to be made
between poststructuralism and postmodernism. Poststructuralism developed out of inquiry
into the relationship between language, reality, and what and how we know things. This
work is credited to structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009), philoso-
pher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). Their
insights into the symbolic order of the human mind have been applied in theories of lan-
guage, knowledge production, and literary criticism. Postmodernism has tended to occupy
the interdisciplinary domain of cultural and social philosophy, history, and sociology
(Agger, 1991). The rejection of meta-narratives that seek to explain history and social
relations in broad strokes, for instance, is evident in French philosopher and sociologist
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s (1924–1998) rejection of German philosopher Karl Marx’s theory
of historical materialism, on the basis that it reduces and over-simplifies dynamic histori-
cal events; such a critique is typical of postmodernist interventions.
In Discipline and Punish (1979) postmodern French philosopher Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) proposes that a core characteristic of the development of modern societies and
the associated major social institutions with which we are accustomed (schools, medicine,
the military, the media, organized religion, and law enforcement and courts) is that they are
deeply invested in cultures of discipline. These cultures of discipline reflect the particular
power dynamics and social trends of any specific historical period. According to Foucault, the
main function of discipline in modern societies is to produce obedient and compliant bodies.
Note here the connection to postructuralism—Foucault’s obedient bodies are enacting their
compliance to fit into Derrida’s or Lacan’s notion of a “symbolic order.” The function of
discipline in modern (Western) societies is thus linked to Foucault’s analysis of power as
diffuse, being everywhere and nowhere at once. Examples of this include means by which we
are under constant real and perceived regulatory surveillance (e.g., street/traffic cameras and
lights, sexual objectification, and body judgment) to the point that we self-regulate/
self-discipline even when no one is looking. This self-discipline is a reaction to the diffuse
operation of power, to not knowing for sure whether one is or is not being watched. We
comply with what we are “supposed” to do because the penalties for non-conformity to
established norms are made clear over and over again (receiving a speeding ticket in the mail;
or, in the case of bodily discipline, romantic rejection, not getting a job or promotion, and so
on). According to Foucault, it is the scattered operation of power that encourages individuals
to impose forms of self-discipline (e.g., stopping at a red light in the middle of the night even
though no one else is around; starving oneself or obsessive exercise in order to be thin even
though no one is explicitly demanding this of that individual), the ultimate function of
which is to meet the regulatory blueprint of that society at that particular historical moment.
Poststructural and postmodern feminism reveal a number of influences, including
existential and deconstructionist (early poststructuralist) philosophy; and psychoanalytic,
linguistic, and literary theory. Links to existential philosophy, particularly the work of
existential feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir are readily evident in postmodern
feminist theory. De Beauvoir’s assertion in The Second Sex (1949/1973, 301) that “one is
not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” is a consistent theme in contemporary postmodern
feminist writing and is clearly evident in one of postmodern feminism’s most applauded
publications, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990). Moreover, the deconstruction of sex
itself, and not only ascribed gender, harkens? back to the work of deconstructionist
philosophers, among them Jacques Derrida (1967/1980), who questioned the existence of
a unified “Self ” and the ability of language to tell us anything “true” about what it describes
(Tong, 1998). If we examine the identity “woman” from a postmodern feminist perspective,
we are called to see that there is nothing essentially/biologically “true” in the identity
“woman.” To the extent that we use gendered and essentialist language to describe the
existential realities of womanhood, we further reproduce the socially constructed norms
and fictions that present “woman” as a stable and fixed identity.
Indeed, Butler proposes deconstructing and destabilizing the very identity of “woman” as
a unified subject; hers is one of the best-known feminist contributions to postmodern theory.
Butler (1990) reads gender identity as unstable, maintained only by a series of stylized
repetitive acts that have no basis in a profoundly rooted biology. She states, there is “nothing
about femaleness that is waiting to be expressed; there is, on the other hand, a good deal
about the diverse experiences of women that is being expressed and still needs to be
expressed,” asserting that language sets out the very conditions for one’s experience of the
world as a “woman” (Butler, 2010, p. 429). This proposition raises important questions for
feminists. If, as Butler suggests, the identity “woman” is grounded in a series of repetitively
performed acts rather than in biology, can anyone claim to be a woman? What are the political
implications of accepting the instability of “woman” as an identity, while still attempting to
organize collectively against the real material consequences of sexist oppression? How is the
subject of these collective political efforts to be represented and talked about in matters of
policy and electoral politics? Who, exactly, is the subject of these collective efforts? We see
these matters manifested in the realm of day-to-day relations all the time. For instance,
should a women’s shelter accommodate female-to-male or woman-to-man transsexual and
transgender persons in crisis?6 In fact, since the case of Kimberly Nixon, referred to above,
many now do either include women and trans people or all women, including trans women,
in their scope of service and employment. This shift marks a tremendous incursion of
postmodern thinking and trans feminist activism into women’s organizations, many of which
were established under the strategically essentialist goal of “serving women only.” Serving
women “only” was a strategic goal that met a desperate need for disproportionately female
survivors of sexual and physical violence, but from a postmodern feminist perspective, this
goal was never meant to further oppress other marginalized groups and thus it has shifted
slowly. This is just one example of the ways in which the postmodern question of what and
who constitutes a “woman” plays out in our day-to-day relations with one another.
A poststructuralist understanding of the relationship between language and reality is
also visible in the work of postmodern feminists such as Hélène Cixous, who critiques the
exclusion of “the feminine” from Western language (Tong, 1998). Here we find feminist
critique directed at a male-centred, or phallocentric, language that excludes feminine
expression, or écriture feminine (Cixous, 1976). Included in this vein of postmodern
feminist writing is the work of Julia Kristeva, who also critiqued the phallocentrism of
language while cautioning against the essentialist tendencies reflected in Cixous’s writing
(i.e., assuming a fixed definition of the feminine that is always tied to female biology). In
the realm of psychoanalysis, engagement with and critique of the work of Sigmund Freud
and Jacques Lacan are also observable in Luce Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is Not One (1977).
Irigaray challenges Freud’s male-centred and sexist assertions regarding women’s “penis
envy,” arguing the plurality of women’s sexuality, and that women have many sexes (the
clitoris, vagina, breasts). Irigaray insists that this multiplicity in women’s sexual pleasure,
or “homo-sexuality,” should not be regarded as a pathological sexual fragmentation, as is
often done when human sexuality is read from a heterosexist point of view.
Postmodern feminist work also highlights the gaps in postmodern theory more broadly
when gender is left out of accounts of discipline, discourse, and power in modern societies.
Postmodern feminist philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky (2010), for instance, has contributed
insightfully to the expansion of Foucauldian theories of discipline and power by pointing
out that gender is key to distinguishing the ways in which women and men experience
established cultures of discipline. Bartky points out that in the larger scheme of the
overarching symbolic order, men and women are expected to manifest their corporal
docility in different ways; that there are particularly feminine forms of discipline that differ
from those more specifically directed at producing a certain type of masculine subject.
Bartky calls attention to a specifically feminine “disciplinary project of bodily perfection”
(p. 407). Aside from the gendered and anxiety ridden practices of dieting, exercise, and
costly beauty regimes evident in many women’s routines, the disciplinary project of
perfection to which Bartky refers can also be observed in the trained physical gestures,
postures, and movements of women as they attempt to take up as little space as possible in
both public and private places. Minimizing one’s girth on subway trains and buses, keeping
one’s arms close to the body and giving way while walking down the street, and lowering
one’s gaze/avoiding direct eye contact when passing others, particularly men, are, according
to Bartky, all manifestations of a specifically feminine culture of discipline. These behaviours
manifest in the context of a sense of being under constant surveillance, or what Bartky
describes as women’s sense of being under constant and inescapable (sexist) judgment. The
resulting self-imposed disciplinary behaviours on the part of women are encouraged and
sustained by “technologies of femininity” (Bartky, 2010, p. 410) such as media, the beauty
industry, and social pressure that often produce a condition of alienation from the self and
varying degrees of self-hate in women (Bartky, 1990). It is interesting to note here the
combination of both postmodern analyses of power and discipline, with the Marxist
concept of alienation (see the preceding section in this chapter on Marxist/Socialist
feminism) to produce a specifically feminist postmodern theory of gendered oppression.
Feminist critiques of Poststructural

and Postmodern Feminism
A key challenge to feminism posed by postmodern approaches, therefore, is that an
unequivocal rejection of broad identity categories makes it difficult to organize collectively
for a change in the inequitable material conditions that are a real consequence of the
function of identity categories as social constructions embedded in power relations. One
such critique is that postmodern feminism borrows from more politicized bodies of feminist
theory such as critical-race and anti-racist feminist frameworks, with little to no
commitment to the politics corresponding to the material realities represented by these
frameworks. For example, postmodern feminism has absorbed theories of intersectionality
coming out of critical race and anti-racist feminism, these being theories that have long
troubled simplistic definitions of “woman” and “man,” particularly when these definitions
ignore intersection with other markers of identity such as “race,” class, sexual orientation,
and ability. Yet, postmodernism’s categorical rejection of unified subject positions
(“woman,” “Black”), even where intersectionality is taken into account (Black woman on
disability benefits; middle income, gay white man etc.), begs the question of how the social
realities of inequality and discrimination experienced by people in such subject positions
might be articulated in concrete terms within the realms of law, public policy, and
government legislation.
Postmodernism problematically threatens to do away with feminism within a broader
social context in which feminism and its main political subjects “women” are still very
much needed (Di Stefano, 1989). Sandra Harding, a feminist philosopher, further argues
that “socially situated knowledge” or a feminist standpoint theory (2005, p. 218) endangers
the social justice objectives of feminism. The tendency, then, of postmodern theory to veer
into relativist stances (i.e., there is not one, but many “truths”; bodies are the stuff of per-
formance, not grounded “truth”) can present particular challenges for feminist efforts to
directly attend to the material realities of sexist power dynamics. In the face of this, and to
the extent that postmodernism gives rise to unyielding relativism, feminist scholars such as
Seyla Benhabib, Susan Bordo, and Nancy Harstock have maintained that just “as human
bodies cannot be understood as endlessly mobile and flexible, so human understanding also
possesses necessary boundaries and rigidities” (Nicholson, 1989, p. 9). A related critique of
postmodernism is that its advocates deconstruct ad infinitum while offering no concrete
solutions to pressing social and political problems (e.g., concrete action plans).
concLusIon
This chapter provides an introduction to liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern femi-
nist theoretical approaches to understanding women’s and gender oppression. The theo-
ries are examined in terms of their central principles, their methods of challenging
women’s oppression, their practical goals, and their achievements.
Liberal feminism is based on the principles of women’s capacity for rationality,
meritocracy, equal opportunity, and freedom of choice. From the application of liberal
philosophy to inequalities between men and women, we learn that at the source of
women’s oppression is an inequitable integration of women into society’s institutions such
as schools and universities, government, professions, and economic organizations. Liberal
feminists have thus concentrated on achieving equal opportunity for women by ensuring
that all the rights, benefits, and responsibilities that accrue to men also accrue to women.
Socialist feminists explain and advocate for women’s liberation through a theoretical
framework that places the interconnectedness of capitalism, patriarchy, and more recently,
race, sexuality, and globalization, at the centre of its analyses of women’s oppression.
Socialist feminists challenge women’s oppression through unions, advocating for equal
pay for work of equal value, increased state investment in social services, and the eradica-
tion of poverty. The theoretical and activist contributions of socialist feminists have been
instrumental in influencing the Canadian state to include, for the first time in the 1996
census, questions on unpaid labour. In addition, many workplaces have passed paternity-
leave provisions (although women continue to take the majority of parental leaves).
Radical feminists investigate what they believe to be the root cause of women’s oppression:
that is, sex oppression of women by men. They argue that sex oppression can be found in social
structures such as the state and the family. Radical feminists identify how women’s sexuality is
directly controlled by men, through an analysis of reproduction, pornography, and rape, but
also through other institutions of social control in everyday relations such as heterosexual
love, marriage, and motherhood. Lesbian and cultural feminists argue that women need to
break free from patriarchal culture, through an endorsement of lesbian relationships and
women-only cultural spaces. Radical feminist theorizing has been influential, bringing to light
issues such as rape, pornography, and violence against women in a misogynist society.
Poststructural and postmodern feminist approaches have contributed important
critical tools to feminist theory, particularly in the areas of deconstructive and anti-
essentialist critique. They have elaborated on the notion of power as diffuse, and have
applied gender-based analysis to illustrate the ways in which power is not only visible
through obvious brute force, but also through the use of language and the ways in which
the symbolic realm creates the possibilities and limitations of our reality. These theories
have also, importantly, suggested that language presents opportunities for agency and
resistance. Yet, these theoretical contributions have also presented particular challenges
for feminism, for, if “strictly speaking, ‘women’ cannot be said to exist” (Kristeva quoted in
Butler 2005, p. 145), what is the basis of the subject identity that feminist politics seeks to
represent? Postmodern feminist approaches do not deny sexist inequality and exploitation
but consider spaces of subversion and agency simultaneously, and generally avoid the
unified, broad sweeping explanations of sexist oppression that are more suited to pushing
for concrete legal reforms within modernist state structures.
endnotes
1. It should be noted that most suffragists did not actually call themselves feminists until the
early twentieth century (Roome, 2001).
2. The GDP is a calculation of the total economic value of a country’s yearly output of goods
and services.
3. Abortion was first decriminalized in 1969, yet initially access was only granted by committees
composed usually of men who had to determine if the procedure would preserve a woman’s
“health,” an ill-defined term. The full decriminalization of abortion occurred in 1988,
although accessibility across the country is limited due to geography, provincial under-
funding, and a limited number of physicians willing to provide the service.
4. Sex worker, advocate, and organizer Carol Leigh of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Eth-
ics) has been acclaimed as the creator of the term “sex worker” as opposed to prostitute,
which has been seen to have “connotations of shame, unworthiness or wrongdoing”
(Bernstein, 1999). “Sex worker” is seen by many feminist thinkers as a more useful term,
as it promotes a sex-positive politic in its attempt to normalize those involved in the indus-
try as simply “service workers and care-giving professionals” who require rights similar to
others as workers (Bernstein, 1999).
5. Slutwalk is a sex-positive contemporary protest march that originated in response to the
rape victim–blaming of a Toronto police officer in 2011 (see www.slutwalktoronto.com).
6. See, for example, the article, “Transsexual and Transgender Women Denied Access to
Shelters as Temperatures Drop in Montreal” (February 6, 2013), by Sherbrooke-based
non-profit organization Head & Hands.
discussion Questions
1. Define each of the four theories (liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern feminism) in
your own words. Which one do you most identify with, if any?
2. Discuss how each theory defines the source of women’s oppression and their approaches
to social change.
3. Identify an accomplishment or goal of each group of feminists. How did theory inform
their actions?
4. What are the main criticisms of each theory? Are they valid critiques? Why or why not?
5. Do you see evidence of these theories at work today? Give examples.
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Chapter 2
Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism
Carmela Murdocca
IntroductIon
Feminism has a race problem. Who counts as a “woman” in the women’s movement? How
have women of colour and Indigenous women been included and excluded in feminist
movements and feminist theorizing? What are the particular issues faced by women of
colour and Indigenous women? What would it mean to write the history of Black femi-
nism or Indigenous feminism as the history of the women’s movement? What would it
mean to build a solidarity movement across the lines of gender, sexuality, class, and race;
and include a framework of decolonization? What are the tensions between different
approaches to feminism? These are the kinds of questions that challenge the history
of feminism and women’s movements in Western Europe and North America. Indeed, the
fact that these issues are framed as questions suggests a history of contestation within the
women’s movement and within feminist theorizing. In this chapter, I explore some of
the debates raised by these questions. The chapter prioritizes contributions to feminist
theorizing made by Indigenous women and women of colour.
In the first section, I outline connections between the concept of race within histori-
cal processes of colonialism and slavery. The politics of race and representation and the
relationship between race and ideas about “culture” are explored. The representation of
race and notions of culture have different implications for Indigenous women and women
of colour. In the second section, I situate the feminist concept of intersectionality as one of
the most significant contributions that feminist theorists of colour have made to the wom-
en’s movement and to feminist theorizing. I also explore Indigenous feminist challenges to
the concept of intersectionality. As fair warning to the reader, this chapter contains dis-
turbing material about historical and contemporary events. Legacies of colonialism and
racism are, of course, in themselves disturbing. I urge readers to reflect on and share their
thoughts with other trusted readers. Specifically, I ask readers to think about the reasons
why it has been so important for feminism to engage directly with these events and ideas.
This chapter draws upon the fields of feminist theory, critical race theory, Indigenous
theory, post-colonial theory, and cultural studies in order to provide insights into how the
historical processes of colonialism and racialization have contributed to feminist theorizing.
Scholarly and activist interventions about race, Indigeneity,1 and feminism use different
categorizations. Some of these descriptions include critical race feminism, Indigenous
35
feminism, Native feminism, anti-racist feminism, post-colonial feminism, transnational
feminism, and global feminism, among other formulations. Each of these descriptions signals
distinct points of entry into the debates concerning race, Indigeneity, colonialism, imperial-
ism, and feminism. Drawing on these contributions, this chapter prioritizes the substantive
engagements of these fields rather than tracing their distinct and overlapping genealogies.
In prioritizing contributions by feminists of colour and Indigenous feminists, certain
challenges and tensions arise. The historical context of the approach of feminist theorists
of colour, Black feminists, and Indigenous feminists emerges from different historical and
experiential processes and are distinct bodies of work. Indigenous feminists, for example,
often examine experiences of genocide, forced assimilation, dehumanization, colonial vio-
lence, and land theft. Black feminists often write through histories of enslavement, dehu-
manization, anti-Black racism, and particular forms of exploitation in the context of
capitalism. Other feminists of colour may focus on forced migration; indentured labour;
and experiences and processes of immigration that result from histories of colonialism,
imperialism, and capitalism. In addition, where Black feminists and other feminists of
colour often use the category of “race” as a starting point in their feminist analysis, Indige-
nous feminists “often spend less time focussing on questions of race and racism per se, and
more on issues of land and sovereignty” (Emphasis in original. Stewart, 2013, p. 50). These
approaches are therefore distinct in terms of orientation to gender and feminism. Rather
than resolving these tensions, the chapter attempts to keep these complexities alive.
race, colonIalIsm, modernIty

Race is one of the defining ideas of modern Western societies. Post-colonial and critical
race scholars argue that race and racism are modern, European inventions. During the
18th century, the Enlightenment produced a set of philosophical, cultural, economic, and
political ideas that were central to the development of the concept of race. Some of the
characteristics of Enlightenment thinking include the rise of empiricism and science, the
importance of reason, the idea of progress (i.e., the notion that the human condition can
be improved), universalism (i.e., the idea that general rules and laws apply to all people),
and the belief in freedom. The ideas that are central to the Enlightenment emerged from
specific political, economic, and cultural processes that began in Europe and proliferated
throughout the world. Colonialism (from the 15th century to the present day) gave rise to
the political and geographical context within which many Enlightenment ideas about the
category of human, gender, and race proliferated. The transatlantic slave trade contrib-
uted to the globalization of markets, economies, and political projects. The impact of
these world-defining and world-changing events has implications for our current under-
standings of race, Indigeneity, gender, and sexuality.
Many Enlightenment thinkers were invested in the idea of the “human”; the category
of “human” came to be an important signifier of ideas related to race and racialization.
Critical race scholar David Theo Goldberg argues that the more universal and abstract
the idea of the human became during this period, the more the historical record reveals
36 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

that a notion of difference, categorization, classification, value, and hierarchy came to be
associated with distinctions between human beings (Goldberg, 1993). These representa-
tions were made possible through European scientific racism (an insistence on identifying
inherent biological differences between human beings) and anthropological observations
and cultural forms (including art and visual representation). These significant historical,
political, economic, and cultural processes produced the ideas concerning race that we are
familiar with today. To indicate that race is an idea is to suggest that it is a created con-
cept, a constructed concept, with a history and a past. Most critical race scholars maintain
that race is a social, political, and cultural construction. Race is not biologically deter-
mined nor is race an objective social or political fact. Race, therefore, is a social construc-
tion (Dei, 2012; Kelly, 1998). For example, as Walcott observes: “Located between the
U.S. and the Caribbean, questions of Blackness (in Canada) far exceed the categories of
the biological and the ethnic (2009, p. 27). To understand race as a social construction
means that social, historical, political, and economic processes shape the meaning that is
given to race over time and in different geographical areas.
some definitions: colonialism, Imperialism,

and Race
To understand the impact of colonialism on feminist theorizing of race and Indigeneity, it is
important to begin with some definitions. Colonialism and imperialism are terms that are
often used interchangeably but it is helpful to distinguish them geographically and politi-
cally. Colonialism is a political “project that extends a nation’s sovereignty over territory
beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative depen-
dencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled, displaced” and murdered.2 Impe-
rialism refers to the project of extending the dominance of an empire, national, and
metropolitan centre over foreign entities, or of acquiring colonies (Loomba, 1998). Imperi-
alism can be exercised without the creation of formal colonies. Colonialism requires the
establishment of formal colonies secured by military force and governance through colonial
administration.
Alongside distinct colonial projects, the transatlantic slave trade, indentured servi-
tude, the rise of industrialization, and capitalism together produced particular forms of
racialization in Western nations. Indentured servitude or indentureship refers to the prac-
tice of a worker being under contract to work for a period of time, usually without pay. In
North America (particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries), indentured servants were
usually migrants who could not afford the cost of travelling. Indentureship and slavery
were ultimately systems of labour that operated together to support the project of coloni-
zation. The transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and the rise of capitalism structured
what critical race theorist Howard Winant describes as the “modern world system.” For
Winant, the “modern world system” is characterized by increased globalization, specifi-
cally, global economic integration that links economic markets around the world. This
global economic integration was assisted and animated by Enlightenment ideals and

carried out through processes such as the conquest of Indigenous people in North and
South America and the transatlantic slave trade (Winant, 2000, p. 172).
Colonization and slavery are predicated on extreme forms of racialized and sexualized
violence and were accomplished through the genocide of Indigenous people. These his-
torical processes suggest a profound and complicated genealogy for the idea of race. Colo-
nization and slavery were not simply top-down processes; the colonized, the enslaved, and
the exploited were not merely passive victims of economic and political exploitation.
Colonization and slavery are dynamic in form and spawned complex practices of survival
and resistance, as a few historical Canadian examples reveal.
Marie-Joseph Angélique was an enslaved Black woman who was owned by Thérèse
de Couagne de Francheville of Montréal. In The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story
of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal, Afua Cooper tells the story of a fire
that burned Montréal in April 1734. Marie-Joseph Angélique was the main suspect
although she maintained her innocence throughout the two-month trial. She was found
guilty and was sentenced to torture and death. On the day of her execution, she suffered
brutal torture (“the hangman applied a gruesome torture, in which her legs were
squeezed tight between planks of wood and then smashed with a heavy iron” [Cooper,
2006, p. 6]). The brutal torture was meant to extract a confession. Angélique broke
down under the torture and confessed to setting the fire. She was subsequently hanged.
In telling the story of the murder of Angélique, Cooper shows how the history of Black
slavery has disappeared from Canada’s history books, which is striking since “the
enslavement of Black people was institutionalized and practised for the better part of
three centuries” (2006, p. 7). As Cooper maintains, the evidence against Angélique was
circumstantial at best and no one truly knows whether she set fire to Montréal. Cooper,
however, believes that Angélique set the fire in an act of great resistance against the
conditions of her enslavement (2006, p. 9). The story of Angélique is “dramatic and
extraordinary” and starkly reveals part of the untold story of slavery, violence, and resis-
tance in Canada. It is also a story about how the history of colonialism and slavery in
the West instituted a distinct racial hierarchy that marked enslaved people as subhuman
(Cooper, 2006, p. 9).
Bonita Lawrence has explored the history of warfare and resistance between Indigenous
people, English and French settlers, and the “large scale intertribal” warfare that marked
early settler colonialism (Lawrence, 2002, p. 27). Mercantile colonialism (an early version
of international trade) was a type of colonialism that assisted the establishment of settler
colonialism in Canada. Mercantile colonialism facilitated by the European invasion of
markets, in the 16th and 17th centuries was “instrumental in destabilizing existing intertribal
political alliances in eastern North America” (Lawrence, 2002, p. 27). For example,
the Mi’maq people of Gaspé began killing the Iroquians who crossed within their trade
territories . . . Meanwhile the Innu nation in the sixteenth century became embroiled
in two different trade wars—the Naskapi fought the Inuit for access to furs in Labrador
while the Montagnais fought the Iroquois for control of the rich Saguenay River route
to James Bay and the Great Lakes. (Lawrence 2002, p. 27)

The trade wars and the diseases brought by Europeans devastated populations in
Ontario and Québec (Lawrence, 2002, p. 27). The chilling example of the murder of
Angélique and the intertribal warfare spawned by European disruption of tribal societies
challenge the simple binaries of colonizer/colonized, oppressor/oppressed, and demon-
strates that the brutality and progression of slavery and colonization resulted in complex
social and political processes.
There are different kinds of colonialism and each emerged in distinct ways in differ-
ent geographical locations and in different historical periods around the globe. In Canada,
for example, settler colonialism proliferated along with the emergence of a new nation
and continues apace today. Settler colonialism is a racial project that is dependent upon
the usurpation of land and the administrative and bureaucratic governance of Indigenous
populations. As Sherene H. Razack explains:
A white settler society is one established by Europeans on non-European soil. Its origins
lie in the dispossession and near extermination of Indigenous populations by the con-
quering of Europeans. As it evolves, a white settler society continues to be structured by
a racial hierarchy. In the national mythologies of such societies, it is believed that white
people came first and it is they who principally settled the land; Aboriginal people are
presumed to be mostly dead or assimilated. European settlers thus become the original
inhabitants and the group most entitled to the fruits of citizenship. A quintessential fea-
ture of white settler mythologies is, therefore, the disavowal of conquest, genocide, slav-
ery, and the exploitation of the labour of peoples of colour. In North America, it is still
the case that European conquest and colonization are often denied, largely through the
fantasy that North America was peacefully settled and not colonized. (2002, pp. 1–2)
In North America, settler colonialism is predicated on land theft, genocide, and

slavery. These practices formed the basis of Canadian nationalism. Nationalism can be
defined as an “imagined community” of a collectivity of individuals with a shared common
culture (Anderson, 2006). Nationalism consists of the stories that we tell about our
countries and ourselves. In Canada, the story of nationalism promotes a white settler
(European) version of history and ultimately constructs the history of the nation through
the categorical exclusion of Indigenous sovereignty and entitlement to the land. At the
heart of stories of nationalism, Sunera Thobani suggests, are “exalted subjects” or noble
subjects, who “having overcome great adversity in founding the nation . . . face numerous
challenges from outsiders—‘Indians,’ immigrants and refugees who threaten their
collective welfare and prosperity” (2007, p. 4). Today, these deeply rooted conflicts
continue to manifest themselves in governmental refusal to support Indigenous claims to
the land as well as in the context of immigration. As Himani Bannerji explains,
“immigration” is most often “a euphemistic expression for racist labour and citizenship
policies”—policies that have been shaped through racial hierarchies (2000, p. 4). The
complex histories of land theft, genocide, migration, and immigration have posed
challenges to feminists seeking to find a place to stand within and outside of the politics
of nationalism in Canada and around the world. For example, in the 20th century,
Indigenous people re-initiated active and distinct practices of self-determination,

anticolonial nationalist movements, and decolonial movements. Resistance has been
ongoing. Consider earlier cultural and military rebellions such as the Red River Rebellion
(1869) and the North West Rebellion (1885) led by the Métis Louis Riel. Lina Sunseri
defines decolonization as “the process by which longstanding colonial relations between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are abolished and new relations are formed (2000,
p. 146). Recently, the decolonial Idle No More movement is an example of a social
movement with the goal of securing Indigenous sovereignty and the protection of land
and water.3 Each of these initiatives—self-determination, anti-colonial nationalist
movements, and decolonial movements—are distinct and come with pitfalls and promises
for women. Social movements, for example, that “fail to combine a gender analysis with
an anti-colonial one can only increase the chances that colonized women’s lives will not
be improved” (Sunseri, 2000, p. 146). On a broader scale, however, the challenge has
always been, as Audra Simpson demonstrates, “how to proceed as a nation if the right to
the terms of legal belonging, a crucial component of sovereignty, has been dictated by
foreign governments” (2014, p. 10). Indeed, the ultimate goal is “the choice of Aboriginal
peoples to determine which course to take rather than having one imposed on them, as has
been the case with the Canadian state” (Emphasis in original. Sunseri, 2000, p. 145).
Feminists of colour have similarly demonstrated the role that nationalism has played
in women’s lives. For example, women have often been positioned as the “producers and
reproducers of the national culture” (Sunseri, 2000, p. 144; see also McClintock, 1995).
There is also a significant body of feminist scholarship that demonstrates the central role
that women have played in nationalist, anti-colonial, and revolutionary movements
(Ranchod-Nilsson & Tétreault, 2000). Some feminist scholars have argued that nationalist
frameworks are incompatible with strategies of decolonization and liberation hence
signalling some of the tensions between aspects of Indigenous theorizing and anti-racist
theorizing (Sharma & Wright, 2009).
Settler colonialism (and the lack of attention to the effects of settler colonialism in
feminist and critical race feminist theorizing) has had deleterious effects on Indigenous
women. Existing feminist frameworks for understanding the effects of settler colonial-
ism on Indigenous women are insufficient and often reinforce racism against Indigenous
women. As Haudenosaunee scholar Patricia Monture explains: “I have a hard time
understanding again how my experience is an experience of disadvantage. Disadvantage
is a nice, soft, comfortable word to describe dispossession, to describe a situation of force
whereby our very existence, our histories, are erased continuously before our eyes.
Words like disadvantage conceal racism” (Monture-Angus, 2003, pp. 3–4). Indigenous
feminists insist that considerations of race and gender are only possible if we understand
how white supremacy and heteropatriarchy are organized through the techniques of set-
tler colonialism—land theft, violence, cultural genocide (Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013;
Smith, 2005). The yardstick of discrimination does not address a needed focus on geno-
cide, land theft, sovereignty, and practices of decolonization in settler colonialism.
Andrea Smith eschews the idea of discrimination and suggests, instead, that we must
focus on three “logics” that structure North American culture: “anti-Black racism, which
anchors capitalism,” “genocide, which anchors colonialism,” and “orientalism, which anchors

war” (Smith, 2010). These three historical process—not discrimination or exclusion or
prejudice—give rise to white supremacy in Western culture. These three logics have particular
implications for differently situated women of colour. In Black communities, for example,
anti-Black racism is manifest in disproportionate incarceration in prison, which is a reality
that can be traced through the legacy of criminalization and slavery (Davis, 2003). The
processes of genocide and colonialism ensure that Indigenous women continue to experience
violence with impunity and are denied sovereignty (Simpson, 2008). For other women of
colour, Western forms of orientalism have provided the imperial rationale for war in order to,
paraphrasing Gayatri Spivak, save brown women from brown men (Spivak, 1980).
Many feminist scholars of race and Indigenous feminists show how ideas about race
are material and symbolic. In other words, race and forms of racialization are sustained and
produced through political, economic, legal, and social structures, and proliferate through
symbolic cultural representations of the racialized Other. The theories of these feminist
scholars can be traced using Edward Said’s ideas concerning colonial discourse and colo-
nial racism that draw from his ground-breaking work Orientalism.
Race and Representation

Edward W. Said (1935–2003) is a central thinker in the development of the field of post-colonial
studies.4 In Orientalism, Said uses Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse to argue that the idea of
the Orient was produced “politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and
imaginatively” through European colonial projects and conversely, “European culture gained in
strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient” (1979, p. 11). The significance of
Edward Said’s work for the social sciences and humanities rests on the connection that he
establishes between the economic, political, as well as cultural process of colonial projects.
As Said argues, colonialism and imperialism do not only require military and governmental
power but also an idea of empire. In other words, colonialism, imperialism, and empire-building
need to be understood not only for the accumulation of capital but also as cultural manifestations
concerning the production of ideas and representations about race. In short, Said’s path-breaking
work reveals how colonialism is structural (political and economic) as well as cultural.
In her famous essay “Under Western Eyes,” Chandra Mohanty relies on a discursive
definition of colonization (which follows from Said’s writing) in order to examine repre-
sentations of the category “third world women” in Western feminist writing. In particular,
Mohanty challenges how the feminist concept of the orientalized “sexually oppressed
woman” is attached to non-Western women.
When the category of “sexually oppressed women” is located within particular systems in
the third world which are defined on a scale which is normed through Eurocentric
assumptions, not only are third-world women defined in a particular way prior to their
entry into social relations, but since no connections are made between first- and third-
world power shifts, it reinforces the assumption that people in the third world just have not
evolved to the extent that the west has. This mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing
and systematizing the experiences of different groups of women, erases all marginal and
resistant modes of experiences. (Mohanty, 1988, p. 80)

Mohanty is concerned with how, and to what extent, representations of third world
women are ideological, legitimating economic and political interests that contribute to the
“latent economic and cultural colonization of the ‘non-Western’ world” (Mohanty, 1988,
p. 82). The incorporation of “third world women” into Western/white feminist discourse has
the effect of categorical silencing of women of colour as representational veneers in
mainstream feminist discourse. These forms of representation spawned one of the most
important contributions by women of colour to feminist theorizing—writing against the
silencing of women of colour. Mohanty’s contributions emerge from what has been described
as transnational feminism or global feminism. At stake in this qualification of feminism is
the necessity to reject the universalization of the category of “woman” (predominant in
mainstream white feminism) and to address the links between women’s struggles beyond the
confines of the nation-state. The universalizing impulse of white Western feminism
“reproduces the paradigmatics of imperialism wherein colonizers speak for all humanity and
the colonized simply talk about their own condition” (Johar Schueller, 2005, p. 64).
In Woman, Native, Other, Trinh T. Minh-ha explores the challenges faced by women
writers of colour: “Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer . . . Writer of
color? Woman writer? Or woman of color? Which comes first? . . . writing weaves into
language the complex relations of a subject caught between the problems of race and
gender” (Minh-Ha, 1989, p. 6). Gayatri Spivak’s classic text “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
similarly advances the idea that Western philosophical writing (from the French
philosophers Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault to the German philosopher and revolutionary
socialist Marx) serves economic and political interests (Spivak, 1980). In this sense,
knowledge is a commodity that serves dominant interests. Spivak is particularly wary of
feminist and post-colonial scholars who are invested in attempts to allow the subaltern (a
person who holds a subordinate position) to “speak.” Such benevolent attempts at
inclusion, Spivak argues, works to reassert what she describes as “epistemic violence” or
colonial racism that is at the root of forms of knowledge production (Spivak, 1980). As
Said, Spivak, Minh-Ha, and others demonstrate, the figure of the racialized colonial
subject is/was made through anthropological, scientific, and cultural representations and
discourses that constructed race as a fixed, biological, and hierarchical category.
The category of race was further consolidated through colonial projects of the 18th
and 19th centuries. For example, in the 18th century and onward, African and Indigenous
peoples were often perceived and represented by colonizers as “savage,” “barbaric,” and
subhuman. Racialized representations of Indigenous people had particular implications for
Indigenous women since “strategies of colonization were gendered purposefully to under-
mine and remove Indigenous women’s traditional authority and agency” (NWAC, 2010,
p. 11; see also Anderson, 2000).
These strategies of colonization systematically devalued, undermined, and subjugated
Indigenous women in every way: mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, economi-
cally, and politically. Women who resisted were put in their place or punished through
ridicule, exclusion, and violence (Anderson, 2000; Monture & McGuire, 2009; NWAC,
2010, p. 12; Smith, 2000).

Racialization
Racialization is a word that is often used to describe the process through which ideas about
race are constructed and the idea of race becomes meaningful in socio-political, legal,
economic, and cultural formations. The word racialization can be traced to the writings of
the anti-colonial revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Born in Martinique,
Fanon was a psychiatrist and a philosopher. He supported the Algerian resistance
movement against colonizer France. His writings have influenced the fields of critical race
studies, post-colonial studies, and social movement studies. In Black Skin, White Masks,
Fanon explores the psychological and social effects of living as a Black man in a colonial
world. His theory argues that European colonialism created a binary world, whereby sharp
and distinct categories of domination and subjection structure social, political, and
economic relations. Fanon described this binary world as a Manichean world; Manichean
refers to religious or philosophical dualism (Fanon, 2008). The binary pairing of colonizer/
colonized, Black/white, civilized/barbaric, and respectable/degenerate became profound
psychic and social orders of domination for colonized people in a colonized world. These
sharp distinctions have the effect, Fanon argues, of splitting humanity into two categories:
human and subhuman. Fanon first uses the phrase “to racialize” when contrasting it with
the phrase “to humanize,” thereby signalling the ways in which processes of racialization
eject certain peoples from the very category of the human (Fanon, 2008). In this sense,
racialization can be viewed as assisting processes of domination, oppression, subjugation,
violence, and marginalization.
This genealogy of racialization echoes the analysis advanced by many women writers
of colour, including Audre Lorde. In her path-breaking essay “Age, Race, Class and
Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Lorde writes:
Much of western European history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic

opposition to each other: dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior.
In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human
need, there must always be some group of people who, through systemized oppression,
can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within
this society, that group is made up of Black and Third World people, working-class
people, older people, and women. (1984, p. 114)
Ideas about race and processes of racialization are interwoven into institutions, social
structures, and systems of representation. Race is a polyvalent concept that changes over time
and through geographical places. In our contemporary world, we see the residues of 18th- and
19th-century views on race in that we often consider racial difference as biologically fixed.
The legacy of scientific or biological racism supports the view that race largely and exclusively,
refers to phenotype (observable traits such as skin colour). Following critical race and post-
colonial scholarship, the concept of racialization challenges this view. Focusing on the process
of racialization helps us to see how what we know about the concept of “race” comes from the
stories that we tell about race and the forms of governance that assist in the organization of

knowledge about race. Whether these stories are derived from popular media, such as
television shows, movies, newsfeeds, Twitter, or Facebook; or through formal governmental
and legal processes, they rely on ideas about race that have a long history in Western culture.
Race and Culture

Scholars of race, Indigeneity, and colonialism address how, and to what extent, the concept
and the idea of culture is a harbinger for racism and racialization. Sherene Razack describes
this process as the “culturalization of racism” and shows how in cases of sexual violence
against women of colour and gender-based asylum cases, ideas about the culture and religion
of non-white people often “pre-empt both racism and sexism” in the legal process (Razack,
1998, p. 60). The “culturalization of racism” refers to the ways in which the idea of “culture”
is used as a euphemism for insidious forms of racism. The challenge is to ensure that when the
language of culture enters the social, political, and legal sphere, it is not concealing or mask-
ing women’s real experiences of racism and sexism. Today, cultural sensitivity training for
workers (such as teachers, police officers, judges, health-care workers, and others) or books
and training sessions that assist with “cross-cultural” communications are just a few examples
of how race relations are often managed through a language of culture. While these kinds of
strategies seek to address an increasingly diverse workforce, for example, and are viewed as
progressive strategies to assist with relations among diverse people, we need to pay attention
to the very real ways in which these strategies can promote new kinds of racism and sexism.
The “culturalization of racism” is also used in the service of settler colonialism.
Indigenous scholars have long demonstrated the ways in which ideas about Indigenous
“culture” and “tradition” work to sustain and enact forms of racism against Indigenous
women, men, and children (Anderson, 2010; Smith, 2005; St. Denis, 2011). In Canada,
the establishment of reserves and residential schools was inspired by colonial and racist
ideas about inferior Indigenous cultures and civilizing “the Indian.” Ultimately, these
representational ideas about race and Indigenous culture provided the underlying rationale
for genocide and land theft. These forms of racialized violence were further sustained
legally through the establishment of the Indian Act in 1876. For example, ideas about
“Indian culture” were reinforced by legal prohibitions criminalizing Indian cultural
ceremonies and dance (Backhouse, 1999). Today, as incarceration rates for Indigenous
women and men are at an all-time high in Canada, criminal justice processes, such as
restorative justice and “cultural sensitivity” training for criminal justice officials, often fail
when they are framed through ideas about cultural difference (Murdocca, 2013).
Cultural approaches to addressing racism and sexism also fail when invoked through
stereotyped narratives about non-white people and cultures. Razack argues,
[C]ulture talk is clearly a double-edged sword. It packages difference as inferiority and

obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are
important for contextualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their
access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural
advantages they enjoy.” (Razack, 1998, p. 59)

The complexity of the real-world experiences of women of colour, Indigenous women,
and other marginalized women led many feminist theorists of colour to develop new con-
ceptual and analytic tools to “voice” everyday and historical realities and to account for
the exclusion of their experiences by mainstream women’s movements.
tracIng IntersectIonalIty
Intersectionality is one of the main contributions that feminists of colour have made to
feminist theorizing. Intersectionality refers to the study of the interconnections between
different systems, social processes, and representations of discrimination and oppression.
As social and cultural forms, race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and other forms of social
identification shape these systems, processes, and representations. Intersectionality largely
emerges from the United States feminist context. This section charts the emergence of
intersectionality in United States scholarship and provides examples of the use of inter-
sectionality (the “how” of intersectionality) when analyzing torture in the context of war
and violence against Indigenous women. Finally, this section also addresses some critiques
of intersectionality (limitations and possibilities) made by Indigenous and other scholars
of colour.
In the United States, feminist approaches to race coalesce around three social and
political processes: 1. The exclusion of Black women and other women of colour in the
first and second waves of feminism; 2. Black lesbian feminist writings in the 1970s and
80s; and 3. An emerging Black feminist critique of civil rights and discrimination laws.
Pre-dating these interventions is a much longer Black female intellectual history that
emerged out of survival and resistance to slavery and its attendant forms of discipline and
control dating back to the work of Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883), an abolitionist and
women’s rights activist. Lee Maracle’s celebrated I Am Woman was partly inspired by
Truth’s anti-slavery feminist speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” suggesting historical links
between ideas that inspired reclaiming women’s knowledge across racial lines and differ-
ently situated women (Maracle, 2003; see also Stewart, 2013).
Jennifer Nash suggests that intersectionality has advanced feminist theorizing in
three ways: 1. Intersectionality challenges dichotomous and binary thinking of the race/
gender systems of domination and subordination; 2. “Intersectionality seeks to demonstrate
the racial variation(s) within gender and the gendered variation(s) within race” through
a focus on recognizing the complexity of subjects and identities (2008, 2); and
3. Intersectionality challenges the legacy of excluding racialized and marginalized subjects
from anti-racist and feminist work (2008). One could argue that feminist theory is a theory
of intersectionality. Or, as Leslie McCall explains: “One could even say that
intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution that women’s studies, in
conjunction with related fields, has made so far” (2005, p. 1771). Indeed, the related
fields—Black feminist theory, critical race theory, anti-racist feminist theory, Indigenous
theory, Latina/Chicana feminist theory, post-colonial feminist theory—have made the
most significant contributions to a theory of intersectionality.

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw is often regarded as the first to develop a theory of
intersectionality (first published in 1989). However, Angela P. Harris’s important work simi-
larly used “a racial critique to attack gender essentialism in feminist legal theory” (1990,
p. 585). Harris proposed an analysis that recognizes the complexity and relationality of iden-
tity categories: “In constructing knowledge and theory about the nature and causes of women’s
oppression, we must account for simultaneity; we must ask: “[H]ow do they combine with and/
or cut across one another? How does racism divide gender identity and experience? How is
gender experienced through racism? How is class shaped by gender and ‘race’?” (1990, p. 123).
Similar to Harris’s work, Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality emerged out of an
attempt to address the mutual conditioning of race and gender in Black women’s lives in
relation to civil rights law in the United States. Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality
emerged out of a critique of law’s purported objectivity, colour blindness, and neutrality.
For Crenshaw (and other feminists of colour, and anti-racist and critical race scholars),
intersectionality is also a historical indictment of the exclusion of women of colour from
the mainstream feminist movement. As Crenshaw explains:
Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any
analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address that
particular manner in which Black women are subordinated. Thus . . . the entire framework
that has been used as the basis for translating “women’s experience” or the “Black experi-
ence” into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast. (2011, p. 26; 1991)
Crenshaw uses the analogy of the traffic accident to consider the real world conse-
quences of the concept of intersectionality:
The point is that black women can experience discrimination in a number of ways and
that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must
be unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going
from all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow
in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection,
it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from
all of them. Similarly, if a black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection,
her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. (2011, p. 29)
For women of colour, intersectionality accounts for the experience of “double dis-
crimination” or the “double bind” of discrimination. Importantly, J. Kéhaulani Kauanui
examines how this civil rights genealogy of intersectionality does not address the issues of
“territory, sovereignty and nationhood (that) structure colonized peoples’ relationship to
the nation-state” (2008, p. 635–636). Furthermore, Kauanui argues that “conflating race
with indigeneity” is another symptom of a civil rights or legal framework that makes it
difficult, if not impossible, for Indigenous people to advance claims of sovereignty to the
land (2008, p. 635). This is an important illustration of where Black feminist or critical
race feminist approaches to civil rights, for example, may be complicit with the ongoing
project of settler colonialism.

In the Canadian context, feminists of colour also began to respond to the exclusion
of Black women and other women of colour from the mainstream feminist movement
and feminist legal scholarship. For example, the first issue of the journal Canadian
Journal of Women and Law was an indictment of Black, Indigenous, and other women
of colour exclusion from mainstream feminism. In particular, Esmeralda Thornhill’s
article “Focus on Black Women” argued “that if the experiences of all oppressed women
are to be understood, addressed, and incorporated, then all must participate in the
building of theory” (Thornhill in Kline 1989, p. 117). Drawing on Thornhill, Marlee
Kline began the task of documenting the ways in which Canadian feminist analysis of
child custody, a feminist review of Canadian criminal law, and the radical feminist
theory of Catherine MacKinnon failed to take into consideration how race and racism
structures the experience of women of colour (Kline, 1989). Patricia Monture also
reflects on the use of law and education as a tool of subjugation and racism for
Indigenous people (Monture, 1990).
Although Crenshaw uses the word “intersectionality” (and is generally identified as
the first to do so), Black feminist activists and other activists and artists of colour had
already developed a legacy of anti-racist feminist action and theorizing that advanced
what might be called an “intersectional critique.” These scholars, poets, and writers had
long established a legacy where ideas about intersectionality, double discrimination, and
difference were central themes. Concerned with advocating for the eradication of forms of
exclusion, violence, and war, these writings are directly connected to political action and
solidarity among different kinds of women globally. Revisiting these works today, their
collective visions seem ever more relevant.
For example, the Combahee River Collective, a collective of Black and lesbian femi-
nist activists in Boston who were committed to the idea that “the liberation of all
oppressed people necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capital-
ism and imperialism as well as patriarchy” (1977).
In advocating an intersectional analysis of the connection between individual identities,
local struggles and global relations, the Combahee River Collective advocates a version of a
historicized transnational feminist analysis that is propelled by an intersectional approach.
The Combahee River Collective traces the origins of Black feminism in the historical
legacy of slavery, global feminist movements, and the historical forms of exclusion and
sexism experienced by Black women in the mainstream/white feminist movement, the
Civil Rights movement and Black nationalist movements. Significantly, the Combahee
River Collective’s approach in 1977 ultimately challenges later feminist theorizing (into
the 80s, 90s, and 2000s) to advance a global and historicized approach to understanding
the politics of subordination and domination.
Similarly, the path-breaking collection This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radi-
cal Women of Color (1984) advocates for the development of a global feminist analysis
that addresses questions of solidarity for different groups of women.
This Bridge prioritizes the experiential knowledge of women of colour and advances
an anti-racist and critical race approach by “draw[ing] explicitly on the person of color’s

lived experiences by including such methods as storytelling, family history, biographies,
scenarios, parables, cuentos, chronicles, and narratives” (Solorzano, 1998, p. 133).
These writings offer a vision of what we might call intersectionality politics—an anal-
ysis of the world and social life that is rooted in experiential knowledge across women’s
diverse experiences. It is rooted in solidarity and action in relation to experiences of vio-
lence, exclusion, and exile. Sarah Hunt describes how This Bridge, in its focus on building
solidarity movements across Indigenous, Black, Chicana, queer, and Asian women, opens
up a radical politics that aims to dissolve identity categories (Hunt, 2007). Similarly, there
have been attempts in Canada to consider collaborative work between Black and Indige-
nous feminists with the view of thinking through Indigenous relations to the land and
Black Canadians who experience diaspora realities of settlement in the context of histories
of enslavement and migration (Amadahy & Lawrence, 2010).
These works echoed contemporaneous writings on women of colour and Black
women’s exclusion and disillusionment with the white women’s movement. bell hooks’s
classic book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (2000), for example, is an indictment
of the white mainstream women’s movement in the United States. “Feminism in the
United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist
oppression . . . Racism abounds in the writings of white feminists, reinforcing white
supremacy and negating the possibility that women will bond across ethnic and racial
lines” (hooks, 2000, pp. 1, 3). Patricia Hill Collins called attention to the suppression of
Black women’s intellectual traditions in her ground-breaking book Black Feminist Thought
(Collins, 2000). She argues that African-American women’s oppression is/was organized by
a triangulated web of exclusion that includes labour (“Black women’s long-standing
ghettoization in service professions” [2000, p. 3]), legal rights (inequitable treatment in the
criminal justice system as well as the history of denying African-American women the vote
and the opportunity to hold public office [2000, p. 4]), and significantly, visual representation
and cultural ideology (“from the mammies, jezebels and breeder women of slavery to the
smiling Aunt Jemimas on pancake mix boxes, ubiquitous black prostitutes and ever-present
welfare mothers of contemporary popular culture, negative stereotypes applied to African
American women have been fundamental to Black women’s oppression” [2000, p. 4]).
In Canada, feminist work that attempts to address the intersections between race,
class, and gender has been described as anti-racist feminist thought (Calliste & Dei, 2003;
Dua & Robertson, 1999). Inspired by a political economy approach and a critical race
critique of liberalism and multiculturalism, some of the issues that anti-racist feminist
thought has explored concern immigration, labour, reproduction, building solidarity with
Indigenous women, and the role of “culture” in structuring women’s lives (Agnew, 2007;
Bannerji, 2000; Monture, 2003; Philip, 1992). In this sense, Canadian anti-racist feminist
thought challenges the Black/white dichotomy that structures some strands of United
States–based feminism. Significantly, there have also been debates in the Canadian con-
text concerning the possibility of “decolonizing anti-racism” and the challenge this poses
to building solidarity between anti-racist feminism and Indigenous feminism (Lawrence &
Dua, 2005).

Collectively, these scholars unsettled the white women’s movement and academic fem-
inism and contributed to the development of an intellectual tradition in the writing of
women of colour concerning what we have now come to call intersectionality—a theoretical,
activist, and literary tradition that recognizes that all aspects of our identity and experience
(racial, sexual, class, religious, migratory, dis/ability, cultural, religious, etc.) are inherently
and necessarily interconnected. Intersectionality demands recognition that our identities
and experiences are complex. If we accept (as I do) that feminist theory is, at its core, a
theory of intersectionality, then it follows—as these writings demonstrate—that feminist
theory is a theory that has been made possible by the writings and experiences of Indigenous
women and women of colour.
The “How” of Intersectionality

Despite efforts to examine the rich genealogy of the concept of intersectionality and its
different iterations across feminist writing and differently situated women, few feminist
scholars have turned their attention to addressing the how of intersectionality. That is to
say, how do we accomplish an intersectional analysis in our feminist work and political goals
(McCall, 2005, p. 1771)? How does intersectionality account for experiences of exclusion
and discrimination? What does intersectionality do as a theory and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, what does it offer methodological approaches used by feminist, critical race, and
Indigenous scholars?
There have been several revisions to the concept of intersectionality that have
attempted to show the limits of the concept when mobilized to explain particular social,
political, or legal phenomena. For example, in the Canadian context, echoing the Combahee
River Collective, Sherene Razack prioritizes the word interlocking rather than intersecting
in order to address the relationships between race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and
other axes of identity. “I use the word interlocking rather than intersecting to describe how
the systems of oppression are connected. Intersecting remains a word that describes discrete
systems whose paths cross. I suggest that the systems are each other and that they give
content to each other” (Emphasis in original. Razack, 2008, p. 62). Significantly, Razack
describes how to advance an interlocking approach through an analysis of the torture and
prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq (now Baghdad Central Prison).
During the 2003 United States–led invasion of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison located
just west of the Baghdad city centre was seized and became a United States military
prison. Most of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were civilians, and women and children
(Hersh, 2004). In 2004, The New Yorker obtained a report written by Major General
Antonio M. Taguba (which was not intended for public release) and the CBS television
program 60 Minutes released photos depicting widespread abuse and torture of prisoners
in Abu Ghraib prison by United States soldiers. The report stated that between October
and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton
criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib (Hersh, 2004). Soldiers perpetuated these abuses. The
widely circulated photos taken by fellow soldiers depicted horrific acts of racialized,

sexualized, and gendered violence. The report describes one of the photos in the
following manner:
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her
mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi,
who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other
hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their
genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in
arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a
cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other
in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled
in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier
stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another
cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs.
Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head
momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is per-
forming oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded. (Hersh, 2004)
In seeking to analyze the events at Abu Ghraib, and the thousands of photos that
circulated, some scholars and mainstream analysts sought to “exceptionalize” the violence
and torture committed by male and female soldiers who were portrayed by Western media
as being on the “right” side of the war (Puar, 2005a; Razack, 2008). For example, com-
mentators suggested that the torture was just the result of a “few bad apples” in the army
(Puar, 2005b; Razack, 2008). As Puar explains, these accounts viewed the racialized and
sexualized torture as rare, extreme bodily and sexual violence (“the site of violation as
extreme in relation to the individual rights of privacy and ownership accorded to the body
within liberalism”) (Puar, 2005a, p. 14).
Razack asks the following questions of the torture at Abu Ghraib: 1. Why take photos
to record the torture and prisoner abuse? (And, why did soldiers send nearly 2000 photos to
their families?); 2. “Why record evil?”; 3. “Why the sex? (This last question is often con-
nected to the women’s participation)” (2008, p. 67). Razack proposes that an interlocking
approach facilitates an analysis of how we each, individually and collectively, come to par-
ticipate in racialized and historical processes of subordination and domination. Razack
advances an interlocking analysis of the torture at Abu Ghraib in the following way:
The fact that the status of Iraqis is so evidently subhuman, so culturally different, and so
in need of discipline, crowds our newsreels. Unless we have become numb to it all, we
will need to find an explanation for the sexualized terror and for the ways that ordinary
people participate in it. Pyramids of naked men forced to simulate having sex should
not baffle us, but neither should we believe they are trivial or exceptional moments in
a giant clash of civilizations. To grasp their import, we will have to attend to prisoner
abuse as a publicly enacted, sexualized ritual of racial violence and track the trade in
mythologies signalled by our persistent marking of ourselves as modern and the non-
West as culturally different . . . We will need to consider how race, class, gender, and
sexuality give each other meaning [in the context of racialized and gendered violence],

structuring desire and producing men and women whose sense of coherency rests on
anxiously drawing the line between those who are abandoned and those who are to
remain members of political community. (Razack, 2008, p. 80)
Several features of this analysis are significant. Razack seeks to historicize the sexualized
racialized violence enacted at Abu Ghraib. In so doing, historical processes of sexualized
racialization (human/subhuman) coupled with particular forms of Enlightenment thinking
(pre-modern/modern, civilized/uncivilized) make the torture possible. The potency of the
images of torture from Abu Ghraib is rendered “coherent” through historical and
transnational processes of imperialism, racialization, and sexualization.
Of particular interest in analyses of the torture was the participation of female soldiers.
As noted in the Abu Ghraib memo, Private Lyndie England was depicted in photos smiling
and giving a “thumbs-up” to the camera next to naked prisoners piled in a pyramid and
pointing to a man’s genitals. Some white liberal feminist scholars and commentators were
bewildered by the presence and active participation of female soldiers. As Puar explains:
The picture of Lyndie England, dubbed “Lyndie the Leasher,” leading a naked Iraqi on
a leash (also being referred to as “pussy whipping”) has now become a surface on which
fundamentalism and modernization, apparently dialectically opposed, can wage war.
One could argue that this image is about both the victories of liberal feminists, who
claim that women should have equal opportunities within the military, and the failures
of liberal feminists to adequately theorize power and gender beyond male-female
dichotomies that situate women as less prone toward violence and as morally superior
to men. (Eisenstein in Puar, 2005a, p. 20)
Puar suggests that the failure to adequately account for gendered racial violence is
part of a version of white liberal feminism that is rooted in binary gender categories and
essentialist ideas about women (i.e., women are less prone to violence). A more complex
account of the violence and torture at Abu Ghraib would reveal the ways in which forms
of subordination and domination travel transnationally across geopolitical space in order
to position certain bodies in historical hierarchies racialization and sexualization.
In the Canadian context, the murder of an Indigenous woman is another violent
episode that can be examined through an intersectional analysis. Razack’s analysis of the
brutal murder in Regina of Pamela George, an Indigenous woman and mother from the
Saulteaux nation who was working as a sex worker on the night of her murder, provides
another example of the possibilities of an intersecting analysis. In particular, the case of
Pamela George demonstrates the ways in which the law fails to adequately address violence
against Indigenous women. George was murdered by two young white university students
who “took turns brutally beating her and left her lying with her face in the mud” (Razack,
2002, p. 121). Razack argues that George’s murder should be understood as gendered racial
violence where “the racial or colonial aspects of this encounter are more prominently
brought into view by tracing two inextricably linked collective histories: the histories of the
murderers, two middle-class white men, and of Pamela George, a Saulteaux woman”
(Razack, 2002, p. 126). By reviewing the transcripts from the murder case, Razack asks the

following questions: How does the history of colonialism and racism in Canada directed at
Indigenous people help us to shed light on Pamela George’s murder? What is it about the
biographies of George and her murderers that brought them into a violent encounter with
each other? What about the histories of the white men made it possible to brutally murder
George? Why must the violence directed at George be understood as racialized gendered
violence? What was it about Pamela George that not only made her especially vulnerable
but also made her a target? Razack insists that to fully comprehend the enormity of the
violence directed at George, and the law’s response to violence against Indigenous women,
a historical view of gendered racial violence must be advanced. Razack writes:
I deliberately write against those who would agree that this case is about an injustice
but who would de-race the violence and the law’s response to it, labelling it as generic
patriarchal violence against women, violence that the law routinely minimizes. While
it is certainly patriarchy that produces men whose sense of identity is achieved through
brutalizing a woman, the men’s and the court’s capacity to dehumanize Pamela George
came from their understanding of her as the (gendered) racial Other whose degrada-
tion confirmed their own identities as white—that is, as men entitled to the land and
the full benefits of citizenship. (Razack 2002, p. 126)
Through analyzing the court transcripts, Razack’s analysis concludes that forms of
racialization, representation, and regulation resulted in George’s “absence” from her own
murder trial: “If this exploration of Pamela George’s murder trial, does anything at all, my
hope is that it raises consciousness about how little she mattered to her murderers, their
friends and families, and how small a chance she had of entering the court’s and Canadian
society’s consciousness as a person” (Razack, 2002, p. 156).
The murder of Pamela George is one episode in a long history of violence against Indig-
enous women. According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), “approx-
imately 60% of 3000 women that have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since 1980
are Native, with approximately 500 cases outstanding in BC alone . . . The discrepancy
between these numbers can be attributed to a lack of funding for widespread research, most
recently manifest in the government’s cutting of funds to NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit cam-
paign” (NWAC, n.d.). Many Indigenous and non-Indigenous advocacy groups, including
Amnesty International, are calling on local, provincial, and federal governments to address
these cases. The Stolen Sisters report, produced by Amnesty International calls upon the state
to address the following root causes of violence in the lives of Indigenous women in Canada:
1. The role of racism and misogyny in perpetuating violence against Indigenous women;
2. The sharp disparities in the fulfillment of Indigenous women’s economic, social,
political, and cultural rights;
3. The continued disruption of Indigenous societies caused by the historic and ongoing
mass removal of children from Indigenous families and communities;
4. The disproportionately high number of Indigenous women in Canadian prisons,
many of whom are themselves the victims of violence and abuse; and

5. The inadequate police response to violence against Indigenous women as illustrated
by the handling of missing persons cases (Amnesty International, 2004).
Recently, the Indigenous Nationhood Movement, a movement described as a peo-
ple’s movement which includes a diverse group made up of Indigenous people and their
allies, has launched a Twitter and social media initiative to address the continued vio-
lence experienced by Indigenous women in Canada. This solidarity movement aims to
include the diverse realities of all of the Indigenous peoples. “#ItEndsHere Confronting
the Crisis of Colonial Gender Violence” is a campaign dedicated to eliminating violence,
including violence based on gender, sexual identity, and orientation.5 In order to compre-
hend the scale of the violence against Indigenous women in Canada (violence that the
law routinely ignores and authorizes), an intersectional analysis that attends to the his-
torical dimensions of race, sexuality, gender, and territory, and sovereignty and decoloni-
zation must be advanced. For example, the remarkable collection inspired by the Idle No
More Movement, The Winter We Danced (2014), demonstrates the imaginings that are
possible when solidarity movements are advanced to prioritize a decolonizing approach to
social, political, and economic subjugation.
some Possibilities and limitations

of Intersectionality
The theory of intersectionality is not without its critics (Nagarajan, 2014; Wiegman, 2012).
Although it has been heralded as the most significant contribution of feminist theory to the
social sciences and humanities, it is nevertheless a contribution that is mired in intellectual
and popular culture debate. In addition, as evidenced by Razack’s interlocking analysis
above, theorists seeking to find an analytic basis for capturing theoretical, methodological,
and tactical ways to address global and transnational formations have further developed the
concept of intersectionality. Jasbir Puar has proposed the idea of the assemblage, for exam-
ple, as an effort to push against the tendency in feminist theorizing to exalt intersectionality
as a “shorthand to diagnose difference” rather than attending to historical, geographical,
and global social movement specificities (Q&A with Jasbir Puar [Interview] | Darkmatter
Journal, 2014). Puar derives the concept of assemblage from the French philosopher Gilles
Deleuze. Puar further describes the limitations of intersectionality in the following manner:
The theory of intersectionality argues that all identities are lived and experienced as
intersectional—in such a way that identity categories themselves are cut through and
unstable—and that all subjects are intersectional whether or not they recognize
themselves as such. But what the method of intersectionality is most predominantly used
to qualify is the specific “difference” of “women of color”, a category that has now
become, I would argue, simultaneously emptied of specific meaning on the one hand and
overdetermined in its deployment on the other. In this usage, intersectionality always
produces an Other, and that Other is always a Woman Of Color (WOC), who must
invariably be shown to be resistant, subversive, or articulating a grievance. (Puar, 2005b)

Puar argues that the additive approach of intersectionality, where race, gender, and
sexuality are viewed as separate components of identity, fails to ultimately demonstrate
how multiple forces (within and beyond identity) produce lived experiences. For example,
Puar suggests that human rights (and feminist approaches to human rights) are “globalized,
sometimes problematically, whereby the terrain of the U.S.-centric frame is transposed
onto other regional and national locations without sufficient attention to differing
epistemological category formations” (Q&A with Jasbir Puar [Interview] | Darkmatter
Journal, 2014). Therefore, the idea of assemblage, unlike intersectionality, advocates for
an approach that recognizes how global processes are particularized in local sites. An
assemblage locates identity within the changing patterns of other social, cultural, and
political formations (like nationalism, religion, war, militarization).
In her view, an assemblage addresses the “interwoven forces that merge and dissipate
time, space, and body against linearity, coherency, and permanency” (Puar, 2005b, p. 128).
Puar’s idea of assemblage carries particular importance in our neo-liberal era concerned
with securitization, counterterrorism, and nationalism. In Queer Assemblages, for example,
Puar argues that the incorporation of the queer subject into liberal politics (through the
legalization of gay marriage, the overturning of anti-sodomy laws, and through increased
popular cultural representation) has depended upon the concomitant representations of
certain populations (i.e., racialized Muslim and Arab communities) as “orientalized
terrorists” (Puar, 2005b). Puar combines transnational feminist theory and queer theory
(along with Foucaultian and Deleuzian insights) in order to address the ways in which
transnational flows of capital, knowledge, and people have legal and disciplinary
consequences for those marked as the “racialized Other” in a particular historical period.
For example, in the context of the post–9/11 global war on terror, the Western world has
witnessed the increased racial profiling, surveillance, and criminalization of Muslims and
“Arab-looking” individuals.
One of the challenges of intersectionality as an analytic tool, derived from a dis-
tinctly United States context, is its applicability in other geographical and political spaces.
Transnational feminist scholars examine the organization and politicization of the role of
race, class, gender, and sexuality beyond the confines of the nation-state. The phrase
“transnational feminism” points to the “position that feminists worldwide have taken
against the process of globalization of the economy, the demise of the nation state, and the
development of a global mass culture as well as pointing to the nascent global women’s
studies research into the ways in which globalization affects women around the globe”
(Mendoza, 2002, p. 314; see also Grewal & Kaplan, 2005; 1994). Gail Lewis describes the
“unsafe travel” of intersectionality to contexts other than the United States. For example,
she explores the unwillingness of European feminists to mobilize an analysis of race when
advancing an intersectionality framework. Lewis explains: “how intersectionality travels
suggest that there is a deep anxiety traceable in the reception of, and debates about, inter-
sectionality that have arisen as it has traveled from the feminism that black women and
other women of color have fashioned in the United States” (2013, p. 873). There are
other “travels” that intersectionality has made that are equally concerning. The influence

of intersectionality as a Western analytic tool is evident in its increasing depoliticization
and its “co-optation . . . in the corporate university” evidenced by new research institutes
dedicated to intersectionality, thematic conferences in a number of disciplines, dedicated
journals, and mission statements of women’s and gender studies programs (Nash, 2014,
p. 45). These forms of institutionalization highlight how intersectionality fails to live up
to the political goals of feminist movements. Robin Wiegman describes this process as the
temporal impossibility of intersectionality. She argues that “intersectionality will always
disappoint, since the ‘political desires’ that animate intersectionality are always greater
than the analytic’s ability to enact social justice” (Wiegman, 2012, p. 240). The depoliti-
cization of intersectionality is arguably intensified in the context of social media where
direct political interventions are mediated by online environments.
For example, one of the main critiques of intersectionality has been that it offers little
utility for direct political action and solidarity movements, a problem intensified by the
use of social media. As Nagarajan explains:
Increasing our collective vocabulary alone is not a sign of success. What matters is the
impact this has on the movement and through this on wider society as a whole. Yet,
many of us seem to have decided to prioritise tweeting about or writing about or talking
about theoretical concepts instead. Social media creates a tendency to be sucked away
into discussions rather than making conscious decisions to do so. I cannot be the only
person to have become engrossed in writing or tweeting only to realise that it is 3am in
the morning, I have not done the activist work I planned to do and I have to be up in a
few hours. What are we not doing because so many of our resources as a movement are
taken up with this? There has not been enough of a coherent, concerted feminist
response to closures of violence against women services, the removal of legal aid, the
conditions in factories overseas where the clothes and equipment we use are made,
attacks on the rights of immigrants, or changes in the benefits system. (Nagarajan, 2014)
Indeed, Indigenous feminists have long demonstrated the fault lines inherent in an
intersectional approach. In the Canadian context, there has been a robust dialogue con-
cerning the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and the feminist concept of
intersectionality. Although some Indigenous people find that “intersectionality has been
useful for making connections between Indigenous knowledge and other epistemologies,
or for making sense of colonial ideologies and institutional frameworks” (Intersectionality
Research and Social Policy, 2012, p. 3; see also Simpson, 2009), others suggest that “aca-
demic terms such as ‘intersectionality’ should not be needed to legitimize Indigenous
knowledge, particularly as the revitalization of Indigenous language and concepts are inte-
gral to self-determination (Intersectionality Research and Social Policy, 2012, p. 3).
Indigenous women have expressed how an idea of intersectionality has always been a part
of Indigenous ways of knowing: “this is a new term, but I’ve been living it since I was a
child” (p. 2–3). In addition, many Indigenous feminists and activists experience a large
gulf between the priorities of academic feminism and the real issues in the lives of Indig-
enous women and other women of colour.

We are not equal when initiatives to achieve gender equality have reverted yet again to
“saving people” and making decisions for them, rather than supporting their right to self-
determination, whether it’s engaging in sex work or wearing a niquab. So when feminism
itself has become its own form of oppression, what do we have to say about it? Western
notions of polite discourse are not the norm for all of us, and just because we’ve got some
new and hot language like “intersectionality” to use in our talk, it doesn’t necessarily change
things in our walk (i.e., actually being anti-racist). (Emphasis in original. Yee, 2011, p. 12)
Indigenous feminists prioritize the goal of decolonization. Intersectionality may be an

insufficient framework for addressing the issues of land theft, sovereignty, and decoloniza-
tion of Indigenous communities in colonization (see also Canon & Sunseri, 2011).
As previously explored, intersectionality emerged from Black feminist theorizing in
the United States and has proliferated to include an approach where race, class, gender,
sexuality, dis/ability (and sometimes nation, in the context of transnational feminism) are
incorporated into a theoretical and methodological approach. As Smith states:
Because the United States is balanced upon notions of white supremacy and heteropatriar-
chy, everyone living in the country is not only racialized and gendered, but also has a rela-
tionship to settler colonialism. Indigenous feminist theories offer new and reclaimed ways
of thinking through not only how settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous and settler
communities, but also how feminist theories can imagine and realize different modes of
nationalism and alliances in the future. (Smith in Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013, p. 9)
The challenge is to advocate for an approach to intersectionality (and feminism in

general) that takes into consideration the paradigmatic nature of colonialism, and settler
colonialism in particular, in structuring power relations (for all women, including Indige-
nous women) in the Western world. As Tiffany Lethabo King suggests, “Black Feminist
Studies have developed rigorous modes of inquiry and analysis that result in multiple the-
orizations of how Black female gender formation occurs during slavery. Seldom do [we]
consider the Black female figure in relation to settler colonial power” (King, 2013, pp. 2–3).
Similarly, white feminist theorizing does not position whiteness in relation to, and as a
construction of, settler colonialism. Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill (2013)
argue that Native feminism (which they define as “as those theories that make substantial
advances in understandings of the connections between settler colonialism and both het-
eropatriarchy and heteropaternalism” [p. 11]) poses five distinct challenges to mainstream
feminist and gender and women’s studies. Indeed, these challenges can also be directed at
certain strands of critical race and anti-racist feminism.
1. “To problematize and theorize the intersections of settler colonialism, heteropatriar-
chy, and heteropaternalism” (p. 14);
2. “To refuse the erasure of Indigenous women within gender and women’s studies and
reconsider the implications of the end game of (only) inclusion” (p. 17);
3. “To actively seek alliances in which differences are respected and issues of land and
tribal belonging are not erased in order to create solidarity, but rather, relationships to

settler colonialism are acknowledged as issues that are critical to social justice and
political work that must be addressed” (p. 19);
4. “To recognize the persistence of Indigenous concepts and epistemologies, or ways of
knowing” (p. 21);
5. “To question how the discursive and material practices of gender and women’s studies
and the academy writ large may participate in the dispossession of Indigenous peo-
ples’ lands, livelihoods, and futures, and to then divest from these practices” (p. 25).
These challenges represent not only goals for the future of feminist theorizing but also deep
fractures in contemporary feminist movements. What would it mean to address sovereignty and
land in feminist struggles over reproduction and child care? What would it mean address the
structure of settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy in the context of labour, migration, and
immigration? What would it mean to think about Indigenous ways of knowing that does not
descend into tokenized inclusion or New Age symbols for white consumption? How to keep the
history of anti-Black racism at the forefront of feminist theorizing without subsuming Indige-
nous feminists concerns about land, sovereignty, and decolonization? How does the history of
forced migration and immigration relate to Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide? What
does it mean to work toward a feminist future that is motivated by the goal of decolonization?
conclusIon
This chapter has addressed some of the ways in which feminist interventions about race,
Indigeneity, and colonialism challenge, rearticulate, and redirect feminist theory and fem-
inist projects. Identifying race and Indigeneity through a historical framework that con-
siders the emergence of race through colonization and slavery in the Western world
permits and compels an analysis of the centrality of the writing of women of colour and
Indigenous women to feminist projects. Intersectionality is a paradigmatic feature of femi-
nist concerns about race (The Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 2011; Puar,
2005; Razack, 2008). Yet, intersectionality fails in its obfuscation of settler colonialism
and processes of globalization. The writers and theorists in the chapter inspire a reconsid-
eration of feminist engagement with social, legal and political struggles.
endnotes
1. The word Indigeneity is derived from the word Indigenous. Legally, politically, socially, and
culturally, Indigenous peoplehood is generally based on: 1. “Self-identification as indigenous
peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member;” 2. “His-
torical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies;” 3. “Strong links to territories
and surrounding natural resources;” 4. “Distinct social, economic or political systems;”
5. “Distinct language culture and beliefs;” 6. “Form non-dominant groups of society;”
7. “Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and system as distinctive
peoples and communities.” (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, n.d.)
2. Retrieved from New World Encyclopedia, Definition “Colonialism.”

3. www.idlenomore.ca/
4. Post-colonial theory is an interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on the historical, polit-
ical, economic, cultural, legal, and social effects of colonialism. Although the “post” in
post-colonialism carries the connotation of after colonialism, “it has been suggested that it
is more helpful to think of post-colonialism not just as coming literally after colonialism and
signifying its demise, but more flexibly as the contestation of colonial domination and the
legacies of colonialism.” (Loomba, 1998, p. 16)
5. See http://nationsrising.org/tag/itendshere/
Discussion Questions
1. What are “race” and racialization? What are colonialism and imperialism? What is settler colo-
nialism? Why are land and sovereignty central to Indigenous women’s lives and resistance strategies?
2. What is intersectionality? What is the genealogy of the concept of intersectionality in
feminist theorizing? What are some of the critiques of intersectionality?
3. What challenges does Indigenous women’s theorizing pose for mainstream feminism and
for critical race and anti-racist feminism?
4. Look for images in the dominant culture that depict particular ideas about race and racial-
ization, or ideas about Indigenous people. How might some of the ideas advanced in this
chapter assist in analyzing these images? How can feminist perspectives on race, Indige-
neity, and colonialism assist with providing an analysis of these images?
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ourselves/feminism-real

Chapter 3
Transnational Feminism
Corinne L. Mason
IntroductIon
The late 20th century saw a global explosion of attention to women’s rights. In 1975, the
United Nations announced the United Nation’s Decade for Women to raise awareness of
international women’s rights. Four world conferences were held between 1975 and 1985
during which women from all over the world gathered to discuss such issues as gender
discrimination, violence against women, poverty, health, armed conflict, the economy,
the rights of girls, and the environment. Since these initial meetings, research on global
gender inequality has increased immensely. Of women worldwide 35% have experienced
gendered violence in their lives (UN Women, 2014). Of all women who are employed,
50% work in vulnerable employment in the informal economy where there are no working
regulations or protections for workers, such as sexual harassment policies and the range of
other workplace protections from injury and exploitation that some take for granted (UN
Women, 2014). There is now growing consensus around the world that mobilizing for
gender equality is a global project for the 21st century as well.
Transnational feminism constitutes a framework that can be used to address the
challenges of working toward gender equality globally. Transnational feminism can be
thought of as a two-pronged approach that analyzes shifts and changes in gender relations
globally and builds feminist communities of resistance across and against borders. As a
theoretical paradigm, transnational feminism examines how gender equality is manifested
geographically (in various locations), and also traces historical structures of inequality.
Transnational feminism is specifically concerned with how colonialism and imperial-
ism map onto current forms of global gender inequality. According to Ania Loomba
(2005), colonialism can be defined as “conquest and control of other people’s lands and
goods” (p. 8). It may include the direct or indirect control of land and people by foreign
occupiers, and in some cases, the settling of foreign populations and the displacement of
those indigenous to the land (for example, Canada). Imperialism can be understood as the
cultural and economic dependency and control over people and land that ensures that
labour and markets are opened to imperial powers (p. 11). Transnational feminists work
from the assumption that colonial and imperial projects have and continue to alter gender
relations in significant ways that intersect with issues of health, poverty, the economy, and
the environment (for more on colonialism and imperialism, please refer to chapter 2).
They also acknowledge that colonial and imperial projects have an impact on how these
62
global issues are represented and discussed in feminist scholarship. Transnational feminists
contend that current imperial projects, including dominant forms of economic globaliza-
tion, affect women’s lives and the ways in which feminists can align themselves in acts of
global solidarity against systems of oppression.
This chapter offers an introduction to transnational feminist theories and activisms.
First, this chapter will explain the concept of “transnational” by distinguishing transna-
tional feminism from the terms “global” and “international” feminism. Second, this chap-
ter will explore the differences between “global feminism” and transnational feminism.
Third, the chapter will outline three issues of global significance where transnational
feminists have made specific interventions: migration, representation of global women’s
issues, and violence against women. Fourth, feminist mobilizations across borders will be
explored. By working through these key questions and issues, this chapter focuses on how
power operates transnationally and how—with both successes and failures—transnational
feminists are organizing and agitating for gender equality across borders.
GlobalIzatIon, local/Global,
and the transnatIonal
Globalization is a highly contested term and yet an essential one for transnational
feminists.1 Globalization can be described as the increased movement and flows of peoples,
information, and consumer culture across borders (Naples, 2002, p. 8). For many, the term
globalization might conjure images of the United States’ companies such as McDonald’s
opening in Tanzania and Starbucks serving its coffee in Shanghai. The term might also
evoke images of people crossing borders for holiday travel, of bananas from Latin America
being imported into Canada, and of receiving cold calls from a United States’ company
that has outsourced its work to India. The term globalization appeals to people’s optimistic
visions of an interconnected world, where national identities and borders are becoming
less important to the ways in which individuals move and interact, the services and goods
people can access, and how companies do business. The largest corporations in the world,
including Nestlé and Shell, are called multinational corporations (MNCs) or transnational
corporations, meaning that these companies spread their work around the world, which is
facilitated by processes of globalization.
Importantly, globalization has winners and losers. Critics of globalization say the costs
outweigh the benefits since the benefits are not equally distributed. For Marchand and
Runyan (2011), the term “globalization” is coded language that gives a positive spin
on projects and processes that are actually imperialist in nature. They use the term
“globalization-cum-imperialism” to denote the ways in which the term globalization
masks the powerful forces behind changes in economies and cultures that create conditions
in which some win and some loose. For example, while goods may flow across national
borders more frequently, these flows are unequal in their volume and the profits are not
shared in equitable portions with producers. For example, many Northern governments
are known to subsidize domestic farmers in their agro-industries. Government subsidies, or
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 63
small amounts of money distributed in various ways to local producers, allow domestic
farmers to sell their goods on the global economy at lower costs. These cheaper goods can
then flood Southern markets and push domestic farmers in poorer countries out of business
because they were produced at a much lower cost by the original producer. This situation
likely means that a Jamaican farmer is more vulnerable to unemployment while a farmer
in the United States can be more assured of a market for her product, due to the ways that
food production is now globally orchestrated.
Globalization has shifted cultures, social interactions, political structures, and national
economies. Taken together, the complex processes of globalization have resulted in jobs for
women opening up worldwide. Unfortunately, the most under-paid, under-valued, and
exploitative jobs seem to be designated for women. A feature of current forms of globalization
is that it is highly gendered, in that many women around the world, who are formally
employed, work in export manufacturing and/or must migrate for work and leave their
families behind. Feminist scholars use the term “feminization of labour” to mark this shift in
the global economy. The pressure to reorient national economies to manufacture for export
has feminized the global labour force. International financial institutions, including the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank, often require poorer countries to gain capital
through a reorientation of their economies for the export of goods and services. Low wages
are attractive to investors in export-oriented economies because more profit can be derived
if lower wages are paid. Given that many export-dependent countries are located in the
Southern Hemisphere, these economic advantages come through the increasing exploitation
of racialized women as the employees of choice in manufacturing and low-paid service and
informal economies. The stereotype of nimble-fingered, inherently docile, and hardworking
Third-World2 women is used to justify their suitability for repetitive and monotonous work
(Bergeron, 2006; Eisenstein, 2009; Erevelles, 2006; Fernandez-Kelly, 1983).
For feminists concerned with the negative impact of globalization on gender relations
and on women in particular, globalization is neither inevitable nor unchanging, but rather
a project shaped by social and political forces. In other words, globalization is a process,
and therefore, it can be resisted. Marchand and Runyan (2011) find the term “global eco-
nomic restructuring” a more accurate and effective one to describe the project of global-
ization-cum-imperialism. This process generally includes the dismantling of nationally
funded social services and health care in favour of putting these services into an open
market for private sector companies to own, deliver, and profit from. By seeing globaliza-
tion through the lens of economic restructuring, the gendered impacts are more visible for
study and can be challenged. For example, a major impact of globalization has been the
increase in women’s unpaid labour. Women do about 70% of the household work globally
(Desai, 2002). Due to global economic restructuring, women are doing more unpaid care
work than ever before. When countries liberalize their economies, many state supports for
reproductive labour are effectively removed and women end up picking up the slack. Fem-
inists have termed this the “double-burden” or “triple-burden” of labour where they per-
form not only paid work in the market and unpaid work for their families, but also the
caregiving and domestic labour that might otherwise have been subsidized by the state.
Among the impacts of global economic restructuring is also the increase in the price of
64 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
goods, including food, that makes women more vulnerable to malnutrition as they often
eat last after providing for family members (Desai, 2002, p. 20).
Transnational feminists conceptualize global economic restructuring as a useful way
of understanding global power systems and cultural flows—and as a starting point for
enacting change. This way of thinking about globalization is important for transnational
feminist theories because scholars are interested in mapping changing politics, cultures,
and economies and contributing to positive change.
Transnational feminist theory invites people to think differently about how culture is
also subject to globalizing forces. Globalization has not meant that cultures have become
homogeneous nor has it meant that the flow of Western products, services, and ideas
proceed uniformly from the West to other countries (Marchand & Runyan, 2011).
Certainly, colonialism and imperialism shape the ways in which culture and capital flow,
and it is important for transnational feminists to map how this happens as well as to note
resistance to it. One way to think about how culture flows unpredictably under
globalization is to take the example of the Mattel toy, the Barbie doll. In their canonical
text Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, Grewal and
Kaplan (1994) use the example of the consumption of Barbie in India to describe the
globalization of culture. Challenging the assumption that cultural flows are unidirectional
(i.e., from the West to “the rest”), Grewal and Kaplan ask where, by whom, and for what
reason some elements of culture are consumed and not others. Since Barbie is sold in
India dressed in a sari while Ken is dressed in “American” clothes, some American culture
is being consumed, but India’s culture is also changing Barbie. Grewal and Kaplan ask
that people think about what a Barbie dressed in a sari might communicate about the
interplay between the global and the local, suggesting that although an American
multinational corporation can impose culture, so can the recipient influence its production
to a certain extent.
More than Barbie’s dress, Grewal (2005) notes that most Barbie dolls sold in the
United States in the 1990s were made in China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The plastics of
the doll were made in Taiwan from oil bought from Saudi Arabia. Her hair was made in
Japan and the packaging was made in the United States. According to Grewal, the labour
cost associated with Barbie was about 35 cents per Barbie and the labour was performed
primarily by poorly paid Asian women in assembly line work. Most of the cost of Barbie
is associated with shipping, marketing, and profit for Mattel. The example of Barbie
demonstrates that the globalized production and consumption of Barbie is multidirectional
and gendered in both labour and consumption. It also shows that the poor, Southern
nations are positioned as sites of resources for the West where captive labour and markets
are opened to Western powers through the project of globalization-cum-imperialism.
local/Global
Transnational feminists are particularly concerned with the terms “local” and “global.”
Global is often used to denote the workings of globalization at a level that is supra-
national, or transgresses state borders. You may have heard the phrase “think global, act
local,” which promotes resistance to globalization. Resisting the harmful effects of global-
ization has involved taking local action, such as purchasing food at farmer’s markets or
checking the labels on clothing to ensure it has been traded fairly. These are complex
consumer practices, and transnational feminists help us understand that the local and the
global are not two distinct entities; instead, they are mutually constitutive spaces that
cannot be separated (Grewal & Kaplan, 1994). In other words, the local and global are
two interconnected aspects of the same phenomenon.
The division between thinking globally and acting locally makes little sense to
many people who are already integrated into structures of globalization in their locality.
For example, in 2013, a garment factory (Rana Plaza) in Bangladesh collapsed killing
over 1000 people and injuring thousands of others (BBC, 2013; Uddin, 2013). Although
a crack in the building was known to be dangerous, workers were encouraged to return to
work after being evacuated a few days before the collapse. Over 4 million people work in
clothing factories in Bangladesh. According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers
and Exporters Association, 85% of the workers are women and over four-fifths of its $20
billion in production is sent to the West (NBC News, 2013; The Guardian, 2013). The
collapsed Rana Plaza building paints a disastrous but informative example of the interplay
between local, national, and global events. Indeed, the Rana Plaza buildings were due for
upgrades and structural renovations that were put off by the local companies overseeing
the manufacturing of garments. Afterwards, numerous local people were arrested on
charges of negligence. Nationally, the government of Bangladesh closed 18 other
factories due to safety issues (BBC, 2013). Transnationally, activists called for boycotts of
multinational corporations working in Bangladesh, such as The Gap and Canadian
retailer Joe Fresh. Since the collapse of Rana Plaza, almost 200 transnational garment
retailers have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (2013). This
disaster, and the response to it, involves global economic systems, multinational
corporations, national policies and legislation, local and global patriarchies (especially
since most precarious work in this industry is done by women), historical forms of
colonialism, imperialism, and consumer culture in the West. For transnational feminists,
the collapse of Rana Plaza and the response to its collapse are indeed transnational since
they cannot be made sense of without an understanding that the local and global
are interconnected.
transnational
According to Swarr and Nagar (2010), transnational feminist theory has grown out of two
interconnected dialogues in the field of feminist studies: first, it has been employed by
those seeking to question globalization and neo-liberalism, and to underscore social justice
issues, including the creation of alliances across borders; and second, it has been used in
feminist debates about Eurocentrism since the 1980s in feminist theory and writing, espe-
cially regarding issues of how stories of Other women lives (including questions of voice,
authority, identity, and representation) cross borders. But the very meaning of the term
transnational is contested among scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Third World, and
international feminisms. Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, and J. T. Way (2008) suggest
that transnationalism is an overused term, taking on very different meanings in multiple
disciplines (p. 625). For example, the term transnational can indicate migratory processes
and capital circulations, or transnational flows of people and goods. The term is sometimes
used to signal the apparent powerlessness of the state to control trade and flows of people
across its own borders. The term is also used to describe the world as borderless and inter-
connected. In fact, in the post–9/11 period especially, borders are very real and worthy of
attention. Since passengers on commercial airlines attacked the New York World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001, the way in which individuals cross some borders has
changed dramatically. Some argue that in contrast to opening, borders are more entrenched
and closed to some people than ever, and yet more open to capital. As Walia (2013) writes:
“Capital, and the transnationalization of its production and consumption, is freely mobile
across borders, while the people displaced as a consequence of the ravages of neoliberalism
and imperialism are constructed as demographic threats and experience limited mobility”
(p. 4). Border crossings, and our varied experiences with crossing borders based on gender,
race, class, sexuality, ability, and citizenship status, can tell us how borders continue to mat-
ter under globalization. Feminist interpretations of the transnational that do not take bor-
ders, boundaries, and inequalities seriously risk hollowing out the concept. So rather than
abandoning the term on account of its multiple and often conflicting usages, the term
allows its users to challenge the flattening of power relations between states.
The use of the term “transnational,” instead of “international” or “global,” marks
some feminist theorists’ refusal to valorize inequitable global systems. International usu-
ally refers to relations between nations. Transnational does a better job of getting at the
social, economic, cultural, and political flows that transcend the boundaries of the nation-
state (Mann, 2012, p. 356). Karen Booth (1998) suggests that the term international
denotes Western power systems founded by global inequalities, including the United
Nations. As Radika Mongia (2007) argues, the term “international” denotes equality
between nations and does not take into account the power differentials between nations.
Nor, I would add, can it adequately acknowledge cases where multiple nations (some
acknowledged, some unacknowledged) may exist within a single state, as in the case of
many Indigenous nations. Using an anti-colonial analysis, she argues that the term inter-
national does not allow scholars to take into account the way in which nation-states are
“co-produced through a complex array of related and relational historical events”
(p. 384). Mongia (2007) sheds light on the inadequacy of the term international by
exploring the work of the United Nations. At the United Nations (UN) only recognized
sovereign nations can negotiate with other nations that are understood to be “equivalent”
to one another. The UN and its many agencies, as an example of the “international,” have
a membership of only recognized sovereign nation-states. The functioning of the UN
ahistoricizes the uneven co-production of nations in the post–Second World War period.
Importantly, many former colonies and occupied territories were not sovereign at the time
that the United Nations was established and could not obtain membership. Significantly,
the UN Security Council is an unequal space where the United States has the power of a
veto vote, and where the Western world holds the most power (Mongia, 2007, p. 410).
For many transnational feminists, the term “transnational” is also a corrective term for
the “global” in some feminist studies. According to Naples (2002), the term “transnational”
intertwines the global and the local and pays attention to the interplay between both sites,
paying specific attention to how power operates within and between nations, and among
and between women. “Global,” on the other hand, has come to represent theorizing and
political organizing that assumes natural and inevitable solidarities among women globally.
For transnational feminists Grewal and Kaplan, “global feminism has elided the diversity of
women’s agency in favor of a universalized Western model of women’s liberation that
celebrates individuality and modernity” (1994, p. 17). In other words, global feminism has
come to represent a kind of theorizing and organizing among feminists that presents
Western women as more advanced, modern, and liberated than their Third World sisters,
and enables them to “save” their sisters from backward, patriarchal, and traditional men.
Post-colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) coined the phrase, “White men
saving brown women from brown men” to describe the ways in which Third World women
are too often positioned in Western scholarship as agentless and waiting to be rescued.
While the term “global” is not always understood so negatively, transnational feminists
have chosen the word “transnational” to repair what they see as the failures and shortcoming
of global feminism, as discussed below.
To review, while a variety of scholars use the terms global, international, and transna-
tional in many different ways, transnational feminists use the term transnational because
they find it useful for feminist theorizing and organizing across and against borders, and for
understanding globalization. Importantly, transnational feminist theorists continually
reflect on the term transnational itself, especially its usage, and what it communicates.
Global FemInIsm and transnatIonal

FemInIsm: KnowInG the dIFFerence
Transnational feminism is often conceptualized as an alternative to global feminism, and
has come to dominate Western feminist interventions into issues related to globalization.
In 1984, Robin Morgan published Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement
Anthology. Morgan envisioned a global sisterhood as a network of women from around the
world, working together to address women’s issues. While this text is not representative of
all global feminist theorizing, and Morgan is not the only scholar I might cite here, this
book demonstrates the most problematic aspects of global feminism that transnational
feminists aim to address. In the text, Morgan suggests that because women from many
countries around the world contributed to the anthology, it represents the state of women’s
issues globally. Significantly, each chapter is devoted to women’s issues in different
countries but there is little analysis of the connections and power differentials between
women and countries. The anthology implies that if feminists know more about women’s
issues nation by nation, they can see that women around the world have connections to
one another on the basis of their shared experiences under patriarchy. Learning about
experiences of oppression other than your own is clearly a very desirable political goal, but
Morgan, as the anthology editor, invited certain women to publish in the text and had
control over the publishing of the anthology. A Western feminist, she collected and
controlled women’s stories for the anthology and provided the language of sisterhood to
bring the chapters together, thus allowing it to be framed through a Western lens. This is
significant because transnational feminists not only question what stories about Other
women are being told, but who has the power to tell these stories.
Transnational feminists are concerned with how stories are told. According to Chandra
T. Mohanty (2003), academic curricula—including the very text you are reading—“tell[s] a
story—or tells many stories” (p. 238). As already explored in this chapter, how feminists
think about the local and the global, and think about, or do not think about, the connection
between these two sites, matters. In the classroom, these stories matter as much as academic
research on globalization. In her chapter “Under Western Eyes Revisited” from Feminism
without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Chandra T. Mohanty (2003)
criticizes the process of “internationalizing” the gender and women’s studies curriculum
(p. 238). As demonstrated in the first section of this chapter, globalization, or what Marchand
and Runyan (2011) call “global economic restructuring,” has had a negative impact on
women’s lives transnationally. In the 1980s, gender and women’s studies programs in the
United States and Canada shifted their focus from centralizing North America to examining
the impact on women of globalization. While the geographical focus of many classrooms
changed during this period, global feminism often dominated studies of global women’s issues.
The “internationalizing” of gender and women’s studies curricula has often meant a
narrow focus on a set of topics including garment export factories and female genital
mutilation, and a destabilization of dominant subject positions, but through inclusion
frameworks that stabilize almost everything else (Fernandez, 2013). This restricted
outlook in feminist classrooms reflects some of the most troubling aspects of global
feminism according to transnational feminists. Global feminist scholarship on the body
and sexuality, and specifically on what in the West is commonly described as “female
genital mutilation,” is routinely embedded in what Grewal and Kaplan (2001) call “the
binary axis of tradition-modern” (p. 669). In other words, scholarship on this subject
habitually produces “traditional” subjects that are agentless in a backward culture in order
to establish more “modern” Western subjects. For the authors, “the global feminist is one
who has free choice over her body and a complete and intact, rather than a fragmented
or surgically altered body, while the traditional female subject of patriarchy is forcibly
altered . . . and deprived of choices or agency”(Grewal & Kaplan, 2001, pp. 669–670).
Mohanty’s (2003) and Fernadez’s (2013) analyses about how feminists teach and learn
about Other women is a central feature of transnational feminism.3 As a way of decolonizing
curriculum, Mohanty offers a “comparative feminist studies” or “feminist solidarity” model
for the classroom. To understand why this model is most successful for teaching and learning
through a transnational feminist lens, it is important to first explore two less nuanced
pedagogical models that are based on the premise that the student of gender and women’s
studies is universally white, middle class, and Western. What Mohanty calls the “Feminist
as Tourist Model” involves “forays into non-Euro-American cultures” and showcases
particularly sexist practices in those cultures. In this global feminist approach, students are
encouraged to metaphorically travel around the world and learn how patriarchal,
misogynist, and backward Other cultures are when compared with their own. In this model,
it becomes the “white women’s burden” to liberate her ‘sisters’ from oppression (Mohanty,
2003, p. 239). Difference and distance between women in the West and the “Third World”
are solidified, and Western women confirm themselves as powerful, modern, and
progressive. A second pedagogical model is the “Feminist as Explorer Model,” wherein
Other women are both the object and subject of knowledge, and the entire curriculum is
devoted to countries other than the one in which the classroom is located. For example, a
class using this model would teach about Latin America and Latin American women, but
would not discuss the connections between where students are located and the places and
people they are studying. This pedagogical strategy “internationalizes” the curriculum by
emphasizing “distance from home” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 240).
Transnational feminist teaching practices suggest instead that a learning and teaching
model based of feminist solidarity is desirable. Beginning from the premise that the local and
global are defined as interconnected, rather than separate geographical territories, means
that curriculum can help students discuss commonalities and difference among and between
women. This pedagogical strategy also foregrounds the women’s and gender studies classroom
as a possible site for transnational solidarity and creates a space for teacher activism—by
centring mutual responsibility to ending transnational oppressions, defining what Mohanty
(2003) calls “common interests” around which feminists? globally can rally, and anchoring
action in solidarity (and not saving, as is often the goal of global feminist curriculum).
The difference between global and transnational feminism might be best understood by
looking at scholarship and claims for women’s rights during the so-called War on Terror. In
the aftermath of the attack on the New York World Trade Center, global feminism has been
particularly occupied with the “binary axis of traditional-modern” that Grewal and Kaplan
(2001) identify. Some Western feminists have concerned themselves with the alleged
subordination of women under Islamic laws and governance, focusing specifically on
women’s bodily autonomy and even more specifically on veiling practices. Using the hijab,
burqa, and niqab as a stand-in for nuanced analyses of women’s lives, and specifically their
religious and cultural practices, some Western feminists claim that “Eastern” women are
pawns in a grand patriarchal scheme. Muslim women, especially those who wear the hijab,
burqa, and niqab, are used as symbols for the cultural backwardness, social conservatism,
and extremism of Islamic fundamentalism of the “East.”
Jennifer Fluri (2009) uses the term “corporal modernity” to describe the ways in which
the visibility of the female body has become a yardstick to measure a nation’s level of
modernity or “progress” in the post–9/11 era. She critiques the association of visibility of the
female body with power, suggesting instead that lack of cultural and historical context
ignores the ways in which the War on Terror has provided a political context for using the
body and its coverings or lack thereof as a measure of liberation. In other words, women
living in cultures that glorify the uncovering of the body are considered progressive, while
those that support the covering of the body are regressive. This is a problematic and over-
simplified formula for understanding gendered relations of power and women’s agency.
Fluri’s work can be read as a criticism of global feminism’s inattention to geography and
history, and the lack of attention paid to the interplay between “home” and “abroad.” Fluri
and other scholars including Mahmood (2005), Thobani (2007), and Moallem (2005)
maintain that what some Western feminists ignore is that the burqa and other veiling
practices provide corporeal privacy in public space, and have allowed women to resist public
patriarchal structures in their lives. Isolating veiling practices as symbolic of oppression does
not accurately trace the cultural and political changes that lead women to wear, or take off,
burqas, niqabs, and hijabs. Ignoring contextual analyses and the voices of Muslim women,
global feminists have overwhelmingly argued that Muslim women are forced to act against
their own human agency, or the innate sense of individual autonomy and desire for freedom
against the weight of custom and tradition. Muslim women in this strand of global feminist
theorizing are thought of as living with false consciousness or internalized patriarchy, and in
need of saving by their liberated Western sisters (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Razack, 2008).
What is also missing from this global feminist discourse is an acknowledgment of the
United States’ role in women’s loss of freedom in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan—a
regime they supported during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. In feminist rescue
narratives, no mention is made of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA) that was established in 1977 and remains active in promoting human rights,
health care, education, and democratic and secular rule in Afghanistan (Naples, 2002,
p. 267). Instead, by employing the “traditional-modern binary axis,” global feminist
scholarship assumes that women are waiting to be saved (Grewal & Kaplan, 2001).
Given that transnational feminism is often presented as a reparative theoretical
framework for “previous” feminisms (including global feminism), it is important to
acknowledge the limits of this framework. While transnational feminist theory emerged out
of theories from women of colour feminisms, third world feminisms, multicultural feminisms,
and international feminisms, a variety of deployments of transnational feminism both
continue and depart from these political and intellectual histories. Transnational feminist
theorists often reflect on the field, how the term “transnational” is deployed, and the kinds
of analyses and activism that the term transnational makes possible. As Swarr and Nagar
(2010) maintain, transnational feminism is an unstable field that is critical of its own
definitions and practices. Desai, Bouchard, and Detournay (2011) offer one such critique.
They suggest that transnational feminism “is often seen to subsume women of color
feminism” (p. 49). As explored briefly in Chapter 2, transnational feminism pays attention
to the role of race, class, gender, and sexuality beyond the confines of the state borders.
However, transnational feminists note that it is incorrect to assume that transnational
feminism resolves racism and/or transcends the contributions of critical race or postcolonial
feminisms. Some argue that transnational feminism removes the emphasis on race
altogether. This critique has led scholars, including Adrien K. Wing (2000) to claim their
work as “transnational critical race feminism” as a way to ensure that their scholarship is
read and located within critical race and transnational feminist theoretical traditions.
Although the field is too broad to outline extensively here, this chapter turns now to
sketch three focal issues of transnational feminism: migration, representation, and violence
against women.
mIGratIon
The movements of culture, capital, and people under globalization are contradictory and
complex. The tension between opening borders for the flows of global capital and culture
and the desire of states to protect their borders from immigration is a major concern (Harvey,
2003; Walia, 2013). For transnational feminists, the increasing security measures at borders,
especially in the post–9/11 period, is a concern. They argue that there are racist and
imperialist dimensions to border security and control of individuals’ movements, and a lack
of justice-based responses to the effects of globalization (Magnet, 2011; Puar, 2007; Walia,
2013). While border crossings may be increasingly restricted by Western states, globalization
simultaneously displaces people from poorer Southern regions due to instability, violence,
and poverty. Migration has been and will likely continue to be a survival strategy for many.
“Care work” provides a good example of the ways in which migration is gendered and
racialized. Care work is labour that is reproductive in nature, namely childrearing, elder
care, and home care. One of the impacts of global economic restructuring has been the
movement of women into the global workforce. These movements have resulted in a “crisis
of care” that affects women around the world in different ways. In poorer Southern
countries, global economic restructuring has pushed women into the workforce, and in the
Western world, more women are working than ever before. While this represents increased
economic independence for women, household duties have not been redistributed among
members. In her foundational work, Arlie Hochschild (1989) found that women in the
United States were working, on average, a full extra month above and beyond their
productive duties. Calling this phenomenon the “second shift,” Hochschild showed that
unequal distribution of workload within households falls on women, or their community
and family networks. When women are unable to work this “second shift,” households seek
employees to do this work for them. Families often hire low-paid child-care, home-care,
and elder-care workers who are often un-unionized and have very few working rights and
protections. Many women, in addition to taking care of their own children, provide child
care for other families in their own homes because child care is un- or under-subsidized.
Since most child care occurs within private homes, this issue remains a “private” issue and
is considered a woman’s personal responsibility. In Canada, this idea is reinforced by the
fact that the Canada Revenue Agency (2015) provides a meagre universal child care
benefit to individual families so they can choose their own child care options, rather than
subsidize public child care across the country.
Global economic restructuring in the United States and Canada shapes the
transnational migration patterns of women. Welfare state retrenchment in both countries
means most families lack an adequate social safety net. In the United States, there is no
guarantee of paid maternity or paternity leave, no public child care, and no universal
health care system. In Canada, women working in the most precarious, piecemeal labour
do not qualify for paid maternity leave, while paternity leave is often less valued, and
women spend upwards of 30% of their annual income on publically available child care
due to the lack of subsidized child care nationally (with the exception of the province of
Quebec) (Macdonald & Friendly, 2014). Under increasing pressure from work and
household-related needs, middle-class families have the option of hiring migrant workers
to care for their children, especially relatively inexpensive live-in caregivers provided
through the Canadian government’s Live-in Caregiver Program (Citizenship and
Immigration Canada, 2014).
Some families in economies like those of Canada and the United States find that
public child care is too expensive, and they can only afford to hire private caregivers as long
as they are inexpensive. Less privileged women from the poorer Southern nations are called
on to fill this gap. Migration, according to Marchand and Runyan (2011), is “fashioned as
the solution to child-care, eldercare, and healthcare crises in the North and un- and- under
employment in the South” (p. 14). Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2003) use the phrase
“global care chain” to denote the migration of women from poor, developing countries to
developed ones as maids and nannies. Many countries, due to global economic restructuring
and national debts, depend on remittances as a way to further develop their own economies
(Rodriquez, 2008). Remittances are monetary transfers from foreign workers to their home
country. For example, the Philippine state relies on the export of labour through national
migration apparatuses. As Rodriquez (2008) suggests, “brokering workers” in this way
ensures remittances; women who leave poorer countries for richer ones, as caregivers, send
money home to their families, especially to their own children and to bolster their nation’s
economy. However, this leaves a major care gap in their home nations and households.
As I alluded to, the global care chain is not an informal network of gendered and
racialized labour. Rather, governments in the West are responding to the known crisis of
care by investing in transnational recruitment of women as maids and nannies. Ehrenreich
and Hochschild (2003) call this the “female underside of globalization,” where women in
poorer countries migrate to do what is considered women’s work in richer countries. The
state is involved in this aspect of migration as governments, such as in the Philippines, for
example, train women for “women’s work” outside of the country, which includes training
to conform to norms of gender and sexuality (Rodriquez, 2008). While care work is
available transnationally, poorer nations must promote and market their women as the
best in the field, and often the cheapest, to compete on a global scale. For Ehrenreich and
Hochschild (2003), the international division of labour is about more than reproductive
labour such as caring for infants and children. In fact, they claim that feelings are
“distributive resources” (p. 23). In other words, migrant domestic workers also engage in
emotional labour. Similar to women workers in export processing zones who are expected
to perform a “docile and dexterous” femininity along the global assembly line, nannies
and maids are expected to perform femininity by nurturing and acting lovingly.
representatIon
Transnational feminists emphasize the study of representation as a key site of feminist
thought and activism. As Swarr and Nagar (2010) remind us, transnational feminism is a
theoretical framework that intervenes in feminist debates about the issues of how stories
of Other women’s lives cross borders. Transnational feminists concerned with
representation are particularly interested in questions of voice, authority, and identity
since Western feminists are often telling stories of Other women’s lives in their scholarship
and in classrooms. They borrow from cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall (2013) and
agree that studying representation is about understanding how “the words we use about
them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions that
we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, and the values we
place on them” give meaning to things (Hall, 2013, p. xix). To study the “production and
circulation of meaning” of text, talk, and images about global women’s issues, and more
specifically Third World women, is important, particularly as certain types of research and
media coverage may have harmful results. As such, they understand the study and use of
representation as a very useful political strategy to effect change as well as an important
practice in and of itself.
decolonizing Feminist thought

First published in 1984, Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s canonical “Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Discourses” critiqued Western feminist scholarship as misrepre-
senting Other women. In 2003, Mohanty republished the essay in her book Feminism
without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity and re-visited the original article
to respond to the huge scholarly attention it had received. This text is now considered a
“signal piece” in transforming the global frameworks of many United States feminists
(Mann, 2012, p. 365). Mohanty’s aim was to deconstruct United States feminist dis-
courses, although it has been taken up in many other contexts. In other words, she was
concerned with how Other women’s stories were being represented in United States
scholarship. She was particularly concerned with what she called the “third world woman”
who appeared in most texts as a “singular monolithic subject” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 372).
To use Mohanty’s term, Third World women are often presented as part of a coherent
group with similar interests and desires, regardless of their class, ethnic, or racial location.
While marginal in the academy, Mohanty (2003) argues that feminist theory has “politi-
cal effects and implications beyond the immediate feminist or disciplinary audience” (p. 21).
She therefore challenges the way in which Third World women have historically been
represented in Western feminist scholarship as homogeneously oppressed. Mohanty argues
that representing Third World women as lacking agency is ineffectual for designing strate-
gies to combat oppression globally.
Transnational feminist scholars concerned with representation attend to the kinds of
language, storytelling practices, and images that circulate in a variety of areas. These
include feminist scholarship, as well as popular media, humanitarian and international
development campaigns, and global feminist activisms. As Mohanty maintains in “Under
Western Eyes,” Western feminist scholarship too often engages in representational
practices that collapse differences between Third World women and erase their agency. In
particular, she argues that women’s experiences of oppression in specific contexts are erased
in favour of more simplistic renderings of their lives. She terms this overused representational
practice “third world difference.” Here, Western women are represented as secular, modern,
and in control of their bodies and lives in contrast to Third World women who are
represented as traditional, backward, and oppressed by patriarchal culture and violent
men. Third World women are rarely represented as resisting oppression from multiple
levels and sites of power, and it is often traditional and patriarchal culture (embodied by
men) that stands in for women’s subordination, rather than deep analysis of global
structures of power.
Mohanty is also concerned with how this category of Third World women allows
Western feminists to assume expertise in Third World women’s issues. Often, feminist
scholars assume that all Third World women have common experiences, problems, and
needs, and so, they must have similar goals. Western feminist scholarship needs to be his-
torically specific and take into account the differences between Third World women and
the concrete reality of their lives. She writes: “These arguments are not just against gener-
alization as much as they are for careful, historically specific generalizations responsive to
complex realties” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 377). For Mohanty, the first prong of a two-pronged
project toward liberating all women from oppression globally is “deconstructing and dis-
mantling” representations and the second is “building and constructing” new coalitions of
feminists across borders (Mohanty, 2003, p. 17).
decolonizing Feminist research

As a response to what Mohanty calls colonized Western feminist discourses, transnational
feminists aim to produce better, more accurate, and more ethical research. But Mohanty’s
call for careful, historically accurate representations that account for the differences
among and between women and the realities of women’s lives is difficult to produce. Some
say that this caution has led to less cross-border research by feminists. Staeheli and Nagar
(2002) argue that many Western feminists became overwhelmed with questions of
representation, essentialisms, universalisms, power and privilege, and were at a loss when
conducting fieldwork across borders. Richa Nagar (2003) charges that transnational
feminist’s focus on the study of representation at the expense of other types of empirical
work has led to widening the gulf between Western academic theory and the “on-the-
ground” priorities of Southern subjects (p. 359). In other words, Western feminists have
become overly cautious of cross-border research, and this critical analysis of colonized
representations has made many researchers anxious about how to tell Other women’s
stories. Briggs et al. (2008) claim that transnational feminist scholarship has the potential
for transformative politics through “collaboration among academics and intellectuals
located in publishing’s First World (the United States and Europe, with access to
international publics) and Third World (where knowledge, however erudite, seems to be
of strictly “local” provenance)” (p. 44). This kind of collaboration would dramatically
change the relationship of women to knowledge production across borders, and help to
build solidarities among women while paying attention to power and privilege differentials.
One powerful quality of transnational feminism is the scholar’s dedication to
reflexivity. Feminist reflections have frequently revolved around questions of how feminists
produce knowledge through research, how researchers can be accountable to those they
study, and how to represent these stories ethically and within a social justice framework
when academics publish their work. In the academy, researchers often use the “grassroots”
or the “local” as sites of knowledge to be excavated. Transnational feminists complicate the
term “grassroots” to constantly decolonize representations of women’s issues transnationally.
Naples (2002) argues that the idea of the grassroots is too often romanticized as a site
where individuals are always resisting and never desiring or benefiting from globalization.
The grassroots is also largely defined as a site for intervention by Western experts. For Priti
Ramamurthy (2003), the grassroots is a site of both agency and contradiction. Using the
term “perplexity,” she maintains that desire, benefit, and resistance are all experienced by
those who inhabit this site.
As Mohanty (2003) maintains, “testimonials, life stories and oral histories are a signifi-
cant mode of remembering and recording experience and struggles” (p. 77). However, she
warns that the current diversification of the Eurocentric canon by publishing culturally
diverse stories—a marked academic trend—can contribute to an exoticization (the process
of making something or someone seem different, alien, or Other) of “different” stories from
women who write as “authentic truth-tellers.” Thus, the mere presence of more writings
from Other women within the academy does not mean a de-centring of knowledge produc-
tion. The ways in which stories are shared, heard, read, and institutionally located are critical
for scholarly interrogation. Mohanty argues that the point of transnational feminist praxis is
not only to record Other women’s stories in order to create cross-border connections. Rather,
it is to take seriously how stories and memories are recorded, the way they are shared and
read, and the way in which they are disseminated to a broad audience (2003, p. 78).
Sangtin Yatra/Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism through Seven Lives in
India (2006) outlines some of the problems and possibilities of cross-border collaborations
between Third World grassroots activists and Western academics. With few exceptions,
Nagar (2003) claims that there are very few tools to execute transnational feminist proj-
ects, and thus, she proposes collaborative border crossings. SangtinYatra/Playing with Fire is
set in Uttar Pradesh, India. It involves workers of a non-governmental organization with
the pseudonym Nari Samata Yojana (NSY) who came together to write about their expe-
riences of their individual social locations and their work. The Sangtin Collective brought
together eight community-based activists with Richa Nagar, a women’s studies scholar
from the University of Minnesota. The writers composed autobiographies about issues
such as childhood, womanhood, and sexuality in an intersectional analysis of class, caste,
regional inequalities, and gender (Mohanty, 2006).
When the collective decided to publish their stories as Sangtin Yatra in India in 2004,
the stories were braided together to avoid collapsing the stories into a singular narrative.
The collective claims that the book represents a “blended but fractured ‘we’” (Nagar,
2006, p. xxxiv). Nagar (2006) writes: “The chorus of nine voices does not remain constant
throughout the book. As one speaks, the voice of the second or third suddenly blends in
to give an entirely new and unique flavour to our music” (p. xxiv). Nagar (2006) notes
that the process of sharing, braiding, and editing was often bitter and caused anger,
suspicion, and conflict within the collective. The members assumed no shared experience
of womanhood and “collectively crafted individual stories shaped through painful
dialogue” (Mohanty, 2006, p. xiii). Working with and through difference was essential to
the collective’s success in producing a collection of individual but connected stories and
to building solidarity with one another.
Sangtin Yatra is one example of transnational methodology that has aimed to disrupt
dominant ways of coming to know about Other women. And yet, as Nagar (2006) claims,
“no act of translation is without problems of voice, authority and representation and no
act of publication comes without risk and consequences” (p. xxiii).
VIolence aGaInst women

Another issue that is often covered by transnational feminist research is violence against
women. Globally, violence against women is a major problem. According to the United
Nations’ In-depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women, “violence against women
persists in every country in the world as a pervasive violation of human rights and a major
impediment to achieving gender equality” (2006, p. 9). The Declaration on the Elimination
of Violence against Women (1993) defines violence against women as: “any act of gender-
based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm
or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of
liberty, whether occurring in public life or in private life” (United Nations, 1993, n.p.).
In 2006, the UN Secretary-General launched an in-depth study on violence against
women. According to the corresponding UN campaign entitled UNITE, violence against
women is a universally unjustifiable crime that exists in every corner of the world. UNITE
maintains that persistent discrimination against women lies at the root of the issue, and
violence against women is unconfined to any culture, region, or country (UNITE, 2012).
This in-depth study revealed that up to 70% of women globally experience violence in
their lifetime. In Canada, a study of adolescents ages 15 to 19 found that 54% of girls had
experienced “sexual coercion in a dating relationship” (UNITE, 2012). The United
Nations includes forced marriages, human trafficking, dowry murders, and honour killings
in its report on global violence against women. It also includes issues of violence against
women in war and conflict situations. The United Nations reports that in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, over 200 000 women have suffered from sexual violence during
conflict. In Rwanda, between 250 000 and 500 000 women were raped during the 1994
genocide (UNITE, 2012).
Globalization and Violence against women
As noted at the outset of this chapter, globalization has meant an increase in women’s
paid employment in a range of sectors, including in the informal sector and in export
manufacturing. Export processing zones (EPZ) are contradictory sites for women. While
they may provide women with income, and perhaps more economic autonomy within the
household, they are connected to violence against women in complicated ways. One of
the most well-known EPZs is the maquiladoras of the borderlands between the United
States and Mexico. The majority of maquiladora employees are young women. According
to scholar Kathleen Staudt (2008), who studies EPZs near Ciudad Juarez, this city and
women’s work here are situated within a matrix of “femicide” (the killing of women).
The Mexican government’s Programa industrial fronterizo (border industrialization pro-
gram) was established in 1960 to facilitate foreign direct investment and global free trade
regimes to be globally competitive and to develop. In 1994, Canada and the United States
solidified the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico. One of many
results of these two major trade programs is the growth of Ciudad Juarez, which has become
home to hundreds of factories employing more than 200 000 workers, over half of them
women (Staudt, 2008, p. 7). Although profitable for factory owners and investors, feminists
have argued that the workers experience structural violence at the hands of “a global economy
that has shrunk the real value of earnings in the export-processing economic development
model that dominates in Juarez” (Staudt, 2008, pp. 7–8). Although there are more jobs in the
city, they have come at a high price. On top of inadequate shelter, food, and wages, the fact
that over 370 women have been murdered since 1993 within and around the EPZ has inflicted
terror on the population (Staudt, 2008, p. x). While families of those missing, raped, and/or
murdered in Juarez have rallied for justice, there has been little response nationally or interna-
tionally by governments, global institutions, or the development community. Serial killers
and drug cartels are popular explanations among some scholars, and yet, violence within the
home has simultaneously become commonplace. This suggests feminists should broaden their
understanding of the systemic causes of violence in a community where gender conflicts have
been sparked by changing patterns of labour for meager wages—all of which is couched in the
heavily increased security of the United States and Mexican borders (Staudt, 2008, p. 143).
Since transnational feminists are interested in understanding the negative effects of
global economic restructuring on women, they pay attention to the manifestations of vio-
lence. In particular, the example of violence in Ciudad Juarez connects the local and global
since the violence experienced in the site is not one or the other, but rather connected to
local manifestations of patriarchy, as well and transnational economic and political forces
that are also deeply invested in maintaining these interlocking systems of oppression.
representing Violence against women

Given the pervasiveness of gender violence globally, violence against women is a crucial
issue for feminists. Still, feminist scholars commonly misrepresent violence against Other
women in problematic ways (Narayan, 1997). Uma Narayan, a self-identified Third World
feminist, has made foundational contributions to transnational feminism. Using the
concept of “border crossing,” Narayan suggests that information about dowry murders in
India is shaped, distorted, and decontextualized when it crosses borders. The practice of
dowry (transferring parental property to a daughter at the time of her marriage), and the
violence associated with dowry (the abuse by husbands and in-laws related to this property
exchange), is both complicated and changing, and yet, it is represented in Western contexts
as a traditional and static practice that occurs regardless of class and caste. Narayan argues
that only certain kinds of information about dowry and dowry-related violence is passed
through a filter when it crosses borders, producing simple, quick facts and media-friendly
sound bites. There is little coverage of violence against women in India in North American
media, and dowry-related violence is rarely framed in terms of the general issue of domestic
violence. This means that stories of dowry murder tend to cross borders with more frequency
and currency than more complicated and nuanced reports of violence against women.
Narayan maintains that while dowry is a social, economic, political, religious, and
cultural practice that varies over time and space, a “cultural explanation” is most often
given when women experience violence related to this exchange (Narayan, 1997, p. 101).
Western media’s focus on widow/wife burning, and even on the dowry itself—a relatively
lesser-known or misunderstood practice—as “alien,” codes the practice as “Indian,” and
therefore Other. For Narayan, phenomena that seem “different,” “alien,” and “Other” cross
borders with more regularity than do problems that seem to also affect so-called Western
women. Unlike dating violence or domestic abuse, for example, dowry murders are misrep-
resented as foreign and unlike anything “at home” (Narayan, 1997, p. 102).
In Canada, popular discourse does not often represent violence against women as a cul-
tural issue, even though the issue is systemic, as discussed further in Chapter 8. According to
Statistics Canada (1993), half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident
of physical or sexual violence.4 In Canada, approximately 1200 Indigenous women have been
murdered or gone missing since 1999, and over 200 of these cases remain unsolved (RCMP,
2014). With the exception of Indigenous communities and anti-violence advocates, popular
discourse has not framed the violence as an issue of Canadian culture. While systemic in
nature and related to gender and racial inequality, media reports of violence against women
use individualized explanations related to mental health, stress, alcohol and drug abuse, or
provocation. While these explanations are problematic in their own right and are compli-
cated by feminist theorizing on the issue, it is important to contrast this framing of the issue
in Canada with “cultural explanations” offered in regard to violence against Indian women.
In all social justice organizing, certain issues are highlighted over others in order to
mobilize attention and resources. In the case of dowry murders, the United States and
Indian women’s anti-violence movements focused their attention in asymmetrical ways,
leading to Western feminists’ over-emphasis of dowry deaths as the issue of Indian
women. More recently Elora Halim Chowdhury (2011) has mapped the activism around,
and transnational representation of, acid attacks in Bangladesh. Chowdhury describes
the complicated relationship between anti-violence organizing in Bangladesh and the
ways in which this issue is taken up transnationally. Borrowing from Elizabeth Friedman’s
(1999) phrase “transnationalism reversed,” Chowdhury is specifically concerned with
local or grassroots organizing against acid attacks and its transnational affects. Similar to
Narayan (1997), Chowdhury’s (2011) extensive analysis points to the ways in which
rhetoric around violence against women, including how violence is made visible and
mobilized by activists in the locality, has global resonance. These scholarly works
demonstrate how misrepresentations of violence against women create opportunities for
feminist saviour narratives, but also feminist mobilizations across borders that are based
on the misunderstanding that Western women need to save their sisters.
actIVIsm and solIdarIty

Transnational feminists examine the negative effects of globalization on women’s lives
while also taking account of women’s resistances. While recognizing the limitations of
resistances, transnational feminists explore the possibilities of generating transformative
change through solidarity activism. Transnational feminists, as they seek solidarity
practices, are particularly critical of global feminism’s assumption that women are natural
or inevitable sisters in struggle. Much transnational feminist literature considers how to
collaborate and resist structures of oppression globally, while also recognizing the differences
among women. Feminist scholarship on globalization has too often focused on global
economic, social, and political change without taking into account the way in which
women’s daily lives are shaped by globalization—outside of women’s labour force
participation and the feminization of poverty in the Third World. Through providing
various case studies of women organizing against local, national, and transnational forces,
transnational feminist scholars aim to demonstrate the power of women’s activism and the
potential of transnational feminist practices, without romanticizing grassroots resistance.
Transnational feminist scholars, including Grewal and Kaplan (1994), use transnational
feminism both as a theoretical and activist framework that aims to avoid “the old sisterhood
model of intervention and salvation that is clearly tied to older models of center-periphery
relations” (p. 19). Yet, “old sisterhood models” continue to shape mobilizations of feminists
globally, especially in response to violence against women as I offer in the final discussion.
saVInG other women

In 2012, a 23-year-old female paramedic was gang raped by six men in a moving bus in
South Delhi.5 She died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later (Times of India, 2014). The
gang rape received widespread coverage by international media; so much, in fact, that the
phrase “the Indian gang rape” became a shorthand descriptor for the event. Importantly,
this violent crime provoked discussion among anti-violence advocates and feminist
scholars about how to intervene in a so-called culture of rape in India.
As feminist author and activist Jaclyn Friedman argued on TVO’s current affairs
program The Agenda with Steve Paikin (TVO, 2013), while individuals talk about “rape
culture” in North America, popular discourse does not often include the phrase “culture
of rape,” and yet, this is the phrase circulated about India in light of the gang rape in 2012.
These two terms are distinctive, and the difference is telling. When feminists speak and
write about rape culture, they often refer to the ways in which sexual violence against
women is explicitly and tacitly accepted in Western culture. This may include
representations of violence in movies, jokes, and even colloquial ways of speaking (e.g., “I
just raped that exam”). When feminists and others speak and write about “cultures of
rape,” as they did in the case of India following the 2012 gang rape, anti-violence advocates
drew on stereotypes of Indian culture as inherently hyper-violent, misogynist, backward,
and traditional. As in the discussion of dowry murder from earlier in this chapter, the
2012 gang rape that happened on a bus in South Delhi was given a cultural explanation.
In practice, cultural explanations of sexual or domestic violence do not allow for
women to build solidarities transnationally. In the case of “the Indian gang rape” as it is
ubiquitously known, a cultural explanation disallowed for connections to be made
between North American and Indian women, in particular, about the different manifesta-
tion of gendered violence at a local level. As Mohanty (2003) articulates, solidarities
among and between women require the mapping of power and difference, and an explora-
tion of common interests. When “the Indian gang rape” was described as a cultural issue,
many feminists in North America positioned themselves as saviours.
One of the most explicit examples of Western feminist attempts to “save their global
sisters” comes from the Harvard College Women’s Center when it announced a policy
task force entitled “Beyond Gender Equality” just following the highly publicized rape and
murder in South Delhi. The Harvardites presumed a stance of superior knowledge and,
implicitly, culture, as they offered “recommendations to India and other South Asian
countries.” Understandably angered by the assumption that Indian feminists needed
North American expertise, the following letter was written to the Harvard task force and
published online on the blog Kafila by Nivedita Menon (2014):
Letter from Indian feminists VRINDA GROVER, MARY

E JOHN, KAVITA PANJABI, SHILPA PHADKE,
SHWETA VACHANI, URVASHI BUTALIA and others,
to their siblings at Harvard
We’re a group of Indian feminists and we are delighted to learn that the Harvard com-
munity—without doubt one of the most learned in the world—has seen fit to set up a
Policy Task Force entitled ‘Beyond Gender Equality’ and that you are preparing to offer
recommendations to India (and other South Asian countries) in the wake of the New Delhi
gang rape and murder. Not since the days of Katherine Mayo have American women—
and American feminists—felt such concern for their less privileged Third World sisters.
Mayo’s concern, at that time, was to ensure that the Indian State (then the colonial State)
did not leave Indian women in the lurch, at the mercy of their men, and that it retained
power and the rule of the just. Yours, we see, is to work towards ensuring that steps are
put in place that can help the Indian State in its implementation of the recommendations
of the Justice Verma Committee, a responsibility the Indian State must take up. This is
clearly something that we, Indian feminists and activists who have been involved in the
women’s movement here for several decades, are incapable of doing, and it was with a
sense of overwhelming relief that we read of your intention to step into this breach.
You might be pleased to know that one of us, a lawyer who led the initiative to put
pressure on the Justice Verma Committee to have a public hearing with women’s groups,
even said in relief, when she heard of your plans, that she would now go on holiday and
take a plane ride to see the Everest. Indeed, we are all relieved, for now we know that
our efforts will not have been in vain: the oral evidence provided by 82 activists and
organizations to the Justice Verma Committee—and which we believe substantially
contributed to the framing of their report—will now be in safe American hands!
Perhaps you are aware that the Indian State has put in place an Ordinance on Sexual
Assault that ignores many recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee? If not,
we would be pleased to furnish you a copy of the Ordinance, as well as a chart prepared
by us, which details which recommendations have been accepted and which not. This
may be useful in your efforts to advise our government. One of the greatest things
about sisterhood is that it is so global, feminism has built such strong international
connections—such that whenever our first world sisters see that we are incapable of
dealing with problems in our countries, they immediately step in to help us out and
provide us with much needed guidance and support. We are truly grateful for this.
Perhaps you will allow us to repay the favour, and next time President Obama wants
to put in place legislation to do with abortion, or the Equal Rights Amendment, we can
step in and help and, from our small bit of experience in these fields, recommend what
the United States can do.
Vrinda Grover (mere lawyer)

Mary E. John, Senior Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi
Kavita Panjabi, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
Shilpa Phadke, Assistant Professor, School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute
of Social Sciences, Mubmai
Shweta Vachani, Senior Editor, Zubaan
Urvashi Butalia, Director, Zubaan
And many others.
Adding to the conversation, United States feminist scholar Carol Vance (2013) asks:
What lessons can be learned from feminist organizing and activism in India in the
wake of the Delhi rape (especially since it could be said that feminist activism is much
more vibrant and effective in India)? What reforms in law and its implementation are
effective, given different legal systems and historical contexts? How do we understand
the (relative) lack of response to horrific rapes in the US? (n.p.)
What this case demonstrates is how global solidarity cannot be assumed. Instead,
global solidarity must be built through negotiations of power and difference across borders.
It should go without saying that Third World women, to use Mohanty’s (2003) term, are
not waiting to be saved.
the united nations as a site for advocacy

At the transnational level, the United Nations has provided a complicated venue for
feminist organizing (Desai, 2005; Ferree & Tripp, 2006; Freeman, 1999). Since the United
Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985), women have used the United Nations to
gather and discuss women’s issues around the globe. However, Manisha Desai’s (2005)
Transnationalism: The Face of Feminist Politics Post-Beijing questions whether the United
Nations as a site of transnational feminist practice enables the latest incarnation of global
feminism, or if such spaces allow for a transformative feminist politic.
Since the field of transnational feminism emerged in United States academic dis-
course, Western notions have played a heavy hand in shaping as well as describing trans-
national feminist movements (Desai, 2005). Desai explains how this comes to be a problem
as she explores the United Nations Fourth Women’s World Conference in Beijing. She
explains that as sites of transnational feminist organizing “across national borders as well as
framing local, national, regional and global activism [through] activist discourse”
(p. 319), global conferences are still power-laden spaces, where structural resources and
inequalities within and between countries in the First and Third World shape which femi-
nist activists are able and allowed to participate. Using Desai’s analysis, feminists might
think of current forms of transnational activism as “globalization from the middle” since it
is often middle-class, educated people who circulate from the academy to UN agencies to
international NGOs (Waterman, 2000, as cited in Desai, 2005, p. 321). Since NGOs have
to be registered as a credible party to participate in such conferences, there is an increasing
depoliticization or de-radicalization of transnational feminist movements (Desai, 2005).
Additionally, critics of such practices suggest that transnational feminist movements
are uneven, with many First World countries overrepresented and many Third World
advocates uninvolved in collaborative efforts, though Southern NGOs often receive their
funding from First World donors. Given the history of UN political manoeuvres outside
of feminist initiatives, this tension should not be surprising. After all, many member
states see UN forums as aiming to develop Third World countries—hardly a viable starting
point for a transnational feminist exchange. As a result, transnational feminist movements
tend to mirror previous forms of global feminism, where middle-class, educated women
from the West see themselves as helping desperate, poor, marginalized Third World
women, rather than seeking transformative gender justice (Desai, 2005).
worker solidarity
While criticizing global feminist saviour models and international organizing that remains
inequitable, transnational feminism also provides a renewed hope in feminist organizing
though solidarity movements. Transnational feminist scholars stress the myriad of ways
that women who may never meet “can draw strength from each other and organize across
differences” (Naples, 2002, p. 270). For example, Mohanty’s (2003) chapter, “Women
Workers and the Politics of Solidarity,” in Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory,
Practicing Solidarity sheds a positive light on transnational feminist organizing by under-
scoring solidarity through common interests rather than assume common experiences.
Solidarity organizing through common interests takes into account women’s varied
desires and needs while acknowledging women’s social circumstances as workers. Both the
Working Women’s Forum (WWF) and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
in India are examples of successful organizations of women workers. The Self Employed
Women’s Association was one of the first organizations to conceptualize women’s infor-
mal work as work—that is, work done in the private or outside formal working regula-
tions, including vegetable vending and producing goods from home. In 1972, SEWA
unionized informal women workers and formed cooperatives to share resources. The
women have formed support networks, trained community health workers, and estab-
lished a SEWA university, where women are trained in production and managerial skills
(Desai, 2002, p. 19). SEWA not only provides leadership training, but also has women’s
banks and producer cooperatives (Mohanty, 2003, pp. 164–65). By defining common
interests, sites of power, and complicity, as well as the needs of Third World women as
workers, SEWA provides a transformative basis for collective struggles (Mohanty, 2003).
In addition to mapping the negative effects of globalization, feminists are also
concerned with mapping women’s resistances to globalization, even if they may seem
small. Scholars, including Fernandez-Kelly (1983) and Ong (1987), have traced resistances
in workplaces by women organizing in solidarity. Although women surely have been
exploited by labour conditions in EPZs, they have also been active resisters, engaging in
work stoppages, resisting long hours without breaks, and using religious or cultural
celebrations to refuse work and to organize workers in these areas (Ong, 1987; Fernandez-
Kelly, 1983). These local actions have transnational effects, and can lead to larger
transformative solidarity actions among workers (Mendez, 2002). For example, the
Central American Network for Women in Solidarity with Women Workers in the
Maquilas (“The Network”) has utilized communication technologies to launch national
and international campaigns pressuring factory owners to sign codes of ethics. Their media
campaign, “Jobs, Yes . . . but with dignity,” has helped to decrease what is known as shop-
floor violence, and has in turn helped The Network to negotiate with factory owners to
monitor conditions for workers. It is important to note that most of The Network’s funding
has come from non-governmental organizations in Northern countries. This means that
The Network’s activism is funded by, and therefore partly accountable to, Northern
countries, which may affect how they do their work.
conclusIon
Transnational feminist theories aim to repair the failures and shortcomings of global femi-
nism and the “internationalization” of gender and women’s studies curriculum. Western
feminism has too often homogenized all Third World women as an uncivilized Other, in
need of empowerment and saving. For transnational feminists, representing women’s
issues within ongoing global economic restructuring, attending to the nuanced facets of
women’s lives, is necessary for cross-border coalitions. While global feminism tends to
assume that women are natural and inevitable sisters in struggle against a universal form
of patriarchy, transnational feminism uses a framework of analysis that emphasizes power
and differences among women within the context of shifting global power relations, in
addition to paying attention to gender inequalities within localities.
This chapter has outlined some of the major concerns for transnational feminists
including the concept of globalization and flows of culture and capital; the mutually
constitutive relationship, or the interplay, between the local and the global; the politics of
representing the stories of “Third World women” in scholarship and in classrooms;
collaborating across borders in research practices; migration and the international division
of care labour; violence against women; and women’s organizing. It is important to
remember that transnational feminism is not a homogenous subfield of feminist theory
with shared values, meaning, ideas, and languages (Swarr & Nagar, 2010, p. 3). Instead,
transnational feminism is a diverse field of study in which theorists have intervened in a
variety of questions pertaining to global women’s issues. It is a field of inquiry into
globalization and its effects, with no single, coherent position or strategy. As scholars
remain reflexive and the flow of goods and cultures shift and transform, the field shifts and
changes. As global economic restructuring continues to alter transnational systems of
oppression, new opportunities for solidarity open up. Transnational feminists concerned
with solidarity at the global level will continue to reframe their analyses of the world and
women’s place within it.
endnotes
1. Watchel (2001) has collected over 450 definitions of the term (as cited in Desai, 2002, p. 15).
2. The term “Third World” originated during the Cold War, a conflict that occurred between
capitalist and communist states after the Second World War. Countries that had been
previously colonized by European or North American countries were constructed as a third
world in reference to the inequalities between them. Third world countries may have
found formal independence from colonial powers during this period but colonialization
left profound disparities in wealth, capacity to compete in a globalizing economy, the
health and life expectancy of populations, and the political status of these nations. The
comparable wealth and status of “First World” countries, such as Canada, Great Britain,
and the United States, led these types of countries to exercise a great deal of power glob-
ally. The “Second World” referred to the Communist countries (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Cuba, China, and others), although this term was only meant by implication, as
it was with these countries that the United States and its allies were silently engaged in a
major nuclear arms struggle. The term “Fourth World” has also emerged to refer to Indig-
enous societies that may be geographically and politically located in any of these countries.
The term Third World has been problematized and also periodically reclaimed. Where Third
World is used in this article, it appears as the language used by scholars under discussion.
3. Put simply, to “other” someone is to distinguish “them” from “us.” It is a process of
demarcating difference, but also superiority and inferiority among groups of people. In
this case, Other women are understood to be different and inferior to Western women.
4. Although more up-to-date data would be preferable, no Statistics Canada surveys since
1993 have asked women about their lifetime experience of violence.
5. In compliance with Indian law, the real name of the victim was initially not released to the media.
1. What are two major critiques of global feminism offered by transnational feminism? How
are global feminist frameworks replicated in the classroom?
2. Manisha Desai suggests that at UN conferences first world delegates outnumber third
world women. If there were more third world women at the table, would women’s orga-
nizing at this forum be different? If so, how?
3. Since the events of September 11, 2001, how have Muslim women been represented by
the popular and news media? How could you use a transnational feminist framework to
challenge these portrayals?
4. The Canadian Live-in Caregiver program is controversial, with some transnational femi-
nists claiming that the “global care chain” is exploitative. How might someone who is not
a migrant worker advocate for this group in solidarity with them?
5. Taking into consideration the response of Indian anti-violence advocates to the Harvard
Policy Task Force, how might transnational feminists concerned about global violence
against women approach this issue differently?
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Chapter 4
Stitch the Bitch
#girl#socialmedia#body#human
#IntroductIon
On October 9, 2012, while riding home from a school exam in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, a
Taliban soldier boarded the bus carrying a young, girl’s rights and social media activist. He called
out her name and said if she didn’t identify herself, he would shoot everyone on the bus. Malala
Yousafzai identified herself, and the soldier shot her in the head. One day later, on October 10,
2012, halfway around the world, a teenager from British Columbia, Canada, Amanda Todd,
took her own life after an extensive period of stalking, sexual exploitation, and cyberbullying.
Malala survived, Amanda did not.
Two moments of physical violation and two turning points in the narrative of girls’
rights globally. After Malala’s shooting and recovery, her continued legacy has affected
United Nations policy on girls’ right to education. After Amanda’s death, the Canadian
government passed a federal bill to regulate cyberbullying and expand police contacts at
high schools throughout Canada to report instances of unwanted cyber activities.
Further and most significantly for this current work, two days after Malala’s shooting,
and one day after Amanda’s death, on October 11, the world celebrated the first anniver-
sary of the UN’s freshly inaugurated International Day of the Girl.
Amanda and Malala’s stories reveal the complexity of theorizing about “girlhood” in
an age of social media. The stories of these plugged-in girls are extraordinary but, when we
pore over them and listen to them, the stories reveal the many forces that play upon girls as
they attempt to construct their identities simultaneously offline and online through various
forms of social media. For those girls, life is mediated, meaning girlhood is mediated.
Some of these forces have a long history: the gaze, objectification, patriarchy,
institutionalized oppression, lack of rights, gender norms, and control and power dynamics.
Many of the forces still play out online. Social media have contributed to a re-negotiation of
our relationship to these forces, our command of the medium, and an ontological rethinking
of our conception of girlhood and the lived experiences of girls in all their diversity, including
race, sexuality, dis/ability, body size, and nationhood. Even though the media of
communication change, every time the language we use to conceptualize its components and
our interaction with media remains the same. Technology changes quickly, but how we talk
about it does not. Online space is conceived of as different, separate from, and less valuable
90
than offline space. Layered on this divide are discourses that cleave and subordinate women
from the masculine high ground of technology and the public arena. Online communication
is reinforced as being textual and disembodied rather than lived and embodied, which shapes
the manner in which online violence is addressed—as symbolic and not real.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines cyberspace as “the forum in which the global
electronic communications network operates.” Interestingly, early discourses about cyber-
space presented it as a playful realm of science fiction and gaming, therefore shaping
online space as “unreal” and unimportant. Until recently in media discourse, online space
continued to be treated as less serious, less real, with less impact than offline space and
offline interactions (Robins, 1995).
Mary Anne Franks states the following about the paradoxical “realities” of online
exploration:
Cyberspace idealism often produces conflicting accounts of the “realness” of cyberspace.

On the one hand, cyberspace is often regarded as more real than real life—that is, the ability
to control the terms of representation makes cyberspace existence more genuine. On the
other hand, harms committed in cyberspace are often dismissed as “not really real,” as they
are by their nature not physical, bodily harms. The way this tension plays out in terms of the
law’s recommended role in cyberspace can yield schizophrenic results: freedom of speech, for
example, in cyberspace is “really real” and must be vigorously protected; harassment in cyber-
space is not “really real” and thus should not be taken very seriously. (Franks, 2011, p. 226)
Franks maintains that the virtual self-representation central to digital media sets
women and young girls up to be targets for sexual predators by having their images manip-
ulated. Franks refers to this process of identity sextortian as being an “unwilling avatar,” an
avatar being a person’s virtual self-representation. Despite its liberatory promise, much of
the public discourse surrounding the online world paints cyberspace as a new public place
only men can handle and inhabit. This masculinization of cyberspace through discourse
reinforces classic notions that men can manage the public realm and women should be
relegated to the domains of the private (like the home) (Bailey & Steeves, 2013).
Contemporary research on women and technology sees emancipatory potential in the
future of mobile technologies. Lee and Sohn’s study (2004) reveals that young women are
active in adopting new multimedia functions with mobile phones. Some feminists see
media products as empowering and liberating for young women (Kearney, 2006). Amy
Shields Dobson (2014) argues that social media can act to challenge Judith Butler’s (1990)
and Angela McRobbie’s (2009) notion of gender melancholia1 by providing space for girls to
show agency through “shameless” photos or sexy activities that challenge gender norms.
These efforts are often met with mixed reactions as they unwittingly align closely with the
sex-positive versus anti-pornography feminist sex wars of the 1980s. The same critiques from
the 1980s can be applied to the representations of sexiness online through social media. On
the one hand you can argue that girls taking control of their bodies and showing themselves as
sexually liberated and exposed could be sex-positive and progressive as Gayle Rubin (1987)
and Wendy McElroy (1996) advocated. On the flip side, however, you can also argue that the
patriarchic lens remains so embedded within all media that any woman who presents
Chapter 4 Stitch the Bitch 91

herself sexually through any medium will, by default, be objectified by the lens of the medium
designed for the pleasure of men (Greer, 1999; Levy, 2005; MacKinnon, 1987). Recent research
on SMS (short message service) and digital imaging of a person’s body has further attempted to
delineate discourse from reality. The research shows the complicated and nuanced relations
girls have with technology and subjectivity (Hasinoff, 2012; Ringrose, 2011).
Cyberspace has been described as a pastiche of fabricated ideas torn and recycled from
previous ideas. We like this metaphor. Metaphors of fabric, quilting, stitching, and sewing
seem poetically fitting for a discussion of girls and social media. Interestingly, one of the
earliest computers was a programmable weaving loom developed by Joseph Marie Jaquard in
the 1700s. The idea that weaving, a traditional practice of women, was one of the inspira-
tions of Charles Babbage’s computers, is a discursive lineage we hope to revive in order to
reconnect the natural connection between fractured discourses like women and technology.
This chapter discusses how patriarchy, capitalism, and Cartesian dualism reinforce
these longstanding embedded discourses that have come to shape our contemporary ideas
about social media and girls. Drawing on Marx’s explanations of ideology and Foucault’s
conception of discourse, we propose that these dominant ideologies have shaped the con-
stellation of dualistic and oppressive discourses concerning technology, online visibility,
women, agency, and the body. Before we explore any of this, however, we insist on recogniz-
ing (as perhaps you have already) that not all girls are plugged in. And moreover, we remind
you that girls and girlhood are experienced from diverse subject positions in different social
contexts with disparate levels of access to technology. The study of girls, culture, and social
media can involve an examination of gender, class, race, and disability as key variables
(Alper, 2014; Gajjala, 2012; Kolko & Nakamura, 2000; Marciano, 2014). This means that
a certain amount of privilege situates our starting point for this chapter. Our focus is on girls
and social media. Our starting point is girls who have access to social media or girls who
exist on and through social media. Drawing on the postmodern work of Donna Haraway
(1991), we also encourage a discussion around the idea that perhaps being mediated could
be part and parcel of anyone connected or not who identifies or aligns with being a woman.
danah boyd (2007) lists three components of social networking sites (SNS). Social
networking sites are “web-based services that allow individuals (1) to construct a public or
semi-public profile within a bound system; (2) articulate a list of other users with whom
they share a connection; and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others in the system” (boyd & Elison, 2007, p. 2).
Furthermore, we recognize that the stories of Malala and Amanda are exceptional.
Alongside these anomalous stories, gleaming with asterisks, we will also unfold the stories
of ordinary, plugged-in Canadian girls from the west coast of Canada whom we interviewed
in the fall of 2014.2 These few stories are not cited to propose a universality of experience
online (not at all!). Rather, they attempt to listen to the mediated nature of the lives of
plugged-in girls. In this chapter, cut, pasted, stitched, and stapled through these stories
will be the theories of past and contemporary scholars from discourse theory, feminist
theory, and social media studies. Their ideas will be integrated in a way that reflects the
postmodern quilt-like nature of cyberspace itself.
92 Chapter 4 Stitch the Bitch

#medIa#Ideology
Karl Marx argued that the ideas that form the foundation of capitalist society are culturally
created by powerful elites. These ideas represent ideology and are produced through a
socially constructed system of reification whereby abstract concepts are given causal pow-
ers and subjectivity. As Marx3 contends in The German Ideology, one of the most important
aspects in the production of ideology is a belief in the separation of mental and physical
labour. This belief is rooted in the practical and actual historical division of labour, which
determines social relationships. The division of labour implies a “contradiction between
the interests of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest
of all individuals who have intercourse with one another” (Marx, 1998, p. 52).
Under a capitalist economic foundation the ruling class controls not only the mate-
rial conditions of society but also the intellectual conditions, which solidify their hold on
power. The goal of the ruling class is to create conditions whereby abstract concepts that
support and maintain their position of power are seen and understood to be not only uni-
versal but also to belong to the natural world while at the same time being divine.4 This
concept of the natural world gives us the belief that we are powerless to interfere in the
actual domination that is based upon this false consciousness. Through this system of rul-
ing ideas, abstract concepts such as gender are given subjectivity, appearing real and pos-
sessing causal powers, while we lose subjectivity.
Mass media is perhaps one of the most influential and important institutions govern-
ing our lives and has become one of the key means for the delivery and acceptance of
ideology. As a key hegemonic and economic force, the mass media engage in the produc-
tion of commodities and services and are the major thrust behind the invention and
advancement of communication technologies. Jackson, Nielsen, and Hsu argue that while
we cannot claim that there is one global “mediated society,” the media as powerful, ideo-
logical tools dictate certain cultural values that have a “normalizing impact” on us and
affect “the type of citizenship that is practiced” (Jackson, et al., 2011, p. 2).
Bagdikian maintains that capitalists who own and control media are the new “lords of
the global village . . . penetrat[ing] the world with messages” that reflect their interests
(1989, p. 805). Bagdikian cites Rupert Murdoch and his NewsCorp Empire as an example
of a “Lord” with dominating, global power. Since the publication of Bagdikian’s seminal
piece, the new Lords5 of the village are now the CEOs behind social media networks.
These young, white, male heads of the global state reign from newly constructed empires
such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
#nature#body versus #mInd#technology

A second key dualistic assumption—the notion of the body somehow being separate from
experience—originates in Cartesian dualism or the notion that the mind is separate from the
body. This disembodied thinking subject is believed to be found within the essence of men,
whose ideal task is to rule the mind/body relationship. Under this dualism, men were considered

to be the thinkers, all that was pure. Women were relegated to a secondary, subservient
subjectivity under the control and domination of men. In Western history, dating from the
ancient Greeks, women were positioned as matter, unclean, on a level on par with slaves (who
were of course women too!). Their bodies were to be controlled and contained (Lloyd, 1984).
In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1972) con-
tend that out of enlightenment philosophy, such as the Cartesian separation of mind and
body, women became represented both as fascinating and repulsive to men who were told
to limit their contact with natural forces including those located within their own being,
in order to ensure the evolution of the human spirit. The main proposition in Adorno and
Horkheimer’s work is that under the enlightenment philosophical tradition, men negate
the sacred/profane essence of their connection with nature and begin to represent nature
as anti-reason, therefore, the enlightenment tradition “aims above all at the domination of
nature” (Vogel, 1996, p. 52).
Under this ideological system, to conquer nature is to conquer the body and to sym-
bolically eradicate all that is female. In her critique of post-structuralism and postmodern-
ist thought, Dorothy E. Smith adds that such thinking reinforces the Cartesian philosophy
of disembodying human subjectivity because it separates the “bases of consciousness from
the local historical activities of people’s everyday lives” (1999, p. 98). Smith introduces a
new “materialist analysis of social consciousness” from the “standpoint of women.” Smith’s
contention is that women have been excluded from sociological inquiry that subsequently
has created an “externalized body of knowledge based on an organization of experience
that excludes ours” (1990, p. 21). Women and young girls are generally understood to be
a reminder of this dualism. They are seen as unwilling avatars, victims, passive, disembod-
ied bodies and objects, with no active subjectivity.
A further dualistic discourse, and one key to any discussion involving social media
and cyberspace, is the divide between notions of public and private realms. Rooted in
both patriarchy and Marx’s notions of ideology, men historically have been situated in the
public arena reaping all the benefits it offers while women have been confined to the pri-
vate sphere. This is the foundation of gender inequality and the ideology of patriarchal
capitalism. Dorothy E. Smith further adds to Marx’s conception that the production of
ideology is duplicated in the gendered realm of capitalist society:
Men have functioned as subjects in the mode of governing; women have been
anchored in the local and particular phase of the bifurcated world. It has been a condi-
tion of man’s being able to enter and become absorbed in the conceptual mode, and to
forget the dependence of his being in that mode upon his bodily, that he does not have
to focus his activities and interests upon his bodily existence. (1990, p. 18)
At the centre of this female oppression is patriarchy, dominating fathers and men in
general, all of whom are seen as deeply connected with material power relationships that
flourish and take shape under a capitalist economic system. Under this oppressive system and
the ruling relations that organize it, men are positioned as rather abstract “knowers” alienated
from corporeal subjectivity. Women are relegated to all things irrational and involving the

body. Under the ideology of the beauty ideal, women lose their subjectivity and are viewed as
mere objects. Smith concludes that the “gendered organization of subjectivity” creates a
crevasse between men and women and ultimately “silences women” (1990, p. 19).
The ideological propositions set up within the logics of patriarchy, capitalism, and
Cartesian dualism leave little room for conceptualizing women as capable, agency-filled,
and savvy media consumers. The next section delineates how the above-mentioned ideo-
logical frameworks have come to shape discourses on women and technology and subse-
quent interpretations of major news events concerning girls and social media.
#socIal#medIa
There are several ways SNS, or the more contemporary and comprehensive term “social
media” differ from older media:
1. by reconfiguring the relationships between message maker, message, and audience;
2. by being multimedia; and,
3. by reconfiguring conceptions of public and private space.
Stuart Hall (1973) argued that when it came to broadcast media (TV, radio, and
newspapers), major media conglomerates encoded, imbued, or authored mainstream, nor-
malized, hegemonic ideas into the messages broadcast on these media. Once the message
reached the audience, the audience could make sense of or “decode” the message in differ-
ent ways: hegemonically (where the audience aligns with the ideologies of the message
producer); oppositionally (where the audience directly challenge the ideologies); and mixed
(where the audience negotiates the ideologies).
Although Hall argued that the audience was active in the act of decoding and could
challenge and negotiate the hegemonic messages of media producers, what the audience
lacked was the force to make those oppositional readings known by a larger audience. This
is not the case with social media and it’s exactly the power of broadcasting coupled with
the back and forth dialogic nature of social media communication that differentiates
social media from the old broadcast media (Fuchs, 2014).
At the point when Stuart Hall introduced the encoding/decoding model, individuals
couldn’t just buy a newspaper, a TV, or radio station and get their opinions out to the world.
Only a privileged group could—an economically privileged elite group—and so the power
of broadcasting rested in a few hands. However, widespread broadcast ability is possible with
social media. Founded on the dialogic, bullet-proof, multi-modal, and hub-based system of
the internet, any member of the “audience” is also a potentially powerful “broadcaster.”
With the diversification of messengers and media messages also comes a diversifica-
tion of audiences. Not only can media messages be tailored to a wide variety of niche
groups perhaps not previously recognized as financially worthy in the heyday of classic
media, but previously powerful media outlets also become audiences to—and co-dependent
upon—citizen journalists, independent bloggers, and instagramers whose cameras were in

the right or wrong place at the right time. The typical person can now, with enough follow-
ers, become what Theresa Senft (2008) calls a “microcelebrity” in cyberspace.
Rather than a linear relationship from producer to audience, messages flow dynami-
cally and cyclically among a variety of messengers and a variety of audiences. We have
had new messengers and audiences since the emergence of the internet but what really
differentiates social media are contemporary new media and new messages. Social media
outlets permit people to connect and to share both newsworthy events and the banality of
everyday life (Beer, 2008, p. 522). Borrowing the term “the spaces in-between” from
urbanist Jan Gehl (1987), we can think of the relationship between broadcast media and
the ubiquity of social media in this way: if old media shared news about high rises and
civic masterpieces, social media share news about the spaces in-between those buildings
such as the alleys, the curbs, the street corners, and the hideaways. Many social media
outlets evolved from texting platforms (e.g., the social media platform QQ) and so the
communication shared over these forums evolved to concern people’s everyday lives.
Whereas broadcast media uphold the classic notion of “objectivity” in news and a
disembodied presentation of the world devoid of a bias-filled author, social media embrace
the subjectivity of experience and draw attention directly to the embodied emotional
experiences of online narrators. Status updates on Facebook and Twitter can highlight
and chronicle a person’s mood through emoji, and Twitter hashtags textually label one’s
feelings #sad, #happy, and #grateful.
The messages we share are also increasingly multi-sensed, appealing to our eyes, ears,
emotions; and arrive in different forms: text, photograph, video, and audio. As a result we can
share richer snapshots of our lives than those that could be shared through text alone. Instagram
and Snapchat images, Vines, gifs, the plethora of apps introduced to capture the perfect selfie
or edit your photos all provide a variety of ways to mediate ourselves and “experience” others.
Apart from providing a voice/eye/ear to the heterogeneous audience, users of social
media are also more integrated into social media infrastructure. When you sign up for a
social media profile, you are required to provide a fair amount of information such as your
name, location, and email. Not only are we users of social media but also fundamentally
we are social media (Deuze, 2013). In most user agreements, we trade the privilege of a
profile for our right to privacy. The information we provide is often tracked and saved for
commercial and advertising purposes. Kenneth Werbin (2012) describes these qualities of
online governance as the regime of surveillance and the regime of commodification. The infor-
mation we provide is used to track us (surveillance) and to turn our aggregated data into
meta-data that can be sold and shared for market purposes (commodification). It is not the
individual bits of data that we share that are valuable but rather it is the aggregated data
that paint an “expected profile” of our consumer habits.
Another force shaping our actions on social media is the reconfiguration of space.
Offline, we have learned various codes that dictate what is public space (the park, a school,
the library) and what is private space (your bedroom, a bathroom, the home) Drawing on
theatre terms, Erving Goffman called these spaces the “front stage” and “back stage” that
regulate the performance of one’s identity (Goffman, 1959). danah boyd coined the term

context collapse when describing how space is reshaped online (boyd, 2001). She argued that
those visual and material borders that exist in the real world to delineate and separate the
public spaces from the private—and thus dictate where public and private activities ought
to take place—are erased online. The public and the private collapse in on each other and
this leads to seeing activities that, offline, would normatively be considered private in
public media. There are many examples of these collapses of the public and private: a
Tumblr page called #postsexselfies (n.d.) is the product of trolling Instagram for images
people have taken or seem to have taken of themselves after sex. Several contexts are
collapsed in this instance. The public conception of sex as a private act is challenged when
people provide a visual image of the privacy of their bedroom in a state of post-coital bliss.
boyd expanded her theory of “context collapse” in a blog post in 2006 in which she
explores the term “superpublics”:
In talking about “super publics,” I want to get at the altered state of publics—what publics
look like when they are infused with the features of digital architectures. What does it mean
to speak across time and space to an unknown audience? What happens when you cannot
predict who will witness your act because they are not visible now, even though they may
be tomorrow? How do people learn to deal with a public larger and more diverse than the
one they learned to make sense of as teenagers? How are teenagers affected by growing up in
an environment where they can assume super publics? I want to talk about what it means to
speak for all time and space, to audiences you cannot conceptualize. (boyd, 2006)
#plugged-In#gIrls
Teens have historically looked for the convergence of back and front stages; social media
is the perfect medium. One of our plugged-in girls said the following about how space is
experienced online:
I feel like on Facebook and Instagram, I am always in front of an audience or like on

stage to be judged? It feels like I’m performing almost. Every move seems critical. Twitter
feels like I’m in front of a panel and the panel consists of professionals—writers,
professors, people from the media.6
The essence of adolescents in Western, capitalist society is the drive and desire to be both
independent and autonomous, resulting in a “healthy self-governance” including the ability
for decision-making, self-reliance, and conformity (Russell & Bakken, 2002). Central to this
desire is securing “space” in which teens can stake ownership claims away from the prying
eyes of parents and other adults. Digital social media sites have finally offered teens a space
that, for the most part, is condoned by adults with minimal contact or interference. In this
virtual world, teens are actually engaging more but these interactions are mediated through
technology. Warnings have emerged claiming that over-use of digital media is somehow
associated with higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, depression, hyper-sexuality, and anti-
social behaviour (Frank, et al., 2010; Leena, 2005; Yen et al., 2009; Yuan-Sheng, et al., 2010).

However, the now portable, online world is all about shaping reputations, managing
networks, and masking information (Madden et al., 2013). According to Duggan (2013),
teens share a wide range of information about themselves on SNS. The popularity of each
site depends on the type of interaction the teen is seeking. As of this writing, the four
most popular sites are Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Google Plus (Madden, et al.,
2013). Madden et al. found that teens are keeping their Facebook accounts, but find too
much “drama” (negative interactions and too much disclosure) involved so they are
turning to other media such as Twitter and Instagram. Twitter’s attraction is that the
140-character limit prevents the drama found on Facebook but still allows for personal
information sharing. Snapchat’s appeal is the ability to share photos and videos quickly.
The images are only displayed for a few seconds and then disappear.
One of our plugged-in girls said the following about why she abandoned Facebook
and her desire to find and secure a space that is free of hate:
[Going] to my Instagram account gives me a safe feeling almost, it comforts me in seeing

people with similarities to me post it’s like a meeting ground. All social media give off a
different vibe to me personally. I don’t go on Facebook too often anymore because most the
posts are cruelty toward another person, lots of ‘slut shaming’ and people nursing fights, the
same goes for Twitter, while I’m on those sites the environment that I’m becoming con-
sumed it may as well be my high school. Instagram is different for me because I don’t follow
as many people who attend my school. I’ve met the people I follow through that site, I find
people with similar interests to my own, things in common to me and it grows from there.7
Youth are becoming the main consumers of SNS with young women more active users
than men (Duggan, 2013). According to a recent United States study, 95% of youth aged
12 to 17 are avid internet users, and 80% of those are using SNS with Facebook and Twitter
being the most popular (Madden et al., 2013). The same study found that girls (aged 14 to
17) are highly engaged users with 93% vs. 85% of boys using Facebook and 31% vs. 21%
using Twitter. Similarly in Canada, 32% of students in grades 4 to 6 (approximate age 9 to
11 years) have Facebook accounts and 16% use Twitter8 (Steeves, 2014a; 2014b). Facebook
gains popularity by grade 11 (16 years) with 95% of students having accounts while just
under 47% of students in grades 7 to 11 have Instagram and Twitter accounts (Steeves,
2014a). Little gender variation exists in younger students (grades 4 to 6), but by the time
students are in grade 11, more girls are using Twitter (53% vs. 41%) and Instagram
(55% vs. 32%). Facebook remains at 83% for both boys and girls (Steeves, 2014a).
But the online world is far from easily malleable and controlled. Seventeen percent of
teens report being “approached” by unknown persons who triggered uncomfortable feelings
and fears about safety (Madden, et al., 2013). Mirroring or perhaps acting as an extension
for the real embodied world, the online experience seems more dangerous for girls as they
are more than twice as likely as boys (24% vs. 10%) to experience interactions with strang-
ers that cause them to feel uncomfortable and scared (Madden, et al., 2013). There is a lure,
or perhaps a belief, for teens that somehow the online world is a private, easily controlled
world where its virtual nature allows for more and more freedom in order to develop an

autonomous identity free from parental and/or adult control. According to Madden et al.
(2013) only 9% of teens report being “very concerned” about the possibility of third-party
access to their data in comparison to their parents of whom 81% stated they were “very” or
“somewhat” concerned about how much information about their children is online.
When asked about interacting with strangers online, one of our plugged-in girls said:
I do chat with them. I’ve been on social media for a long time so chatting with strang-
ers (only if we’ve followed each other for a while) doesn’t seem strange to me. I’ve
made a lot of good friends through chatting. Of course, I have received negative
remarks as well. Especially with the ‘anonymous’ feature on Tumblr Ask.9
#Iam#amanda
Perhaps one of the most compelling life stories exemplifying these concerns is the story
of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old teen from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, who
experienced all aspects of the negative side of SNS. Her poignant story is often used as a
cautionary tale for teens. Her story also points to the importance of feminism for young
girls and how feminist inquiry and theory need to adapt to a rapidly changing social
Source: Todd, A. (2011). A still from Amanda Todd’s YouTube video telling
the story of years of bullying after having a nude photo sent to classmates.
[Online Image]. Retrieved from http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/
2014/04/17/21611366.html

world—a social world dominated by digital technology. Here is Amanda’s story, written
and narrated by Amanda and shared via an uploaded video on YouTube on September 7,
2012. The title of her video is “My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, and self-harm.”
Hello!
I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story In 7th grade I would go with
my friends on webcam To meet and talk to new people. Then got called stunning,
beautiful, perfect etc . . . Then wanted me to flash . . . So I did . . . 1 year later . . . I got
a message on facebook from him . . . Don’t know how he knew me . . . It said . . . If you
don’t put on a show for me I will send ur boobs . . . He knew my address, school, rela-
tives, friends family names . . . my photo was sent to everyone . . . I then got really sick
and got . . . Anxiety, major depression and panic disorder . . . I then moved and got into
Drugs & Alcohol . . . My anxiety got worse . . . couldn’t go out
A year past and the guy came back with my new list of friends & school. But made
a facebook page . . . My boobs were his profile pic . . . Cried every night, lost all my
friends & respect people had for me . . . again . . . Then nobody liked me name calling,
judged . . . I can never get that Photo back . . . Its out there forever . . . I’m not con-
stantly crying now . . . Everyday I think why am I still here . . . cant go to school . . .
Meet or be with people . . . constantly cutting. I’m really depressed . . . I overdosed . . .
in hospital for 2 days . . . I’m stuck . . . what’s left of me now . . . nothing stops . . . I have
nobody . . . I need somebody ||
My name is Amanda Todd . . . 10
Underneath her video she has the following disclaimer:
“I’m struggling to stay in this world, because everything just touches me so deeply. I’m
not doing this for attention. I’m doing this to be an inspiration and to show that I can
be strong. I did things to myself to make pain go away, because I’d rather hurt myself
then someone else. Haters are haters but please don’t hate, although im sure I’ll get
them. I hope I can show you guys that everyone has a story, and everyone’s future will
be bright one day, you just gotta pull through. I’m still here aren’t I?”11
On October 10, 2012, 33 days after posting her story, Amanda took her own life. The
now famous video (to-date there have been over 9 million downloads) is filmed in black
and white and shows a partially hidden Todd holding up her hand-written message on
numerous pieces of paper. Her young age is apparent by the slightness of her build, her
long hair curled at the ends, and the numerous string bracelets, ironically referred to as
friendship bracelets, adorning her wrists.12 The film is silent, or rather Amanda is silent
with just the soundtrack she chose herself: “Hear You Me,” by Jimmy Eat World. Amanda’s
silence is understood to somehow be a projection of the debilitating, gendered-based
violent attacks she experienced at the hands of sexual exploiters and schoolyard bullies.
Although Amanda’s story is tragic on so many levels, her story also points to the
major negative aspect of social media: the sexual exploitation of young women and girls
and the growing phenomenon of cyber bullying. Michelle Dean (2012) brilliantly
connects Amanda’s story to Franks’s by maintaining that she was an unwilling avatar. As
previously introduced, Franks documents the fact that in many cases of online harassment

sexually explicit images are used without consent as revenge or for blackmail purposes as
was demonstrated in Amanda’s testimonial13: “In stark contrast to the way users exert
control over their online identities, the creation of unwilling avatars involves invoking
individuals’ real bodies for the purpose of threatening, defaming, or sexualizing them
without their consent” (2011, pp. 226–227).
Central to becoming an unwilling avatar is the camera and how women and young
girls are so easily victimized by the ever-present male gaze. Women and young girls have
historically been objects of a patriarchal gaze. As John Berger (1972) contends, this desire
to objectify women as lifeless objects of male sexual fantasy first became entrenched in
representation during the European art tradition of the nude. This is symbolic violence
where women are represented as objects without life, agency, and will. Laura Mulvey
similarly argues the male gaze is found within mainstream films and has become part of
the camera work. Mulvey (1975) contends that the “controlling and curious gaze” of the
“fetishistic, scopophillic” spectator not only turns the person being observed into an
object of both fear and desire but also actually requires an active participation by the
spectator (pp. 28–29). The spectator is not only consumed by his anxiety about his own
identity, but intermixed with these anxieties is desire. So as not to be dangerous, the
spectator turns the object into a fetish, which creates a power imbalance.
Since Mulvey’s initial work, many scholars have agreed with her psychoanalytical
interpretation of women’s experience in film (Cooper, 2000; Kaplan, 1997; Ussher, 1997),
while others argue that this psychoanalytic reading negates female sexuality and ignores
any issues regarding race and class (Arbuthnot & Seneca, 1990; Gamman, 1989; Mayne,
1993; Stacey, 1991; Studlar, 1990). Some of these critics maintain that psychoanalytic
theories investigating female subjectivity in film do not sufficiently address the “com-
plexities of female experience with the cinema” (Studlar, 1990, p. 74) and ignore the
cultural and social dimensions that are behind the production of patriarchal narratives
(Stacey, 1991).
Michel Foucault (1979) argues that the gaze is connected to power and surveillance,
giving the bearer of the gaze empowerment over those who are gazed upon. However,
Foucault did not extend his analysis to examine how gender is enacted through the gaze.
Both Susan Bordo (1993) and Sandra L. Bartky (1997) expand Foucault’s analysis to
incorporate gender relationships and its impact upon female embodiment. Bordo utilizes
Foucault’s methodology arguing that power is a “dynamic or network of non-centralized
forces” (p. 26) that are maintained through individual “self-surveillance and self-
correction” (p. 27). Bartky contends that disregarding the “feminine body” perpetuates
the “silence and powerlessness . . . and as a whole reproduces the sexism which is endemic
throughout Western political theory” (1997, p. 132).
Similar critiques are presented within the realm of online gendered relations. Whittington-
Walsh (2006) explains the presence of online hate websites such as the user-generated site
uglypeople.com as extensions of the tyrannical male, patriarchal, colonial gaze. This gaze
involves both embodied and virtual experiences of young girls and women with physical
disabilities/differences who experience attitudinal violence toward their physical appearance and
beauty. Online, attitudinal violence merges physical and symbolic forms of violence in which

people enact hatred toward physical difference by posting images of everyday people and
celebrities. Using Mulvey’s analysis of the gaze and cinematic spectatorship, Whittington-Walsh
maintains that the spectator of those hate sites is simultaneously using an active “controlling
and curious gaze” (Whittington-Walsh, 2006, p. 20) by turning the person on display (usually
female) into an object of both desire and fear. The ultimate power imbalance lies in the fact that
the active spectator can post “unwilling avatars” onto the site and rate each image on a score of
1 to 10 for “ugliness” and even have the option of “putting this ugly on a t-shirt” (2006, p. 20).
Here, as mentioned in our analysis of Hall’s media model, previous categories between audience
and producer break down. Furthermore, embodied reactions to online textual violence challenge
the reinforced dualistic separation between mind and body and thus online and offline selves.
Similarly, Franks’s research also draws attention to the fallacies of the dualism
between offline and online lives by arguing that women are often victimized online simi-
lar to the extent they experience in the offline, so-called embodied world. The online
world denies women the opportunity to become fully embodied citizens with all rights
afforded by law that “amplifies the sexual stereotypes and discrimination women experi-
ence in the offline world” (2011, p. 260). Franks refers to this as a new form of “social
tyranny” (p. 251) in the fact that most retractors argue that rather than enforcing regula-
tions and laws governing behavior in the online utopia women should not participate.
However, this view only seems to recreate and reinforce traditional gendered relations
and minimizes women’s ability to benefit from engagement in this new frontier.
It is within this discourse that Amanda is positioned. We are told to see her as an
unwilling avatar, as numerous studies and media accounts testify—she is a victim of a form of
technology that she was somehow too naïve to handle. But this discourse must be separate
from her actual embodied offline lived reality, Amanda is not alone. Hinduja and Patchin
(2009) coined the term cyberbullicide to capture the growing phenomenon of predominantly
youth committing suicide after being victimized from aggressive online bullying. Seeking to
determine if suicidal ideation was linked to cyberbullying, Hinduja and Patchin surveyed
2000 randomly selected middle school–aged students (in the United States) and found that
20% (19.7% girls, 20.9% boys) had seriously thought about attempting suicide, while 19%
(17.9% girls, 20.2% boys) reported attempting suicide. Youth who were victimized online
were twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to youth who had not experienced
cyberbullying. Although youth may have been experiencing other emotional and social issues
at the time of their deaths, cyberbullying exasperated feelings of “instability and hopelessness.”
Similar patterns have been detected in Canada. In a national survey of 5436 Canadian
students in grades 4 to 11, Steeves (2014a) found that 23% had been mean to someone
online while 37% of students had been victims of mean or cruel behavior. Among grade
4 students, 6% had been bullied, with grade 8 (31%) and grade 11 (38%) students
experiencing even more. The most common forms of cyberbullying were the following:
■ harassment
■ spreading rumours
■ posting embarrassing photos

■ making fun of someone’s race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation
■ saying something about someone’s sexual activity
According to Hinduja and Patchin (2010) the most common social media sites for
cyberbullying to occur are through email (18%), instant messaging (18%), MySpace
(14%), and chat rooms (10%). As with all areas of our social world, girls are more likely
than boys to have something mean said about them and boys are more likely to engage in
mean or cruel behavior toward someone online (Steeves, 2014a).
Another key aspect to Amanda’s story is the fact that she engaged in self-harming
behaviour (suicide) but also non-suicidal self-harm. Amanda refers to this in her story as
“constantly cutting” (Todd, 2012) referring to intentional self-poisoning or other forms of
self-injury behaviour, which is widely believed to be a coping device when experiencing
high levels of stress. Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is very common in adolescents with
younger females (12 years) engaging in higher rates than males at 12:1. By 18 years of age
the rate becomes 2:1 (Hawton, et al., 2012). Most significantly, DSH is an important risk
factor for future suicide (Hawton, et al., 2012). Cutting is the most commonly used
technique, although Amanda engaged in all forms of self-injurious behaviour: self-
poisoning (drinking bleach), self-injury (cutting), and suicide.
Non-suicidal self-harming behaviours have moved out of the shadows of clinical
diagnosis (such as border-line personality disorder) and are now beginning to be conceptualized
as a social phenomenon. James (2013) found in her survey of 38714 girls aged 13 to 16 in
New Zealand that self-harming is more normalized than previously thought and is being
heavily influenced by peers. Most significantly, 23% of girls who engaged in self-harming had
done so in front of other people, most notably peers and a shocking 12% had harmed together.
Interestingly, self-harming girls are more likely to be popular at school, which further dispels
another image and discourse—that harmers are believed to be highly troubled (James, 2013).
In Canada, self-harming behaviours, most commonly cutting, are also on the rise.
According to the division chief of community-based psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of
Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, teens aged 12 to 17 are engaging in cutting behaviours at twice
the rate as seen in previous years. Kim St. John, divisional head of child and adolescent
psychiatry at the Janeway Children’s Hospital in St. Johns, Newfoundland, contends that
cutting has become “almost a fad . . . And many of the young people that I see that cut do it
to belong to a group or to stay within a group. They post it on Facebook” (The Canadian
Press, 2014). Social media has become a key medium in which self-harming behaviours occur
and are documented and shared. Young girls are reported to be engaging in what is being
referred to as copy-cat behaviour where they send a video to YouTube and/or photo-sharing
sites of self-harming, causing self-harming competitions (Adams, 2013). Further, there is a
correlation between the amount of time spent online with self-harming (Mitchell & Ybarra,
2007). Self-harmers have higher rates of online use, and most significantly, online use that
exceeds five hours per day was associated with suicidal ideation and planning (Kim et al.,
2006; Lam et al., 2009; Messias, et al., 2011; Mitchell & Ybarra, 2007).

Another contradiction in the discourse surrounding Amanda’s story is that she did
not see herself as a helpless victim. In a 2013 edition of The Fifth Estate documentary
show, The Sextortian of Amanda Todd,15 her story is explored and a thorough examina-
tion of her computer reveals further details of her online activity. While the beginning of
her “never-ending” nightmare (it did in fact end with the taking of her life) occurred
online with the sextortian she experienced while interacting on BlogTV,16 she eventually
found another supportive online community where she could discuss the issues she was
experiencing. By creating and posting her video, My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, and
self-harm, Amanda became a willing avatar. She decided to use the very medium that was
used against her, the site of so much of her vulnerability and pain, namely social media.
The very last image she posted is the image she wanted seen. It is an image of a young
woman returning the gaze, not an unwilling avatar.
The popularization of the correlation between cutting, mental health, and social
media usage has led to the presumption that correlation means causation. To return to
Stuart Hall’s (1973) analysis, to reinforce this understanding is to encourage a decoding,
or reading, that girls bodies online are ripe for victimization. Hegemonic discourse sug-
gests that social media and technology in general is separate from bodies and quite beyond
the capacities of young women. The logic of this storyline, as we’ve narrated until now,
reinforces classic dualistic divides between women/Nature/Body/private versus Men/
Mind/Technology/public.
#Iam#malala
Source: Global Partnership for Education. [Online Image]. https://

www.facebook.com/globalpartnership/photos/a.247464265289994.
53377.247459801957107/700417876661295/

I come from Swat Valley, Pakistan. A region where rifles are fired to celebrate the
birth of a son, but daughters are hidden away behind a curtain. Where I grew up
girls were afraid to go to school. But I’m not afraid. I believe that education is a
universal human right. I believe that one child, one teacher, one book, one pen, can
change the world. Schools were attacked. I still went and I spoke out. We realize
the importance of our voices only when we are silenced. I was shot on a Tuesday,
at lunchtime. One bullet, one gunshot, heard around the world. But here I stand;
I am Malala.17
While Amanda’s story is read and positioned as a cautionary tale of either shameful
behaviour (as wanton as Lolita’s) or victimization by sexual predators, Malala Yousafzai’s
story is based on a survival narrative. Malala was born the same year as Amanda but in a
vastly different country. Malala was born in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Her father was
a huge proponent of girls’ right to education and owned and operated a school for both
boys and girls. Malala’s first contact with the media was in 2008 at the age of 11 (Ellick,
2012). The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist political movement, had already banned
TV and music (Peer, 2012) and a website for the BBC Urdu was interested in presenting
a novel way of covering the Taliban’s increasing presence. The BBC contacted Malala’s
family and she posted her first blog post January 3, 2009, under the pseudonym “corn-
flower” (Boone, 2012). Malala narrated her thoughts about everyday life under the
Taliban and in her blog under the name Gul Makai, she began to focus on the on again,
off again availability of education for girls in the region. The Taliban originally closed
girls’ schools but then boys’ schools closed their doors in solidarity. Local boys returned
to school and girls were permitted to attend co-ed classes but not girls’ only schools.
When tensions and Taliban control of the region increased, Malala’s blog went silent
mid-March 2009.
After the publication of the blog posts, New York Times reporter Adam B. Ellick
approached Malala and her father to produce a documentary. The film recounts Malala’s
vision of education for all girls. Following the documentary, Malala began to gain traction
in mainstream media as a political figure. She was interviewed locally by several national
news stations as well as internationally by the Toronto Star. She received several awards for
her efforts for girl’s education.
Not all the attention she received, however, was positive. Malala began to
experience harassment both on- and offline. Similar to Amanda, Malala was an active
user of Facebook and several anonymous users created fake profiles for her (Peer,
2012). The harassment escalated and she started receiving threatening messages,
including death threats. Local police communicated to her that the Taliban were
targeting Malala and two other female activists. Strangers were constantly seen
outside the family’s house, lurking in the shadows despite nightly police patrols.
Malala recalls this general, day-to-day fear by describing what happens while the
bus they were riding hit a large pothole jerking her sleeping brother awake. Startled,
his first question was “Was that a bomb blast? This was the fear that filled our daily
lives. Any small disturbance or noise could be a bomb or gunfire.” (Yousafzai & Lamb,
2012, p. 84).

Although Malala never admitted to being frightened by the rising threats and the daily
fears, she began to take precautionary measures to assure her safety and the safety of her family.
At night I would wait until everyone was asleep—my mother, my father, my brothers,
[ . . . ] then I’d check every single door and window. I’d go outside and make sure the
front gate was locked. Then I would check all the rooms, one by one. My room was at
the front with lots of windows and I kept the curtains open. I wanted to be able to see
everything.” (Yousafzai & Lamb, 2012 p. 118)
On October 9, 2012, the online threats and the offline fears were realized. While rid-
ing a bus home from a school exam, a Taliban soldier boarded and called out her name.
Threatening to kill all girls on the bus if she did not identify herself, Malala stood up and
was shot. One bullet went through her head and neck and became lodged in her shoulder.
She went through intense medical treatment, which included temporarily removing part
of her skull, but her recovery was relatively quick, given the nature of the injury, and by
October 17, she emerged from a coma.
Media outlets around the world covered the shooting. The United Nations, the
United States government, celebrities all proclaimed their hope for Malala’s recovery and
their support for her causes. In October of 2012, the UN Special Envoy for Global Educa-
tion Gordon Brown launched a petition in her name and using the slogan “I am Malala.”
The petitions demanded that no child be left out of school by 2015.
At the outset, Malala’s words, then her image, and then her body, became the site of
political debate. The words of her blog were used to add a personal connection to the
political turmoil in the Swat Valley. The BBC Urdu service reporter responsible for set-
ting up Malala’s first blog, said that in choosing her name “corn flower,” which harkens to
a traditional Swat Valley folk tale, he “wanted to give an indigenous, symbolic attach-
ment to Swat so that people could own it journalistically” (Rahman, 2014). It also meant
that they could own or at least attach themselves directly and rhetorically into Malala’s
plight. Her face and her body on the screen of the documentary became the embodiment
of her political motives that quickly, through other media outlets, began to network amid
more global political motives and movements. She was reproduced and rebroadcast
through global media outlets, which individually curated and manicured her words, image,
and body in different ways.
Malala’s words, image, and body were copied and redistributed digitally around the world.
Did she become a willing avatar because her body became a symbolic site for the battle over
girls’ right to education? In a post-colonial analysis of Malala’s story, author Fauzia Rahman
wrote, “The message around her was always, imagine: if a girl can rise out of their current
contents of patriarchy, repression, cultural backwardness, and poverty, and claim their rights
not only as Pakistani citizens, but also global citizens for the 21st century?” (Rahman, 2014).
Her narrative, when retold in Canada and the United States, presented her as an example of
the plight of a girl who represented a struggling but hopeful developing nation.
The image of Malala watching TV and fighting with her brothers over the remote control
was never a part of the public discourse that surrounded her, but was a key part of her autobi-
ography, being mentioned several times. Malala’s favorite show was Ugly Betty, and she wrote

the following in her autobiography, I am Malala, about the show and what it means to be
female in Western society: “Although Betty and her friends had certain rights, women in the
United States were still not completely equal; their images were used to sell things. In some
ways, I decided, women are showpieces in American society too” (Yousafzai & Lamb, 2013).
The embeddedness of colonial discourses in Malala’s narrative is illustrated by a state-
ment by United States Senator Dianne Feinstein in the Huffington Post and reprinted in
her newsletter: “The barbaric attack on this brave girl should be condemned by the civi-
lized world” (Feinstein, 2012). Civilized world is key. Malala’s story highlights the emanci-
patory potential of social media for girls around the world (Clinton, 2010; MacKinnon,
2012). Implicit in this logic is the idea that without technology, girls are helpless. Tech-
nology and its power usurp the individual capacity of girls—a logic that is opposite of the
dystopian projection of girls with technology implicit in the discourse surrounding
Amanda Todd. In both cases girls, on their own, are unable to wield and manage the over-
whelming potential of social media and technology that can be used for us vs. them.
Interestingly, Malala’s feelings about herself, her body, changed when she started seeing
herself through the media gaze. While on the one hand Malala understands the complexity
involving the media’s representation of women (as demonstrated in her discussion of Ugly
Betty) she, similar to Amanda, saw her media-self through the male gaze: “I suddenly noticed
all kinds of things about my looks—things that had never much bothered me before. My
skin was too dark. My eyebrows were too thick. One of my eyes were smaller than the other.
And I hated the little moles that dotted my cheek” (Yousafzai & Lamb, 2013).
Through the global reach of her words, images, and body, Malala’s online presenta-
tion of herself spread globally. But her post-attack vision did not align with the vision of
powerful groups who began to see the power of her online identity and influence. She had
been violated verbally online for quite a time before she was shot. She was depicted nega-
tively in anger, and finally action when the bullet pierced her skull on October 9, 2012.
At that point there no longer existed a separation of online and offline space. Malala’s
online and offline selves became one. Her attack became a spark that catalyzed the future
of online/offline communication, online/offline advocacy, and online/offline reality.
Amanda Hess (2014) further documents this private-public collapse. Documenting
her story (she was threatened with beheading and rape), she maintains that “on the inter-
net women are overpowered and devalued” and that instances of cyber violence have
transferred into actual in-person violence. Hess states the following:
“Ignore the barrage of violent threats and harassing messages that confront you online
everyday.” That’s what women are told. But these relentless messages are an assault on
women’s careers, their psychological bandwidth, and their freedom to live online. We
have been thinking about internet harassment all wrong.
Significantly, the stories Hess recounts all involve women who are speaking and writ-
ing publically in cyberspace about gender equality. Of victims of online harassment,
60% are female and within the total harassment cases reported, 76% saw an escalation of
violence and 25% saw offline threats of violence (WHOA, 2013). Another major study
reported that 5% of female internet users reported that online harassment led to offline
“physical danger” (Hess, 2014).

#backlash
“I dont need feminism because

as a young adult women i feel no
oppression or patriarchy in my
society and neither do my
friends/female relatives. We feel
we have MORE power and
opportunities than men do and
thats unfair on THEM.”
– Anonymous
45 notes
Source: We Don’t Need Feminism Blog. Retrieved from http://why-we-dont-

need-feminism.tumblr.com/
In April 2012, just months before both Malala and Amanda’s online identities went
viral, on the Duke University campus in North Carolina, 16 young women enrolled in a
“Women in Public Space” class as part of their women’s studies course. Inspired by feminist
theory and history, they decided to use social media as a way to “fight back against popular
misconceptions surrounding feminist movement” and created an online media campaign to
expose stereotypes surrounding feminism and challenge the belief that feminism is no longer
needed (Beattie et al., 2012). Through interactive social media sites such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Tumblr they launched a campaign that showcased young women holding up
hand-written signs stating “I need feminism because . . .” finished with a personalized reason
why they needed feminism to draw attention to issues at the heart of gender ideology. A year
later the Duke University group had 29 000 Facebook likes and universities across the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Pakistan quickly followed
and started their own campaigns taking over cyberspace (Seidman, 2013).
Young women and girls who attempt to claim an equal amount of space in the public/
private realms experience backlash, which demonstrates why feminism is necessary and how
the collapse between cyber- and offline space is complete. For example, a group of 16-, 17-,

and 18-year-old young women from Altricham Grammar School in Cheshire, England,
created their own Who Needs Feminism Society with school approval. As in the other
campaigns, they made posters showing themselves holding up signs stating why they needed
feminism. Each poster had a deeply personal reason. They found that the more they voiced
their right to openly discuss gender issues, the “more vitriolic the boys’ abuse became”
(Younis, 2013). Jinan writes the following:
We were told that our “militant vaginas” were “as dry as the Sahara desert”, girls who
complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10,
details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos. And others
were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon “get personal.”
The school issued a statement similar to Franks’ contentions: women who experience
harassment need to leave the site. The blame lies solely on the young women for daring to
claim space, any space in the name of equality:
We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends
to their safety on-line. We consider very carefully any society that the school gives its
name to and support to. As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove
words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of
other students at the school. (Younis, 2013)
In the summer of 2014, another online campaign trended and served as a backlash to
the I Need Feminism Because . . . campaign.18 #WomenAgainstFeminism and #idontneedfemi-
nism started on Tumblr but soon took over other SNS including Facebook and Twitter. Stuart
Hall could not have anticipated how his encoding/decoding model could be reconfigured in
the age of social media. The messages produced by the originators of the #idontneedfeminism
meme suggested that certain young girls believed that “feminism” was not necessary anymore
because women are equal. Furthermore, these authors conceived of “feminism” as reinforcing
gender inequalities and continuing to position women as less than men. Some of the most
popular #idontneedfeminism memes showed selfies with girls holding up signs that read:
“#idontneedfeminism because they reject femininity but try to feminize men and demand
equality but ask for special treatment.”
“#idontneedfeminism because it demonizes traditional family constructs, because I do not
blame men for an action I am responsible for, and being whistled at or complimented on the
street is not oppression.
“#idontneedfeminism I am not a target of violence and there is not war against me.”
Although the meme garnered enough hegemonic followers for it to gain traction,19 the
majority of the news coverage and public uproar was a result of oppositional readings. Many
girls, vehemently challenged the original viral message by creating the oppositional hashtag
#idoneedfeminism. These hashtags reminded girls that they wouldn’t have the privilege they have
right now had it not been for the hard work and history of feminism that came before them.

“I do need feminism because who do you think fought for our right to vote? Feminists! Feminism =
equal rights. #idoneedfeminism.”
Several memes pointed out the misconstrued definitions the original producers had of
“feminism,” equating feminism with militancy, anger, and man-hating. They commented
that these girls saw feminism through the lens of dominant discourses and not reality.
Perhaps this was made most visible by the number of male allies who took to the cam-
paign holding signs such as the following:
“I need feminism because men of quality support women’s equality #idoneedfeminism.”
“I need feminism because I know I hold gender biases and I don’t want to #idoneedfeminism.”
Other commentators considered the need for feminism on a global scale.
“I need feminism because 1 woman dies every 7 minutes due to an unsafe and illegal
abortion. Our struggle for equality is far from over. Women’s rights = human rights.
#idoneedfeminism.”
Paralleling some of the intersectional demands of third-wave feminists such as Rebecca

Walker, the oppositional #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag pointed a finger at the privileged
position of the white middle-class population of faces who predominantly tended to colour (or
not colour) the selfies of both the “I do” and I don’t” side of the debate. Some oppositional
tweets highlighted the “compassion gap” (Kristof, 2014) between the white middle-class
privileged youth of America and other oppressed groups. Other oppositional tweets highlighted
the neo-liberal agenda embedded in the stereotype of girl-power feminism that argues if a girl
wants it, it’s a matter of her and her hard work against the world (McRobbie, 2009).20
“#solidarityisforwhitewomen when poc [people of colour] are angry for no reason but white
women are ‘passionate crusaders for justice.’”
“#solidarityisforwhitewomen when convos about the gender pay gap ignore that white women
earn more than black, latino, and Native American men.”
“#solidarityisforwhitewomen when Rihanna is criticized for wearing a carnival outfit bt Lena
Dunham is praised for going topless.”
Another important movement launched in reaction to the #idontneedfeminism
movement meme was the hashtag #notyourasiansidekick, a product of freelance writer
and activist Suey Park. In support of Asian American feminism, Park said she started the
hashtag because, as a Korean-American, she was “tired of the patriarchy in Asian Ameri-
can spaces and sick of the racism in white feminism” (Kim, 2013). Many of her tweets and
the tweets of others under this hashtag listed media stereotypes and personal experiences
of gender or racial prejudice and ignorance.
“Not all #indians are engineers and doctors. And the rest of us don’t answer phones for a
living. #notyourasiansidekick.”
“ ‘Do you know Korean?’ ‘No I speak Japanese.’ ‘they’re pretty similar right?’ THEY ARE
LITERALLY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES! #notyourasiansidekick.”

This case illustrates how feminists, discussions about feminism, and the principles
behind the ideology are being reshaped through social media. The #idontneedfeminism
movement embodies the conclusion of this chapter where we suggest that the reshaping of
the medium—from broadcast media to social media—could be leading to a reshaping of
the relationship among bodies, discourses, and ideologies that, instead of being fixed for
long periods of time and controlled by a limited set of voices, are now being hacked
through a perpetual digitally mediated living and fluid conversation.
#cyborg
In the face of a waning period of social feminism in the 1970s, Donna Haraway, a critic of
power constructs in the natural sciences, penned an ironic paper chastising the Cartesian,
patriarchic, and capitalist dualisms that shape the oppressive structures in which feminism
operates. Rather than suggesting working within the existing systems, Haraway proposed an
ironic linguistic ontological paradigm shift. She said that the way we think about and conceive
of concepts like nature/technology and man/woman shape the way we talk about and treat
them in their material forms. She clearly lays out the relationship—as we have throughout
this chapter—how ideology shapes discourse that then controls bodies in the material world.
The power of her ironic propositions is evident when she says that high-tech culture
(cyberspace before cyberspace existed) could help in erasing, discursively, and thus ideo-
logically, the borders between these dualisms:
High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways. It is not clear who makes
and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind
and what is body in machines that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we know
ourselves in both formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for exam-
ple, the homework economy in the integrated circuit), we find ourselves to be cyborgs,
hybrids, mosaics, chimeras. Biological organisms have become biotic systems, communi-
cations devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal
knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. (Haraway, 1991, p. 179)
We can apply this idea to the real dynamics of social media today. Whereas broadcast
media (a major manufacturer of dominant discourse) is so deeply rooted in a capitalist,
patriarchal, and Cartesian dualistic matrix that its ideology and discourses seem immov-
able and fixed, the fluid and dialogic nature of social media changes these dynamics. If, in
the traditional model, dominant ideology (e.g., capitalism) shaped dominant discourses
(e.g., public/private domains), which in turn orders bodies (e.g., women in private abode
and men in the public arena), in the realm of social media the model is reversed. Without
sounding too utopian in our own proclamations, we must fully acknowledge that major
conglomerates still do control SMSs and mine our conversations, status updates, tweets,
and tags for metadata to sell to advertisers. But unlike broadcast media, the gatekeeper sits
more at the point of the medium and less at the point of the message.

The mass of people (bodies) who have access to social media perpetuate a mass of
voices, chatter, and talk (discourse) that at least sit alongside and at most challenge the
hegemonic voices (dominant discourses) on the same terrain. This mass of voices, such as
those from #solidarityisforwhitewomen and #notyourasiansidekick, flood our eyes and ears
with oppositional and negotiated readings of original texts. Oppositional discourses hold a
mirror up to privilege and control and give rise to a backlash of voices from real bodies of
those who are marginalized and located beyond the focused lens of the majority. This
constant, forceful nattering turns ossified dominant discourse into living discourse and in
that process makes embedded ideology visible and potentially accountable. Whereas the
ideological foundation to the commercial broadcast media system perpetuates discourse,
which affects and shapes bodies, the potential to reverse this pattern lies in social media.
The mass of diverse, marginalized, and real bodies shapes discourse, which in turn exposes
dominant ideological standpoints. This in turn has the potential to come full circle by
even shaping our bodies.
Social media provides a stage for women to write, post, and update ourselves into
being. On social media, we work in and through what we “ought to be”—the structures
that have determined us for so long—to find, figure out, and broadcast “who we really
are,” and in those digital instances the lines between ideology/discourse/text and body
collapse too because with every Instagram image, tweet, and Tumblr post we are
re-presenting and making “women” anew. To quote Hélène Cixous in the Laugh of Medusa,
She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which,
when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispens-
able ruptures and transformations in her history . . . It is by writing, from and toward
women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the
phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved
in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence . . . (1976, pp. 880–881).
In the constantly connected lives of plugged-in girls who are adding to online
discourse and challenging ideological structures, under this new operative system, text is
not static and disconnected. Text is reconnected to producer and to a physically embodied,
living being. The dualism between body and technology is erased and a new accountability
and respect for text is absolute and necessary. Under this paradigm shift, we can see how
the textual and symbolic violence against Amanda is simply violence like any other kind
that occurs in the offline world. We can also understand how the physical violence against
Malala’s body is also symbolically important because it relates not to just one girl but to
the integrated circuit of all the bodies labelled as “female.”
Haraway suggests that cyborgs are a product of the imagination and flesh, a substance in
the material world. She says that women are cyborgs—a combination of the imaginary and the
real. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” (1991, p. 150).
Haraway suggests that women have always been mediated. We have always been part
flesh and part imaginary, part media construction and part lived flesh. She proposes a

fracturing of boundaries and binaries, suggesting there is no distinction between natural
life and artificial machine because discourses that reinforce these binaries also reinforce
the structures that have historically oppressed “women, people of color, nature, workers,
animals . . . all [those] constituted as others” (p. 178).
Social media and the lives of plugged-in girls must be considered in this manner if we
are to attempt to understand what they are really like. We must rethink an ontology that
stitches back together cleaved dichotomies, which control, organize, and oppress. We are
nature and we are technology. We are public and we are private. We are text and we are
body. We are objectified and subjectively embodied.
endnotes
1. In The Aftermath of Feminism, McRobbie (2009) explains how melancholia, illness, and dis-
content have become key identifying elements of contemporary girlhood. Embodying this
melancholy doesn’t challenge norms; rather, we are melancholically accepting of our
place within the heterosexual matrix.
2. The research for this chapter involved in-depth narrative interviews with four cisgender
girls, with a variety of different gender expressions, who were between the ages of 13 and
16 all located on the west coast of Canada. Ethics approval of this research was granted
by Kwantlen Polytechnic University in August of 2014.
3. We are utilizing D. E. Smith’s contention that despite co-writing The German Ideology with
Friedrich Engels, the work is most notably that of Marx. See Smith, 1987.
4. For a thorough discussion of this please see D. E. Smith, 1990.
5. Most significant that they are Lords not Ladies.
6. Interview, Plugged-in Girl One, September 16, 2014.
7. Interview, Plugged-in Girl Two, September 24, 2014.
8. Steeves (2014) notes that both Facebook and Twitter have age restrictions of 13+ but the
restrictions are ignored, as the statistics suggest.
9. Interview, Plugged-in Girl One, September 16, 2014.
10. Published on September 7, 2012 under the YouTube username TheSomebodytoKnow
11. Published on September 7, 2012 under the YouTube username TheSomebodytoKnow
12. Bracelets are also used to hide self-injurious behaviours such as cutting and are sometimes
worn as act as inspirations to not self-harm. Retrieved from https://self-injury.net/self-injurers/
in-their-own-words/how-do-you-hide-your-self-harm/bracelets-help-hide
13. In April 2014, a 35-year-old man living in the Netherlands was arrested and charged with
extortion, internet luring, criminal harassment, and child pornography in connection to
Amanda’s suicide and in dozens of other cases involving the sextortian of underage girls.
See Culbert & Hager, 2014; White, 2014a, 2014b.
14. 303 non self-harmers and 84 self-harmers.

15. Original Broadcast date, November 15, 2013.
16. BlogTV is a live-streaming video website where people, generally youth, express their talents
and ideas.
17. #wearesilent Campaign. April, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Se1MpgdN-0.
18. At the time of writing this chapter, on September 22, 2014, British actress and United
Nations Women’s Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson gave a speech at the UN in New
York to launch her #HeForShe campaign for gender equality. Watson’s plea included the
argument that women should have the right to make choices about their bodies. Her
speech went viral and within a few hours a website was created, “Emma You Are Next,”
threatening to leak nude photos of the feminist/celebrity. This is another example of the
online backlash against girls and young women who speak out against gender inequality.
19. To date, the Women Against Feminism Facebook page has 23 913 likes.
20. McRobbie, 2009.
1. Watch Amanda Todd’s YouTube video and Malala Yousafzai’s New York Times documentary.
What do you think about the way the two women are portrayed in the different styles of
videos: one camgirl-style and one documentary style?
2. We suggest that all women are mediated and have always been mediated. Discuss this
statement. Do you believe it’s true? How do you see media affecting you?
3. Discuss the concept of the “unwilling avatar.” Can you think of a case in the news where
a person has become an unwilling avatar or turned into a meme?
4. Do you have different personae for different social media accounts? What are your differ-
ent personae?
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Chapter 5
Constructing Gender, Regulating
Sexuality
Susanne Luhmann
IntroductIon
Sex always makes the news. As I am writing this, in Alberta in the summer of 2014, a
hotly debated news topic is: Who should teach sex ed in high school and what should it
entail? Earlier in the summer, Edmonton teenager Emily Dawson and her mother success-
fully filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission after Emily’s public
high school, like many others in Edmonton, invited a Christian fundamentalist organiza-
tion to teach sex ed. Although, according to Dawson, the organization’s instructors more
accurately taught “anti–sex ed,” as they emphasized abstinence as the only viable option
for young people. According to Emily, the instructor emphasized the dangers of sexuality,
shamed girls and held them responsible for keeping boys’ supposedly unbridled sexual
urges at bay, refused to talk about LGBTQT2-S issues, and bashed single parent families.
(CBC, 2014).
Learning about Sex—constructing Sexuality

Does this sound familiar to you? Take a moment to reflect upon your own sex education,
both inside and out of school. Where did you learn about sex: at home, at school, from the
media, on the internet? Who taught you, where, and what did you learn? What did that
education feel like: Did it make you feel afraid, nervous, curious, giggly, informed, proud,
empowered, blasé, bored? What counts as “having sex”? What did you learn about differ-
ent genders and sexual orientations? Do you feel your sex ed constructed sex as dangerous
or pleasurable? Did it emphasize risk and violence?
Most likely, your school-based sex education stressed the risks of unplanned pregnancy,
sexually transmitted infections, exploitation, and emotional heartbreak. Did you learn
about pleasure or how to figure out what you do and don’t like sexually? Did you learn
about how to ask for and give (enthusiastic) consent? Did your sex ed class entail relevant
information for students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, intersex, trans,
queer, or two-spirit? Most likely the answer to these latter questions is “No.” Generally
speaking, adults and educators tend to talk to young people primarily in terms of sex as
dangerous, as something to be avoided or at least to be carefully regulated. Educators tend
119
to speak very little about sexual pleasure, fearing that “all hell will break loose” if they do.
This mode of emphasizing sex as hazardous, while downplaying the role of pleasure, is a
central mode of regulating sexuality in the wider culture—with serious consequences,
especially for people who already face sexism, homophobia, and/or transphobia. For
students who don’t identify as heterosexual and/or cisgendered, most school-based sex ed
has nothing to offer beyond feeling alienated. By cisgendered I am referring to everybody
whose sex assignment at birth (female or male) matches their gendered presentation
(feminine or masculine) and their identity (woman or man).
In this chapter I explore how the regulation of sexuality works historically and in the
contemporary moment and how feminist analyses and activisms both intervene in this
regulation, as well as participate in it, at times. This chapter contests the assumption of a
predestined “natural” sexuality; even though feminists and queers (these terms are not
mutually exclusive) have often argued that repression of sexuality is a major problem in
society. Instead I demonstrate how and where sexuality is socially constructed. I turn to
feminist and queer scholarship to argue that policing, regulation, and resistance to/of sex-
uality, are part of the ongoing construction of sexuality. Everybody’s sexuality is regulated
in some form or other. Some modes of sexuality are privileged, socially valued, and
rewarded while others are deemed “unnatural” and “immoral” and are subject to various
forms of punishment. I also explore in detail how the regulation of sexuality works cen-
trally through the policing of gender.
FIrSt thoughtS on Sex and SexuaLIty

(and on gender too)
Before we talk further about sex and sexuality—and feminism—I should perhaps intro-
duce myself: I am a professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the
University of Alberta and have been teaching a course on feminisms and sexualities for
about 15 years. By addressing you the reader directly throughout this chapter, I hope that
we can get a bit of an (imaginary) dialogue going: I hope you will speak back as you are
reading this chapter.
So let’s develop some common language. How do you define sex? Or, alternatively, what
do popular sex surveys mean when they ask “how often do you have sex?” (Note that the
“how often” question really seems to matter to people much more than the question of how
good or enjoyable it was.) When does “having sex” begin: with a thought, a bodily response,
an action? And when is sex “over”: with an orgasm or ejaculation (his or hers)? Reflecting
on this you see pretty quickly that the popular understanding of what “having sex” means is
really quite unimaginative: usually it refers to heterosexual penetrative intercourse, which
supposedly begins with his erection and ends with his ejaculation. (This should make you
wonder: what about her? Is there always a her? Is there always a him?) The widely used
definition of what counts as sex is androcentric,1 organized around cismen, and nearly always
heteronormative. By heteronormative, I refer to both beliefs and institutionalized practices
that make heterosexuality the norm, essential, and “natural”; mostly by marginalizing
120 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
everything else as “abnormal,” as unimportant, inauthentic, or deviant. Heteronormative
understandings of sex, for example, make same-sex sexual practices seem unimaginable.
(Indeed, lesbians often find themselves confronted with the question of “what do lesbians do
in bed?”.) But the heternormative understanding of what counts as sex also makes a whole
range of practices between heterosexuals not seem to be sex either.
Maybe you are old enough to remember former United States President Bill Clinton
infamously declaring publicly that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” in
the aftermath of his affair with Monica Lewinsky? By reducing sex to heterosexual pene-
trative intercourse, many folks can maintain that they are not having sex, thus are “not
cheating,” or are “saving sex” for marriage and are still “virgins,”—even if they engage in
all kinds of sexual activities, including oral and anal sex, and affairs like Clinton’s. (Note:
virginity and “saving sex for marriage” also seem highly prized by a lot of folks, as is hav-
ing only one partner.) So let’s summarize: “Having sex” obviously involves a wider spec-
trum of practices than generally is recognized; some of these practices are physical, while
others are primarily or exclusively mental, like fantasizing or sex talk. Having sex usually
involves one or more people. Let’s keep in mind that having sex with oneself is a common
sexual practice and some people like to have sex with more than one person. Let’s also
remember that the very limited understanding of what “counts” as having sex is already a
mode of regulation.
Why have Sex?

In my class, when we make a list of why people have sex, usually the first response is:
“to make babies.” This response reveals something about the popular imagination and
discourse of sex: obviously reproduction often, but certainly not always, involves
penile/vaginal penetrative sex. (Think of modes of reproduction such as insemination,
adoption, surrogate pregnancies, and so on.) Clearly in sheer quantity, most sex is not
about having babies. Quite the opposite, it’s mostly about avoiding getting pregnant—
at least among straight people of a certain age in North America. However, culturally
(and unfortunately also in evolutionary psychology classes) sex tends to be reduced to
reproduction. Indeed, for many, sex is only legitimate if it is about love and family. Sex
for pleasure, which is arguably a primary reason for having sex, is still somewhat suspect.
Eventually in my class discussions, we create a long list of why people have sex. It
usually includes: for money; against loneliness and boredom; for fun; for love; to create
or express intimacy and connection; as a competition (“scoring”); to feel desired; to
relax; to guilt trip; to make up; for self-esteem; for mental health reasons; for power; as
a form of violence; and so on. So, there is much more at stake in having sex than
reproduction or even love. In the Western world today, the most acceptable and
idealized context for socially approved sex is within a committed, monogamous, ideally
married (heterosexual) adult relationship, as an expression of love, for reproductive
purposes, and in the privacy of one’s home. The most idealized version is certainly not
the most frequent scenario.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 121
Sex vs. Gender
The English language complicates matters because sex always potentially refers to two dif-
ferent things that are often confused: “having sex,” but also as “being” a sex—as in female,
male, intersex, or transsexual. I am writing this with some trepidation because an important
critical contribution of feminist gender studies has been to focus on gender more so than on
sex. Gender studies broadly build on the idea that gender refers to the socially constructed,
historically and culturally specific expectations attached to being female and male. Sex was
long understood to refer to the presumed biological and physical differences between female
and male, such as genitals, anatomy, and chromosomes. (We will see later in this chapter
that these biological differences might not be as clear-cut as commonly assumed.) The ini-
tial idea was that sex is biological, while gender is social. Distinguishing biological sex from
social gender meant, for example, to recognize that many (but not all) women have the
ability to get pregnant and give birth, which is biological and related to their sex.
However, the ideas that women by and large are the primary caregivers of children,
both at home and professionally, and are considered more nurturing, are entirely social
and related to their gender. Who carries a pregnancy and gives birth is biological and one
marker of sex; who nurtures and raises the kids and is considered more suited to this com-
plex task is socially constructed and relates to socially defined genders. This means that
different cultures might construct very different parenting roles. One example is the par-
enting practices of the Aka Pygmy people, a traditionally nomadic people who live in
both the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo. Among them, moth-
ers and fathers share parenting nearly equally, including men suckling the infants
(Hewlett, 1991; Moorhead, 2005).
You probably can already see why the insight that gender is socially constructed has
appealed to feminists for a very long time. The possibility that vastly unequal shares of
work and social and political status could be re-distributed among men and women is
repeatedly proven by this and many other examples. Feminists have thus long argued
against biological determinism, which is the idea that a woman’s biology, her sex, prede-
termines her behaviour, temperament, abilities and justifies a second-class social status.
Gender Differences in Cultural Context

The distinction of sex from gender was informed by early 20th century anthropological
field research that found that the organization of gender differs drastically across different
cultures. Although nearly all societies have some form of gender differentiation, how gen-
der is organized and what count as “natural” traits of a gender varies greatly. The work of
United States anthropologist Margaret Mead was ground-breaking in this regard. Mead
(1935/1963) described diverse patterns of gendered behaviour she observed during her
field research in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. Among the Arapesh she found
both women and men to be gentle, sensitive, and cooperative—attributes frequently asso-
ciated with femininity in the West. Among the Mundugumor (now Biwat), both women
and men were violent, selfish, and aggressive, behaviour often associated with masculinity
in the West. Mead found Tchambuli (now Chambri) women and men had distinct tem-
peraments, but roles were reversed: women were dominant and managerial and men were
emotionally dependent and rarely in charge.
Although some of Mead’s findings and descriptions have been modified and her refer-
ence to “primitive societies” speaks to a problematic colonial mindset, cross-cultural and
cross-historical research continues to be an important source of knowledge for under-
standing how gender (and sexuality) is constructed and experienced very differently in
specific historical and cultural contexts.
Studying gender cross-culturally

Cross-cultural gender studies research prompts critical reflection upon the specific con-
structions of gender within a person’s own culture, including questioning the limits of the
categories “woman” and “man” as the two and only two genders that structure Western
Eurocentric thinking. Why accept these as given and natural when other cultures, else-
where and within North America, acknowledge more variation, sometimes three or four
genders? Multiple gender systems have been documented as existing in 110 to 150 Native
American societies prior to colonization (Nanda, 2014) and some of this history allowed
Indigenous lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans folks to re-claim the term “two-spirit.” Gender
anthropologist Sabine Lang (1990/1998) mapped four genders: woman, man, woman-
man, and man-woman. A woman-man would have been identified as male at birth but
later took up the culturally defined role of a woman; a man-woman was assigned female at
birth and, usually during adolescence, felt inclined to take up the social role defined for
men.2 Indigenous people prior to colonization are not the only cultures who acknowl-
edged gender variance.3 As part of the violent legacy of settler colonialism these tradi-
tions were largely eradicated or forced underground, as missionaries and other settlers
took the less rigid gender system of many Indigenous societies as indication of their alleg-
edly more “primitive” and less evolved state. Or, as Andrea Smith argues quite forcefully,
colonial domination sought to instil a gender-binary system, often by way of sexual vio-
lence, since it remains foundational to heteropatriarchy that, in turn, “is the logic that
makes hierarchy seem natural” (2011, p. 59). More broadly speaking, derogatory sexual-
ized depictions of Indigenous peoples—ranging from images of sexual licentiousness to
sexual brutality—play a central role in settler colonialism. They serve, as Joanne Nagle
has shown, to justify “military, political, and economic policies, and ultimately, these
images provided a rational for seizing native resources”—and for other programs aimed at
the “civilisation and assimilation” of Indigenous peoples (2000, p. 122). In the face of
this long repression, assimilation, and often problematic naming and categorization by
Western anthropologists, some queer Indigenous people began to reclaim a range of
culturally specific gender and sexual identities in the 1990s. Specifically the identity of
“two-spirit” emerged to describe non-normative sexual, gender, and other social roles
within many Indigenous societies (Thomas & Jacobs, 1999). By looking cross-culturally,
we begin to get a glimpse of sexuality as not just a “private issue.” Instead what counts as
“normal” or “civilized” sexuality plays a central role in historical and contemporary modes
of oppression and in the constructions of national and racial self and Other.
In the next section, we question mainstream Canadian culture’s investment in a devel-
opmental model that neatly lines up birth sex with gender identity and sexual desire. The
foundational (albeit wrong) assumptions of this model are that every child is born male or
female, will develop a gender identity coherent with their sex, ideally will desire a person of
the other gender, and will come to understand themselves as heterosexual. Judith Butler
(1990) critically calls this “the heterosexual matrix”: a dominant and coercive meaning
making system that assumes, even demands, a coherence between sex, gender, and desire/
sexuality. Butler turns this model on its head to argue that in order to maintain the vision
of a supposedly “natural” reproductive heterosexuality, gender identity is both enforced and
enacted, which retrospectively serves to make sex assignment seem natural and biological.
the coherence of Sex, gender, and Sexuality

As Heterosexual Matrix
Of course, you already know that this “coherence” of sex, gender, and desire may be
frequent, but it certainly is not the only form that gender and sexual attraction take. Just
because a majority of people in Canada today may identify as heterosexual—understanding
themselves to be attracted to another sex than the one they identify with—does not make
heterosexuality more “normal” or “natural” than other sexual identities. Certainly you are
aware of human sexual variation beyond heterosexual, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
asexual, to name a few. Indeed, same-sex sexual behaviour is frequently found not only
within human but also among nonhuman animals (Roughgarden, 2004). The question of
how societies respond to human sexual variation beyond heterosexuality is social—not
biological—and varies greatly across history and cultures.
Today social anxiety still surrounds human sexual variation. Witness the ongoing
debates about gay marriage and the outlandish arguments of gay marriage opponents,
including the idea that the legalization of same-sex marriage will “destroy the family” and
end civilization as we know it. Ten years into same-sex marriage in Canada, many lesbians
and gays are getting married, having children, and are divorcing too, “just like heterosexuals.”
And the institution of “the family” seems alive and well, or, at least as well as it had been for
decades before gay marriage became legal.
Binary gender constructions

Beyond noting variation in sexual attraction and practices, we certainly also see lots of
variation in gender. Indeed, when it comes to behaviour, skills, temperaments, and
identifications, the binaries of feminine and masculine and women and men are not
exhaustive. Think of masculine women and soft or more feminine men. Consider the
enormous physical strength and muscularity of many female athletes or the grace of male
dancers. In mainstream Canadian culture, we use rather blunt categories to distinguish
girls from boys and women from men. If you are familiar with queer culture, you may be
familiar with a much more nuanced and elaborate gender and sexual identity vocabulary
that includes butch lesbian, faerie, femme dyke, tomboi, lipstick lesbian, bear, butch
bottom, femme top, stone femme—each term denoting more finely tuned articulations of
gender identity, sexual preferences, and erotic attraction.
Based upon the problematic reduction of human variation to only two sexes, our culture
largely insists on recognizing only two binary genders. This has grave consequences for any-
body who does not fit this neat binary system—boys who don’t measure up to the “tough-
ness” required to pass as “male” and girls who are regarded as “too” assertive and strong. Girls
and boys and women and men who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with their gender face
near daily homophobic name calling (“sissy,” “pussy,” “dyke,” “lesbian”) and all too often,
physical violence, not only from their peers but also, too frequently, from their own families.
It is worth noting that gender non-conformity is policed by way of sexual shaming.
Gender non-conforming and queer youth face immense risks. They constitute as
much as 25 to 40% of all homeless youth (Abramovich, 2012). Gender non-conforming
youth and adults attempt suicide in much higher numbers than any other population—
41% as compared to 4.6% of the overall United States population and 10 to 20% among
lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults (Grant et al., 2011). Life is dangerous for gender non-
conforming people and even more so if the person is young, not white, Indigenous, has
little education, and/or is poor.
Part of the problem is the misguided assumption of the “natural” coherence of sex and
gender, namely that the sex assignment at birth or in utero can correctly predict the gen-
der identity and behaviour of kids as they grow up. Privileging heterosexual sexual orien-
tation and condoning homophobia doesn’t make things better. The boy who plays with
dolls is “feared” to be gay; the girl who refuses to wear dresses and is tough is “feared” to be
lesbian. As long as gayness and lesbianism are considered undesirable in children and
adults, or are merely “tolerated,” rather than celebrated and welcomed as part of human
sexual variation, gender non-conforming kids are gravely at risk not only for social pres-
sures to “conform,” but also for physical violence. An alternative view would be to see
gender on a much wider spectrum beyond masculine and feminine, boy and girl, man and
woman, beyond a binary construction of supposedly oppositional differences. There is no
knowing what range of gender expression we might see if children and adults alike were
encouraged to express their gender in any way they want.
The policing of gender-conforming behaviour is not just problematic for trans folk,
but for nearly everybody. Think of the female politician or businesswoman who gets called
aggressive and power hungry for behaviour that is acceptable in men. Consider the boy
who is not allowed to cry or is shamed for wanting to take ballet rather than play hockey.
While those of us who are most gender conforming do reap some benefits, such as social
acceptance, to do gender normatively requires a lot of “gender work.” Gender work could
include dieting and grooming regimes and other exhausting activities involved in
producing, meeting, and maintaining the standards set for conventional femininity and
masculinity. So most of us “fail” in some way at doing gender, as long as we still “pass,” we
are much safer than those who don’t. (Although of course, another argument is that
inhabiting conventional femininity poses other dangers.) But given the work involved in
getting gender “right,” the often violent efforts at gender patrolling, and the increasing
number of children, some as young as three and four years old, who actively challenge
their assigned gender, we should question whether the assignment of sex at birth or in
utero is a reliable indicator of the future gender identity of the child. Still, the guiding
assumption is that the presence or absence of a penis in utero indicates the sex of the
embryo and, in turn, the future gender of the child and the eventual adult. Think of pink
and blue cribs, names, outfits, nursery colours, baby toys, baby showers, and pronouncements
about what the child will be when they grow up. Indeed, shopping for any baby or kids’
item that is not gender colour-coded has become close to impossible. The intense need to
gender children from a young age should make us question how natural the division into
female and male really is. If it were a purely biological division, as many still claim, why
spend so much effort on reinforcing it through symbols, language, and social structure and
demanding that children and adults get it right? Beyond the intense gendering to which
children and adults are exposed, even from before birth, sex assignment in utero or at
birth is not always correct or successful in forecasting the gender identity a person might
develop over the life course.
We might want to ask why human gender variation beyond girl/boy or woman/man is
such a site of anxiety. What is at stake when we accept that there are more than two
genders, that a person’s gender identity might not neatly match their genitals and
chromosomes, that over the life-course an individual’s gender identity may change? Besides
challenging some fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies and
identities, accepting more than two genders and some fluidity in gender identities centrally
challenges the “naturalness” of heterosexuality.
A few years ago, after asking my class to imagine a world in which gender identities
would not exist or would be truly fluid and changeable, a rather panicky-sounding (male)
student interjected, “I would not know who to be attracted to!” This seems a telling
response that affirms Judith Butler’s (1990) more analytical claim that the construction
and policing of binary genders, whether done violently or in seemingly more benign modes,
is ultimately about solidifying and securing the presumed “naturalness” of heterosexuality.
a (BrIeF) hIStory oF SexuaLIty

Students are sometimes surprised when I assert that sexuality has a history. Their surprise is
grounded in their acceptance of a natural reproductive heterosexuality. Indeed, if sexuality
is biological and “natural,” as many assume, how can it have a history? History usually
suggests some kind of change over time—think about rapid technological changes and how
technology has profoundly affected our modes of transportation and communication, from
the invention of the steam engine to space rockets. Think about the first telegraphic
message sent in 1844, and compare this to emailing, texting, and tweeting today.
Biological matters on the other hand, unless we take the long view of evolution, do
not seem to change that much. Sexuality certainly has a biological, or at least physiologi-
cal, component. Think, for example, of the lubrication of the vagina, the enlargement of
the clitoris and penis during arousal; the release of oxytocin during orgasm; or female and
male ejaculation. These physiological aspects are not unrelated to social and discursive
constructions of sexuality. What counts as sexual and as erotic, as appropriate or inappro-
priate sexual feelings and behaviour, is certainly socially defined—and thus varies drasti-
cally across various historical (and cultural) contexts. Your own family’s social expectations
regarding appropriate sexual behaviour (who, when, with whom, where, at what age, in
what kind of context, what kinds of practices) have changed significantly from your grand-
parents, to your parents, to you. If in the 1950s oral sex was scandalous, and one step away
from being a Communist, today it might be regarded as good sexual etiquette—or not as
sex at all. In the late 19th to early 20th century, women who showed their ankles were
considered indecent. Today short skirts and hot pants seem de rigueur for many young
women. On the other hand, until quite recently nude baby pictures were considered cute
and were widely shared. Now in the context of rising anxieties around sexual abuse and
child pornography, these no longer seem innocent. Sexual mores not only change across
time, they are always profoundly gendered, meaning they differ for women and men. And
sexual mores do gender: they are a mode by which gender is produced and maintained.
Cross-historical and cross-cultural comparisons allow us to see variations in how sex-
uality is lived and experienced. For example, many take it to be a biological “fact”—and
evidence of a “natural sexual difference”—that men desire sex frequently and with various
partners. Women are often described as desiring intimacy, closeness, connection, and
friendship. Indeed, socio-biology claims that women’s monogamy and men’s promiscuity
are natural imperatives, all allegedly driven by different strategies required for securing the
survival of their respective genetic material. Assuming that the survival of genetic mate-
rial is what drives humans—and thus their sexual behaviour—the argument is that men
seek “to spread their seed,” while women seek a single male protector around for their
offspring. Note that sexual behaviour in this explanation is once again directly tied to
reproduction. All the other motivations for sex seem to fall by the wayside. But also note
how sexuality is profoundly linked to reproducing gender.
Interestingly enough, ideas about women’s and men’s “nature” were distinctly differ-
ent in earlier centuries. The European Renaissance (1440–1680), for example, prized
friendship as the most valued relationship. Only men were deemed mentally equipped for
such important and demanding connections. Women, understood to be intellectually
inferior to men, were deemed incapable of such an evolved relationship form. Instead
women were seen as driven by insatiable sexual appetites. Marriage and motherhood were
deemed appropriate ways for controlling these inclinations. And men were seen as being
in need of protection from being lured by women’s sexual urges (Fone, 2000). Even though
we continue to see resonances of the contemporary image of the female seductress or the
sexually controlling woman, these ideas differ radically today. All of these changing con-
structions are deeply shot through with gendered expectations.
One-Sex and Two-Sex Model
Another important and perhaps even more surprising difference to contemporary views
can be found in the medieval period. According to Thomas Laqueur (1990), early medical
knowledge insisted that male and female genitalia were practically the same. Laqueur calls
this the “one-sex model,” as compared to our “two-sex model.” Today medical textbooks
present entirely different female and male bodies. My students are incredulous as to how
early anatomists could have seen similarities. But perhaps they were onto something.
According to Laqueur, women’s genitals were understood as corresponding with male
genitalia, only less developed. Thus the vagina was described as an inverted penis folded
up inside the body, while men’s had dropped down. The clitoris was presumed to be a
shrunken, external penis. The notion that women were really underdeveloped males cor-
responded with women’s inferior social status, confirmed somatically by their supposedly
immature genitalia. Women, like young boys, were seen as lacking sufficient heat to make
the genitals drop down. Did the early anatomists deliberately misinterpret what they saw
in dissections in order to maintain the belief of women’s inferiority? The one-sex view was
the dominant model for understanding sexual difference for hundreds of years. It was not
until the discoveries of Gabriel Fallopius (1523–1562), after whom the fallopian tubes are
named, that this model was seriously challenged.
The insistence on absolute sexual difference and absolutely distinct sexes, which may
be taken as a biological “truth” grounding gender difference and all it stands for (“boys
will be boys”), is not quite scientifically accurate either. Distinct genitals (penis and
vagina/clitoris) are seen as indication and proof of dimorphism.4 How does the “truth” of
natural absolute sex and gender difference shift when we understand that these different
external genitals develop from the same tissue? The insistence on the absolutely dimor-
phic body is foundational to naturalizing heterosexuality. Here penis and vagina are con-
structed in a “key-lock analogy” (Valverde, 1985), according to which the key (penis) is
presumed to be a “natural” fit for the lock (vagina). This is a problematic construction in
many different ways, not least because it ignores the role of the clitoris for sexual pleasure.
So we also have to consider, what difference does it make to understand the clitoris, as
opposed to the vagina, as the penis equivalent?
the PerILouS route oF SexuaL dIFFerentIatIon

For the first two or two-and-a-half months after fertilization of the human egg cell, embryos
look exactly the same. This is called the state of sexual undifferentiation, meaning all of us
start out the same and the tissue from which the external genitals later develop are the same.
They initially look closer to what eventually leads to the sex assignment as female: two folds
(inner and outer) with a small protuberance in the middle. All human fetuses have the
potential for this tissue to develop either into a clitoris, vagina, and vulva; penis, urethra,
and scrotum; or into something in between. What makes the difference is the level of
exposure to hormones, more specifically androgens and testosterone. A specific gene, usually
located on the Y chromosome, activates the development of the undifferentiated gonads
into testes. If this gene is missing, the gonads develop into ovaries. If the fetus has testes, if
the testes produce a certain level of testosterone, and if the tissue responds to the testosterone,
the outer two folds will swell and fuse to grow into the scrotum. The protuberance in the
middle grows to form the penis, with the inner folds fusing around the penis to form the
penile urethra. Without exposure to certain levels of testosterone the tissue develops into
clitoris, vagina, and vulva. So genital development is shaped both by chromosomal makeup
(XX or XY combinations in the fertilized egg cell) and the exposure to in utero hormones.
Needless to say, there are a lot of “ifs” involved, as hormone levels vary. Thus there
are instances in which despite an XY chromosome makeup, the tissue does not develop
into a penis or does not develop in ways that are seen as sufficient for what is considered
“normal” penis size—meaning the tissue turns into what can variously be identified as a
micro-penis or a large clitoris.
There is some evidence that exposure to high levels of chemicals or artificial hormones
during pregnancy may affect birth outcomes, resulting in higher than statistically expected
ratios of babies born with a clitoris and a vagina, assigned as girls (Lean, 2006; McDonald
et al., 2014). Exposure to environmental pollutants can affect genital development. How-
ever, to determine gender identity based upon visual impressions of the genitals is always
problematic, since not everybody’s genitals match their gendered self-understanding.
Given that female and male genitals develop from the same tissue and genital struc-
ture, perhaps the early anatomists and their one-sex body model were not so wrong after all.
Seeing women as underdeveloped males, as they did, and using this to justify women’s
social inferiority is certainly not something to embrace today; however, the later move to
the two-sex model did not alleviate women’s social inferiority and secondary status. From
then on, women’s alleged “absolute” difference to men and male bodies became justifica-
tion for inequality. But the notion of the “absolute” difference of women and men does not
hold at the level of genital structures. As we have seen, bodies are not as dimorphic as many
believe, thus confirming once more that gender equality or inequality is not a biological but
a social issue. Throughout history, social and discursive constructions of male and female
bodies have been mobilized to justify social status differences between women and men.
Intersex and human Variation

Somatic dimorphism, the idea of two and only two sexes, is a social ideal rather than a bio-
logical reality. It is biologically more accurate to think of a range of bodies and somatic differ-
ences. Not all babies are born with clearly identifiable female or male external genitalia.
Approximately one of about 1500 to 2000 babies (or 0.15 to 0.2%) have ambiguous or atypi-
cal genitalia at birth, and are then identified as intersex (Intersex Society of North America,
2008a). It’s a small number. But in addition to visibly ambiguous birth genitalia, a wide range
of other sex anatomical variations exist. Conte and Grumback (1989) list more than 25 dif-
ferent ones, not all of which are discovered at birth. Some only become noticeable later in
life, others never. The most frequent is chromosomal make-up other than XX or XY (variations
such as XXY, XO, XYY, XXYY, and XX males or XXX females). Altogether, based upon their
extensive survey of the medical literature from 1955 to 1998, Blackless et al. (2000) note that
up to 2% of the population deviate from the “ideal” female or male. This number is still small,
but not insignificant, especially when we compare it to some other anatomical variations. For
example, 2% of the world’s population has green eyes or red hair. While red-haired or green-
eyed humans are a minority globally, we see these as “normal” human variations rather than
as pathologies in need of fixing. So why is intersex considered a “condition”?
In fact which sex anatomical variations are considered “intersex” is up for debate, as
people, even in the medical community, disagree.5 The disagreement is rooted in the fact
that what counts as “intersex” and what counts as “female” or “male” is humanly defined.
These are socially constructed categories, based upon an ancient Platonic ideal “that for
each sex there is a single, universally correct developmental pathway and outcome”
(Blackless et al., 2000, p. 151).
By deviating from the imagined ideal female and male developmental pathway, inter-
sex challenges this Platonic ideal. Understood as a “condition” in need of “medical inter-
vention,” an intersex “diagnosis” also confirms the ideal of absolute difference. Alice
Dreger (1995) has shown that since the late Victorian period, medical professionals have
been hard at work to keep women and men distinct and to settle once and for all every-
body’s “true sex.” This also means an attempt at settling, once and for all, the question of
what makes a person female or male. Intersex interrupts the desire to settle these ques-
tions. How can we know women’s place in society when we don’t even know what makes
one a woman? And how does one distinguish “normal” (aka heterosexual) relations from
same-sex relations, if one cannot clearly distinguish woman from man? These are espe-
cially pertinent issues at a time when feminists as well as lesbians and gays (not mutually
exclusive) are challenging their respective secondary social status. Ambiguous genitalia
throw social certainties into relief and thus contest the social order. The social epitome of
the two-sex body requires the assimilation of every body into this ideal, through whatever
surgical or medical interventions are deemed necessary.
In the 21st century, visibly ambiguous genitalia are still seen as pathological and in
need of “fixing.” The “fix it” approach is based on the assumption that both the parents
and the child will not be able to cope with genitalia that don’t match the ideal. While
ambiguous genitalia are not medical problems in most cases, they are considered a
“psychosocial emergency” by the medical profession, potentially leading to depression,
suicide, and possibly “homosexuality.” (Note here that same-sex sexuality is seen as a
problem.) The common practice since the 1950s has been early medical intervention:
genital surgery and hormone treatment. The decision on what genitalia to create has been
based on ideal penis size and heterosexuality: to be assigned male, the penis at birth must
be larger than 1 cm; smaller size leads to female assignment. A clitoris regarded as too large
may be surgically altered, again, to fit the female ideal, often with negative consequences
for the experience of sexual pleasure later in life not to mention immediate surgical trauma
to the infant. Since constructing a sizeable penis is more difficult, “normalizing” surgery
often involves creating “female” genitalia (Fausto-Sterling, 2000).
A major problem is that these assignments are not always correct, grounded as they
are in “genital ideals” and a presumed heterosexuality, leading to enormous pain and suf-
fering for those who find themselves at odds between their assignment sex and their own
gender identity. Moreover, genital surgery can lead to loss of genital sensitivity and seri-
ously impede the ability to experience sexual pleasure. Since the 1990s, intersex activists
have lobbied fiercely against current treatment protocols, especially against surgical inter-
vention during infancy. Arguing that ambiguous birth genitalia constitute a crisis primar-
ily for the parents and not, at least initially, for the child, the Intersex Society of America
(ISSA) offers a distinctly different treatment protocol. Citing the baby’s inability to grant
surgical consent, ISSA’s protocol forgoes irreversible genital cosmetic surgery during
infancy in favour of assigning a social gender initially, while leaving any later medical
intervention to the purview of the intersex person.
Mainstream treatment protocols tell us something about the ways in which sex differ-
ence is surgically manufactured in cases when genitals do not fit an imaginary ideal and
when somatic differences are not as clear as our culture presumes them to be. Intersex
understood as a form of human variation, on the other hand, challenges the deeply rooted
belief in absolute dimorphism and absolute differences between female and male anatomy.6
The Invention of Heterosexuality

Gender identity is often confused with sexual identity. Perhaps it helps to remember
that gender identity is about who I go to bed as (woman, man, gender queer), while the
sexual identity (lesbian, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual) is defined by whom I go to bed
with. To organize sexuality in distinct identity groups is a 20th century, Western
approach. Historian Jonathan Katz (1990) shows that the terms “heterosexuality” and
“homosexuality” were first coined in the late 19th century. Originally both terms named
sexual deviance. Heterosexuality referred to the excessive attraction to the other sex or
sexual relations outside of reproduction (Katz, 1990). Siobhan Somerville (1994) shows
how the invention and determination of “the homosexual body” as distinct from hetero-
sexuality borrows heavily from dominant racial ideologies and scientific racism at the
time. Late 19th century racism assumed somatic differences between different races and
between different sexualities, promoting the idea that both miscegenation (interracial
relations) and same-sex relations were inherent and deviant sexual orientations. Only
in the 20th century did heterosexuality become the term used to describe what is now
considered “normal” sex: sex between adults with different sex assignments.
Much of contemporary sexuality studies is informed by Michel Foucault’s (1976/1978)
The History of Sexuality. He describes the process through which married adults having sex
in the privacy of their bedroom became established as the only “normal” form of sexuality.
This happened by way of intense social scrutiny and moral regulation of all other sexual
practices, especially the sexuality of children, sex in public, sex between adults of the same
sex, and masturbation (which in the Victorian era at least was considered cause for medi-
cal concern). Foucault also suggests that this structuring of “normal” and “deviant” sexual
relations is central to the emergence of the middle class. The middle class defines itself
against the presumed sexual excesses of the upper class as well as against the supposed
sexual disorders of the working class, and against what was considered the uncivilized,
licentious sexual abandon of non-white and non-Western people.
charting human Sexual diversity

Across cultures, we find immense differences in the ways in which sexuality is organized
and what is labelled as “normal.” Evelyn Blackwood (2000) offers a useful distinction
between two versions of social constructionism: weak and strong. The “weak” social con-
structionist view assumes the existence of “natural desires” that are then shaped and con-
strained by societies according to specific social and cultural values and beliefs. This
construction might entail the learning of specific gendered scripts in a given historical
and cultural context. The strong social constructionist view assumes a very general and
somewhat vague “sexual potential” that societies then construct into what counts as sex-
ual desires, behaviours, and meanings. The main difference between these two social con-
structionist positions is that the weak view presumes a pre-existing sexuality, which is
culturally shaped and regulated. The strong social constructionist view proposes that what
counts as sexual is socially determined by a wide variety of factors such as religious ideolo-
gies, ethnicity, class, gender, family, everyday life, and material and social conditions.
Thinking about sexuality as socially and discursively constructed is challenging, in
part, because to many of us, our sexual attractions, desires, pleasures, distastes, and sexual
identities feel deeply rooted inside ourselves, maybe even like something that we can’t help
but feel and want. Just because something is deeply felt as authentic doesn’t mean that it is
not socially constructed. To say something is socially constructed does not mean that
it is trivial, easily changed, or not real.
Looking at sexuality cross-culturally we see immediately that the present dominant
Western way of thinking and organizing sexuality in terms of identities based upon “sexual
orientation” is far from universal. Katz’s and Foucault’s work cited earlier charted the histori-
cal process by which different sexual “types” emerged in the process of inventing hetero- and
homosexuality. So, currently in the West, somebody who identifies as a woman and is attracted
to other women is considered a lesbian. A woman who is attracted to both women and men is
considered bisexual, a woman attracted to men is considered heterosexual. Sounds reason-
able, yes? Except of course, that things tend to be more complicated than this categorical
organizing proposes. Obviously, lesbians are not attracted to all women, just as heterosexual
women are not attracted to all men; heterosexually identified women might find themselves
attracted to women too, might have erotic fantasies about women, just as lesbians might fall
in love with a specific man. And bisexual women at any given moment might be either in a
heterosexual or lesbian relationship or the gender of their partner might not be relevant. All
of this suggests that the notion of stable “sexual types” or inherent sexual identities might not
be as stable as is often presumed. How people identify sexually in public or to themselves does
not always capture the complexities of their attractions, desires, and behaviours.
constructing Sexuality cross-culturally
Looking cross-culturally, Blackwood’s (2000) anthropological survey of women’s sexualities
demonstrates that various “sociocultural factors . . . produce sexual beliefs and practices”
([emphasis added] p. 224), including but not limited to: gender, religion, age, marriage, and
family systems. Blackwood offers examples of socially sanctioned same-sex practices and
relationships between girls and women in various non-Western cultural contexts. These
range from intimate erotic and educational friendships between girls in rural Lesotho, a
small country surrounded by South Africa, to erotic ritual practices during initiation into
adult womanhood among Australian Aborigines prior to colonization, as well as adolescent
sex play among the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. Each of these are
culturally distinct and complex formations of sexuality; some may be surprising and
challenging to current Western assumptions about sexuality, especially to the presumption
of stable sexual identities and concerns about the sexuality of young people.
The so-called “mummy-baby” relations among younger and older girls in Lesotho are a
socially sanctioned context for girls to experience their first romantic and sexual encounters
with each other. They precede heterosexual marriage and are the site of a practical sex edu-
cation. According to Blackwood, mummy-baby relations are the result of a cultural negotia-
tion between Indigenous pro-sex views that value women’s sexual agency, and the Roman
Catholic instance on girls’ virginity. They emerge out of older Indigenous traditions, such as
both married women and men having sex with people other than their spouses and intense,
long-lasting affective partnerships between women alongside heterosexual marriage.
Other examples of quite “practical” sex education could be found among Australian
Aboriginal women prior to colonization when adult women taught girls about sexuality by
way of homoerotic dances and movements during erotic initiation rituals. The !Kung of
Southern Africa constructed adolescence as a phase of sexual experimentation with both
same-sex and other-sex partners, as a time of exploration and learning about sexual feel-
ings and desires, prior to heterosexual marriage.
These brief examples entail very different constructions of sexuality, shaped by factors
such as age, gender ideologies, religion, marriage, and family. My students are frequently
surprised by the centrality of women’s sexual agency in these examples and by the sex-
positive views concerning young people in these cultures. This surprise arises from the
ethnocentric assumption that women and girls in the West are the most “liberated”; but
also, from students’ experiences with (anti-sex) education in high school, which does not
sanction sexual experimentation.
The most challenging example Blackwood raises concerns the Sambia people of
Papua New Guinea for whom femininity is something inherent and stable with which girls
are born, while masculinity and manhood must be acquired. Masculinity is understood as
unstable and in constant threat of being overtaken by women, who are perceived as domi-
nant. Masculinity is acquired through rituals that involve ingesting adult men’s semen.
My students respond with shock when they learn about this ritual production of
masculinity. For the Sambia this is a necessary practice for becoming a man and for
accomplishing and maintaining masculinity. In a Western cultural context, these practices
are understood as pedophilia and sexual abuse. We usually have very lively discussions
around this practice, because it raises complex questions about how different cultures
construct what counts as sexual. These examples also raise interesting questions about
how our understanding and assumptions about gender shape constructions of sexuality in
Canada today.
Blackwood’s second example of gender ideologies shaping sexuality are the Chinese
marriage resisters of the 19th century. Young women working in the silk factories achieved
economic independence that allowed them to postpone heterosexual marriage indefi-
nitely. Instead of marrying men, they lived in sisterhoods with other women. They vowed
publicly to remain unwed and to not engage in sex with men. They lived together and
formed sexual relationships with each other, including “ménage à trois” (Sankar cited in
Blackwood, 2000, p. 279). The Chinese marriage resisters were responding to gender ide-
ologies in ways that shaped their sexual practices. Chinese men at the time were granted
a wider range of sexual options, including male lovers. Women’s sexuality was subordi-
nated to men’s desires. This inequality also produced the kind of resistance that sisterhood
represented. (Sisterhoods were banned after the victory of the Red Army in 1949.)
Another example given by Blackwood are the tombois in West Sumatra, who are
physically female but see themselves as men attracted to normatively feminine women.
Tombois behave in the manner of the men in West Sumatra culture. They smoke, play
cards, drive motorcycles, and model themselves in all aspects in terms of the construc-
tions of masculinity. They love feminine women; in couples tombois and their lovers refer
to each other as mami and papi. The tomboi identity is a blended sexual and gendered
construction that is grounded in a gender ideology that sees women and men as inher-
ently different. It is also a construction grounded in a matrilineal Muslim culture, mean-
ing that people trace their family line through the mother rather than the father. While
men in this cultural context enjoy different rights and privileges, they are not considered
superior. Instead, women are traditionally the leaders and reproducers. Within a pretty
strict two-gender order, tomboi as an appropriation of the masculine gender is the only
alternative for girls who do not conform to the standards of conventional femininity.
Being called tombois by others becomes an explanation for their own behaviour. Tomboi
is a blended gendered and sexual identity. Gendered behaviour preferences come to deter-
mine sexual identity.
The point of these cross-cultural examples is not to idealize “non-Western” sexualities
and genders as somehow “freer,” “more authentic,” or unfettered by social regulation.
Rather, the point is to show that while all cultures construct—and regulate—sexuality
and gender, they do it uniquely. The categorization used in the West today to organize
sexuality, namely by discrete sexual categories (hetero-, bi-, and homosexuality) does not
hold in other cultural contexts. Indeed in the examples above, same-sex and different-sex
relations exist in parallel. Same-sex sexual practice in adolescence does not preclude
heterosexual relations in adulthood—in some cultures it is seen as making them possible.
In some contexts same-sex sexual practices continue alongside heterosexual marriage.
Sexual monogamy is not a universal cultural value; neither is limiting sex to reproduction.
Cross-cultural comparative studies show a range of human sexual diversity.
Local concepts of sexuality, however, are changing with globalization. Prior to the
internationalization of lesbian and gay discourses, for example, tombois did not easily
translate into any Western category. They seem neither clearly lesbian, butch, transgen-
der, woman, nor man. Now they are increasingly seen as only a sexual orientation. This
changing understanding of tomboi in West Sumatra today is an example of how local,
national, and transnational discourses shape the construction of sexuality, constructions
that certainly are shifting over time and across different contexts.
the Strong Social constructionist View

Gender ideologies, religion, tradition, economics, age, and other factors shape how sexu-
ality is constructed, lived, understood, and responded to in specific cultural and historical
contexts. The strong social constructionist view goes beyond this by suggesting that the
very definition of what counts as sexual is socially defined. These social definitions are
pretty powerful—they shape how we experience ourselves, our bodies, our desires, and
others. They shape what we consider appropriate or unacceptable and how we construct
our identities and that of others. That is not to say that we are “brain washed” and experi-
ence and believe all the same things. Social definitions, or discourses, of sex give us a
language through which we make sense of what we feel, see, and experience. That can
also entail experiencing and defining oneself against dominant ways of thinking about sex
and gender. Think about the tombois, for example. They certainly define themselves in
opposition to the constructions of conventional femininity in their cultural context.
However, they do so by appropriating and modifying dominant constructions of masculin-
ity for themselves. We can also see that social constructions of gender and sexuality affect
what is seen as sexual and what is seen as violent. Semen ingestion as a means to acquire
and stabilize masculinity, as practised among the Sambia, is hardly imaginable in a con-
text in which this would be considered sexual abuse.
Cross-cultural variations regarding sexuality lend support to Gayle Rubin’s (1984)
conclusion that “sexuality is as much a human product as are diets, methods of transporta-
tion, systems of etiquette, forms of labor, types of entertainment” (p. 277). Like other
human products, sexuality is profoundly structured by modes of regulation and policing.
Sexual norms and expectations are frequently justified through the language of the “nor-
mal,” “moral,” and “acceptable.” Rubin (1984) maps a detailed “sex hierarchy” of different
sexual practices and the ongoing social struggles over where to “draw the line” between
sex deemed “good, normal, natural, holy” and sex deemed “bad, abnormal, unnatural, sin-
ful, sick” (p. 281). In the “good sex” category, Rubin situates heterosexual, married,
monogamous, reproductive sex at home. Sex deemed “bad” includes sex for money, sado-
masochism, fetishism, and intergenerational sex. Under contestation are unmarried het-
erosexual couples, promiscuous heterosexuals, with long-time stable lesbian and gay
couples inching their way into respectability.
ConstruCting sexual normalCy
At this point, I hope you have become suspicious of the concept of “normal” sex—and its
“second cousin,” “healthy sex.” Sexual regulation in the West today works perhaps less
through the moral terms of “good” and “bad” and more often as “healthy” or “unhealthy.” But
there is really very little that is inherently “healthy” or “unhealthy” about sex. Whether kiss-
ing is a “normal” and important part of sexuality and intimacy or regarded as unhygienic and
disgusting as in Burma (Levine, 2002), whether intergenerational sex is deviant and abusive
or an accepted precursor to adult heterosexuality (as in mummy-baby relationships in Leso-
tho or in man-boy marriage among the Azande) is not universal but culturally specific. Thus
our sexuality and our sexual behaviour, like many other aspects of our daily life, such as what
we wear, eat, do for entertainment, and find beautiful, is shaped by what our culture deems
appropriate and normal. Our sexuality is not just individual and unique to each of us. Instead
it is profoundly shaped by the world around us by books, art, movies, television, advertising,
what our friends and family say, social institutions (church, school, legal system). I suggest
then that sexuality is shaped, not determined, by the discourses that circulate around us.
Feminist Challenges to “sexual normalcy”

Feminist and lesbian/gay movements of the late 20th century have been on the forefront
of questioning what long had been accepted as sexual “normalcy” and “deviance.” Central
to this questioning was an analysis of questions of power and the political nature of sexual
regulation. One starting point for doing so was Anne Koedt’s (1970) widely circulated
political pamphlet “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm.” A scathing critique of the ways
that, at least since Freud, penile vaginal penetration has been misconstrued as “mature”
heterosexual sex, Koedt describes vaginal orgasms as “a myth,” an androcentric
construction, organized around men’s sexual pleasure that ignores the reality of women’s
bodies and the role of the clitoris in women’s orgasm. Koedt argued that penile vaginal
intercourse leaves women sexually unsatisfied, while the vaginal orgasm myth blames
women for their alleged “inability” to orgasm, misconstruing this as a sign of their alleged
“sexual immaturity” and “frigidity.” Recognizing the clitoris as the centre of women’s
sexual pleasure threatens men, as it renders men “sexually expendable.” Ultimately, the
myth of the vaginal orgasm anchors the normalization and naturalization of heterosexuality.
While there is lot to be said about the assumptions that guide Koedt’s critique,
including her ethnocentric statements about women in “backwards nations,” her
deconstruction of the idealized vaginal orgasm was a huge relief to many women. Realizing
its unattainability helped women to feel less like sexual failures. Koedt’s critique also
opened a door to challenging not only normalized sex acts such as heterosexual penetration
but also institutionalized heterosexuality and men’s power. Nearly twenty years later,
Nancy Tuana (2004) shows that the role of the clitoris as the “seat of women’s pleasure” is
not new knowledge. Its role for sexual pleasure was recorded as early as 1559, when within
the one-sex model discussed earlier, the clitoris was understood as analogous to the penis.
Tuana demonstrates that throughout the history of anatomy, the clitoris gets discovered
and forgotten over and over again. By calling this a “strategic forgetting,” Tuana argues
that knowledge of the role of the clitoris “gets lost” intentionally rather than accidentally.
The attention to the clitoris distracts from the cultural narrative of sex being about
reproduction. Ignoring the clitoris in favour of a supposedly “natural fit” of penis and
vagina, on the other hand, aids the cultural construction of reproductive (hetero)sex.
Sadly, even four decades after Koedt’s analysis, the rates of women not achieving
orgasm during partner sex continue to be high. Vaginal orgasms, preferably simultaneous
with a person’s lover, continue to be mythologized and idealized. Think about representa-
tions of orgasm in mainstream movies and on TV. Here clitoral stimulation, for example
by way of oral sex, is represented as foreplay at best, while “real” sex still means penile
vaginal penetration with no clitoral stimulation involved. (How often is the role of the
clitoris for women’s sexual pleasure mentioned in sex ed curricula?)
the compulsory Institution of heterosexuality

Feminists do not always agree on how to think about sexuality. For example, during the
early second feminist wave, lesbians, who were very active in the emerging women’s
movement, found themselves asked by heterosexual feminists to keep their sexual
orientation hidden so as to not give feminism a bad name. Outraged by such silencing of
their voices and experiences, radical feminists made lesbianism a central political issue
(Jackson & Scott, 1996). Some lesbians argued that they focused their energies on other
women instead of on the oppressor—men. Many feminists began to think of lesbianism as
political resistance to patriarchy and male dominance.
Germinal to this debate was an article published in 1978 by the American poet and
essayist Adrienne Rich (1978/1996). Entitled “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian
Existence,” the text challenged the common beliefs that heterosexuality is natural and that
women voluntarily engage in heterosexual relations. Instead, Rich provocatively suggested
that across history and cultures heterosexuality has been forced upon women. One way to
do so is through male violence. Another one is withholding or demonizing alternative
options such as love between women. Rich urged feminists to make the critique of compul-
sory heterosexuality a pivotal political issue for feminism. Feminists, she insisted, should
not only address gender inequality or the taboos surrounding homosexuality, but must also
understand “the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male
right of physical, economic, and emotional access [to women]” (1978/1996, p. 135). Femi-
nism must understand heterosexuality as a social institution, not a natural order. As social
institution, rather than inherent orientation and identity, heterosexuality is similar to the
education system, organized religion, and the family opening up heterosexuality to the
same kind of scrutiny for how it benefits men and disadvantages women.
Rich urged women to dis-identify with heterosexuality and men—and to identify as
lesbians instead. “Lesbian identification,” as Rich called it, does not necessarily mean to
engage in sexual relationships with other women. For Rich lesbianism is not primarily about
sex or desire. Instead, “lesbian” means making other women an emotional and political
priority in your life. Lesbian identification is a consciously chosen bond, something that
allegedly all women already experience in their deep emotional connection with each other
as sisters, mothers, best friends, teachers, and so on. Lesbian identification then becomes a
choice: to honour and make legible the ways women bond with each other.
Leaving aside for a moment that Rich takes deep bonds between cisgendered women
as a given, the text is radical, provocative, and strategic all at once. Rich called out straight
feminists for their homophobia. She strategically challenged a feminist movement that
had become deeply divided over the issue of lesbianism by asking straight women to iden-
tify politically with and as lesbians—instead of telling lesbians to shut up. Rich called out
to feminists to critically analyze heterosexuality, question its naturalness—even when it
may feel natural and normal—and begin to understand how heterosexuality benefits
(most) men and hinders (many) women. Within feminist communities, this evoked lively,
even divisive debates, which arguably are ongoing.
By suggesting women can choose to identify as lesbian, rather than “being born that way,”
Rich introduced the radical notion of political choice into sexual identity discourses and
moved away from what Eve Sedgwick (1990) later would call a “minoritizing” view. Within
a minoritizing view only a “distinct population ‘really are’ gay.” A minoritizing view assumes
that one either is or is not lesbian/gay. Contrary to this, a universalizing view, like that of
Rich, recognizes that anybody could engage in homo or heterosexual acts and that sexual
desire is much more fluid and not easily predictable. Rich endorses lesbianism as a universal-
izing position, one that anybody can choose to take up. Understanding lesbianism as a radi-
cal (political) choice as compared to an inherent condition of a distinct population, while
simultaneously daring to question the naturalness of heterosexuality, Rich’s text became an
important building block for queer theory—albeit one frequently unacknowledged.
Thoroughly productive as Rich’s text has been, it also garnered well-deserved criti-
cism. Her political, non-sexual lesbianism makes erotic desire between women invisible
once more. She implied that lesbians are all political freedom fighters against patriarchy.
She failed to outline how compulsory heterosexuality does not benefit all men, but
oppresses gay men too. She made problematic use of transhistorical and transcultural evi-
dence to demonstrate heterosexuality’s compulsory and violent nature (Sullivan, 2003).
heterosexual Privilege
One critical and productive response to Rich is the concept of “heterosexual privilege,”
an analytical term that suggests that heterosexuality does not only limit women as Rich
had claimed. Instead, heterosexual privilege names the benefits straight people accrue
when complying with the compulsory nature of heterosexuality. Privileges associated with
heterosexuality may include the right to have a person’s relationship socially and
economically recognized and supported; never having “to come out” to friends, family,
and co-workers; not being discriminated against for being straight; access to varied and
many positive representations in the media of your relationship; never having to hide
your partner for fear of discrimination. (Of course, heterosexual privilege does not
necessarily protect a person from discrimination and violence on the basis of race,
ethnicity, class, or religion. Thus not all heterosexuals accrue the same privileges.)
For many straight-identified feminists, then and now, to question heterosexuality poses
personal and political dilemmas. Particularly troubling is the suggestion that heterosexuality
supports male dominance. Many straight women ask themselves how to love men and be a
feminist committed to gender justice. Canadian Christine Overall (1990) proposes a “femi-
nist heterosexuality.” Refusing to accept heterosexuality as either innate, which is the popular
view, or as forced upon women, which is Rich’s suggestion, Overall argues that heterosexual-
ity can also be a choice you make without just “acquiescing in it, or benefiting from hetero-
sexual privilege, but actively tak[ing] responsibility for being heterosexual” (p. 266).
Overall encourages moving beyond a demoralizing choice according to which hetero-
sexual feminists either have to feel guilty about loving men or accept that heterosexual
desire and attachment are always already anti-feminist. Instead, Overall, with other femi-
nists, paves the path to changing both the institution and the ways in which heterosexual-
ity is lived. Recognizing its privileged position and the rewards attached to heterosexuality
is a first step. The next step may be to “queer” heterosexual norms.
Queering heterosexuality
For Lynn Segal (1994) queering heterosexuality involves challenging traditional understand-
ings of gender and sexuality. This includes looking at how women’s and men’s bodies are coded
in ways that support a binary model of oppositional genders that are then supposedly attracted
“naturally” to each other. Segal encourages us to recode bodies differently so as to move away
from an understanding of (heterosexual and cisgender) women’s bodies as only “passive,”
“receptive,” “penetrable,” and “vulnerable” and of (heterosexual cisgender) men’s bodies only
as “active,” “determined,” “penetrating,” and “impenetrable.” (Keep in mind that lesbian and
gay bodies and practices have always included both sexual receptivity and penetration.)
If we stop and think about this for a moment, we can perhaps begin to imagine talk-
ing about women’s and men’s bodies during heterosexual penetrative sex quite differ-
ently—not in terms of a “quasi militarized invasion and occupation of the female body”
(Sullivan, 2003, p. 130) in which the aggressor/penis pushes its way into a defenceless but
fortified vagina.7 Maybe instead we can see the vagina as actively pulling in and enfolding
a penis, as holding it and pushing it in and out.
To learn how to recode bodies in ways that veer away from a conventional gendered
and naturalized script, straight folks might learn from queer folks. Within butch/femme
culture, femme femininity and sexuality has long been celebrated as active and aggressive
rather than merely passive and receptive. Within trans communities and among lovers of
trans women and men8 it is common to recode bodies too, especially pre-operative bodies
that don’t match normative and idealized cis-male or cis-female genitalia. For example
pre- or non-operative trans men (and their lovers) may produce male bodiedness when
speaking of their pre-operative genitalia, particularly those changed by testosterone, in
their difference in size rather than structure from cis-male genitalia. This focus on size and
structural similarity invokes the anatomical continuum between clitoris and penis we dis-
cussed earlier. What would be identified as clitoris, breasts, and vaginal opening respec-
tively in cis-female identified humans, by way of vernacular may be recoded by trans men
as dick, man boobs, and bonus hole, respectively.9 This recoding is part of discursively
producing bodies that match gender identity.
If we understand that all bodies are coded through language, we can see that coding
plays a central role in the construction of gendered and sexual difference. If trans and
queer folks can recode bodies, then straight and cis-bodied folks should be able to do the
same. In so doing they may be able to unsettle the unequal discursive constructions of cis-
male and cis-female bodies in ways that allow for less restrictive gender roles, both sexu-
ally and in the world. Such unsettlement also might undo the transphobic distinction
between bodies and genders that pass as “real” and those considered “unreal,” by showing
that all bodies and genders are discursive and linguistic constructions.
When we talk about such queering of bodies, my feminist, cis-female, and heterosex-
ually identified students are quite intrigued. They want to think about ways to expand
and undermine restrictive gender scripts, knowing how these limit their own sexuality
and pleasure. (After all, how pleasurable is it to always imagine sex as a militaristic male
invasion of female defences?) However, they have a hard time imagining how to win over
their cisgendered boyfriends. Indeed, imagining male bodies as vulnerable, receptive, and
penetrable is deeply threatening to many cis men—and to many cis women too.
This anxiety tells us how deeply rooted homophobia still is in our culture, despite the
increased tolerance towards LGBTQT2-S people and despite the wider recognition of
same-sex relationships. Penetrability of men continues to signify gay masculinity in our
culture and thus is something that most straight men seek to distance themselves from,
even if they tolerate gayness in others. The fear of being read as gay may well be at the
heart of sex that is not only heterosexual but heteronormative, sex constrained in the
name of reproducing normatively gendered sexual practices.
Such constraint tells us something else. Sadly conventional sex is rarely just about
pleasures. Nor is sex “just” an expression of some inherent orientation. Instead, sex prac-
tices play a central role in the production and consolidation of coherent identities (for exam-
ple as heterosexual, as “normal” woman and man, as cisgendered). Calvin Thomas (2000)
critically calls this “fucking to assert identity.” That is, sex that seeks to assert the unequal
construction of sex, gender, and sexuality, and the privileges associated with these subject
positions. Such sex cannot tolerate how during consensual sex the boundaries of gendered
subjectivities are often transgressed. “Fucking to assert identity” cannot bear that one
of the pleasures of sex might precisely be the loss, rather than the assertion, of a self, of
boundaries and dichotomies of self and other, of supposedly complementary bodies, of
active/passive, and of inside and outside (Bersani, 1987; Segal, 1994; Thomas, 2000). That
is to say, sex itself has queer potential, if we understand “queer” not just as a convenient
short form for the identity diversity that the acronym LGBTQT2-S represents. Instead,
“queer” here represents a move to undermine the normative and coercive coherence of
sex, gender, and sexuality—and the violent efforts involved in producing such coherence.
Accordingly, sex’s potential to undo us can be queer even when it involves cisgendered
and heterosexually identified women and men. Sex is “queer” when it is not about the
assertion of straight identities. But, similarly, sex can be straight and heteronormative,
even if it involves same-sex lovers. Indeed, for Thomas (2000) sex is heteronormative when
it is “teleologically narrativized sex: sex with a goal, a purpose, a product” (p. 33); when it
is reproductive, with the product being an identity, a sense of self, or a child. Merri Lisa
Johnson (2002, p. 49) provides us with a quite concrete list of what queering heterosexuality
might entail: sex with less restrictive gender roles; pleasure; recognition of heterosexuality
and the nuclear family as one relationship/family form among many; body integrity; and
sexual practices that are less coitus, penetration, and penis-centred.
While many of my students can see the value of opening up a wider spectrum of gen-
der and sexual practices for everyone, they often voice concerns that identifying as “queer”
when one is not really lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or intersex is an appropriation of some-
body else’s identity in ways that does not acknowledge sufficiently the discriminations
that real queer folks experience. Ultimately, they argue identifying as a queer straight per-
son is just about being trendy, and this straight queerness only gets articulated in contexts
where being queer is cool. I think their concerns are legitimate. However, these are based
upon notions of stable identities and assume that real queers are somehow unified in their
experience of similar hardships. But are they really?
If we think about progress and equality, lesbian and gays in North America certainly
have had much to celebrate over the last two decades as access to marriage, adoption,
military service, and survivors’ benefits have been won. These are significant accomplish-
ments that extend social recognition and human rights protection. However, these equal-
ity measures have in common that they were won by insisting that lesbians and gays are
“just like straight people.” And that claim is the crux. Basically, these equality measures
are for those same-sex couples who most closely resemble straight folks in terms of their
gender, their relationship model, and their modes of reproduction. Rather than challenge
the heteronormative institutions of marriage, monogamy, procreation, and gender,
recently won gay rights simply assimilate and sustain them. Calling this critically “homo-
normativity,” queer theorists and activists, following Lisa Duggan (2000) and Martin F.
Manalansan (2005), have argued that these socio-legal successes ultimately benefit only
that small segment of queer communities who are in monogamous relationships and can
afford weddings and property, who have access to pension and health care plans, and who
wish to procreate. Indeed, Duggan argues that these rights ultimately depoliticize gay cul-
ture by reducing equality to equal access to “domesticity and consumption” (p. 50). Simi-
larly, Manalansan offers the criticism that these kinds of rights put queer communities “to
sleep,” after having recoded “freedom” and “liberation” to mean merely “freedom and
liberty to consume” (p. 142).
These are harsh critiques and in my class we have lively discussions about whether these
rights constitute progress of some sort or not. Certainly, for (some) students who grew up
lesbian and gay and suffered from social exclusion and violence, the idea of finding true love,
getting married, having a family, and getting recognition for being “just like everybody else”
is very appealing. Yet others recognize that the right to marry will not fix economic or racial
injustices or lessen the harassment they may experience for not “doing gender” conventionally.
Indeed, the right to marry and other equality measures might most benefit white and middle-
class lesbian women and gay men, while it does not end homelessness for poor queers, provide
trans-specific health care options, or decrease violence against gender-nonconforming
queers. Then again, marriage might give some queers access to benefits and immigration, the
kinds of security that might otherwise remain unattainable.
More broadly speaking, we can conclude that constructions of sexuality in the contem-
porary moment are wildly contradictory. On the one hand, we note more cultural visibility
of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and, to a lesser degree, of trans folk, intersex folk, and other
queers. At the same time, marginalization, violence, and homo- and transphobia persist
raising the question of whether visibility really equals legal protection and greater safety.
COnCluSiOn: THe AnTinOMieS Of yOung

PeoPLe’S SexuaLIty
As I am finishing this chapter during the winter of 2015,10 the Conservative majority in
the Alberta legislature just stopped an opposition bill that would have enshrined the right
for students to create Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in high schools, no matter what
principals, school boards, or parents might think about them. This bill also would have
stripped from the Alberta Human Rights Act a provision that allows parents to remove
children from the classroom when issues of sexual orientation are discussed.11 The bill’s
rejection, at least for now, reflects the continued tensions in the social construction of
sexuality. Sexual images are ubiquitous in the culture; pornography of all stripes is readily
available on the internet; lesbians and gays can legally marry, adopt children, and feature
on TV; and more and more young people come out as trans or gender-nonconforming. At
the same time, parents in Alberta can (and many do) ask for their children to be pulled
from classrooms, so as to “protect” them from the knowledge and support that discussing
sexuality and having gay and queer support groups in schools presents.
Thus while sexual images and knowledge abound in the culture and are understood as
one indicator of sexual progress, there is an increasing desire to preserve children’s
“innocence” in all sexual (and gender) matters and not only in Alberta. Parents and adults
in Canada and the United States more generally tend to be intensely uncomfortable with
recognizing children and young people as sexual. Sex is generally seen as something that
puts young people at risk from which they are to be protected and shielded, rather than as
something that they need to learn about, experience, and practise. A common fear is that
explicit sex education will incite sexual activity among teens. Such logic implies that the
availability of information about sex, contraception, abortion, and sexual pleasure is the
cause of teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections rather than being recognized
as effective prevention.
Programs that teach students only to abstain from sex prevent teenagers from learning
anything about sex, withholding necessary information that helps them make decisions
(and communicate them) about when, how, and with whom to be sexually active.
Teaching only abstinence implies erroneously that when people are ready to have sex,
ideally only once they are adults and married, they will know what to do and how to
protect themselves from pregnancy, infections, emotional harm, and violence. What we
fail to account for when we do not educate children and teenagers on matters of the body,
gender, sexuality, and pleasure is that all learning takes practise. Judith Levine (2002, p. 110)
observes astutely “maturity, including sexual maturity, cannot be attained without
practice, and in sex, as in skiing, practice is risky.” Young people, straight and queer alike,
deserve to practise with as much information at their disposal as possible. Without
effective, comprehensive, and inclusive sex education, we abandon young people to
learning about sex from overwhelmingly sexist, heteronormative, and transphobic
mainstream and online representations of sexuality.
Endnotes
1. Androcentric means cis-male centred: the privileging and centring of the specific view-
points and experiences of cisgendered men of the world, of culture, and of sex as if these
reflected a universal viewpoint shared by everybody.
2. There is some disagreement between Lang and earlier anthropologists such as Fulton and
Anderson (1992) and Roscoe (1991) about the terminology itself and whether the chosen
gender or the birth sex should come first.
3. If you google hijra you will learn that large parts of South Asia socially recognize a third
gender and India also does so legally.
4. The vagina is not the name for the entire genital area. The vagina is the internal orifice, the
canal that extends from the exterior genitals (the vulva) to the cervix and the uterus. If you
use tampons or engage in genital intercourse with a penis, a dildo, fingers, or something
else, you insert these into the vagina. The external genitals are the vulva and include the
clitoris and the labia (majora and minora). As an aside, if women “vajazzle,” they don’t
decorate their “vagina” as it is often claimed. Instead vajazzling involves decorating the
shaven or waxed pubic area. Decorating the vagina, it being an interior canal, would be
rather difficult, to say the least. But the fact that the vulva regularly gets misnamed vagina
should give us pause. Also, if you have a vulva, I suggest that you take a mirror and look
at it. You also might want to google vulva images to get a sense of the wide variation of
what vulvas look like.
5. The Intersex Society of America describes intersex in the following way:
a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual
anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person
might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the
inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female
types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or
a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed
more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX
chromosomes and some of them have XY. (www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex)
6. Recent biological research supports the view of a wider spectrum of human sexual varia-
tion beyond XX and XY options. Indeed, this research suggests that there is a spectrum of
sexual difference within many individuals (Aintsworth, 2015).
7. Cameron’s (1992) study of male American college students’ use of slang words for their
genitals found, quite disturbingly, a predominant use of militaristic metaphors for the
penis, such as torpedo, missile, snake, or jack hammer. Such language masculinizes a very
sensitive body part and seeks to deny the penis’s intense vulnerability.
8. Trans men typically were assigned female at birth or in utero, but come to identify at
some point in their lives as male. Trans women on the other hand were assigned male
but identify as female. Trans people choose a variety of ways to “transition” from MtF
(male birth assignment to female identity) or from FtM (female birth assignment to male
identity) over their life course. Some undergo full genital reassignment surgery to bring
their bodies in line with their identity. Others, particularly FtMs—due to limited funds
and/or lack of effective surgical solutions—might undergo top surgery and take testos-
terone but refrain from bottom surgery. Other trans folks might only transition socially
but don’t undergo any medical or hormonal interventions. Some folks identify as gender-
queer and have no desire to produce any form of coherence between appearance, body,
and their gender identification. Like cisgendered folks, there is an enormous diversity
among trans folks.
9. For a recent study of discursive framing of trans embodiment see Edelman and Zimman (2014).
10. For a discussion of sexual antinomies in late modernity see Jackson and Scott (2004).
11. Unique to Alberta, according to the 2009 Human Rights Act, schools have to inform par-
ents when religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation are to be discussed in class. Parents can
then pull their children from these classrooms.
1. Explain the difference between the strong and weak social constructionist position with
regards to sexuality. Which one do you find more convincing and why?
2. Make a list of the privileges associated with heterosexuality. Discuss what “taking respon-
sibility” for these privileges could look like.
3. Ask your friends to draw and name the different parts of the vulva, including the location
and size of the clitoris. What do you note, especially when comparing this to your friends’
knowledge about the location and size of the penis?
4. Should sex education in high school entail discussions of sexual pleasure? Why or why not?
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Chapter 6
Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture
Carla Rice
IntroductIon
The body is an important identity project for girls coming of age in Westernized cultures.
As a key self-making medium, many girls and women also experience their bodies as
significant obstacles and sources of distress. On the positive side, bodies are sites of agency
and empowerment, primary vehicles through which individuals explore, interact with,
and understand the world. On the negative side, bodies are objects of social scrutiny and
sanction, fuelling girls’ dissatisfaction and deprecation. In this chapter, I explore the
contradictory meanings young women hold regarding their bodies. Using the concept of
the “material culture of beauty” and my own research on adult women’s body histories,
I reveal the ways in which cultural imaginings and gazes have shaped their body self-
images. Narratives of embodiment from 100 ordinary Canadian women of varying body
sizes and racial backgrounds and with and without disabilities and physical differences
illustrate the fact that, although women of all ages have greater freedom to play with their
appearance, cultural codes of beauty have become more narrowly defined over the past
few decades. The result is a curious situation in which women are told to be and look
however they wish all the while experiencing social sanction and derision if they step
outside narrow boundaries of acceptable bodily self-presentations.
There is an upsurge of feminist writing about beauty, both critical and celebratory.
Although feminist commentary on beauty has mushroomed since the 1970s, writers
continue to wrestle with the same old debate: Are beauty practices manifestations of
sexist, racist, and market oppression of women? Or, do they afford women opportunities
for self-expression, empowerment, and pleasure? Some critics contend that patriarchal
and commercial interests push women into painful beauty work to satisfy our culturally
created desires and assuage fears of difference (Clarke & Griffin, 2007; Gill, 2009; Stuart &
Donaghue, 2011). Others argue that women are not cultural dupes but active agents who
strategically alter their appearance in their best interests (Davis, 1995; Gimlin, 2006;
Holliday & Sanchez Taylor, 2006; Scott, 2005). Body stories reveal the ways in which
women of all shapes, sizes, and hues take up body ideals and identify multiple motivations
for their beautifying practices, ranging from pleasure and convenience to self-esteem and
economic advantage. The stories further disclose that although all women grapple with
the contradictions of body practices that may oppress even as they empower, not all
confront the same cultural looks and gazes. For example, young, thin, white women are
147
more likely to be seen as the epitome of beauty; visibly disabled women as undesirable
and sexless; Black women as sexually wild and aggressive; and Asian and South Asian
women as meek or mysterious and exotic. The interplay of these stereotypes with body
ideals calls for more intersectional understandings of the role that cultural imagery plays
in women’s lives. To help develop these sorts of interpretations, I explore the differing
cultural gazes that diverse women confront then move to examine the body projects
they take up.
the uneasy PrImacy of Images

In Western culture, women are identified socially with their bodies. How the culture val-
ues or devalues physical features, sizes, and capacities has a significant impact on women’s
sense of body and self. In explaining why the body is so important to women’s identity,
French feminist Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that “one is not born, but becomes a
woman” (1974, p. 249). She argues that women’s bodies are central to this process; through
media, medical systems, and beauty culture we learn how to fashion our bodies to “create”
our gender. Since de Beauvoir, feminist critics looking at images of female bodies have
noted that women tend to be positioned as “objects” of a male gaze (Mulvey, 1975). As
critic John Berger (1980) said of the ways that women and men have been depicted in
Western art and advertising: “. . . men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women
watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men
and women but also the relation of women to themselves” (p. 47). Many in my study expe-
rienced being looked at as an everyday occurrence in their lives: “No one verbalizes it. It
becomes the norm. ‘He was looking at my tits.’ ‘He was looking at my ass’” (Sheila, 22,
South Asian Canadian). In sexist visual society, where men as a group are handed greater
power to determine women’s desirability and value, girls grow up with varying degrees of
insecurity about the beholder’s assessment: “I see girls who are competent yet they fall
apart because a guy walks in the door” (Andrea, 37, white Canadian). These “gendered
looking relations” not only affected how the women I interviewed surveyed their bodies
but, by teaching them certain ideals and norms of femininity and femaleness, also taught
them to police the boundaries of their gendered and sexed embodiment.
How did gendered looking relations emerge? For most of us, mirrors are the oldest and
most ubiquitous image-making technologies in our day-to-day lives. As cultural historians
have shown, prior to the Victorian period, only the wealthy could afford mirrors. In the
16th century, for example, a small glass mirror framed in precious metals and jewels cost
the equivalent of a luxury car in today’s currency (Melchior-Bonnet, 2001). Technological
advancements in the 19th century saw massive increases in mirror production and their
installation in public and private spaces. The new department stores, such as Eaton’s in
Canada and Macy’s in the United States, used reflecting surfaces to illuminate interiors
with light as a way to encourage spending (O’Brien & Szeman, 2004). At the same time,
mirrors became permanent fixtures of middle-class homes as well as portable accessories
for many girls and women. Thus, a majority of Western women began to subject their
148 Chapter 6 Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture

bodies to greater scrutiny only with the introduction of affordable image technologies—
first mirrors, then photography and film (Rice, 2014).
In the 19th century, beauty was believed to derive from inner qualities such as character,
morality, and spirituality. To orient female buyers toward consumption of cosmetics,
marketers heightened women’s image consciousness by reminding them of the critical gaze
of others. For example, as one ad warns women, “Strangers’ eyes, keen and critical—can you
meet them proudly, confidently, without fear?” Another claims, “Your husband’s eyes . . .
more searching than your mirror.”1 Positioned as objects of an outsider’s gaze, female viewers
of commercial culture were, for the first time, invited to see themselves as recipients of
evaluative looks.
Surprisingly, while today large corporations control the cosmetics market, ordinary
women were industry innovators. Canadian working-class farm girl Elizabeth Arden, poor
Jewish immigrant Helena Rubinstein, and African American domestic servant and daugh-
ter of slaves Madame C. J. Walker became successful entrepreneurs. Feminist social histo-
rian Kathy Peiss (1998) suggests that these socially marginalized women built their
businesses by attracting other women to act as sales agents and by using stories of their
own struggles to attract customers. Early entrepreneurs brought to advertising the idea
that women could improve their social situation through personal transformation.
By the 1920s, the beauty business had mushroomed into a mass market overtaken by
male manufacturers (Peiss, 1998). Drawing on the social permissiveness of the period,
advertisers connected women’s cosmetic use with greater individuality, mobility, and
modernity. The caption of one ad exclaims, “The Lovely Rebel Who fought for Youth and
Won!” and another reads, “Be as MODERN as you like—for you can still be lovely.”
While marketers sold makeup as a means for women to assert autonomy and resist out-
moded gender expectations, by the end of the 1930s, messages increasingly equated beauty
with a woman’s “true femininity.” For example, in one ad entitled “Beauty Lost—Beauty
Regained,” readers are told how a “lovely lady who goes to pieces” recovers her mental
health by “regaining her lost youth.” Ads of the time encouraged women’s investment in
their appearance in the name of their emotional well-being and psychological health.
When image became intertwined with a woman’s identity, personality, and psychology in
this way, modifying the body became, for many girls and women, a principal method of
caring for the self. In this way, a woman’s appearance came to be read as a prime measure
of her self-esteem, feminine essence, and mental health.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, marketers encouraged middle-class mothers to
invest energy in their own and their daughters’ appearance in the name of physical and
emotional health (Brumberg, 1998). In one period ad from Canada, mothers are told that
keeping their daughters’ complexion clear is “a mother’s duty” and in another that girls
“are never too young” to begin their beauty routines. During the Second World War,
beauty became a means for women to support the war effort, with ad copy announcing
that “beauty is a duty,” that “fit” bodies increased women’s productivity, while “lovely”
faces enhanced troop morale. It was not until the 1950s that cosmetics companies began
directly targeting teenage girls—who had started to hold part-time jobs and had their own

disposable income—with ads designed to appeal to their sense of generational
distinctiveness and romantic desires. With copy encouraging readers to get “The ‘natural’
look men look for,” ads for Seventeen Cosmetics reinforced girls’ desires to attract an
admiring male gaze.
Cultural norms about beauty and gendered looking relations can be difficult to question
because of the ways that they are naturalized in art, advertising, and popular culture.
Immersed as we are in these conventions, they appear as normal. Yet making the conventions
strange can make us better able to see them. Modern-day Japanese “appropriation” artist
Yasumasa Morimura (2008) remakes classical nudes by altering his features through
make-up, costume, and digital-image manipulation, and then inserting himself in the place
of the idealized female figures in famous paintings such as Manet’s Olympia. (View his work
at: www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/yasumasa-morimura) By putting himself, a Japanese
man, in place of iconic beauty ideals, Morimura draws our attention to gendered and
racialized looking relations, challenging Western conventions of seeing female bodies as
objects “to be looked at” and especially of seeing white women’s bodies as desirable objects.
Arguably, these gazes have become even more complex in today’s commercial culture,
as women are encouraged to find pleasure in gazing at each other’s images. For example,
think about the typical cover of a Cosmo, Vogue, or other fashion magazine. As you consider
the cover photo, ask yourself the following questions: Who is the woman on the cover
looking at? Who does she think is looking at her? Your reflections might suggest that the
cover image operates not only as an object of vision for male but also for female audiences.
As viewers, we might imagine ourselves to be a male or female spectator looking at the
model with envy or desire. Alternately, we might imagine ourselves to be the beautiful, sexy
model looking back with confidence, desire, or a conviction in our own desirability at the
male and female spectators who are looking at us. In either case, through this relay of looks,
the model becomes an object of desire for imagined spectators who want her and for those
who want to be like her. While the idea that women find pleasure in looking at each other ‘s
bodies may appear less sexist than that of men evaluating female bodies, media critic
Rosalind Gill argues that the shift from an “external, male judging gaze” to an internal “self
policing” gaze may represent deeper manipulation, since it invites female audiences to
become more adept at scrutinizing their own and other women’s images (Gill, 2007, p. 151).
Image culture sends powerful messages about the rejected or “abject” body, which it
subjects to invasive stares, gapes, and glares. In Western culture, the fat, aged, ambigu-
ously gendered, racially marked, disabled or diseased, and physically different body is an
object of fear and fascination. The work of Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra explores the
intrusive looks and stares that women, seen as “abject,” encounter such as those undergo-
ing treatment for cancer. Rather than posing as an idealized female figure in her version of
Manet’s Olympia, Kozyra evokes the ideal’s dreaded, abject Other by presenting herself
lying ill and naked on a hospital bed under the insensitive ever-watchful gaze of a medic.
(View her work at: http://katarzynakozyra.pl/main/10/olympia/) Julia Kristeva (1982), a
Bulgarian-French philosopher, calls the abject the twisted braid of fear and fascination
that people feel when they encounter bodily fluids, physical differences, disabilities, grave

illness, and dying bodies. According to Kristeva, the abject is feared and rejected because
it resists our drive to master and control our bodies. Physical features and processes treated
as abject are those that remind us of the uncontainability of our bodies, our vulnerability
to disease, the certainty of our death. A simple way to understand the abject is to see it as
that which doesn’t fit to body norms or ideals. Media images continually play on our fear
of abjection and desire to embody norms/ideals by showing us “rejected” before and “per-
fected” after pictures of people who undergo cosmetic makeovers (Covino, 2004).
Rather than being an object of the gaze, abject bodies, according to disability theorist
Rosemary Garland-Thomson, are subjected to “the stare” (2009). Staring is our compulsion
to look at disaster, called “the car wreck” phenomenon (p. 3); the visual gape we engage
in when we can’t pull our eyes away from the unfamiliar, unexpected, the strange. Because
people both crave and dread the unfamiliar and unpredictable, consumer culture is
continuously feeding our hunger for novelty while enforcing certain notions of “normal.”
Women with disabilities, visible differences in particular, described the fearful and
fascinated gape of non-disabled others: “There’s a fascination with difference. People want
the gory details of disability because they want to feel that they are better off ” (Harriet,
34, WASP, chronic illness). Racialized women also reported that cultural stereotypes
often informed and validated hyper-sexualizing looks onto their bodies: “From a lot of
white men, I get sexual fascination: I’m the wild Black woman, with pronounced buttocks
and thighs” (Marcia, 37, African Canadian, First Nation).
Body Projects today

As a result of the cultural meanings given to notions of desirability and difference, many
girls and women come to relate to their bodies as self-making projects. The women who
participated in this study, born in the 1960s onwards, from all walks of life in Canada are
among the first generation to come of age in a world replete with image technologies of
mirrors, cameras, and computers. Nearly every woman I spoke with recognized the
controlling influence of different cultural and gendered gazes. While the experiences of
this cohort varied depending on race, size, and ability, most women I spoke to also told of
how their degree of dissatisfaction increased in adolescence, a time when they encountered
mounting pressure to appear as desirable. Many came to see different body sites—including
skin, weight, hair, and breasts—as projects and as problems. This included the 90% who
saw themselves as over- or underweight; 80% who believed their breasts were too big or
small; 60% who believed their skin was too dark and/or disliked their hair colour/texture;
and 100% who began to remove unwanted body hair. Body dissatisfaction increased
dramatically between ages nine and 16, when all confronted a growing gap between their
changing bodies and images of culturally normalized and idealized bodies. Coming of age
in a consumerist, image-oriented society, they dealt with the disparity between differences
and ideals by imagining, as one participant put it, their best possible bodily self: “I never
had an image of me that wasn’t in the [wheel]chair. But I would create images of me looking
different in the sense that I would be prettier, slimmer, more popular. The most attractive

I could imagine becoming: my best possible image of myself ” (Frances, 45, WASP, born
with spina bifida). All navigated puberty and adolescence by envisioning or adopting
diverse practices—from hair relaxing and eating disorders to dieting and cosmetic surgery—
to remake their differences desirable.
The messages in today’s magazines echo the efforts of the women in my study to close
the gap between their body differences and desirable ideals. Fashion magazines are vehicles
for delivering messages of the beauty business to female consumers; a primary purpose is to
enlist readers into image enhancement through continuous consumption. Rather than
advocating one ideal, magazines try to democratize beauty by convincing readers that they
can achieve their “best bodies.” This message enables girls’ and women’s expression of
individuality and celebration of difference. Yet it also portrays body modification as critical
to self-expression. In addition, it pulls diverse audiences into preoccupation with perpetual
body improvement and purchase of products. In many ways TV shows like America’s Next
Top Model and The Face likewise instruct young women that they can bridge the gap between
their bodily difference and images of desirability by re-visioning their differences as desirable.
Such shows frequently reinforce the idea that the greatest power a young woman can wield
is her sexual sway over men, and they invariably present makeovers as tickets to success.
Despite purporting to represent diversity, they still promote a narrow notion of beauty and
encourage body modification through consumption to achieve the desirable look.
Beauty pageants in which contestants are women with disabilities are yet another
example of the idea of re-visioning differences as desirable within narrow confines. Miss
Ability is a reality TV beauty contest from the Netherlands that started in 2006; contes-
tants have to display a “handicap visible to the eye” (Eye2Eye Media, 2008). The winner
of the first pageant, crowned by the Dutch prime minister, was a young woman named
Roos who wears a cervical collar due to an acquired disability affecting her neck. The
cervical collar is the only indication she has any physical disability and is not an average
model. Roos manages her disability by using the cervical collar sometimes and lying prone
sometimes, yet images often depict her as highly sexual. While it can’t be ignored that she
is disabled, the nature of her disability is socially acceptable—no dribbling, sudden move-
ments, speech impairments, or any deviance from social protocols that make people
uncomfortable. Thus, the winner is someone the non-disabled population can relate to in
fundamental ways. She can look “normal,” albeit for very brief periods; she is seen as sexu-
ally desirable; and she meets expectations of what is feminine. Even in a forum where it’s
supposedly “celebrated,” disability must remain invisible (Rice et al., 2005). It is interest-
ing to note that due to the show’s surprisingly high ratings in the Netherlands, broadcast-
ers have snapped up the rights to remake Miss Ability in Britain, France, Germany, and the
United States. (Sherwin, 2006). In 2008, the BBC launched Britain’s Missing Top Model, a
series in which eight women with disabilities participate in a competition, with the win-
ner appearing in Marie Claire (Stanley, 2009).
In what follows, I describe the various body projects that women in my study took up
and consider how their motivations for engaging in bodywork varied depending on their
race, ability, and size.

Weight and eating
In contemporary Western culture, people learn to value a certain size as part of the body
beautiful. For example, the thin female body is associated with health, wealth, sexiness,
and success. Despite a growing dialogue about body acceptance, fat body is seen as unat-
tractive, not physically or emotionally healthy, and lacking in control. Today’s magazines
criticize women’s bodies, whatever their weight. Headlines such as “Battle of the Bones”
and “Stars’ Worst and Best Beach Bodies” regularly invite readers’ criticism of famous bod-
ies and encourage comparison based on looks and size. Coming of age in our size-obsessed
culture, 66% of the women in this study came to feel their “too-big” bodies violated size
standards and 24% that their “too-thin” ones failed to fit weight norms. The voices in
their heads echoed messages from mainstream media: no size is acceptable or safe.
Historically and cross-culturally, fatness has been interpreted as both a sign of wealth
and fertility and a signifier of disease and death. While the celebration and stigmatization
of fat have fluctuated in different times among various cultures, concerns about the medi-
cal and moral risks of being overweight have intensified over the last century. In North
America today, two competing frames shape the debate on overweight and obesity: Is it an
“epidemic” or is it a “myth” (Lupton, 2012; Rice, 2007)? The first frame—the epidemic of
obesity—dominates public debate. Global and national public health institutions have
fuelled fear of fat by interpreting obesity as an escalating epidemic that threatens the
health and fitness of populations and nations (World Health Organization, 2003). Beyond
health problems, an increasing number of social problems are being blamed on fat, from
global warming (Jacobson & McLay, 2006) to America’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks
(Associated Press, 2006). Despite the ubiquity of such moralistic medical messages, there
is considerable uncertainty and controversy within obesity research itself about the causes,
health consequences, measures, and treatment of obesity (Cogan & Ernsberger, 1999).
More recently, scientists, while not dismissing health concerns raised by doctors or gov-
ernments, have questioned obesity researchers’ assumptions and interests and begun to
explore why our society has become so alarmed about fat (Gard & Wright, 2005).
Epidemiologists now suggest that rising weights in our society may be related to
people’s biology combined with obesity-causing environments (Brownell & Horgen,
2004). In addition, we simply do not know the health consequences of obesity. We
know that the relationship between health and weight is a U-shaped curve, meaning
that health risks increase at extreme under- and overweight (Gard & Wright, 2005).
While high weight is associated with hypertension and heart disease, this association
does not mean there is a causal relationship—in other words, there is no evidence that
being fat in itself causes these health problems (Cogan & Ernsberger, 1999). To date,
there are no safe, proven treatments for “excess” weight (Ernsberger & Koletsky, 1999).
The most common treatments such as dieting, pills, and surgery all have health risks
and consequences (Bennett & Gurin, 1983). Finally, weight measures such as the Body
Mass Index (BMI) have also been called into question. BMI was originally meant as a
screening tool (to tell if someone is at risk for developing a health problem), but it is

now widely misused as a diagnostic tool (to tell if someone needs to lose weight)
(Ikeda, Crawford, & Woodward-Lopez, 2006; Jutel, 2006). Kate Harding (2008)
developed the BMI Slide Show to get people to think critically about BMI. Watch the
slide show to assess whether you think the categories are skewed (http://kateharding.
net/bmi-illustrated/).
Some critical scholars have written about “the obesity epidemic” as a moral panic,
arguing that misplaced morality and ideological assumptions underlie our “war on fat”
(Gard & Wright, 2005). They argue that in obesity science the causes of and solutions for
obesity invariably come back to people’s health practices. This view both ignores scien-
tific uncertainly about the causes of weight gain and blames individuals by ignoring con-
texts such as poverty or weight prejudice that constrain their options for eating or activity.
Recent history shows that obesity epidemic discourses dominate cultural narratives
partly because they dovetail with ongoing state-sponsored efforts designed to improve
the health, fitness, and competitiveness of nations. From the late 1960s onwards, many
Western governments, including Canada’s, initiated public education campaigns that
advocated greater physical activity to prevent fatness and promote fitness in citizens
(MacNeill, 1999). In response to growing concerns about excessive consumption and
the sedentary lifestyles of Canadians, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau launched the
ParticipACTION Campaign in the early 1970s. It famously compared the fitness levels
of a 30-year-old Canadian with a 60-year-old Swede. (See this ad at the ParticipACTION
Archive Project: http://scaa.sk.ca/gallery/participaction/english/home.html.) Many
ParticipACTION ads imagined the ideal Canadian citizen as a thin, fit, white, able-
bodied male. They further raised the spectre of the feminized, unfit, underdeveloped,
and Third-World “Other,” who threatened Canada’s competitiveness on the global
economic stage. However, the effectiveness of interventions that link fatness prevention
to fitness promotion has never been established. Studies show that fat children and
adults are less likely to be physically active and more likely to have eating problems. Yet
research has not revealed whether overeating and under-exercising increases weight,
whether being fat increases one’s susceptibility to problem eating and inactivity
(Boutelle, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, & Resnick, 2002), or whether the association
between behaviour and weight is mediated by other factors (such as genetics, food
additives, and so on).
Some women in my research suggest that ParticipACTION ads disseminated
throughout the 1970s and 1980s heightened their fear of fat and instilled the belief that
their big bodies were “bad.” By linking thinness with fitness and positioning fat as
opposite to fit, ParticipACTION’s popular “FitFat” ad conveyed the idea that fatness
and fitness could not coexist in the same body. Those perceived as fat in childhood
describe how demanding physical education programs introduced into schools often
dissuaded them from participating in physical activity altogether. Adult enforcement of
restrictive diets resulted in long-term struggles with food, including compulsive, binge,
and secretive eating (Rice, 2007; 2009b). In other words, fatness prevention efforts
contributed to producing the very behaviours and bodies that proponents were
attempting to prevent!

“I remember this feeling of dread when the [“FitFat”] ad came on TV. Once my father
and I were watching, I remember a man’s voice saying, “This year fat’s not where it’s
at.” This made me so self-conscious. . . .” (Maude, 27, white Canadian, blind from
adolescence)
“I wasn’t doing very well in ParticipACTION or Canada Fitness. I hated gym class. I didn’t
like being tested in front of everybody. . . .” (Yolanda, 23, Dutch-Indonesian Canadian)
Although ParticipACTION ended in 2001, the Canadian federal government

recently re-launched the campaign to stem rising levels of obesity, once again focusing on
“over”weight children and adults as a high-risk group (Canadian Press, 2007). With a
renewed focus on fatness prevention through fitness promotion, efforts to stem today’s
obesity epidemic may be leading a new cohort of large children to adopt problem eating
and inactivity, possibly contributing to future problems with weight. This raises some criti-
cal questions for developing feminist-informed health and physical education policies and
programs: What do you think a fat-friendly, girl-friendly and disability-friendly physical
education curriculum would look like? If you had the task of designing a feminist health
promotion campaign, what messages would you want to convey to promote girls’ health?
eating distress
Although only about 3% of young women in North America have eating disorders
according to medical criteria (Woodside et al., 2001), 50% admit to extreme weight
control, including fasting and vomiting (Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2002). The high
prevalence of problem eating notwithstanding, eating disorders are interpreted as mental
illness (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, feminist critics have long
noted that an eating disorder, like all diagnoses, is a social construct (Rabinor, 2004). The
term disorder incorrectly establishes a clear dichotomy between mental illness and wellness.
Yet given the pressure for women to control their appetites and weights, it is often difficult
to distinguish normal from pathological eating (Cohen, 2004; Rice & Langdon, 1991).
Unfortunately, few experts consider the concept of a continuum of eating problems.
Beyond debates about eating disorder diagnoses, there are many problems with psychiatric
labelling more generally—not only do labels stigmatize people, they also tend to be
applied to the least powerful groups in society (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004). Young wom-
en’s emotional struggles tend to be pathologized more than young men’s, so that there are
fewer diagnoses to capture the downsides of masculinity (like excessive risk taking and
inability to express emotion) than of femininity (depression and eating problems). Exam-
ples of psychiatric labels that have been proposed—such as dressing disorder and compul-
sive shopping disorder—expose how power relations often arbitrate what is considered
stereotypical behaviour and what is labelled a psychiatric condition.
Further, many feminists have been critical of psychiatric treatment for eating disorders
that positions women as pathological for adopting socially induced behaviours (Fallon,
Katzman, & Wooley, 1994; Rice, 1996). In her ethnographic research, Helene Gremillion
(2003) has found that treatment programs tend to substitute one set of disciplinary

practices that regulate women’s bodies for another—disempowering female patients by
replacing culturally condoned food and weight control with medically condoned
surveillance of their eating and weight (LaMarre & Rice, 2015). Hospitalization can save
lives, yet statistics belie the effectiveness of interventions: re-hospitalization of women
with eating problems is common (Health Canada, 2002), creating a revolving-door
experience that suggests that treatment often does not work.
Many of the women I interviewed described how they began dieting and disordered
eating as a way of amending what they saw as their abject body fat. Some talked of starting
to eat secretively in childhood as a direct response to mothers’ and doctors’ enforced diet-
ing routines while others took up disordered eating during adolescence to escape their
“deviant” labels and answer pressure to appear as desirable. Whether they started secretive
eating in childhood to resist adult imposition of restrictive diets or later adopted disor-
dered eating to amend size differences, it is noteworthy that all participants perceived as
fat eventually took up problem eating.
At least I felt normal enough and desirable enough [when bulimic] that I could actu-
ally contemplate a sexual relationship. I could actually let go of protecting myself and
enter into a relationship. (Gayle, 29, English-Métis Canadian)
The times I have felt love are times my body has been the most socially acceptable
[through starving and purging]. It makes me profoundly sad that the only ways of
accessing those feelings are through having a conventional body. (Sylvie, 36, Italian-
Scottish Canadian)
Many people mistakenly believe that only privileged white girls have eating problems.
Weight restriction became a way of life for a majority of women of all sizes and shapes I
interviewed, whether Black, Asian, South Asian, or white. Some racialized participants
told how ultra-thinness was viewed more critically in their communities, where images of
attractive bodies spanned a broader range of sizes. However, most had grown up during a
time when communities of colour constituted a small portion of the Canadian population,
and thus many had little access to an alternative beauty aesthetic that called into question
white weight standards. With stereotypic portrayals of starving African bodies circulating
in Western media throughout the 1970s (such as in children’s charity commercials),
slenderness also became abject for Black women interviewed. According to post-colonial
scholars, Western images have mythologized Africans since the colonial period as
innocent yet savage; as less human than animal; as dark presence and ghostly absence
(Kaspin, 2002). By portraying emaciated Africans as abused and coarsened victims of
starvation and civil war, Western photography has reduced a complex continent of
cultures and peoples to a few simple stereotypes. In an attempt to scare Western girls out
of self-starvation, only a few years ago one eating disorder campaign unwittingly drew on
these injurious associations to render the emaciated African form, faded and ghostlike, as
an abject sign of strife and famine.
Growing up in a racially charged image environment, some Black women describe how
they got caught between racist stereotypes of starving African bodies in mainstream media

and sexist pressures to conform to conflicting feminine size ideals from both the dominant
culture (thinness) and their communities (roundness). In my research, the meaning given
to a woman’s size depended on her race, which suggests that the emaciated brown body
operates as an implicit Other against which the thin, white beauty ideal gets defined.
A girl at school said I looked like starving kids in the World Vision commercial. That
was the most hurtful thing anybody ever said to me. I thought, “I should be bigger and
more normal because I look like those poster kids.” (Rhonda, 32, West Indian Canadian)
I was heavier than most girls because I was muscular. So I went on these crazy diets,
where I’d only eat yogurt. I consumed so much that the bacteria started to affect my
stomach. So I ended up in the hospital with “anxiety attacks.” But I was just trying to
make myself look the way I was supposed to look in society. (Marcia, 37, African, First
Nation, Scottish Canadian)
It is significant that no medical professional identified any racialized woman in my

study as having an eating problem. Instead, because clinical data in the 1970s and 1980s
mostly came from white experts working with white girls (Hesse-Biber et al., 2006), health
care providers interpreted the struggles of racialized storytellers as something other than
problem eating. Few feminists would deny that Western culture is implicated in the global
spread of eating disorders. According to Susan Bordo, the failure of medical professionals
to recognize eating disorders among racialized women may be rooted in a deeper reluctance
to recognize the role of culture in shaping female embodiment (Bordo, 1993, 2009). Yet
some feminists, such as Mervat Nasser and Helen Malson (2009), caution against impos-
ing Western or white meanings onto non-white and non-Western women’s experiences.
They argue that this denies cultural complexities and local specificities in diverse women’s
body practices, such as how problem eating might signal an adoption of Western feminine
ideals (such as Marcia’s attempts to starve away her muscularity) and rejection of racial
Othering (her refusal to be stereotyped as an overly muscular Black girl through not eat-
ing). By showing how the meanings of body sizes and motivations for eating practices vary
across and within Westernized contexts, this exploration reveals important differences in
the meanings of experiences but leaves many questions unanswered. If eating disorders are
no longer a “white girl” or “Western” problem, what challenges confront researchers in
trying to explain them? How do we make meaning of problem eating without imposing
Western or white understandings on non-Western and non-white women’s experiences?
skin
Historically, skin became women’s first body project as they learned the power of complexion
to advance or undermine their social inclusion. From ancient times, pallour was associated
with high social status; women at work outdoors were tanned and aged faster, whereas women
of high social status were not obliged to work in the fields but stayed indoors and were pale-
skinned. From the 17th century onward, this superiority of white over dark was scientifically
proclaimed, as white Europeans needed a convincing justification for systems of slavery and

colonization that contradicted emerging political theories of human rights (Schiebinger,
1993). To rationalize the disenfranchisement of racialized peoples, scientists constructed a
hierarchy of races based on physical traits such as skin colour and bone structure.
As a result, women of every hue attempted to improve their social standing through
skin whitening, the most cosmetic procedure of the 19th century (Brumberg, 1998). In
period advertisements, skin whiteners for white women promised to enhance their com-
plexion while products for Black women pledged to remove their dark skin. For instance,
one “face bleach” ad claims to “turn the skin of a black or brown person four or five shades
lighter, and a mulatto person perfectly white” (St. Louis Palladium, 1901, cited in Rooks,
1996). According to Black feminist scholar Noliwe Rooks (1996), these ads persuaded
African American women to purchase products by presenting dark skin as an ugly imper-
fection and by suggesting that skin lightening would promote women’s class mobility and
social acceptance in a white supremacist society.
As a result of the legacies of Western colonization, racialization, and widespread
sexism, many cultures still associate light skin with female beauty, and this fuels and is
fuelled by a profitable business in skin-whitening products. While some feminists have
suggested that skin whitening is a practice relegated to our racist past (Peiss, 1998), they
are missing the rapidly growing global trade in skin-lightening products. Feminist critical
race scholar Amina Mire (2005) has called this phenomenon “the globalization of white
western beauty ideals.” (If you doubt Mire’s claim, do an internet search for “skin
lightening.” It will yield over two million links!) In the West, many cosmetics companies
market skin lightening to aging white women by associating light skin with youth and
beauty. In ads the aging process frequently is framed as a pathological condition that can
be mitigated through measures such as bleaching out “age spots.” Globally, cosmetics
companies also sell skin-whitening products to women of colour, often covertly via the
internet in order to avoid public scrutiny or state regulation of their commodities and
campaigns (Mire, 2005). This is partially because many products contain unsafe chemicals
such as hydroquinone and mercury that inhibit the skin’s melanin formation and are
toxic. The dangers of mercury poisoning due to skin lighteners—neurological, kidney, and
psychiatric damage—are well known. However, the hazards of hydroquinone, which has
been shown in laboratory studies to be disfiguring in high doses and to cause cancer, are
less well documented.
In Africa and other regions of the global South, skin whitening is traditionally
associated with white colonial oppression. Because women who practise skin-lightening
were and are harshly judged as suffering from an “inferiority complex” due to colonization,
many engage in the practice covertly (Mire, 2005). Companies thus rely on covert
advertising to mitigate women’s secret shame about their perceived physical deficiencies,
as well as their need to conceal such practices in order to avoid condemnation. Companies
selling covertly also avoid public scrutiny of product campaigns. In some campaigns,
explicitly racist advertisements associate dark skin with “diseases” and “deformities” such
as “hyperpigmentation” and “pigmentation pathologies.” In contrast, they typically
associate light skin with youth, beauty, health, and empowerment. In its online ads,

L’Oréal, a leading manufacturer and marketer of skin-whiteners such as Bi-White and
White Perfect, references the inferiority of dark skin and the superiority of light
complexions. Bi-White features an Asian woman unzipping her darker skin. (See the ad at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zsVIA3x6Y.) Directed mainly to female Asian consumers,
the ad uses medical language to suggest that Asian bodies produce too much melanin that
Bi-White will block. As Mire (2005) writes, darkness is associated with falseness, dirtiness,
ugliness, and disease. Lightness is seen as true, clean, healthy, and beautiful.
There is a growing trend for many Western-owned cosmetics corporations to rely less on
covert internet marketing and more on splashy TV and print campaigns to reach customers
in Asia. Since 1978, Hindustan Lever Limited, a subsidiary of the Western corporation
Unilever, has sold its skin-whitening products to millions of women around the world
(Melwani, 2007). Fair & Lovely, one of Hindustan Lever’s best-known beauty brands, is
marketed in over 38 countries and monopolizes a majority share of the skin-lightening
market in India (Leistikow, 2003). One industry spokesperson recently stated that fairness
creams are half of the skin-care market in India, and that 60 to 65% of Indian women use
these products daily (Timmons, 2007). Ads for Fair & Lovely frequently feature depressed
young women with few prospects who gain brighter futures by attaining their dream job or
desired boyfriend after becoming fairer. Other commercials show shy young women who
take charge of their lives and transform themselves into “modern” independent beauties.
Appealing to women’s dual aspirations for desirability and economic equality, ads feature
taglines such as “Fair & Lovely: The Power of Beauty” and “Fair & Lovely: For Total Fairness”
(Timmons, 2007). (See ads at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIUQ5hbRHXk&NR=1.)
The accounts of racialized women in this study echo these ads’ sensibilities in that all
learned, often from both the dominant culture and their own communities, that lighter
skin was associated with beauty, virtue, and economic opportunity.
Being in the West Indian community I was more attractive, and with people who
weren’t West Indian I was more acceptable because I wasn’t as dark. So I had an easier
time from all groups because I am supposedly that ideal. (Salima, 30, West Indian,
South Asian Canadian)
Ironically, Western psychologists and psychiatrists have framed skin whitening as

a sign of mental illness, unconnected to colonial or other oppressive histories. In contrast,
the experiences of informants suggest that skin-lightening practices are technologies of
both oppression and opportunity, especially for racialized women who get caught between
the colonizing effects of white supremacist ideals and competing desires for femininity
and social acceptance (Rice, 2009b; 2009a). In their narratives, participants aspired to
lighter (rather than white) ideals to straddle conflicting demands: to affirm their ethnic
looks and escape being seen as Other. Many spoke of avoiding sunlight, wearing light
concealer, and using skin lightening in an effort to create a desirable image that enabled
them to evade demeaning racist and sexist comments while not completely erasing their
embodied difference.

I saw neither beach nor bathing suit in high school! I was already Black and with
people who weren’t Black. (Marcia, 37, African, First Nations, Scottish Canadian)
We have a family friend who is a lot darker than we are. She bought Fair & Lovely and
when everyone found out, they used to say, “Oh, she uses Fair & Lovely.” The fact that
we talked about it is mean. The fact that she feels she has to use it is terrible. (Preeta,
29, South Asian Canadian)
Many white women are well aware of the cultural associations of dark skin with devalued
status. Yet in a cultural context where race is read off multiple body sites (skin colour, facial
features, and so on), tanned skin may be viewed as a temporary, detachable adornment
rather than an essential feature that signifies someone’s racial status (Ahmed, 1998). It is in
this context that white women often see skin darkening as a beauty project. After the First
World War, tanning became a statement about high social status; a tan proclaimed the
leisure to lie out in the sun and the money to go to tropical beaches in midwinter. White
women who tan can thus connect their bronzed skin to health, wealth, and attractiveness,
secure in the knowledge that they still are seen as white, regardless of the health implications
(such as the increased risk of skin cancers and premature skin aging). These experiences,
too, generate many questions: Why is there emphasis on white women’s attainment of a sun-
kissed glow while racialized women feel pressured to aspire to the glow of fairness? Is the
obsession with fairness a bad case of a “colonial hangover,” or is it an example of a Western
cultural imperialism that uses global media to spread white beauty ideals?
hair
Within a racial hierarchy of beauty, Black women encounter complex messages about hair
due to associations of long, flowing hair with social mobility and femininity. Beauty entre-
preneur Madame C. J. Walker, who is credited with popularizing the “hot” comb for
straightening hair, sold such products as Black women’s “passport to prosperity” (Rooks,
1996, p. 65). She saw Black women’s beauty in a political light—as a “vindication of black
womanhood” demeaned by slavery and as a pathway to prosperity and respectability
denied by white society. Many Black feminist and critical race scholars have debated
whether Madame Walker preyed on African American women’s feelings of inferiority or
promoted pro-Black beauty through dignifying their beauty practices (Byrd & Tharps,
2001; Rooks, 1996). In her personal letters and public talks, Walker clearly did not seek to
embody white ideals. Instead, beauty was a way to challenge stereotypes of Black women
as unfeminine and unattractive, and in so doing, to raise Black women’s self-confidence
and contribute to their collective advancement.
Today, an estimated 80% of African American women straighten their hair (Swee,
Klontz, & Lambert, 2000). In 1993, the World Rio Corporation marketed a hair-
straightening product on its late-night infomercials that targeted these women. In the
Rio ads, good hair was equated with straightened hair and bad hair with untamed curls.
Ads used the now familiar format of abject before and ideal after shots featuring women

who had been given a complete makeover. As Noliwe Rooks notes (1996), models in
the before shots were without make-up, jewellery, or accessories (p. 123). They looked
unhappy and their hair was unstyled and unkempt, almost made to look primitive. The
after shots featured women who had complete beauty makeovers. Although the
manufacturers claimed Rio had low levels of acid, it actually contained harsh chemicals.
Many who used it experienced hair loss, burns, blisters, and sores on their scalps.
Of 340 000 people who purchased the product, over 3000 filed complaints, the largest
number ever received in the United States for a cosmetic product (Swee, Klontz, &
Lambert, 2000). In infomercials, women were repeatedly told that Rio would deliver
them from the “bondage” of chemically treated hair (Rooks, 1996, p. 121). Rio sold
itself as a product that would enhance Black women’s self-worth, freedom, and social
mobility. It thus sent a message designed to resonate with female consumers: that they
could escape sexist and racist oppression through relaxing their hair. Many Black
women in my study explained how they used hair relaxers, not because they desired
whiteness, but because they wanted to avoid racial Othering, as well as aspire to
desirability, acceptability, and an enhanced self.
In high school, people would say, “What are you?” I realized if I blow-dry my hair to get
it straight I might not identify as anything separate. . . . The less I try to visually look
like some stereotypes from the media or their beliefs, the less I am singled out. (Ada,
27, Trinidadian Canadian, African and Chinese)
Those who think that stigmatization of natural hair is a thing of the past might
consider this: in October 2007, Glamour magazine developed a presentation called
“The dos and don’ts of corporate fashion” that showed an African American woman
sporting an Afro with a caption reading, “Say no to the ’fro” (Dorning, 2007). The
presenter told a women’s luncheon at a Wall Street law firm that Black female attor-
neys should avoid wearing “political” hairstyles like dreadlocks or Afros, because these
styles were seen as unattractive and unprofessional. Members of the audience were jus-
tifiably upset with the replay of stereotypes about “natural” hair as overly political,
unfeminine, and unprofessional.
Not only do these attitudes have an impact on Black women’s beauty perceptions but
they also are linked to blocked educational and economic opportunities. Many African
Canadian girls report witnessing or experiencing harassment in school arising from
perceptions of their hue and hair. Some school boards in the United States have suspended
African American students for wearing cornrows, dreadlocks, and other hairstyles seen as
making an overly strong political statement (Rooks, 2001). Black women have even been
fired from corporate jobs for styling their hair in dreadlocks and braids. Virtually all Black
women I interviewed worried that if they wore their hair naturally, they would not succeed
in their career or romantic aspirations. Seen in this light, it would be a mistake to interpret
hair straightening as another example of women’s internalization of sexism and racism.
Instead, their stories suggest that managed hair could carry social benefits, including
boosting status and success.

There’s a lot of anger because if I go on interviews, people have a pre-made assumption
about Black women and therefore about me. When I put in a bid for a job, it is all
paper. So it isn’t until the interview that they meet me. So you go into a room of ten
people and they’re all white. Then in walks little Blackie in her braids. You can see the
shock on their faces. (Sharon, 31, West Indian, English Canadian)
Along with the presence of long-flowing hair on a woman’s head, the absence of body
hair is a critical characteristic of the acceptable female body. Few North American women
removed their underarm or leg hair before the 20th century; with the rise of beauty culture
and body-baring fashions, hair removal became commonplace by the end of the Second
World War (Hope, 1982). To convince female consumers to buy depilatory products, early
marketers framed any hair not on a woman’s head as unsightly and ugly. At the same time,
physicians began to label as pathological “excess” hair on parts of the female body typically
associated with hair growth in men (Herzig, 2000). However, sorting the normal from the
pathological has proven to be difficult: there remains no agreed-on measure of normal
amounts of hair in women and no clear markers to distinguish male from female hair
growth. Men are thought to be naturally hairier, though patterns of hair growth overlap
since women have the same number of hair follicles as men and, like men, produce testos-
terone (Ferrante, 1988). There may be more variation within than between the sexes
because hair growth differs based on age, climate, lifestyle, and genes. The number of hairy
women who have an endocrine problem is unknown, with rates ranging from 1 to 80%
(Azziz, Carmina, & Sawaya, 2000). (The high percentages should be treated with caution
since they may reflect renewed medical attempts to pathologize female body hair.) Whether
or not an underlying medical condition is present, any fuzz deemed excessive is labelled
“hirsutism,” a word related to the Latin hirsutus, an adjective meaning rough, shaggy, and
bristly (Barber, 2004). This suggests that in parts of the Western world, female body hair
has been imagined as repellent, and the unaltered womanly body as feral and unfeminine.
From the pages of fashion magazines to illustrations in biology textbooks, the image
of the hairless woman has emerged as a pervasive norm (Schick, Rima, & Calabrese,
2011). Although unshaven men are considered acceptable and their body hair removal
optional, studies show that in Anglo-Western countries between 80 and 100% of women
spend an average of 30 minutes per week removing unwanted face or body hair (PR Web,
2011). A strong cultural connection exists between hair and sex—the absence of body hair
is interpreted as a sign of femaleness, whereas its presence signifies maleness (Toerien &
Wilkinson, 2003). Despite feminist challenges to sexual dualism, Western thinking still
understands femaleness and maleness as opposites that do not overlap. In this context, the
vast majority of women, for whom hairlessness is not a natural state, must remove their
hair or have their sex called into question. A lucrative market in hair removal products
has resulted, with global sales in shaving gear topping US$25.7 billion in 2010 (PR Web,
2008). So ubiquitous is the puberty rite of shaving that Nair launched Nair Pretty, a depil-
atory aimed at “first-time hair removers,” that is, girls 10 to 15 years old (Newman, 2007).
A majority of women in this study committed at puberty to a lifetime of hair removal,
which became a routine part of the hidden work of having an acceptable female body.

The hairless norm is so ubiquitous that although pubic hair is an important marker of puberty,
its discovery was horrifying and embarrassing for 25% of women, who had no prior knowledge
that growing hair “down there” was typical. Many began removing leg and underarm hair to feel
more attractive and a majority also told how they conformed as a way of shielding themselves
from people’s disapproval and their own discomfort. For some, facial hair was particularly fright-
ening because it was read as a sign of maleness, visually undermining her sex and eliciting the
scary feeling that she was not really a woman. Even though 40% of all women naturally grow
facial hair (Bindel, 2010), being hirsute was emotionally and socially damaging for those in this
study, such as Erum, fuelling their depression, body consciousness, and fear of relationships.
I remember looking in the mirror thinking “Oh my God! Why are these hairs hanging
out of my face?” I never thought of myself as woman. I thought of myself as a girl strug-
gling. I didn’t feel normal. I would think, “What if I really am a boy? What if I have
internal male genitalia? I look like a woman on the outside but I have hair on my face.
So what does that mean?” (Erum, 22, South Asian, African Canadian)
Studies of racial differences in body hair are contradictory with some researchers
claiming that Black, South Asian, and “Mediterranean” women are hairier than northern
European women and others, that whites are the hairiest and Asian women the least
hirsute of all (Toerien & Wilkinson, 2003). A majority of South Asian women identified
body hair as a problem trait, far more than any other group I interviewed. Most assumed
they were naturally hairier. But their accounts point to sexual dualism and racist stereotyping
as the more likely roots of their hair worries. Historically, certain groups of racialized
women, including darker-skinned African and South Asian as well as Indigenous South
American women from the colonized world (and to a lesser extent, those from southern
Europe), have been imagined as more hairy than white northern European women. In the
wake of Darwin’s theories of evolution, scientists began to see body hair as a measure of
racial difference and to classify amounts and thicknesses of hair according to a racial
hierarchy. By the Victorian era, scientists and the lay public exhibited great interest in
racialized bearded women because they were seen to represent the missing link between
animals and humans. In this context Julia Pastrana, a Mexican-American Indigenous
woman, became a freak show performer in Europe due to her excess facial hair (caused by a
rare condition called hypertrichosis). Hypersexual advertising used to attract audiences
exaggerated her female, male, and supposedly ape-like features (Browne & Messenger,
2003). Associations between race and hair haunt the stories of South Asian Canadian
women today who tell how their body hair conjured up ideas about racialized women as
hairier, more masculine, and hyper-sexual within white-dominated culture.
The 1970s feminist movement brought an acceptance of body hair, but hairlessness has
become a thriving industry today. Consumer capitalism combined with the growing
availability of free online pornography and demand for body-baring fashions have influenced
where and how often women today depilate. The cohort I interviewed came of age before the
popularity of pubic hair removal. Over the last several years, the Brazilian wax, which leaves
behind a strip of hair above the pubic bone or takes all hair away, has gone from being a

risqué novelty to a basic grooming practice. To give an indication of how popular pubic hair
waxing has become, one researcher searching for the term “Brazilian wax” on the internet in
2001 yielded 133 hits (Labre, 2002); when I searched for the same phrase in 2011, I got close
to 5 million. Surveys have found that 85 to 95% of Western women polled have tried
removing hair from their groin area (Tiggemann & Hodgson, 2008); 50% regularly practise
pubic-hair removal (Riddell, Varto, & Hodgson, 2010). Many shave or wax because they see
their pubic hair as ugly and unclean. The association of female body hair with the abject is
highly evident in women’s descriptions of their pre-shorn bodies as disgusting and gross.
Breasts
Despite headlines to the contrary, cosmetic surgery rates in North America remain greatly
skewed by gender: in 2010, over 91% of cosmetic procedures were performed on women by
mostly male doctors who made up 91% of surgeons (American Society of Plastic Surgeons,
2011). According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (2011), demand
for plastic surgery increased by 9% in 2010 and by a whopping 155% since statistical
collection began in 1997. Breast augmentation topped the list (318 123) beating out breast
reduction (138 152), which placed fifth in popularity. It is difficult to get an accurate read
on how many Canadian women seek breast surgery because the government does not keep
track of procedures (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, 2008). However, it is
estimated that between 100 000 and 200 000 Canadian women have implants. Little
reliable data is available on the race of those undergoing reductions and augmentations,
but statistics indicate that 30% of all North American procedures in 2010 were performed
on non-whites, who make up a growing percentage of recipients (American Society of
Plastic Surgeons, 2011). The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (2011) reports that
reductions are popular among African American women, while Asian American women
most commonly request augmentations. These statistics do not reflect actual numbers,
however, since the rise of medical tourism means more people seek out cheap surgeries in
places like India, Costa Rica, and Thailand (Morgan, 1991, 2009; see, for example, http://
www.worldmedicalandsurgical.com). As surgery goes global, augmentation has become
the second most sought-after procedure, with reductions coming in sixth worldwide
(International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2010).
Techniques used in cosmetic surgery were originally developed to treat the facial burns
and soft tissue wounds of male soldiers returning from the First World War. During the 20th
century, doctors gradually drew a distinction between plastic surgery, aimed at restoring the
body’s normal appearance or functioning, and cosmetic surgery, intended to enhance features
already deemed normal (Heyes & Jones, 2009). Breast augmentations involving silicone gel
or sacs were introduced in the 1960s, but it was not until 1991 that controversy about the
possible effects of these implants lead to a moratorium on their general use (Heyes & Jones,
2009). Almost two decades after fears that leaks could cause connective tissue diseases (such
as rheumatoid arthritis), North American governments approved a new generation of “safer”
implants (for more information go to www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/med/implants-eng.php).

In the wake of this reversal, promotional pitches have escalated. Although direct-to-
consumer advertising of medical drugs and devices is illegal in Canada, implant-
promoting messages still trickle across our image-permeable border. Ads for the Natrelle
Breast Enhancement Collection liken implants to jeans, shoes, and jewellery, framing
augmentation as a fashion accessory rather than major surgery with risks. (View some
examples at http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/natrelle-breast-implants-
shoes-10538005/.) On Facebook, Natrelle now gives away free “Breast Augmentation
Kits” so that women considering implants can try different sizes at home. Earlier ads that
used images of flowers, the word “blossom,” and a just-out-of-puberty model suggest that
the campaign is designed to appeal to an adolescent audience.
In makeover culture, cosmetic surgery is no longer reserved for celebrities or the super
rich. Popular media and surgeons alike now promote procedures as viable solutions to ordi-
nary image problems. Reality TV shows like Fox’s The Swan and ABC’s Extreme Makeover
create appetites for nips and tucks in audiences seduced by the fantasy that changing bod-
ies will transform lives (Markey & Markey, 2010). Proliferating images of medical make-
overs do not in themselves enlist viewers to go under the knife (Nabi, 2009). Instead, they
put surgical options on what I call viewers’ “horizon of possibility”—inviting them to imag-
ine seeking out the scalpel (where they never before had considered this as an option) to
ease their image distress. For-profit medicine boosts surgical sales in similar ways. Physi-
cians have long framed surgical breast reduction as a necessary treatment for macromastia
(big breasts), an apparent disorder causing physical pain and emotional problems (Mello,
Domingos, & Miyazaki, 2010). More recently, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons
has also classified small breasts as a disease: micromastia (Ehrenreich, 2001). Despite efforts
to establish clear lines between elective and restorative surgery, labelling small breasts as a
disease indicates that the boundaries between profit-driven medicine and the beauty indus-
try have blurred as medicine transitions into big business (Sullivan, 2001). In Canada, the
medicalization of large breasts gives women access to needed surgery through our publicly
funded health system. Yet medicalizing breast size can have a downside—deflecting atten-
tion away from the broader cultural and social forces fuelling dissatisfaction onto breasts
themselves as the sole source of women’s distress. Evidence indicates that this reframing is
working: according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (2009), the number of
people who approve of cosmetic surgery has climbed steadily over the last decade.
Immersed as we are in a media sea of successful transformations, it is troubling that we
don’t have easy access to information about surgery’s downside: the health consequences of
reductions and augmentations. In my role as a researcher, I have spoken with women who
were satisfied with their surgeries and had no regrets. However, in my former career as a
clinician, I worked with those who bitterly regretted their decision. Some felt lied to,
misled, kept in the dark about the procedure’s negative consequences, and angry about the
long-term costs to their bodies and lives. Beyond the pain, infection, and scarring associated
with any surgery, complications from reductions and implants include partial or full loss of
sexual sensation in the nipple, inability or restricted ability to breastfeed, and necrosis or
death of nipple tissue (Reardon & Grogan, 2011). Of women receiving implants, most will

have complications requiring additional surgery or implant removal (Tweed, 2003) because
of rupture, deflation, and leakage that occurs in three-quarters of recipients (Brown, et al.,
2000). There is no medical consensus on how long implants last, although reputable
surgeons acknowledge that all women with implants will require replacement at some future
date (Singer, 2008). Anywhere from 25 to 100% of those with implants deal with capsular
contracture, where scar tissue forms around the implant, causing implanted breasts to
become hard, painful, or lopsided (Tweed, 2003). There may also be a link between silicone-
gel implants and autoimmune diseases such as fibromyalgia (Brown, et al., 2001).
It is troubling that cosmetic surgery is now advocated as the only reasonable solution to
girls’ and women’s body dissatisfaction resulting from harassment. One article in Toronto’s
Globe and Mail (MacDonald, 2001) went so far as to present surgery as the only viable
response for adolescent girls dealing with racism and sexism at school. By promoting surgi-
cal answers to verbal abuse, the article ignored systemic solutions, such as enforcing anti-
harassment policies (Larkin & Rice, 2005). In the absence of institutional policies on
harassment or of the political will to enforce policies where they exist, the drive for young
women to seek out individualized solutions such as surgery makes sense. The eight women
in my own study who sought breast augmentations and reductions did so to avert harassing
looks and hurtful comments, and to free themselves from stressful efforts to conceal their
breast size and shape. As Debra Gimlin (2006) found in her research on women considering
cosmetic surgery, those I interviewed described getting reductions and implants as a way to
escape abjection more than to embody an ideal—as a means of alleviating negative feelings
and alienation associated with being seen as an Other. Many experienced physical and
psychological problems associated with too large or too small breasts that they connected to
discomfort caused by looks, stares, and criticisms more than to the size of their breasts alone.
At the same time, all were aware that to get Canada’s publicly funded health insurance to
cover the procedures they had to make the case that size constituted a serious medical, and
not merely social, problem. Their accounts offer reasons for why women pursue surgical
solutions without relying on the “beauty myth” as the main argument. Instead, as Holliday
and Sanchez Taylor (2006) show, surgery seekers in this study exercised choice within a
given set of constraints and engaged in a project of self-making using the options available.
[Before my implants] I felt so uncomfortable hiding my breasts. I used to take off my

bra, get under the covers, make sure it was dark so you couldn’t see. I wouldn’t let him
touch the smaller one. If he did touch it, then he’d be “How come one’s smaller?”
(Maya, 22, Jamaican Canadian, disability from late childhood)
The surgical solution, though entirely understandable, is not without consequences

that extend beyond each individual’s health or wellness. In a context where the body is tied
to a woman’s morality and body modification is seen as a self-improvement strategy, there is
a danger that what was once a difficult choice for some might become compulsory for many.
Since a sizable minority of women now pursue surgery to enhance self-image or to ease
emotional turmoil and, at times, physical pain, surgery’s spread may create a conundrum for
a majority since it contributes to a hierarchy of bodies and a narrowing of norms.

In general, cultural meanings given to women’s bodies play a primary role in con-
structing their bodies as problem sites that need to be corrected. Women respond to these
messages through diverse body modification projects that range from dieting and disor-
dered eating to skin lightening and cosmetic surgery.
conclusIon: recoverIng Beauty?

In my research, women report two responses to beauty standards: changing their bodies,
which can lead to harmful image problems and risky body alteration practices, or chang-
ing their situations, which can lead to improved bodily self-images. Many redirected their
energy into creating life circumstances where self-worth was based on things other than
appearance. Significantly, the capacity of each to alter her environment emerged in each
narrative as key to a woman’s control and ownership of image. Beyond individuals’ impro-
visational efforts to affirm their embodied identities, other critical ways that activists
change their situations is by changing their institutional and image environments. For
instance, a “body equity” approach implemented in schools, health care settings, and
other institutional sites advocates accepting diverse bodies and stopping stereotyping
based on size, disability, and other differences (Rice & Russell, 2002). Similarly, altering
image environments entails creating representations that celebrate bodily differences and
that dare to depict the abject. For example, live performances by “fat drag” troupes such as
Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off and the Fat Femme Mafia poke fun at cultural stereotypes
about fat while the play ‘Da Kink in My Hair explores Black women’s diverse embodiments
and relationships to beauty. Guerilla Girls don gorilla masks as they deliver facts and
funny visuals to expose the ugly underbelly of visual culture: the sexism and racism that
are rampant in art and film (at www.guerrillagirls.com/). Photographer Holly Norris and
model Jes Sachse have created American Able as a spoof of American Apparel ads to
reveal how disabled women are made invisible in mass media. With creativity and cour-
age, these artists and activists imagine new possibilities for representations.
For some feminist writers, the challenge is to rethink our concept of beauty itself
(Felski, 2006) so that women can reclaim notions of beauty and “ugly” in their lives.
While feminists during the second wave advocated for doing away with harmful beauty
standards, contemporary scholars now contend that we cannot eliminate concepts of
beauty entirely (Rice, 2014). This is because judgments about what is beautiful may be
universally present in societies (Holliday & Sanchez Taylor, 2006) and because there is no
such thing as a “natural” body to which we can escape from imposed standards (Scott,
2005) (the natural and cultural are always shaping and transforming each other). For
instance, Phoebe Farris (2013) explains that beauty has always been emphasized in Native
American cultures, manifest through works of art and craft produced as well as in regalia
worn and dances performed by contemporary Indigenous peoples.
Beyond recognising the futility of appealing to the “natural,” some writers wonder
what we would lose without beauty—without the visual and tactile, the gesture, smell, and
sound, or any sensory pleasure in our lives (Colebrook, 2006). To change our image-driven,
dominant conception of beauty, they argue instead for creating a feminist aesthetic—an

inclusive theory of feminist beauty and sensory pleasure that incorporates the ugly. In order
to reframe beauty in a way that avoids body shame, refuses to be reduced to the visual,
affirms the ugly, and includes anyone who seeks it, art historian Joanna Frueh develops the
concept of “monster/beauty,” a condition emerging “from intimacy with one’s aesthetic/
erotic capacity” (2001, p. 11). Rebecca Coleman and Mónica Figueroa (2010) recast
beauty in a temporal sense, saying that its past and future orientation (longing for the body
we once had or hope to have in the future) needs to give way to a present orientation to
make it less cruel and harmful to women. Here beauty might function in women’s lives not
as a visual ideal to aspire to but as an embodied feeling of aliveness or vitality recognized as
it is happening in the moment.
Such theories are promising because they offer ways to rethink beauty and bodily
difference so that disabled women, racialized women, fat women, and all those decreed to be
unbeautiful might reclaim sensory pleasure, bodily self-celebration, and a fuller range of
embodied experiences in their lives. These are only a few examples that exist for altering our
image landscapes and expanding possibilities for beauty and more meaningful representation
of bodies. Much work remains to be done. It is up to each of us as individuals and in our
communities to give careful thought to the images and narratives we produce and consume
as well as the radical ways we might transform these as we chart our pathways forward.
Endnotes
1. Unless otherwise noted in a citation, all historical advertisements discussed in this chapter
were retrieved from Ad Access On-Line Project, Duke University, at http://library.duke.edu/
digitalcollections/adaccess/
Discussion Questions
1. List the image-based technologies you use and the image-based media you consume in
your daily life. How have technological developments increased the pressures and oppor-
tunities for body- and self-scrutiny in the 20th and 21st centuries? Applying feminist the-
ory introduced in this chapter, explain why the proliferation of visual technologies and
images has a particular significance for women. To what extent are men being similarly
affected by the image system?
2. In what ways has the body become “an important identity project”? Do body modifi-
cation techniques such as surgeries or fitness/beauty regimes work primarily to
enhance the self-esteem of people who seek them out? Or do they conscript consum-
ers into prescribed roles in a patriarchal, racist, and classist world? What are the pos-
sible effects of makeover shows and body modification products on diverse female
and male audiences?
3. Debate the origins and implications of the “obesity epidemic” and the “epidemic” of
disordered eating within Western and global contexts. Why have Western populations
become so concerned about weight? Are poor countries really facing an “epidemic” of

obesity? What are the possible effects on the public of frightening messages linking over-
or underweight with people’s health? What’s wrong with current approaches to physical
education and fitness in schools, clinics, and other sites of health education? What might
a “body equity approach” look like in practice?
4. What do you think girls and women really need to break free of the image system? How
should we be advocating for change to restrictive norms and ideals? Will banning super-
thin models from fashion shows change our ideals? Should skin-lightening, hair relaxing,
and other beauty products be banned? What other changes would you like to see? What
do you think “real” autonomy and liberation might look like for girls and women?
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Chapter 7
Men, Masculinities, and Feminism
Masculinity studies have a fraught and tense history when addressing feminism, yet today
they have become an important component of many women’s and gender studies programs.
Although later writings on men and masculinities are feminist inspired and critically
oriented, too often early writers aggravated rather than advanced the project of achieving
gender equality. In this chapter, we present an overview of the study of masculinities in
North America as a social and historical category, distinguishing between early and later
writings in the field of masculinity/ies studies. Our purpose is to show how the complexity,
tensions, and contradictions within the history of the study of men and masculinity
contribute to the feminist study of gender oppression.
We discuss early North American writings on men and masculinities to help contextu-
alize and situate the later, most recent feminist-inspired, critically oriented research on men
and masculinities. Next the chapter discusses the work of Australian sociologist Raewyn
Connell, whose theorizing of gender has profoundly shaped contemporary academic research
on men and masculinities (Beasley, 2005). We highlight and discuss the recent explosion of
research on masculinities informed by Connell’s work that has centred on analyses of power
relations and intersectionality. Finally, to illustrate the connections between Connell’s work
and the everyday experiences of men and boys, we highlight a key social site for the produc-
tion and reproduction of masculinities: sport. The overriding goal of this chapter is to show
how a feminist perspective on men and masculinities has made significant contributions to
challenging dominant models of masculinity that work against the best interests of men and
boys, with a view to securing gender justice for women and girls.
The early WriTings on Men and MasculiniTy

Until the 1970s, a distinct scholarly focus on examining “men as men,” using masculinity as
a primary category of analysis, was absent from academic research (Beasley, 2005, p. 179).
Kimmel (2003), for example, calls masculinity during the pre-1970 period the “unexamined
norm” (p. xi; for a notable early exception, see Helen Mayer Hacker, 1957). Masculinity
was considered to be singular and innate—an outcome of biology or an expression of an
assumed eternal quality. Critical attention by scholars to the complexity, diversity, fluidity,
and plurality within masculinity (i.e., masculinities) was not paid until the late 1980s and
early 1990s. However, the notion that men and boys are preordained by their biology to act
175
and behave in certain narrow ways came under increased scrutiny by the early 1970s,
triggering a wave of popular writings on men and masculinity.
Early Writings on Men and Masculinity:

1970s and 1980s
The late 1960s to the mid-1970s was marked in North America by large-scale social, polit-
ical, and economic change. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and
the Cold War; and faced with the civil rights movement, the rise of the gay and lesbian
liberation movement and its embrace of new racial, gender, and cultural priorities; schol-
ars, writers, and activists began to raise questions about the “problem” of masculinity. It was
second wave feminism that was key in fuelling the early writings of masculinity studies.
Beginning roughly in the early 1960s, and lasting throughout the 1970s, the second
wave feminist movement was an expression of women’s changing social roles. At this time,
faced with structural and systemic barriers and experiencing everyday sexism, women as a
group simply did not have the choices and opportunities in life available to men as a
group, whether that meant access to most jobs or traditional male-dominated areas of edu-
cation such as law, medicine, or engineering. As discussed extensively in Chapter 1,
various types of feminist thought and action challenged patriarchal structures and every-
day sexism, helping to expand social and economic possibilities for women and addressing
issues of workplace inequality, salary inequity, access to better jobs, and developing anti-
sexist/discrimination legislation. There was an increased social interest in challenging the
social, economic, and political inequalities faced by women (Rebick, 2005).
In particular the 1970s feminist critique of the female sex role resonated with some
men who began to offer a similar critique of the male sex role. Jack Sawyer’s 1970 article
“On Male Liberation” became a foundational text in the newly developing men’s liberation
movement, advising men to free themselves from the burdens of the male sex role. “Male
liberation,” Sawyer wrote, “calls for men to free themselves of the sex-role stereotypes that
limit their ability to be human” (Sawyer, 1970, p. 32). An article published in the August
27, 1971, issue of the popular periodical Life quickly followed Sawyer’s article. Written by
Barry Farrell (1971), and titled “You’ve Come a Long Way, Buddy,” the piece explored the
views of a few “healthy and intelligent young white American” males (p. 50). Drawing on
themes already being developed within the Men’s Liberation literature, men spoke about
how traditional masculinity was limiting as it often meant denying or suppressing emotions
and limiting the types of relationships available to them, including relationships with other
men. One of the men interviewed, for example, remarked that intimacy between men was
a dangerous encounter in light of homophobia; simply touching another man would make
them “fags” in the eyes of other men (p. 56).
Following these two works, various male writers such as Warren Farrell, Jack Nichols, and
Marc Feigen Fateau began to take seriously the idea that masculinity was socially constructed
and not something that was necessarily hardwired into boys and men. Warren Farrell’s The Lib-
erated Man (1974), Marc Feigen Fateau’s The Male Machine (1974), and Jack Nichols’s Men’s
176 Chapter 7 Men, Masculinities, and Feminism

Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (1975) were inspired by feminist scrutiny of the
female sex role. Male authors argued that men could benefit from their own liberation move-
ment by challenging what they saw as an oppressive male sex role, although the call for freedom
was largely directed at white, middle-class, American heterosexual males. By the mid-1980s the
Men’s Liberation Movement would unfortunately turn into a much more conservative, and at
times stridently anti-feminist, Men’s Rights movement. However, for many Men’s Liberation
writers of the 1970s, men’s enemy wasn’t women; it was the traditional male sex role.
The prevailing idea that authors forming the Men’s Liberation movement wanted to
convey in their books, conferences, and discussion groups (Goldrick-Jones, 2001, p. 324)
was that, while sexism and the female sex role had been a significant problem in the lives
of women and girls, men had also paid a high cost in their physical and emotional health
and their relationships. Farrell and Nichols, for example, insisted that men were forced to
conform to a standard male image that prevented them from possessing or demonstrating
a broader range of ways of being men, such as being gentle, nurturing, and vulnerable
human beings. The male sex role, they argued, flattened the lives of men by demanding
they be physically and emotionally strong, dominating, competitive, aggressive, and of
course, successful breadwinners. This set of demands was extracting a heavy toll on the
emotional, psychological, and physical lives of men. In other words, “the struggle to live
up to impossible standards of virility and prowess has made some [men] strangers to their
own feelings and strangers to each other” (Farrell, quoted in Life, 1971, p. 50).
In order to help men liberate themselves from the male sex role, Men’s Liberation
authors borrowed a main strategy from the feminist movement—consciousness-raising. Men
met together in small groups in order to raise their consciousness about the limitations and
problems of the male “sex role” (e.g., Farrell, 1974, p. 207). Sessions often focused on men’s
hyper-relationship to work. Harry Chapin’s 1974 hit song “The Cat’s in the Cradle”
popularized the fraught relationship between a father’s hyper-commitment to work and his
unfulfilled, failed relationship with his son. Echoing themes found in Chapin’s hit song,
Farrell and others not only reinforced the idea that men’s work often came at the expense of
time spent with their families, but also drew readers’ attention to how some occupations were
gendered differently. Farrell, for example, advised men to begin to ask themselves why a
“corporation president rather than an honest salesman”; a “school superintendent rather
than an elementary school teacher”; “a professor at Harvard rather than a professor at a
junior college” were more respected (pp. 57–58). By raising men’s consciousness, Farrell
hoped to draw their attention to how their beliefs and aspirations were often heavily distorted
by the expectations that marked the male sex role, including the social and cultural status
afforded by certain occupations and its link to securing a socially sanctioned masculinity.
There are numerous feminist critiques of these early writings (see Messner, 1998). Little
was mentioned within the Men’s Liberation literature about the significant amount of
structural or systemic physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological violence inflicted on
women and girls by the patriarchal relations that produced the male and female sex roles in
the first place. The Men’s Liberation movement also failed to ask a key question when it
came to gender equality, waged labour, and the work force: Why were most of these

occupations male dominated? For example, they often traded in false equivalencies when it
came to comparing the inequalities faced by men and women, so they promoted the idea
that men were equally oppressed as women. Much of the rhetoric tended to operate from a
men as victims framework. For instance, Nichols suggested that “women, once docile and
undemanding,” were now “asking for the moon” (1975, p. 11). Writing without irony and
with some surprise, Nichols went on to suggest that women, in their attempt to move toward
a much more equitable world, have become overly “aggressive!” (p. 11). Certainly, this form
of sexist and anti-feminist rhetoric found in the Men’s Liberation literature did very little to
advance the cause of gender equality, despite its substantial critique of the male sex role.
Men’s Liberation literature also assumed a white, heterosexual, middle-class masculin-
ity. Little if anything was discussed about the racist or classist discrimination faced by non-
white men or working class, working-poor men. The male sex role limited men’s emotional
range just as structural systems of oppression based on race operated to discriminate against
these groups of men, but this was rarely considered. Certainly, very little was mentioned in
the Men’s Liberation literature about the implicit and explicit ways in which gay, bisexual,
and transgendered men suffered enormous institutional and individual discrimination
when it came to finding employment and housing, or facing physical violence (Carrigan,
Connell, & Lee, 1985; Chenier, 2008; Kinsman & Gentile, 2010; Ramsay, 2011).
Finally, the main thrust of the Men’s Liberation movement was based on the mis-
guided notion that understanding the male sex-role better, rather than challenging gender
binaries and hierarchies, would transform the broader economic and social structures that
helped produce and reproduce those very roles. Early sex-role theory as practised by Men’s
Liberation writers was simply incapable of explaining and analyzing the complex ways dif-
ferent men constructed and embodied their identities in context-dependent ways. This
was due to the relatively narrow social membership of this movement in the United
States, and to a certain extent in Canada. White heterosexual middle-class men from the
1970s expected and operated from an unquestioned assumption that they would inherit
positions of cultural, social, and economic power; find themselves in medical or law
school, or working as a corporate executives or engaging with other men of power in uni-
versities; or in federal, provincial, or municipal politics. In other words, much of the Men’s
Liberation literature was concerned mostly with changing white, heterosexual, middle-
class individual men’s psychological attitudes toward gender and not questioning how
gender was institutionalized through relations of power in a way that structurally and sys-
tematically oppressed and disadvantaged women and girls (Beasley, 2005, p. 179). The
writers also tended to focus on the costs to individual men rather than the advantages and
privileges afforded to men by being men. By the end of the 1970s, popular writing on men
and masculinity remained uncritical, doing little to challenge the gender structure that
entrenched male privilege and power. Popular writing on men and masculinity became
increasingly conservative and antagonistic to women in general and to feminists in par-
ticular in the 1980s. It is to these writings that we now briefly turn.
The 1980s was a period of increased conservatism within the Western world. This era
saw the emergence and rise of the New Right and its neo-conservative political, social,

and economic agenda, including its attempt to promote (white) hegemonic constructions
of masculinity for men and traditional gender roles for women. It was in this context that
American writer Susan Faludi published the 1991 bestseller Backlash: The Undeclared War
Against American Women. In Backlash, Faludi explored key areas of social and political
culture during the 1980s as sites of anti-feminist sentiment. The response to the second
wave feminism of the 1970s was the creation of a conservative counter-movement that
was largely anti-intellectual and anti-feminist. The movement sought to roll back some of
the real or perceived gains secured by feminist activists and others. The anti-feminist
backlash Faludi describes was reinforced by a parallel rise within popular culture of a con-
servative, masculinist understanding of men and masculinity.
The emerging masculinist approach drew in large measure from the Mytho-Poetical
Men’s Movement (for a detailed discussion on the mytho-poetical men’s movement, see
Messner, 1997) that viewed masculinity as an eternal expression of maleness. This conser-
vative movement was primarily shaped by the work of poet Robert Bly, in particular his
1990 national bestseller Iron John: A Book about Men (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1994, p. 259).
In Iron John, Bly drew upon traditional folk cultures and Jungian psychology to provide
men with a roadmap to regain their assumed “lost” masculinity. Bly argued men had lost
their “true” masculinity in the face of an increasingly perceived feminized society. Fuelled
by the fear of social feminization, he suggested men retreat into the wilderness and orga-
nize and perform all-male spiritual rituals that would allow them to be with other men in
an all-male context. Doing this, it was imagined, would allow men to reconnect with their
assumed lost “deep masculine” identity. Both the men involved and the masculinity
sought were understood to be heterosexual, revealing an undercurrent of homophobia in
the movement. Understandably, feminist women and some pro-feminist men termed the
new Mytho-Poetical Men’s Movement “patriarchy with a New Age face” (Kimmel &
Kaufman, 1994, p. 260; for a critique of this movement, see also Messner, 1997).
The rise of the mytho-poetical men’s movement ran alongside the emergence of the
conservative men’s rights movement (MRM). In fact, former 1970s men’s liberation
writer Warren Farrell moved away in the 1980s from feminist thinking and increasingly
adopted a conservative men’s rights approach to understanding and addressing issues of
masculinity, ultimately becoming a leader in the conservative men’s rights movement. The
belief that underlay the men’s right movement, which was largely made up of predominately
white, middle-class men, was that it was men who were victimized by the gender order,
perhaps more so than women. Much of the men’s rights movement in the 1980s lobbied for
greater fairness in child custody disputes, although it expanded its agenda over time to
include grievances such as the ongoing struggles of boys in school (see, e.g., Biddulph, 1997;
Pollack, 1998; Whitmire, 2010; for a critique of this view, see Lingard, Martino, & Mills,
2009), violence against men, false rape reporting, and alleged anti-male bias in government
policies (Messner, 1997, p. 44). Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the
crux of the conservative, anti-feminist Men’s Rights argument rested on the perception that
the world, including the legal system, was tilted in favour of women, fuelling what they
would later term a perceived “war” against men and boys (see, e.g., Hoff-Sommers, 1990).

From a conservative Men’s Rights perspective it was not women who were oppressed and
discriminated against; it was men. A consequence of this anti-feminist, sexist perspective,
which failed to recognize patriarchy as a system of oppression that discriminated against
women and girls, was an unrelenting hostility toward feminist and pro-feminist thinking, all
of which worked against efforts to create a sincere and genuine understanding of gender
justice and equality for women and men.
Fortunately, during the latter part of the 1980s and the early 1990s, a feminist/
pro-feminist understanding of men and masculinity emerged, one that provided a research-
based corrective to the early writings of the men’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
And, although the men’s rights movement remains active to this day (for recent
examples, see Kay, 2014; Smith, 2013) in “mainstreaming misogyny” (Laxer & Lochwin,
2014), on university campuses, in the media, and elsewhere (“Venturing into the Male-
Strom,” 2014), particularly in Canada (Gheciu, 2014), and among some conservative
male academics (see, e.g., Baumeister, 2010; Benatar, 2012; Mansfield, 2006); the later
writings on masculinities have helped provide a critique and a corrective to this movement.
It is to these the later writings on masculinities that we now turn.
Later Writings on Masculinities: The late

1980s to the Present
Later North American writing on masculinities has been feminist inspired and critically
oriented, and emerged in the late 1980s, once again during a time of significant social,
political, and economic change (Greig & Martino, 2012). Although a few critically ori-
ented writings on masculinity existed (see, e.g., Hacker, 1957; Sedgewick, 1985), it was in
this period that a variety of international scholars started to employ feminist frameworks
in new and significant ways. They were informed by the feminist project to interrogate
different masculinities based on a variety of social categories such as social class, race, and
sexuality (Brod, 1987; Carnes and Griffen, 1990; Kaufman, 1993; Kimmel, 1987, 1995;
Jackson, 1990; Rotundo, 1993; Segal, 1990). There has also been a growing body of work
written on masculinities beyond men, manliness, or the male-identified. Some of the
more important works include: Jack Halberstam’s (1998) Female Masculinity; Lily Burana
and Roxxie Linnea’s (1994) Dagger: On Butch Women; and Bobby Noble’s (2004) Mascu-
linities Without Men? Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century Fictions. Although there
were certainly some differences between and among these key works when it came to
theorizing masculinities they all rejected essentialist/biological notions of masculinity and
shared in the larger project of challenging the structural and systemic issues that produce
dominant models of heterohegemonic masculinity.
A key outcome of critical feminist informed research was the establishment of univer-
sity courses and programs, associations, and a web-based database, The Men’s Bibliography.
Scholarly journals such as Men and Masculinities, Journal of Men’s Studies, and Thymos:
Journal of Boyhood Studies that focus on masculinities in a pro-feminist critical way also
emerged. In this period pro-feminist campaigns to end male violence against women and

girls, such as The White Ribbon Campaign (Kaufman, 2012), arose as a means to work
toward the broader goal of gender justice. We turn now to several influential theories of
masculinity that have helped develop a more sophisticated understanding of masculinities.
undersTanding MasculiniTies
Over the past two or more decades, critical theories of masculinity have become very
important. In this section we discuss several of these. We begin with Australian sociologist
Raewyn Connell’s theory of multiple masculinities, widely acknowledged as one of the most
influential theories in the study of men and masculinities (Beasley, 2005; Glaser, 2004;
Messerschmidt, 2000). Connell’s theory of masculinities rejects the idea that there exists a
fixed, monolithic, unitary, asocial, ahistorical version of masculinity (1995). Rather, Connell
advances an argument that there exist many varied and competing socially and historically
constructed models of masculinity at any given time; a few hegemonic, some marginalized,
some complicit, some subordinated. All types are shaped and influenced by the social
locations of particular men or groups of men differentiated by race, ethnicity, social class,
sexuality, age, bodily abilities, and so on (Connell, 1995, 2000). As with other social identities,
masculinities are continually in flux, shifting, and fluid, situated in relations of power, always
in the moment-to-moment process of being made and unmade depending on the context.
Connell engages masculinities through the prism of feminist theory and thus under-
stands them as embedded in relations of power. She theorizes that gender is a socially
organized set of practices forming relationships between and among men and between
men and women. Masculinities are situated in relations of power and produced together
in “gender regimes.” Gender regimes are patterns found within institutions such as reli-
gious institutions, families, schools, corporations, and the military that are formed through
relations of power and that structure everyday experiences of gender relations. Institution-
alized gender regimes are coupled with the overall gender patterns found in culture and
personal life that Connell calls the “gender order” of a society (Connell, 1995, pp. 71–86).
The overall structure of the current gender order found in Western societies privileges
men as a group over women as a group in ways that are hegemonic, that is, dominant
masculinity and its hierarchies are so normalized as to be practically invisible.
hegemonic Masculinity
Connell’s theory of multiple masculinities and its key concept of hegemony borrows from
the work of scholar Antonio Gramsci (1971). In order to better understand class and class
formations, Gramsci theorized that the continuing dominance of certain class formations
was not secured by physical force or through ideological compulsion. Rather, Gramsci argued
that dominance or hegemony was secured largely through persuasion by the dominant class
engaged in various forms of cultural and social leadership. For Gramsci, the dominant class
effectively secures key economic and political processes in society, and extends and expands
its control in such a way that its interests are met, its values and beliefs internalized.

For Gramsci, it is the dominant class that establishes the standards and norms against which
all other groups are measured. The success of the dominant group is principally achieved by
means of winning the active consent of those classes and groups that are subordinated within
it. Institutions such as schools and the mass media are key sites where the beliefs and values
of the dominant class are “taught” to the public, in a way that will, over time, eventually
lead to the securing of consent from subordinate classes. In other words, Gramsci’s key
theoretical insight lies in demonstrating how subordinate classes are complicit and active in
their own oppression in a way that ensures the hegemony of the dominant class.
Connell borrows the concept of hegemony from Gramsci to conceptualize relations
among various versions of masculinity situated in a gendered hierarchy. Connell argues
that one hegemonic model of masculinity is valued and esteemed above all other versions.
Within Western society today, hegemonic masculinity has been most closely associated
with white, heterosexual, able-bodied, class-privileged men who are also youthful, aggres-
sive, athletic, economically successful; and independent, a breadwinner, and physically
and emotionally tough and competitive (Greig & Martino, 2012; Kimmel, 2013; Mara,
2012). This dominant form of heteronormative masculinity ensures that men and boys
who come close to embodying hegemonic masculinity are culturally rewarded through the
accumulation of social and cultural capital. It is important to keep in mind that hege-
monic masculinity is a social and cultural product and appears differently across time and
context. What becomes the idealized version of masculinity in early 21st century Canada
is different than what became the idealized version of masculinity found, say, in Victorian
America; what is so for white teenage boys of working-class background in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, is different for Indigenous men in rural Manitoba who experienced the Indian
residential schools. (For key works that compare and explore historical constructions of
masculinity across time and contexts, see, for example, Carnes & Griffen, 1990; Dummitt,
2007; Greig, 2014; Horowitz, 1991; 2001; Kidd, 2004; Kimmel, 1996; Rotundo, 1993.)
Hegemonic masculinity sits atop a gender hierarchy and has been theorized to be the
most valued and idealized masculine identity produced through historical and social
processes. Of course, as many boys and men will know, hegemonic models of masculinity do
not necessarily correspond to the actual lives of boys and men but rather express ideals.
Although men and boys are persuaded to work toward living up to the ideals of hegemonic
masculinity, this is simply unachievable for most boys and men. Examples, however, abound
in popular culture. There are few men who are able to live up to the masculine standards set
by the fictional character Tony Stark, the American billionaire, hyper-heterosexual playboy,
genius industrialist and scientist, and invincible superhero recently valourized in the
extremely popular Iron Man films. It is important to note that celebrations of a narrow
hyper-masculine, white, heteronormative, able-bodied culture so central to many Hollywood
action movies, comic books (e.g., Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine, The Incredible
Hulk), and current popular television shows aimed at youth and adolescents (e.g., Arrow,
Gotham, The Flash) play an important role in shaping and directing the desires of many
young and adolescent boys to securing this particular version of hegemonic masculinity.
Few, if any, men and boys can actually embody the physique and qualities of a muscular

superhero, but this does not stop film makers from perpetuating hegemonic masculinity as
an ideal, or millions of little boys (and some girls?) from imagining themselves as such.
It is also important to consider carefully a material example of the ways in which
hegemonic masculinity manifests itself. For example, hyper-capitalism and neo-liberal
globalization have more recently constructed the corporate executive as a masculine ideal.
Not only has the neo-liberal offensive harmed women and girls in a variety of significant
ways, including its relentless attack on the welfare state and “imposing more unpaid work
on women caring for the young, the old, and the sick” (Connell, 2010, p. 33), but it has
also helped promote a “transnational business masculinity” (Connell & Wood, 2005,
p. 347) as the latest manifestation of a mode of hegemonic masculinity (see also Braedley &
Luxton, 2010). Set against the backdrop of an increasingly neo-liberal world that endorses
the so-called virtues of the free market and the valuing of hyper-competition and hyper-
individualism, the image of the global corporate executive as the ideal man has emerged.
This version of an ideal masculine—transnational corporate executives and chief execu-
tive officers (CEO)—is characterized by whiteness and the hyper-drive to control and
dominate global markets in an effort to accumulate enormous amounts of capital
and power and privilege (Connell & Wood, 2005; see also Elias & Beasley, 2009). This
ideal model of masculinity promotes affluence and power as key aspirations for men. For
Connell, the rise of transnational business masculinity as a mode of hegemonic masculin-
ity legitimizes men’s dominance in the global gender order (see also Greig & Holloway,
2012). Perhaps this is a good time to point out to readers the fact that of Canada’s
100 top-earning CEOs, only one is female. Moreover, according to a 2012 report written
by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada’s 100 elite CEOs make up
the richest 0.01% of Canadian tax filers, indicating the nexus between masculinities,
neo-liberalism, wealth, and hyper-capitalism (Mackenzie, 2012).
Dominant forms of heteronormative masculinity have been increasingly challenged
in recent years by the proliferation of queer and transgender identities in pop culture and
through changing legislation (e.g., Ontario’s Bill 33, Toby’s Act [Right to be Free from
Discrimination and Harassment Because of Gender Identity]) or even the legalization of
same-sex marriages in Canada (Greig & Holloway, 2012, p. 129) and the establishment of
gay-straight alliances in schools. Still, to be considered a “real man” remains closely teth-
ered to the assumption of heterosexuality. As such, the norms of hegemonic masculinity
pressure boys and men to constantly work hard to have sexual relations with girls and
women. Boys and men do this work in order to demonstrate to themselves and to other
males that they are indeed heterosexual, to prove their masculinity, and to gain status
among their male peers. In this way, women and girls become a form of commodity that
men and boys acquire in order to improve their ranking on the masculine social scale.
Yet equating hegemonic masculinity with sexual power, dominance, and violence has
unfortunately led to the development of powerful predatory and aggressive male
heterosexuality. Within the logic of hegemonic masculinity, men must be able to possess and
be successful in the area of sexual prowess and virility and be capable of sexually dominating
and successfully taking charge of women. Unfortunately, a clearly harmful outcome of this

misperception of male sexuality is the relatively high incidence of male violence against
women, including rape and sexual harassment, in Canada and elsewhere (Sinha, 2013). Recent
media attention into allegations of sexual harassment has focused on high-profile men such as
Canadian radio personality Jian Ghomeshi (Bradshaw & McArthur, 2014; Kingston, 2014),
American pro football player Ray Rice (Taylor, 2014), and well-known television personality
Bill Cosby (Elber, 2014). One need not be reminded of an earlier incident at St. Mary’s
University in which male students were “celebrating” frosh week with a public chant about
their intention to sexually assault underage girls (Hunter, 2015; see also, Simona, 2015).
Abiding by the premises of hegemonic masculinity also requires boys to practise
homophobia. Homophobia of course refers to the fear and hatred of gay males and those
who are perceived to be gay, and the prejudices and oppression that go along with that fear
and hatred (Short, 2013). To be other-than-heterosexual subordinates boys and men within
the dominant gender hierarchy. Homophobia keeps boys and men fixed into rigid and gen-
dered ways of being that inhibit their creativity and self-expression. Even today, boys, for
example, have to make sure that they choose the “right” words, speak them in the “right”
way, walk the “right” way, and engage in the “right” sort of masculine interests or else they
come under the scrutiny of other boys. However, as Christine Overall (1990) has pointed
out, the threat of homophobia and homophobic violence is not limited to the regulation of
masculinity. Rather, homophobic behaviour is also part of the enforcement of heteronor-
mativity and the institution of heterosexuality, which has an impact on all people.
Within the gender order, hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to margin-
alized, subordinate, and complicit masculinities (Connell, 1995). Connell uses the term
marginalization to express the relationship between masculinities in dominant versus mar-
ginalized classes. Men who are subject to marginalization in Western societies are often
Indigenous or people of colour, may be dis/abled, and may come from the working-class or
working-poor communities. For Connell, the intersections between and among race, class,
and gender relations are significant for understanding both relations of marginalization and
relations of dominance. Connell, for example, discusses well-known African American
athletes in the United States (e.g., Michael Jordan) who appear to exemplify hegemonic
masculinity, and yet the wealth, status, and fame of an exceptional athlete do not filter
down to secure social and cultural capital for other African American men. The problem,
as Connell notes, is that the increased visibility of a small number of men of colour func-
tions in a way to position them as exemplars of racial equality; using these men as examples
of racial equality actively prevents other non-white men from gaining social and cultural
capital and power (see, e.g., Katz, 2011). In the same way, marginalized men or boys across
racial or sexual categories may, for a brief moment, perform hegemonic masculinity but
remain marginalized within a hyper-capitalist, neo-liberal world that privileges whiteness,
wealth, heterosexuality; and the practice of economic, legal, and political power.
The concept of subordinate masculinity is most commonly thought to be associated
with gay men or men who are perceived to be gay. Boys and men who display supposedly
feminine characteristics and engage in practices and express attitudes that are not consistent
with hegemonic masculinity also fall into this category (Kimmel, 1994; Mac an Ghaill,

1994). Along with hegemonic, marginalized, and subordinate, Connell also theorizes about
complicit masculinity (Connell, 1995). Complicit masculinity is understood to be that
version of masculinity that supports and is complicit in the propping up of hegemonic
masculinity. Boys and men who adopt a complicit masculinity are not the frontline fighters
for patriarchy; they are men and boys who are not violent, openly sexist, or misogynistic but
nonetheless reproduce patriarchal relations of power while not appearing to be its primary
enforcers. Boys and men who adopt a complicit masculinity do very little, if anything, to
challenge patriarchal models of masculinity. All men, however, receive what Connell calls
the patriarchal dividend. For Connell, the “patriarchal dividend” is the power and privilege
that is provided to all men in a society, but is secured largely by the foot soldiers of patriarchy.
In other words, not all men who benefit from this privilege are violent, sexist, misogynistic.
Most men do passively benefit from those culturally engendered practices.
Masculinity as Performance
It is now common to understand gender as a performance. Conceptualizing gender as a
performance emerged from the work of Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their sem-
inal article “Doing Gender” published in 1987 in Gender and Society. In the paper, West
and Zimmerman argued that gender is not a “property of individuals,” rather gender is best
thought of as an individual’s stylization or “routine accomplishment” of gender “situated”
in everyday interaction (pp. 125–126). Performing one’s gender is something men and
boys have to work at constantly as the project of constructing an appropriate identity is
never complete but always in process. Indeed, queer theorists of the 1990s, including
Judith Butler (1990/1999), convincingly argued that gender is inscribed on the body
through continual performance. Butler wrote that gender was produced both within one-
self and for other people as “a stylized repetition of acts” (p. 179).
A man’s gender performance is assessed and evaluated by other men against socially
accepted norms of what it means to be a man. Other men watch, provide surveillance, and
issue the man a tentative acceptance into the realm of an assumed “acceptable” masculinity
(Martino & Pallota-Chiarolli, 2003; Mac An Ghaill, 1994). For example, world champion
marathon runner Alberto Salazar doggedly chased after running glory in the 1980s. In
Salazar’s case—he was a three-time winner of the New York City Marathon, in 1980, 1981,
and 1982—he did it in order to “prove his manhood” to his father (Brant, 2006, p. 69).
Masculinity then, is a homo-social enactment, a performance where other men, including
fathers, function as the audience. Many men and boys test themselves, perform heroic feats,
take enormous physical risks, work hard to secure enormous wealth and status, all because they
want other men and boys to grant to them an “acceptable” manhood (Kimmel, 1994, p. 129).
Understanding gender as a performative act helps to explain in part why men’s public
and private practices of gender sometimes differ radically. Some men and boys find their
actual practice of masculinity is at odds with their internal values. For instance, some men
and boys may not desire or be able to engage in aggressive physical acts to demonstrate an
“appropriate” masculinity. However they may do so in order to secure status among their

male peers or because they feel pressure from an adult male in authority. In a similar way,
some men may want to establish sensitive, caring, and non-exploitive relationships with
women and other men, while others desire to engage in non-violent sports. Both groups
may find it difficult to do so in light of the pressure exerted on them by standards of hege-
monic masculinity (see, e.g., Messerschmidt, 2000). Along with understanding masculin-
ity as performance, students of gender and gender relations also need to consider carefully
the ways in which masculinities overlap, intersect, and interact with other important
social categories such as social class, race, and disability.
Masculinities and intersectionality

Intersectionality is an analytical tool that feminist and other critical scholars use in order to
examine the relationship among identity, gender, and other systems of oppression (Crenshaw,
1989; Nash, 2008). Intersectionality rejects the single category framework (e.g., only race,
only gender, only sexuality), and instead analyzes the various and complex ways in which
various categories such as social class, race, age, able-bodiness, and sexuality overlap, interact,
and intersect with gender to shape the multiple dimensions of all people’s experiences. So
the study of men and masculinities is far more complicated than many early writers and
scholars first imagined. Men can be privileged in some ways and not privileged in others. For
example, due to structural and systemic oppression, being born a straight, white, heterosexual
middle-class, able-bodied male affords access to multiple systems of privilege that are simply
not available to Indigenous and non-white boys; and/or those who are working class and/or
disabled; and/or gay, bisexual, or transgendered. In many ways, being born straight, white,
male, abled-bodied, and middle class is similar to “winning life’s lottery,” where most if not
all of society’s privileges are available to you (Crosley-Corcoran, 2014).
class and Masculinities

Similar to gender, class is one of the key hierarchies within contemporary society. Class
relations unequally distribute social, political, and economic benefits and life chances
(Weis, 2008). An earlier work that adopted critical theoretical frameworks exploring class
in the lives of working-class boys was Paul Willis’s 1977 book Learning to Labor: How
Working-Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. In what is now considered to be a pivotal work
on the relationship between class and masculinities, Willis’s ethnography explored the
gendered subculture of high school aged, white, working-class, disenfranchised adolescent
boys from Hammertown, England. Willis demonstrated how economic, social, and cul-
tural structures shaped the identities of working-class boys—called the “lads”—many of
whom rejected the idea that school was a method to secure social and economic mobility.
The lads understood that their class location and social positions would likely limit their
future labour-market opportunities. Situated within a capitalist society and faced with
institutional authority, the boys largely rejected schools’ invitations to learn.
The lad’ rejected the perceived “femininity” of mental labour in favour of the
“masculinity” of manual labour. It was this strong connection between manual labour and

an “appropriate” white, working-class masculinity that largely ensured the Hammertown lads’
active participation in and consent to their subordinate economic and social fate. Similarly
Dunk’s research on working-class men from Thunder Bay, Ontario, found that real “men go
to work in work clothes, work boots, and hard hats, and carry a lunchbox” (1991, p. 46). So,
within the logic of the norms of white working-class masculinity in Hammertown, boys who
accepted a school’s invitation to learn and were academically successful were “emasculated”
and ridiculed by the lads. To pursue a successful masculinity, then, in the eyes of other boys,
the lads engaged in identity construction that rested on behaviours such as skipping school,
fighting, drinking, and smoking. Willis’s work was one of the first studies to demonstrate the
relationship between the broader structure of social class and the active ongoing identity
performance of masculinity by boys within the context of a capitalist society. When
researchers and others begin to think more closely about men’s and boys’ experiences of
masculinities, they also need to take into careful consideration the complex intersection of
gender with social class relations, with a particular eye to how social class relations currently
are being powerfully reshaped and reformed within a hyper-capitalist, neo-liberal order.
race and Masculinities

Race has figured prominently in the configuration of masculinities. Within the current
configuration of masculinities, whiteness privileges white men over non-white men. Because
of race privilege, Indigenous men and men of colour, do not experience masculinities in the
same way that white men as a group do. The high-profile examples in Ferguson, Missouri,
and New York City, in which two unarmed African American men were killed by white
police officers (El Akkad, 2014; Koring, 2014) provide current examples of the politics of
privilege and the complex intersection between race as a system of oppression and masculinity.
Even for non-white men, when class and other socially important properties such as
sexuality are examined, there are diverse experiences within the logic of masculinities.
Clyde W. Franklin II’s examination of Black masculinities in Ain’t I a Man? (1994),
demonstrates the different ways of being a man that are open to differently situated Black
men. In Black Masculinity: The Black Male’s Role in American Society, Robert Staples provided
one of the earliest feminist interpretations of masculinity by a Black male scholar. Staples’s
work was key in drawing scholars’ attention to the relationship between male power and
whiteness. As Staples and other scholars have noted, unlike white men, Black men
constitute one of the most powerless male populations in the United States, demonstrating
how some men have power based on gender, but remain oppressed due to racism.
Along with scholars such as Robert Staples and Rinaldo Wallcott, Canadian scholar
Carl E. James has written extensively about the relationship between race and masculinity.
James, for example, has explored race, gender, social class, and education in relation to
Black male athleticism in the Canadian context. James found that race, class, gender, and
location intersected in the lives of young Black men in Toronto to produce particular
versions of “appropriate” masculinity. Faced with institutional racism that privileges
whiteness, the young men were inclined to participate in sport because that is where they
were able to exercise cultural capital, gain a sense of belonging in the school among their

peers, and navigate racist structures (James, 2012). Forms of Black masculinity that became
dominant within schools were grounded in a hyper-heterosexuality and the capacity to be
physically strong, fearless, and athletic with a goal to becoming famous. James (2012)
found that, unfortunately, living out their conception of Black masculinity through sport
was not made problematic by educators and others, but rather was reinforced by the
schools’ teachers, coaches, and administrators; and parents, the media, and young female
fans. For working-class Black males, sport, not education, became the vehicle for cultural
and social mobility (see also May, 2008). The works by scholars such as those illustrate how
systematic differences in the accumulation of social authority, wealth, power, and social
and cultural capital are shaped in powerful ways by the structure of gender as it articulates
and intersects with race, social class, and other significant social categories such as sexuality.
A critical look at whiteness has enabled feminist scholars to explore the relationship
between race and masculinity. Using this approach helps us to identify and become aware of
the historically and culturally dominant form of masculinity, characterized in part by
whiteness, heterosexuality, and class mobility. Men who come from non-white European
populations—Black, Indigenous, Métis, Inuit, Mexican, Italian, and other ethnic groups, are
marginalized and “Othered.” Scholars writing about the Canadian context, for example, have
drawn our attention recently to the complexity of Indigenous masculinities. Kim Anderson,
Robert Alexander Innes, and John Swift (2012) have explored the fraught relationship
between the legacy of British Imperialism, colonization, heteronormativity, whiteness, and
patriarchy on Indigenous masculinities. Their research demonstrates that how white
European patriarchy was expressed in the Indian residential schools had a significant impact
on Indigenous men, banning their communities’ practices and rituals that had helped
Indigenous boys become democratic and egalitarian men. Also consider that, in our current
social, political, and historical context and best understood against the backdrop of
Islamophobia, representations of Middle Eastern masculinity within the popular imagination
have often been tied to a threatening “terrorist” identity (Davies & Babington, 2004). As
other non-white masculinities are Othered in the popular Western media, so too are Middle
Eastern masculinities which does very little to advance the goals of gender equity and equality
(for a more detailed and richer discussion of race, Indigeneity, and feminism, see Chapter 2).
Masculinities and Disabilities

Early researchers (e.g., Gerschick & Miller, 1994; Hahn, 1988; Shakespeare, 1999) who
studied the intersection of gender and disability found that the prevailing models of mas-
culinity and disability were in conflict with each other. In the structure of Connell’s gen-
der hierarchy, men with disabilities fall within the category of subordinate masculinity
because of the conflicting expectations placed on them as men and as people with dis-
abilities. Consider that contemporary masculinity privileges men who are physically
strong, courageous, aggressive, independent, and self-reliant (Connell, 1995). This runs
in contrast to men with disabilities who are typically perceived to be, and are often treated
as, weak, pitiful, passive, and dependent (Gerschick & Miller, 1994, p. 350), as men to be

pitied rather than respected and admired. The image of a man with physical disabilities
runs in deep contrast to all that is “embodied in the ideal masculinity: strength, power,
virility and independence” (Asch & Fine, 1988, p. 3).
If this image is so persistent in North American society, how do men with physical
disabilities negotiate their identities as men? Men with physical disabilities, such as
quadriplegia, remain committed to negotiating their identity in relation to the standards
of hegemonic masculinity in three general ways: reformulation, reliance, and rejection
(Gerschick & Miller, 1994). According to Gerschick and Miller (1994) reformulation
happens when “men redefine hegemonic masculinity on their own terms and along the lines
of their own strengths and capabilities” (p. 187). Men who reformulate their masculinity in
light of a physical disability remain committed to traditional characteristics of masculinity
such as control, independence, and autonomy. Those men who reformulate their gender
identity in a way that is consistent with the standards of hegemonic masculinity will also
engage in traditional masculine pursuits such as an active sex life or a full-contact sport such
as wheelchair rugby (Gerschick & Miller, 1994, p. 353). Men who practise a reliance on
normative standards of masculinity do not feel comfortable with their sense of gender
identity. The inability to meet society’s standards of what it means to be a man leaves these
men troubled and feeling “incomplete.” Men who rely on dominant conceptions of
masculinity tend to internalize their feelings of inadequacy and seek to compensate, or at
times overcompensate, for them. This can result in increased attempts to have sexual
relations with women in order to demonstrate their masculinity, or in increased attempts to
engage in dangerous and risky physical pursuits or to participate in disability sports such as
wheelchair rugby as ways to construct or recuperate hegemonic masculinity (e.g, see Rubin
and Shapiro’s 2005 award-winning documentary, Murderball). This model does very little to
challenge the current gender order as it makes disability the problem of the individual rather
than a shortcoming of the broader society.
The third method that men with physical disabilities use in relation to the standards
of hegemonic masculinity is one of rejection. In this model men come to understand that
the dominant models of masculinity are deeply problematic and begin to develop new
standards of masculinity in place of the ones they have rejected. Gerschick and Miller
(1994) interviewed men who rejected traditional masculinity and its emphasis on sexual
prowess. The men in this category also rejected traditional notions of what it meant to be
a father, placing much more emphasis on being emotionally and physically available to
children. Finally, it is important to point out that men with disabilities very rarely use one
method exclusively. Rather, “men often employ each of these methods at different points
in their lives in complex and overlapping ways, even though they do tend to rely on one
method more than others” (e.g., Mara, 2012).
An intersectional approach to understanding gender and disability accepts that not all
men with disabilities experience disability in the same way. Therefore any nuanced account
of the intersection between masculinity and disability needs to reject a homogeneous
understanding of disability and consider how various types of disabilities intersect with
gender and other factors such as class, race, age, and sexual orientation (Shuttleworth et al.,

2012). For instance, Shuttleworth et al. found that there were differences between men
who acquired a physical impairment after childhood and men who experienced early onset
impairments. Men who acquired impairment later in life, such as a spinal cord injury, “were
more closely aligned with nondisabled normative masculinity, than men who experienced
early onset impairments, such as cerebral palsy” (p. 183). In other words, men who acquired
a physical impairment later in life have been perceived by other men as “real men” who lost
their masculinity compared to those men who experienced an early onset physical
impairment and have been considered as never having been masculine in the first place.
While men with disabilities are marginalized within the logic of hegemonic masculinity,
failing to differentiate between impairments overlooks types and degrees of difference in
impairment as they interact with masculine expectations.
sport: a Key social location for the

Making of Masculinities
Individual identity construction is usefully understood and situated in relation to institu-
tions such as education, family, and the media. Sport is a key institution for men and
boys. Understanding these key cultural and social institutions such as schools, family,
and organizations as gendered cultural spaces requires us to view gender as dynamic,
fluid, and relational historical processes situated within complex relations of power.
Although each institution is important for students of gender to examine, in the final
section of the chapter we turn to the case study of sport and masculinity.
sporting culture and the Making of Masculinities Research on men and

masculinities has consistently demonstrated how sport remains one of the key social and
cultural institutions in the social production of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995;
Krebs, 2012; Messner & Sabo, 1994; Rand, 2012; see also Joseph, Darnell, & Nakamura,
2012). Scholars have largely agreed that boys learn at a very early age, through the institution
of sport, that social and cultural capital can be secured, at least temporarily, by displaying a
high level of sporting prowess (Connell, 1995, p. 54; see also Michael Buma’s 2012 Refereeing
Identity: The Cultural Work of Canadian Hockey Novels). Indeed, it almost goes without saying
that demonstrating the physical and mental attributes most closely associated with athletic
achievement, in particular in contact sports, is an important requirement for status in most
male peer groups (Burstyn, 1999; Messner & Sabo, 1994; Pronger, 1990). Some of the more
detailed work that has been completed on masculinities has demonstrated quite convincingly
that boys who are considered to be competent in “appropriate” masculine sports such as ice
hockey, football, basketball, or rugby acquire enormous amount of social capital and sit atop
the gendered hierarchy (Burstyn, 1999; Martino & Pallota-Chiarolli, 2003; Messner, 1990,
2002). At the same time, boys who are physically small or awkward or less coordinated, and
boys who are scholarly or artistic or simply have no interest in sports, are often ridiculed and
marginalized and often face verbal and physical violence from other boys (Burstyn, 1999;
Mac An Ghaill, 1994; Martino & Pallota-Chiarolli, 2003).

The significance of sport in contributing to gender hierarchies and to the mainte-
nance of male supremacy should not be underestimated (Anderson, 2005; Burstyn, 1999;
Lenskyj, 1986; Messner & Sabo, 1994). In fact, it has almost been taken for granted that
the masculinities produced in professional men’s team sports, such as ice hockey or profes-
sional football, are often the most valued and venerated in popular culture (Burstyn, 1999;
Messner, 1992). The institution of sport continues to prop up hegemonic masculinity by
ritualizing and embedding aggression, strength, and skill in the male body and closely con-
necting it with competitive achievement (Anderson, 2005). Sport is a space in which a
certain definition of hegemonic masculinity has been celebrated, a version of masculinity
that Burstyn termed, “a manly antifeminist warrior” (1999, p. 65). In some sports, women
have gained only second-class status and have been forced to play with more “feminine”
rules, positioning them as the “weaker” sex. In golf, to take one example, there exists a
Ladies Tee, which suggests women should play a shorter course. Nonetheless, the distribu-
tion of wealth, power, opportunity, and authority between men and women is also con-
nected to media coverage. Messner and Cooky (2010) demonstrated that although woman
made up close to 40% of participants in sport, they received just 4% of the media cover-
age. Unfortunately, the researchers also found that the media coverage “of women’s sport
has actually declined over the past two decades” (p. 3).
Brian Pronger’s (1990) early research on the relationship between masculinity and
sport within the North American context also demonstrated that competitive team sports
that have a strong focus on violence, such as ice hockey, were more likely to be played by
hyper-heteromasculine men than sports that do not focus on violence. In Crossing the Line:
Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s National Sport, Laura Robinson (1998) demonstrated
that young men who played junior hockey in Canada displayed a hyper-masculinity as well
as demonstrated more misogynistic and sexist beliefs about women and girls than the
general population. Robinson argued that within junior hockey culture, sexual assault
against young women, including rape, is common. This suggests that sporting practices
and cultures, which are grounded in the celebration of an aggressive, hyper-masculinity,
promote sexual violence against women and girls. Certainly the growing list of high-profile
domestic abuse and sexual assault cases among high school (Zernike & Schweber, 2014),
university (Cohen & Bachman, 2014), and professional football players (Armour, 2014;
Wilner, 2014) provides further evidence of the relationship between hyper-masculine
sporting cultures and the production of a violent, hegemonic masculinity.
Sport teaches males to play through pain. This is often taken as a clear marker that a
boy has adopted an “appropriate” masculinity. Don Sabo (1994) pointed out that the vast
majority of male athletes in North America adopt the “pain principle,” the idea that they
are expected by coaches, teammates, fans, and others to ignore their body’s pain. For
instance, in his recent memoir, a book-length reflection on his professional hockey play-
ing days during the 1970s and 1980s, Derek Sanderson recalls the very first lesson his dad
taught him when he was just eight years old, to condition “myself to ignore pain” and
“never [allow] it to intimidate me” (2012, p. 16). In a similar way, former National Hockey
League (NHL) superstar Theo Fleury related in his memoir that during his time in hockey

in the 1980s and 1990s, he could never be honest with other players or coaches when it
came to being hurt or feeling pain. In front of other men, he always “had to be tough,
never show weakness” (2009, p. 96). As these examples show, men and boys must demon-
strate their manliness time and again by rejecting any supposed feminine behaviour, even
though those behaviours work for self-preservation. According to Michael Messner
(1990), herein lies one of the “ultimate paradoxes of organized combat sports: top ath-
letes, who are often portrayed as the epitome of good physical conditioning and health,
are likely to suffer from a very high incidence of permanent injuries, disabilities, alcohol-
ism, drug abuse, obesity, and other related health problems” (p. 211). To put it a little
differently, the norms of hegemonic masculinity teach male athletes to view their bodies
as machines, which “results at times in violence against the athlete’s own body” (p. 211).
To be sure, out of all the masculine attributes that fuel an elite athlete’s hegemonic
masculine status, sacrificing one’s body in silence for the sake of sporting glory has histori-
cally been key. In a social system in which experiencing pain in silence brings so-called
masculine honour, recognition, and respect, it is only natural that boys and men would
strive to meet this expectation. Boys are taught at an early age that if they don’t conform
to the pain principle they might be labelled as “women,” “fags,” or “pussies” (Messner,
2004, pp. 328–329). Let’s take the recent example of the National Basketball Associa-
tion’s (NBA) superstar Lebron James. On June 6, 2014, Game one of the NBA’s final
between the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat was played. Key to the Miami Heat’s
success over the season was the play of superstar forward Lebron (King) James, considered
by many to be the best basketball player in the world. However, on this particular hot
spring night, the air-conditioning in the San Antonio basketball stadium broke down,
raising the temperature on the court to over 32° Celsius. The extreme heat appeared to
have caused James to develop leg cramps late in the game. Because of the visible pain he
was experiencing and the fact that he looked like he could not even walk because of the
leg cramps, James made the decision to pull himself out of the game. It was James’s deci-
sion to not conform to the “pain principle” that stoked controversy in the media.
The racist public backlash against James’s decision to leave the game for health rea-
sons came quickly via Twitter and other forms of media. James was ridiculed, using misog-
ynistic and homophobic slurs for not playing through the pain: “Lebron is a woman!
Having her period!” tweeted one Twitter writer (Signal, 2014). In the context of anti-
Black racism, the swift public attack on James’s masculinity should tell us something very
important about the permeation of white heteronormative masculinity within North
American culture and the cultural policing of normative masculinity. Not even Lebron
James, a pro athlete who has achieved enormous athletic success and wealth in a hyper-
masculine culture, is free from being unseated from the status he has earned. Denying
physical and emotional weakness and playing through pain are necessary in order to main-
tain even pro athletes’ privileged position.
Let’s take a final example. In the winter of 2013, popular conservative American radio
personality Glenn Beck mocked American president Barack Obama for his comments in a
pre-Super Bowl interview about football safety. Obama sat down with television journalist

Scott Pelley prior to Super Bowl Sunday and was questioned by Pelley whether he would
allow his son to play football. “I have to think about it,” Obama said, adding that he is a
“huge fan” of the sport, “but that there are concerns about safety to consider.” “He’s a girl,”
mocked Beck on the following Monday: “His man card has been revoked by me. That’s
saying something.” Invoking a misogynist and thinly veiled racist discourse, Beck then went
on to state that the president’s response was typical of a woman’s. Oddly, Beck then imitated
a wife concerned about letting her son play football. “You’re a full-fledged woman . . . I’ve
never heard anybody but a woman say that.” Beck told listeners that Obama should “[S]top
being such a chick, Mr. President. You’re commander-in-chief, not the chick-in-chief ”
(Beck, 2013). Beck’s comments and the public response to James’s decision clearly reveal the
relationship between racism, homophobia, misogyny, and standards of hegemonic masculinity.
In both cases, women are devalued, denigrated, and positioned as weak, cowardly, and
passive. Even the president of the United States, often considered the most powerful man in
the world, was ridiculed for not adhering to the standards of hegemonic masculinity.
For the man or boy—in particular, the athlete—who temporarily succeeds at embodying
normative masculinity, its norms are often internalized to the level that violence and
aggression become part of his own sense of identity. The body of these men becomes a
machine that can be used to inflict pain on other men, which elevates him into the
“masculine elite” (Powell, 2014) where he reaps the social, political, and economic rewards
that accompany this position in all-male worlds, including professional sports. Many are
willing to be involved in these sports even if it might mean acquiring early onset dementia
or other cognitive and physical disorders, such as chronic headaches, memory loss,
depression, and sleeplessness (Vasquez, 2014).
The recent public concern and media attention around chronic traumatic encepha-
lopathy (CTE) and the risk of concussion for those who play professional sports such as
pro football and hockey may, however, be bringing about some change. In light of the
growing body of research on some sports and their relationship to the development of
progressive cognitive degenerative diseases such as CTE, some parents may no longer
choose to risk the long-term health of their sons for the sake of a game (see Gregory,
2014). In fact, a Canadian writer (Fitz-Gerald, 2014) recently suggested that growing pub-
lic concerns over concussions could cause the death of ice hockey. Echoing a similar trend,
the New York Times published an article that highlighted the decreasing number of boys
electing to play high school football in the United States because of increased concerns
over their health and welfare (Leonhardt, 2014).
Remember, however, the strong relationship among hegemonic masculinity, sport, and
capitalism, in particular corporate capitalism that has historically exploited the bodies of
men and women in its pursuit of greater profit (Engels, 1887/2004). The promotion of a
so-called ideal masculinity needs, in part, to be understood as closely connected to the
interests of those men well positioned within the corporate capitalist structure. Corporate
capitalism teaches boys to develop an identity that is closely associated with physical
toughness, competition, and public displays of bodily power. When it comes to major sporting
leagues such as the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL),

and the National Basketball Association (NBA) (and minor and university leagues), these
corporate capitalist structures encourage boys and men to live up to the ideals of hegemonic
masculinity by offering them exceptional material rewards, widespread fame, and masculine
honour (Gruneau & Whitson, 1993; Howell, 2001; Whitson & Gruneau, 2006). To play in
one of the professional leagues almost guarantees a man his place among the so-called
masculine elite in society. Yet keep in mind that, by aspiring to live up to the so-called ideals
of hegemonic masculinity within the context of sport, men and boys routinely sacrifice their
bodies and minds, including experiencing the likelihood of depression, substance abuse, and
premature death (for a recent example, see Branch, 2014; see also Nilan, 2013; Sanderson,
2012) for significant corporate profits. In this sense, men’s (and women’s) bodies are
considered to be disposable and quickly discarded if they no longer serve the interests of
corporate capitalism. Within the context of an increasingly corporate capitalist society,
institutions such as sport adhere very closely to the principle of profit before people.
Within the logic of the hierarchy of masculinities, different sports are gendered
differently. With some exceptions, the more violent the game the higher up on the gendered
sport hierarchy it rests. Team sports that are gendered hyper-masculine, such as ice hockey
and football, and infused with violence sit atop the gendered hierarchy, while non-violent
and non-contact sports such as badminton, ballet, and gymnastics sit on the bottom.
Violent, high-status sports often serve as a key zone for the expression of patriarchal practices
and a place for boys to be viewed by other boys as “appropriately” masculine. Describing the
North American context, Mary Louise Adams, in her 2011 book Artistic Impressions: Figure
Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport, put it this way: “[I]n the North American sport
hierarchy, hard-hitting, aggressive team activities pursued by men occupy the highest rungs,
and to these sports and the athletes who participate in them accrue the highest status, the
greatest profits, and most media coverage” (p. 11). As Adams suggests, many boys raised in
contemporary North America rarely entertain the idea of becoming a figure skater, in part
because a boy who figure skates is often viewed by other boys as effeminate, a sissy, or worse,
gay (Adams, 2011). Not surprisingly, then, those men who succeed in achieving significant
professional status by playing in appropriately masculine sports such as professional ice
hockey are often the most popular and admired men in their national context. In our own
Canadian context, and taking into serious consideration the project of whiteness, we need
only consider the enormous and widespread cultural and social status afforded to former
professional hockey players Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, and Wayne Gretzky to
see the truth behind this statement (Allain, 2008; Gruneau & Whitson, 2007; for a first-
hand account of race and racism in ice hockey, see Cecil Harris, 2003, Breaking the Ice: The
Black Experience in Professional Hockey; see also Valmore James & John Gallaher, 2015, The
Val James Story: Black Ice; for an intriguing broader discussion on race and sport in Canada
see Joseph, Darnell, & Nakamura, 2012).
Sport is a key social institution in the making of masculinities. Sport remains a place
of male dominance, where men and boys can live the fantasy of assumed male superiority
and toughness, even if the vast majority of men and boys cannot play at the level of elite
athletes. Unfortunately, some boys may also learn through organized sport to hide or
repress their emotional and physical pain in order not to show perceived weakness, making

sport a dangerous place for boys. Not only does this narrowing and flattening of boys’ lives
come at the cost of the development of their emotional life, but also the expectation to
play through pain can be a source of long-term physical harm, as the recent research on
CTE has demonstrated. Men and boys continue to use sport, in particular, high-status
contact sports such as ice hockey, as an arena where they can prove their masculinity to
other men and boys. Although sports can offer men and boys some positive benefits, such
as experiencing camaraderie and mutual support from other men and boys and learning
how to understand the use of their bodies, many of the values currently celebrated in
sports have a negative impact on them, as well as on women and girls. Some of the key
lessons boys learn through organized sport are misogyny, sexism, and violence that all
work against efforts to secure gender equality. In light of the significant amount of male
violence against women and girls, this is important to bear in mind because it undermines
efforts by feminists and antiviolence educators to work toward gender justice.
ConCLusion
North American writings on men and masculinity produced in the 1970s looked critically
at the male sex role. These early writings began to see men as explicitly gendered rather
than as innately driven to be “hard,” unemotional, and driven only by work. However,
early writings on men and masculinity did very little to advance the cause of gender equal-
ity between men and women. They failed to consider power relations, reducing issues of
gender to individual men, rather than analyzing the systemic and structural issues that
privilege men as a group over women. Moreover, the early writings on men and masculin-
ity largely assumed a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class male as the norm. By
making this assumption, early writings failed to take into consideration the complexity,
fluidity, and intersection of masculinities with other significant categories such as race,
social class, able-bodiness, and sexual identity.
Later writings on men and masculinity provided a much-needed corrective to popular
writings produced by writers identifying with the men’s liberation movement. By taking into
careful consideration feminist, queer, and other critically oriented scholarship, and by under-
standing men and masculinities as plural, socially and historically constructed, and by under-
standing masculinity as performative and embodied, rather than somehow just “naturally”
one way or another, the later writings on men and masculinities provided new key insights
into the making of masculinities. Certainly, Connell’s conceptualization of masculinity as
relational between and among men has helped students of gender and gender relations under-
stand that as a culture, we come to understand what it means to be an “appropriate” man by
“setting” the definition against a group of Others, including racial minorities, differently
abled, sexual minorities, and women (Kimmel, 1999, p. 4). Unfortunately, the fear of emascu-
lation or being viewed as a sissy or gay, continues to fuel men’s active and ongoing desire to
meet hegemonic standards of masculinity. Relief from these forms of gender anxieties will
only be achieved once we begin to help men and boys understand that it is in their own best
interest and the interest of others, including those women and girls they love and care for, to
begin to dismantle hegemonic models of masculinity.

Later writings on men and masculinities have pushed researchers and students of gen-
der to think more carefully about the intersection of gender with other important social
categories such as race, social class, and sexuality in the ongoing construction of men’s
identity. As Connell and other critical scholars of gender have noted, intersectionality
analyzes the various and complex ways in which various categories such as social class,
race, age, able-bodiness, and sexuality interact with gender to shape the multiple dimen-
sions of experiences with masculinities.
Finally, the later feminist-informed and critically oriented writings on men and mas-
culinities have helped make a contribution to the advancement of gender equality
between men and women. By interrogating and working toward dismantling hegemonic
versions of masculinity that are based on homophobia, misogyny, aggression, violence,
and the devaluation and oppression of women and girls, men and boys can begin to work
to end violence against women and girls, and promote gender equity, healthy relation-
ships, and a new, broader understanding of masculinities. A pro-feminist research agenda
that remains committed to addressing issues of gender justice for women and girls will also
help men and boys live in a more socially just and meaningful way that respects a variety
of healthy and respectful forms of masculinity and encourages men and boys to challenge
the realities of privilege, power, and violence in their own lives.
1. What are some of the key differences between the early and later writings on masculinity/
masculinities?
2. Performing masculinity is demonstrated and displayed for other men in the hope of being
granted an “acceptable” masculinity. Describe examples from your own experiences
where you felt a man or a boy was working hard to construct an “appropriate” masculin-
ity for others?
3. How does the pain principle manifest itself in the everyday lives of boys and men? Give as
many examples as you can think of in relation to various social institutions that you par-
ticipate in (such as sports, health care, education, paid work, and others).
4. How has an intersectional approach to analyzing masculinities helped researchers theorize
about overlapping systems of oppression and power? Can you think of examples from
your own life in which an intersectional approach helps you to better understand a man’s
or boy’s identity?
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Chapter 8
Violence Against Women in Canada
IntroductIon
In 1982, during Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons, New Democratic
Member of Parliament Margaret Mitchell asked how the government was planning to
respond to a recent report on wife abuse. She was greeted with a chorus of male laughter.
As Mitchell later recalled, “The uproarious and outrageous response by many male
MPs . . . sent shock waves across the country.” (Mitchell, 2007, p. xiii). This infamous
incident was a defining moment in the Canadian women’s movement. Today, we would
be unlikely to hear such an open public dismissal of the issue of woman abuse. Yet well
over 30 years later, the statistics do not give us reason to celebrate the end of violence
against women. Women today are 5% more likely to be targets of any violence than
men are, and 83% of that violence is perpetrated by males. Women are eleven times
more likely to be the victims of sexual assault and four times more likely to be the target
of stalking behaviour and intimate partner violence. The vast majority of violent
offences (84%) were perpetrated by a man who the woman already knew rather than a
stranger. Almost half (45%) were her husband or boyfriend (Sinha, 2013). In Canada,
violent crime has declined overall, but sexual assault rates have remained stubbornly
consistent. Statistics Canada, while reporting these figures, acknowledged that the
actual rate of crimes involving male violence against women is likely much higher due
to under-reporting (Sinha, 2013, p. 26). If we look at violence against women through
an intersectional lens, this is compounded. Immigrant women and women of colour face
particular challenges in reporting violence due to language barriers and ethnic and
racial prejudices. Women with disabilities have a rate of spousal violence that is nearly
double that of the general population (Brownridge, 2009). Indigenous women are esti-
mated to suffer from a frequency of abuse that is 2.5 times than that of the general
population (Sinha, 2013, p. 19). For those who do not conform to sexual and gender
binaries, such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and gender queer and trans people, the rela-
tionship to violence is greatly multiplied (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 5; Grant et al.,
2011, p. 100). How can we understand this disturbing reality, and is there anything that
can be done to change it?
201
IdentIfyIng the Problem
Starting in the late 1960s, with the growth of the Second Wave of feminism, women gath-
ered to talk about the realities of their lives in what were called “consciousness-raising”
groups. They soon discovered that domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape were
not uncommon. The early critics of men’s violence were radical feminists who saw
patriarchal society as the root cause of women’s oppression, and violence against women
as the key mechanism by which men exercised power and control over women. The critics
worked hard to bring this to public view, which was an uphill battle. Former Liberal
Member of Parliament Monique Bégin has noted that the Canadian Royal Commission
on the Status of Women, which was formed in 1967 in response to feminist pressure for
change, shied away from dealing with issues connected to violence. She later noted that
“The commission did not even identify violence towards women—physical, sexual, and
psychological—as a feminist issue” (Bégin, 1992, p. 31). Women’s access to child care,
abortion services, and workplace equality were the concerns that were considered the
appropriate mandate of the Commission. Violence was seen as a social or criminal matter
that the legal system should address. The number of charges placed and convictions
gained in crime victimization data indicated that domestic violence was a problem that
was thought to happen only in severely dysfunctional families at the lower end of the
socio-economic order. Rape was seen as a rare event that happened in dark alleyways
where predators lurked. Sensible middle-class women who stayed away from dangerous
places, it was assumed, were not likely to be victimized. The Commission was criticized by
many feminists who felt that the final recommendations did not adequately challenge
such stereotypes or address questions of violence against women.
Unwilling to simply wait for government action, feminists moved forward to address
woman abuse issues directly. In 1972 the first shelters for battered women and rape crisis
centres were opened across Canada. They fought hard for government funding, which was
eventually granted reluctantly, but their financial viability was precarious (Janovicek,
2007, p. 5). One of the recommendations of the 1970 Commission Report was the
establishment of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. In 1980,
responding to persistent pressure from the women’s movement, the Council published a
study by Linda MacLeod, Wife Battering in Canada: The Vicious Cycle. This was the report
that Margaret Mitchell had referred to in Parliament. MacLeod worked closely with bat-
tered women’s shelters to obtain information about the women who used their services.
Extrapolating from their records, she concluded that a conservative estimate of the pro-
portion of Canadian women abused every year by their male partners was 10% (MacLeod,
1980, p. 21). Seven years later an update was published, also relying heavily on data from
shelters. McLeod pointed to several advances since her last report, including a new law
passed in 1983 that made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife. Formerly consent to sex
was considered to be part of marriage. She also noted the ever-increasing number of
shelters, which had tripled to 264 across Canada, as well as the corresponding increase in
the number of women who used their services (MacLeod, 1987, p. 113).
202 Chapter 8 Violence Against Women in Canada

Two years after this report, on December 6, 1989, a lone man with a legal hunting rifle
walked into the École Polytechnique in Montreal, entered an engineering classroom, and
ordered the men to leave. He accused the women of being feminists and shot them. By the
time he was finished his rampage through the college and turned the gun on himself,
14 women had been killed. This is known as the Montreal Massacre and an intense and, at
times, acrimonious national debate opened in its wake. Many discussions focused on gun
control and mental illness as the important issues. Feminists felt that it was an example of
the systemic abuse of women in a patriarchal society and the reality of male violence
against women. The Montreal Massacre is commemorated on December 6 across Canada
as an official day of mourning and remembrance (see also Cultural Memory Group, 2006).
Public consternation along with feminist lobbying led to the Canadian Panel on
Violence Against Women that was struck in 1991, followed by public hearings across the
nation. Its report, Changing the Landscape: Ending Violence, Achieving Equality (Marshall &
Vaillancourt, 1993) was completed in 1993 and made 494 sweeping recommendations, most
of which remain unimplemented today. The report argued that structural inequality was the
basis of all forms of violence against women. Despite government endorsement of the report,
no actual funds were allocated to implementation (Levin, 1996, p. 348).
However, at the same time as Changing the Landscape was released, two other positive
initiatives were launched, both by Health Canada. One was the establishment of five
regionally based research centres on violence against women that were funded for five
years and still operate today. The second initiative was the national Violence Against
Women Survey (VAWS), conducted by Holly Johnson of Statistics Canada. Since the
results of the standard Canadian crime victimization surveys did not line up with the
qualitative information and usage numbers being collected from front-line women’s anti-
violence organizations, a specialized survey was deemed necessary to get a full picture.
The survey was given to a representative sample of 12 300 women across Canada. During
the design of the questionnaire, Johnson consulted extensively with feminist anti-violence
workers and researchers about how to ask women about male violence and specially
trained the female interviewers to ask these sensitive and sometimes difficult questions.
When released, the results of the VAWS shocked Canadians. They revealed that
“51 percent of Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual
assault since the age of 16 and 10 percent had been victims of violence in the 12-month
period preceding the survey” (Johnson, 1996, p. 49). As is the case now, women were three
times more likely to be assaulted, either sexually or physically, by men they knew and often
were in an intimate partnership with, rather than the imagined stranger in the dark alleyway.
“The VAWS captures almost twice as many incidents as the GSS [Statistics Canada
General Social Survey],” Johnson reported, “3 times as many cases of wife assault as are
reported to the police, and about 38 times as many sexual assaults as police statistics”
(Johnson, 1996, pp. 50–51). One of the most striking results was women’s fear for their
safety when they were alone after dark: 60% of women were either very or somewhat
afraid of walking in their own neighbourhoods, 76% of waiting for public transit, 83%
walking to their car in a parking garage, and 40% in their own homes. As a result of the

prevalence rates determined from this survey, it became possible to also calculate the eco-
nomic costs to society of violence against women. Economist Tanis Day was the first to do
so, conservatively estimating that based on health care alone, the cost was just under
$1.54 billion annually to Canadian society (Day, 1995). A second study expanded this to
cover other areas of cost and came up with an estimated cost of $4.7 billion for 1993
(Greaves, Hankivsky, & Kingston-Reichers, 1995).
The backlash to the results of the VAWS was unprecedented for a Statistics Canada
survey. That it was done only on women was considered an outrage to some, who won-
dered why there hadn’t been such a dedicated survey for men, especially in the case of
spousal violence. The involvement of feminist anti-violence experts and agencies in the
early stages of the survey’s development was seen as inserting political bias into objective
research causing the interviewers to ask “leading” questions. “Serious” and “non-serious”
offences were viewed as being not sufficiently distinguished and the results about women’s
fear were criticized for being unnecessarily inflammatory and an attempt to cause panic
among women who otherwise felt safe (Johnson, 1995, pp. 148–156). As Anthony Doob,
professor of Criminology at the University of Toronto concluded, “Criticisms of the
survey—couched often in ‘technical’ or methodological language—appear to be motivated
primarily by political and social attitudes, rather than by concerns about the actual
methodology” (Doob, 2002, p. 61). As a result, Statistics Canada now only conducts
surveys on domestic violence that include both men and women. What shocked the
public, but was no surprise to anti-violence feminists, were the variety of ways in which
women experienced violence, and its deep systemic roots.
tyPes of VIolence AgAInst Women

sexual Assault
Prior to 1983 when new legislation was introduced, sexual assault was known as “rape” in
Canadian law. Feminists pressed for this legal change in order to remove rape from the
realm of morality and sex and make it a violent assault upon the person. Rather than see
rape as only an act perpetrated by men on women, it was de-gendered so that men could
be rape victims too. The intent of this change was to circumvent rape myths that had
biased the behaviour of police, prosecutors, and jury members who had drawn on
entrenched social attitudes that hinged on whether women meant “no” when they said
“no” to sex, or whether they indicated their willingness by other, non-verbal means such
as wearing skimpy clothing, drinking in public places, walking alone after dark, or having
had sex previously with the assailant. Certain groups of women, such as sex workers and
racialized and Indigenous women, were often considered to be more “sexual” and there-
fore more likely to give consent. If a woman had engaged in previous non-marital sexual
relationships, it was often considered as evidence that she was more likely to have con-
sented to sex and the accused might have reasonably assumed that she was willing.
Furthermore, any delay in reporting was seen as possibly indicating that a woman had

second thoughts about having sex or was seeking revenge on a man who had rejected her.
Feminists protested that putting a woman’s behaviour and motivation under such intense
scrutiny to defend the accused in effect put the victim on trial for the crime (Du Mont &
Parnis, 1999, pp. 102–109). In contrast, no one who was the target of theft was questioned
about whether their behaviour had invited the crime, or to show physical injuries as proof
of resistance. The new law introduced what was called a “rape shield provision” that
introduced “limits on the ability of the defence lawyers to ask questions about the sexual
history of the complainant . . .” (Balfour & Du Mont, 2012, p. 705). This, however, has
not prevented defence lawyers from attempting to establish “inconsistent testimony or a
pattern of fabrication by the complainant, thus retrenching rape myths of raped women as
liars, mentally unstable, or hysterical” (p. 706).
Women who have been through the legal system and cross–examined by a hostile
defence lawyer describe the process as brutal (Doe, 2003). Women who bring complaints
to the police are often subjected to very rigorous interrogation to ensure that their case
will be strong enough to stand up to questioning in court. This means that the victim must
relive the details of a traumatic assault repeatedly throughout the whole legal process, and
in front of sometimes unsympathetic and judgmental strangers. Persistent lobbying by
feminist activists has resulted in efforts being made to improve the process of collecting
forensic evidence immediately following a rape. There are now specially qualified Sexual
Assault Nurse Examiners who not only collect evidence, but also provide support and
referrals to rape victims. In many hospitals, there are sexual assault treatment centres that
also aid women who have been assaulted by their partners and children who have been
abused. However, as Johnson and Dawson have observed, “Despite decades of activism by
feminist grassroots organizations, researchers, and legal scholars, myths and prejudicial
stereotypes about sexually assaulted women persist, sexual assault remains hidden, and
victims are routinely blamed and stigmatized” (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 121).
Thus it is not surprising that an estimated nine out of 10 non-spousal sexual assault
cases are never reported to the police. Of those who reported in 2011, 44% were unsolved
either because the rapist was not identified or the police did not feel that there was sufficient
evidence to lay charges (Status of Women Canada, 2013). Of the 56% that went to trial,
42% resulted in convictions (Dauvergne, 2012, p. 25). This means that in over 97% of cases
of alleged sexual assault, the accused rapist walks away with few, if any, consequences. This is
why many feminists call our society a rape culture that supports the sexual assault of women
by not taking the issue or the women who have been subjected to such violence seriously.
A woman known only as Jane Doe has brought many of the problems with how the
police and legal system deal with sexual assault to public attention. In August 1986, she
was attacked in her own home at night by a serial rapist armed with a knife who had
entered through her balcony door. After she reported the incident to the police, she was
dismayed to learn that they were well aware of the perpetrator, who had assaulted four
other women in her neighbourhood in the same manner. When she asked why she had
not been warned, the police said that they did not want to alarm women, cause them to
become hysterical, or scare the rapist away. In effect, Jane Doe concluded, she and other

women were being used as “bait” in an on-going police investigation. Defying the police,
Jane and other women postered their neighbourhood with warnings about the rapist.
Ironically, this led to his arrest within 24 hours when his parole officer turned him
in. He was charged with sexually assaulting Jane Doe and four other women, and the
evidence against him was so overwhelming that he entered a guilty plea in exchange for a
sentence of 20 years instead of indefinite incarceration as a Dangerous Sexual Offender.
In an unprecedented move, Jane Doe hired her own legal representation and was granted
approval by the court to be present at the entire pre-trial hearing. Previously, rape victims
were only called in to testify and then required to leave. Jane did not stop there. Supported
by the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, which had been formed in 1985, she
sued the Toronto Police. Eleven years later, she was awarded damages of $220 000 in a
“judgment that damned the police” and found them responsible for “breaching her right
to equal treatment under the law, guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; for her
right to security of the person, also guaranteed by the Charter; and for carelessly failing to
warn her that she fit this rapist’s pattern of targets” (Sheehy, 2012, p. 25). This judgment
made legal history. Jane continues to work to end violence against women and in support
of rape victims, but she warns women to be aware of the challenges they will face as com-
plainants in the legal system (Doe, 2003).
By 2008 in Canada, there were at least 134 rape crisis centres serving over 80 000
women every year (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 119). Despite uncertain funding and
constant pressure to become more professionalized and less openly feminist, they offer
24-hour crisis lines, individual and group counselling, support through all stages of the
rape investigation process from the hospital to court, and are tireless in their public educa-
tion efforts. They have inspired the organization of Take Back the Night women’s marches
held the third Friday of September since the late 1970s to protest gender-based violence.
Women undertake all of this work on limited and precarious funding.
In 2011 a grass-roots action called SlutWalk developed from the reaction of young
women to a Toronto police officer evoking rape myths by suggesting that women should
stop dressing like sluts if they didn’t want to be victimized (SlutWalk Toronto, 2015).
Although he later apologized, young women responded to this with outrage, and in protest
held marches where they dressed like “sluts” as an anti-rape protest and to assert their right
to wear what they pleased without being assaulted. These sex-positive walks have become
an international phenomenon. Some have criticized the march, arguing that “the word
slut was beyond rehabilitation, and the movement was critiqued for mounting a spectacle
for the male gaze in the choice by (some) participants to dress provocatively” (Teekah
et al., 2015, p. 5). Some Black (Hobson, 2015) and Indigenous women and their allies
(Walia, 2015) have observed that the SlutWalk ignores the daily realities of violence and
racial discrimination women of colour experience in the street. In “An Open Letter From
Black Women to the SlutWalk” it was pointed out that, “Although we vehemently sup-
port a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants anytime, anywhere, within the context of
a ‘SlutWalk’ we don’t have the privilege to walk through the streets . . . either half-naked
or fully clothed self-identifying as ‘sluts,’ and think that this will make women safer in our

communities . . . .” (Newblackman, 2011). SlutWalk supporters acknowledge and have
engaged with these critiques but still contend that the repurposing of the word is empow-
ering and instrumental in returning popular attention to the issue of sexualized violence
and victim-blaming (Teekah et al., 2015). The SlutWalk demonstrates the political
engagement of a new generation of young feminists with the anti-rape movement.
Intimate Partner Violence

Canadians were very surprised to learn from the VAWS that 51% of Canadian women had
been subjected to violence from a man (or men) in their adult lifetime. Almost 30% of the
general sample had experienced this at the hands of their spouse and 16% from a date or
boyfriend. Most Canadians believed that in a good relationship, a woman would be pro-
tected from violence in the safety of her own home. However, stranger violence was the
least likely to occur, with only 23% being victimized by men they did not know (Johnson,
1996, p. 51). This was not a shock to workers in shelters and transition houses for battered
women, who for years had seen spousal abuse at close hand. Rather than focusing on the
violent men, however, many members of the public asked, “Why doesn’t she just leave?”
Looking at the abusive relationships from the outside, they wondered whether there were
mental or emotional weaknesses that prevented women from leaving.
As with sexual assault, feminists objected to this victim-blaming that made women
responsible for their own abuse. Researchers and activists sought to find reasons why, after
fleeing to shelters in a crisis, many women kept returning to abusive relationships,
sometimes a dozen times or more before finally leaving. Based on the qualitative
observations of front-line workers, it was thought that battered women were trapped in a
“cycle of abuse” that caused “learned helplessness” that caused them to be unable to
extract themselves from the violent relationship. The cycle of abuse followed a pattern of
a violent incident followed by apologies, a honeymoon period, and then a buildup of
tension until the next violent episode exploded. Believing in the contrition of their
spouse or boyfriend, women kept returning in the hope that things would be different next
time. The constant attacks on a women’s self-esteem undermine her ability to act
independently for fear of invoking her partner’s anger and because she may feel that she
truly needs to improve to earn his approval and make her relationship work. This state of
“learned helplessness” has also been called the “Battered Woman Syndrome” (BWS)
(Walker, 1984/2009). The BWS has been used, first in American and then in Canadian
courts, as a defence strategy in cases where women have killed their abusive husbands,
especially in cases where the killing occurred during a time when the women were not
immediately under direct threat of harm. The first successful case in Canada was that of
Angélique Lavalee, who shot her common-law husband in the back of the head after years
of abuse. He was walking away from her after just threatening to kill her later that night.
In 1990 the Supreme Court of Canada acquitted her of all charges. Despite this victory,
the BWS defence has rarely been used, remains controversial, and is difficult to prove in
court. Some feminist analysts have objected to the use of the BWS defence because it

psychologises women, making psychiatrist expert testimony more important than the
woman’s own words, and reduces the case to a women’s individual state of mental
weakness. Absent is an analysis of the political context and the systemic factors that make
for an unequal society in which women can be terrorized by abusive partners.
Indeed, researchers have suggested many other reasons that women might stay in abu-
sive relationships other than learned helplessness. One of the aspects of an abusive man’s
dominance over his partner is restriction and control. In Duluth, Minnesota, a model of
the comprehensiveness of this abuse was made by the “Domestic Abuse Intervention
Project” called the “Power and Control Wheel” (pictured on page 208). Developed by
those with experience working with survivors of intimate partner violence, it graphically
describes a range of inter-related controlling behaviours to which abusive partners might
expose the women with whom they live. It makes the point that physical violence is only
the final stage of a pattern of domination that starts out in small ways and gradually
Figure 8.1 Power and Control Wheel
USING COERCION USING

AND THREATS INTIMIDATION
Making and/or carrying out threats Making her afraid by using
to do something to hurt her looks, actions, gestures
• threatening to leave her, to • smashing things • destroying
commit suicide, to report her property • abusing
her to welfare • making pets • displaying
USING her drop charges • making weapons. USING
ECONOMIC her do illegal things. EMOTIONAL
ABUSE ABUSE
Preventing her from getting
or keeping a job • making her Putting her down • making her
ask for money • giving her an feel bad about herself • calling her
allowance • taking her money • not names • making her think she’s crazy
letting her know about or have access • playing mind games • humiliating her
to family income. • making her feel guilty.
POWER
AND
USING MALE PRIVILEGE
Treating her like a servant • making all the
CONTROL USING ISOLATION
Controlling what she does, who she sees
big decisions • acting like the “master of and talks to, what she reads, where
the castle” • being the one to define she goes • limiting her outside
men’s and women’s roles. involvement • using jealousy
to justify actions.
USING MINIMIZING,
CHILDREN DENYING,
Making her feel guilty AND BLAMING
about the children • using Making light of the abuse
the children to relay messages and not taking her concerns
• using visitation to harass her about it seriously • saying the
• threatening to take the abuse didn’t happen • shifting
children away. responsibility for abusive behaviour
• saying she caused it.

escalates. This includes such behaviours as isolating women; mocking, criticizing, and
complaining; exercising male privilege to get his own way; using threats against children,
pets, or the woman herself to control her; restricting and monitoring her movements; and
withholding money and refusing to allow her to engage in paid work. Relationships with
friends and family who could assist a battered woman are often systematically undermined,
limiting the options she may have for support. Economic control and refusal to allow a
woman to undertake paid work limit her ability to support herself independently.
Compounding this, welfare benefits have been cut and punitive monitoring to detect
fraud increased. Thus, “research undertaken by the Ontario Association of Interval and
Transition Houses shortly after a 21.6% rate cut was introduced in the mid-90’s,” showed
that, “all of the shelters surveyed reported that women were remaining within, or returning
to, abusive relationships as a direct result of the decrease in financial assistance” (Mosher &
Evans, 2006, p. 163; see also Mosher et al., 2004). Women are vulnerable to negative
reports to welfare agencies from vindictive ex-partners that can result in a loss of benefits.
Welfare payments are so meagre that often women are unable to secure adequate housing
for themselves and their children. One recent Canadian study has suggested that, “For
some abused women, leaving becomes a path to homelessness” (Tutty et al., 2013,
p. 1498). As a consequence of their precarious financial state, women can lose custody of
their children to an ex-partner or the Children’s Aid Society. Rather than face such
poverty and the loss of her children, many women are forced to stay in an abusive
relationship. Researchers have observed that rather than just being concerned about
women’s immediate safety in the wake of violence, “Adequate, non-punitive and
respectfully bestowed welfare benefits must be understood as a crucial component of
Canadian anti-violence policy and strategies” (Mosher & Evans, 2006, p. 162).
However, it became apparent after the VAWS that violence does not just happen to
women who are economically disadvantaged. One recent study published by the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives, citing Statistics Canada data, asserted that, “70% of the
Canadian women who report having experienced spousal violence are working women and
71% have a university or college degree” (McInturff, 2013, p. 5). Much of the information
we have about women returning to their abusers is derived from the very valuable data
collected by interval and transition houses that shelter abused women. Women who have
alternatives might never go to a shelter. Audra Bowlus and Shannon Seitz, further analyzing
the data from the 1993 VAWS, determined that the vast majority of women in abusive
partnerships divorce their husbands or leave their common-law partners. The VAWS
measured spousal violence both during the previous 12 months and over a women’s lifetime.
Over a lifetime, women who had been subjected to violence from their partners were six
times more likely to have divorced or left him. On the basis of this, they challenged the
model of learned helplessness that, they argued, was based on a limited, non-representative
sample of abused women (Bowlus & Seitz, 2006, pp. 1113–1149). What this shows us is that
the answer to “Why doesn’t she just leave?” is that she does leave—provided that she has the
economic means to do so. Women’s increased educational attainment and employment is a
vital systemic factor in eliminating gender-based intimate partner violence.

A final consideration deterring many women from leaving abusive relationships is that
the physical violence may not start or escalate to extreme levels until the time she threatens to
end the relationship. While most women leave successfully, in some cases there are increased
threats to her or her loved ones’ safety when the control of her partner is threatened. Johnson
and Dawson, drawing on Statistics Canada data, report that 20% of women have been stalked
by their partners or ex-partners. “Women stalked by a partner were more likely to experience
multiple forms of stalking . . . than if the stalker was not an intimate partner. Women also
faced the greatest risk of stalking by an ex-partner and were more likely than other stalking
victims to be intimidated, threatened, grabbed, attacked, or to fear their lives were in danger”
(Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 68). Indeed, women in Canada are six times more likely to be
killed by an ex-spouse than a current spouse (Status of Women Canada, 2013).
It might be expected that women would turn to the police for protection and support in
leaving an abusive situation, but in practice only 30% of women experiencing abuse reported
police involvement. These were mainly in the most extreme circumstances of physical
violence, where women would have had the greatest fear of being seriously injured or killed.
In 2009, 15% of abused women obtained a restraining order against their spouses, but fully
one third of those were breached (Status of Women Canada, 2013). Restraining orders mainly
act as a deterrent, and the police cannot effectively enforce them on an on-going basis.
Persistent lobbying by anti-violence feminists has resulted in the police and the court
system implementing a number of measures to address the issue of the safety of women in
violent relationships. In the past, police had been reluctant to intervene in family disputes,
because such matters were seen as private and not the proper concern of the law. Now they
are mandated to respond to such complaints. As with rape myths, there were also miscon-
ceptions about domestic violence—that women stayed in such relationships because they
wanted to; that they provoked men’s violence; or that they were people on the lower level
of society who were poor, drug abusers, or alcoholics. Although it is true that alcohol use
and lower incomes are often correlated with domestic violence, the most important
predictive factor found in research is the attitude of the violent men, specifically their
conviction that they have the right to control their partners (Johnson & Dawson, 2011,
p. 83). The education of police officers in an effort to dispel outdated attitudes has been
given a high priority. In a recent report it was observed that, “In the last 30 years, Canadian
jurisdictions have put into place aggressive criminal justice policies to respond to intimate
partner violence, including pro-arrest policies, pro-prosecution policies, and specialized
domestic violence courts” (Johnson & Fraser, 2011, p. 3). Yet in spite of this, women’s rate
of reporting intimate partner violence to the police has declined 6% since 2004 (Status of
Women Canada, 2013). To the frustration of prosecutors, up to half of women retract their
statements accusing their partners of violence when they get to court (Robinson & Cook,
2006, pp. 189–213). These women did not wish their partners to be sent to jail, rather they
wanted the police to intervene to stop the violence. If a man goes to jail, the main source
of family income may be removed and many women will face financial disaster. For those
who leave, the on-going court process provides their ex-partner with further contact and
access to information about them. If their abuser gets a light sentence or is found not guilty,

he may seek revenge. Ironically, the very policies that mandate that police must charge the
abuser may make women less likely to ask for police assistance.
The very high percentage of women who do not call the police (70%) when they are
abused indicates that they do not feel that their safety or best interests will be served by
doing so. Very often, women from particular racial or ethnic groups have had bad experi-
ences with police and do not trust them. Many of those who did not report when asked,
gave as the reason that they were afraid of retaliation, that involving the police would
escalate the violence, and many women were ashamed to reveal the problems in their
relationships. Some may fear that the Children’s Aid Society will remove their children if
violence is reported in their home. One quarter of abused women instead turned to social
services such as counsellors, psychologists, crisis lines, shelters for battered women, or
community centres. In a one-day snapshot survey of shelters across Canada on April 15,
2010, 4646 women were found to be seeking safety from abusive male partners (Status of
Women Canada, 2013). Researchers have found that despite the efforts made to improve
legal redress for women who have suffered abuse at the hands of their male partners, they
remained intimidated by and dissatisfied with the results of police intervention and court
proceedings. Police attitudes continued at times to be biased against abused women. In
interviews with women who had been through the court system as accusers of their part-
ners, one study found that they were “offered little protection from further violence after
their partner completed his sentence. Most of these women continued to fear for
the safety of themselves and their children and found little support from the legal-judicial
system. . . . All women reported that they would be reluctant to involve the legal-judicial
system in future domestic violence cases” (Gillis et al., 2006, 1164).
gender symmetry in Intimate Partner Violence? Despite the overwhelm-
ing evidence that women are the primary sufferers in abusive relationships, there are some
who assert that the truth is that women are just as violent as men. Researcher Murray
Straus has dedicated his career to attempting to prove this. In 1972 he developed a tool
for measuring violence in interpersonal relationships called the Conflict Tactics Scale
(CTS). Using the CTS, he asked men and women how they and their partners deal with
conflict in their relationships. Their responses are rated on a scale of severity of violence
from less severe forms, which include verbal harassment and name calling; moderately
severe, which involve physical violence such as hitting, kicking, and pushing; and the
most severe forms, which involve assault with a weapon such as a knife or gun. Straus and
others who have used this model find that men and women have nearly equal levels of
violence in their intimate relationships. As Johnson and Dawson have observed:
The CTS has been criticized for failing to provide the context, intentions, or meanings
needed to provide accurate interpretations, for equating less severe acts with more vio-
lent ones, for equating a single act with chronic on-going violence meant to terrorize,
for leaving out sexual assault and violence after separation, for failing to distinguish
between offensive and defensive acts, and for ignoring gendered power imbalances in
intimate relations and society more generally. (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, pp. 55–56)

For example, a man who consistently terrorizes his wife with threats to harm her or
those she loves would be considered equal to a women who yells a single threat in an
argument. Similarly, on the CTS throwing a dish is equivalent to threatening with a gun,
and shoving away an attacker is rated the same as a man hitting a women in the face with
a closed fist. Isolation from family and friends, belittling, and withholding of economic
resources are completely ignored by the CTS. Furthermore, research has shown that men
tend to minimize and underreport their violence while highlighting what the woman may
have done to “provoke” them. Women tend to do the opposite—minimize the violence
done to them by men while exaggerating their own actions (Dragiewicz & DeKeseredy,
2012, p. 1012). The result is that every survey using the CTS has shown results with
nearly equal amounts of male and female violence in disputes between co-habitating
partners. While Straus has responded to criticism by making some modifications to his
scale and has expressed concern that “the statistics are likely to be used by misogynists and
apologists for male violence” (Strauss, 1997, p. 79), he feels justified in highlighting
women’s violence. Although he admits that male violence is more of a concern, he argues
that women’s violence provokes men’s, and ending it is a vital component of ending men’s
violence. This is an example of how domestic violence myths still influence thinking
today. In a 2009 article, he stated that feminist academics “have concealed, denied or
hidden the evidence,” given by studies using the CTS because the message is not
acceptable to the front-line anti-violence workers who solely work with abused women
(Straus, 2009, p. 560). He argued that this does a disservice to such women because they
need to be helped to recognize their problem not only so that they will not expose their
children to violence and have better relationships, but also because “it increases the
probability of physical attacks by the woman’s partner” (p. 563). He denies the feminist
position that patriarchy is a vital causative factor in violence against women, and ignores
the results of numerous surveys done around the world, which, like the VAWS in Canada,
have looked at violence against women in a more complex, systemic manner, and not just
in the context of current partner relationships.
The backlash to the VAWS in the mid-1990s was at least partly fuelled by those
who cited Straus’s work. The result was that the violence against women framework
was abandoned by the Canadian government and replaced by a family violence per-
spective. The next round of data collection was done with the GSS in 1999 and was
based on a modified version of the CTS. Unsurprisingly, the results showed far greater
gender symmetry in violence that did the VAWS. Over the previous five years, the
1999 GSS found that 8% of women and 7% of men had experienced domestic violence
as compared to 12% for women in the 1993 VAWS (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 66).
These findings seemed to fly in the face of everything scholars, policy-makers, front-
line workers, and activists had been saying for the previous 25 years. Was violence
against women decreasing, were women equally as violent as men, or was the design of
the survey flawed? Yasmin Jiwani analyzed the results and noted that many of the flaws
in the CTS, such as lack of context, the limited view of the types of violence and con-
trol women are subjected to, and the conflation of more and less severe forms of

violence, had been reproduced. Additionally, the violence women experienced was
much more severe:
Some 65 per cent of the women were assaulted more than once, and 26 per cent
reported being assaulted more than 10 times. Forty per cent of women compared to
13 per cent of men reported being physically injured as a result of the violence in the
five years preceding the interview and women were five times more likely to require
medical attention as a result of the violence. Four out of ten women are afraid for their
lives, as compared to one out of ten men. (Jiwani, 2002, p. 68)
By 2012, the results were very similar, with very nearly equal rates of 6% for both men
and women. However the same pattern of women experiencing more severe forms of
assault, being almost four times more likely to report to police and more likely to suffer
from chronic abuse, still held true (Status of Women Canada, 2013). If violence against
women in intimate partner relationships is truly decreasing, this is a positive sign, but the
idea that there might be parity is inconsistent with what we know from other areas of
gender-based violence. As Johnson and Dawson have noted, “Given that there are no
other situations in which women and men are equally violent, it would be very surprising
indeed if women were violent on par with men in intimate relationships and no others”
(Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 57).
Despite the assertions that men also suffer from domestic violence, there has yet to be
any demand to have shelters established for them. Fortunately, despite government cutbacks
and years of uncertain funding, the numbers of shelters for women has continued to grow.
In 2010, there were 593 across Canada that had over 46 500 admissions in the previous
year. Most of these abused women (60%) had not contacted the police ( Burczycka &
Cotter, 2011, p. 5). In a study of Canadian women’s help-seeking behaviour in response to
intimate partner violence, it was found that only 11% went to shelters, although 66%
sought out some and often multiple types of formal support. Some contacted counsellors
(39%), police or court based services (6%), crisis lines or centres (17.3%), community
centres (15.5%), or women’s centres (11.2%). Despite the fact that the Canadian
government had adopted a comprehensive plan for gender equality in 1995, there has been
little fiscal commitment to coordinating and stabilizing this patchwork of services. It is not
surprising that most women who have been abused seek less formal channels of support
such as family (66.5%), friends or neighbours (66.5%), co-workers (27.8%), and religious
or spiritual advisors (11.5%) (Barret & St. Pierre, 2011, p. 57). For those dedicated workers
who provide essential crisis support with uncertain funding to those suffering from violent
partners, the task can be extremely stressful. Its effects have been called “vicarious trauma”
or “compassion fatigue.” Stephanie Martin, a Toronto psychologist, has pointed out,
“Canadian frontline anti-violence respondents literally bear witness, on a daily basis, to the
pain and suffering experienced by the victims of woman abuse.” She calls for “anti-violence
advocates, agency administrators, and policy-makers to prioritize the welfare of frontline
anti-violence responders as an important aspect of our collective effort to eradicate woman
abuse in Canada” (Martin, 2006, p. 11).

dating Violence Less attention has been paid by researchers and activists to dating
violence, but all indications are that violence against women in non-spousal intimate
relationships is a serious problem as well. In fact it may be more severe than in spousal rela-
tionships. Statistics Canada reported in 2011 that unmarried women were 60% more likely
to be subjected to violence from their dating partners than women in married or common-
law relationships (Sinha, 2013, p. 20). In general, women ages 15 to 34 were most at risk in
Canada for all kinds of violence (Sinha, 2013, p. 54; Status of Women Canada, 2013).
In 1992, Walter Dekeseredy and Martin Schwartz surveyed over 3000 randomly
selected students in universities across Canada. Overall, 28% of the female participants
reported having been sexually abused in the past year, while 11% of the males admitted to
abusive behaviour. Since leaving high school, 45.1% of the females had been sexually abused
and 35% reported physical violence. In the past year, almost 80% of the young women
reported psychological abuse from their dating partner, such as insults, swearing, put-downs,
threats, and jealous accusations (Dekeseredy & Schwartz, 1995, p. 62). A 2005 American
study of female university students surveyed about previous relationships showed that 47%
had experienced physical violence, 22% sexual violence, 57% jealousy, 58% attempts at
isolating from family and friends, 54% criticism and insults, 68% monitoring of behaviour by
former partners, and 36% stalking combined with physical violence post break-up (Roberts,
2005, pp. 89–114).
Drawing on Statistics Canada data, a researcher from the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives reported in 2013 that of the women who have been sexually assaulted in the
past 5 years, 29% were students (McIntuff, 2013, p. 5). Clearly this is a significant prob-
lem, and colleges and universities across Canada have attempted to grapple with this issue
with varying degrees of success. However, they are often reluctant to take aggressive
action in individual cases. (For some Canadian examples, see Ikeda & Rosser, 2009/10;
Quinlan, et al., 2009/10.) Adding to this is the difficulty many young women experience
in recognizing and naming the violence, particularly sexual assault. If they were drinking
at the time, they may feel responsible. Giving in to a dating partner’s forceful sexual
demands may not be recognized as rape. Thus, as we find in general population studies of
sexual assault and spousal abuse of women, only a small fraction of such incidents are ever
reported (Cleere & Lynn, 2013; Edwards et al, 2014; Sudderth et al., 2009/10).
sexual harassment
The types of sexual harassment that women experience vary greatly. In the wake of relation-
ship break-ups, some women are stalked, threatened, or experience violence. This is called
criminal harassment and is against the law. Bothersome but still frightening behaviours can
include stalking on social media, harassing texts and phone calls, following or showing up in
the same public places, and making threats. These may skirt the edges of illegal behaviour,
but it is possible to obtain a restraining order to prevent the offender from coming into con-
tact with his target. However, as noted earlier, restraining orders have little practical effect
and mainly serve as a deterrent. Of the violent offences that women reported in 2011 to

police, 7% were cases of criminal harassment and 13% uttering threats (Sinha, 2013, p. 11).
How these percentages relate to the actual incidence of these behaviours is unknown.
Other types of harassment are not addressed by the law, but within the framework of
human rights. Each province has a human rights commission that can deal with such com-
plaints. In practice, these tribunals are seldom used. Since the 1970s, sexual harassment of
women by men in the workplace has been recognized as a problem for women entering tra-
ditionally male-dominated job settings. (For one early Canadian example see Backhouse &
Cohen, 1978.) Since 1985, it has been part of the Canadian Labour Code as constituting
unacceptable workplace conditions. These behaviours include telling obscene jokes and
posting or viewing pornographic images or videos at work, unwanted touching, persistent
requests for dates, offering of promotions or favours for providing sex, punitive behaviours for
refusing a man’s advances, making comments about a woman’s body, and spreading sexual
rumours. At first dismissed as normal male behaviour, today most large workplaces have
zero-tolerance policies and human resource departments to handle complaints. However,
the deterrents to women reporting are real, and when they do complain, often the complaint
is dismissed or handled privately with no penalty for the perpetrator. Often the woman is the
one who suffers a second time from office backlash against her coming forward. In a 2014
report on sexual harassment in federal workplaces, the committee noted that,
in some workplaces, sexual harassment remains under-reported because it is normal-

ized or trivialized within the workplace culture. . . . The Committee was told that in
some workplaces, victims of sexual harassment will not report the situation because
they fear that they will not be believed by management or co-workers. Many victims
will be concerned about the effect that reporting will have on their reputation, includ-
ing being labelled as a “troublemaker,” losing the trust of co-workers, or being subjected
to value judgements. (Le Blanc, 2014, p. 56)
The Committee noted that this negative atmosphere was particularly accentuated when
the workplace was a male-dominated one (Le Blanc, 2014, pp. 57–58). Particularly notorious
are the military and the legal professions (Gill & Febbraro, 2013; Leskinen et al., 2011).
Canada’s federal parliament is also a well-known location for sexual harassment, both in
Margaret Mitchell’s time and today (Ditchburn, 2014). Ironically, having very few complaints
filed does not mean that a workplace is harassment-free, but may indicate the opposite. It may
be that women are afraid to come forward. A workspace where many complaints are filed may
correspondingly indicate a more open and gender-sensitive atmosphere. Experiencing sexual
harassment is psychologically traumatic for the victim. It may cause her to become
apprehensive and fearful, undermine her confidence in her work, and cause her stress and ill
health. This in turn may negatively affect her work performance (Cortina & Berdahl, 2008).
Of course, not all harassing behaviour happens in the workplace. In the VAWS, 89% of
the respondents had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime (Johnson,
1996, p. 70). Women experience harassment in the streets; from landlords, police, and other
officials; and in all levels of school. One study of high school students in grades 9 to 11 found
that 46% of the girls had experienced sexual harassment (Wolfe & Chiodo, 2008, p. 3).

The unwelcoming atmosphere for women in universities first became known as the Chilly
Climate in the 1980s and still persists (Prentice, 2000).
A new sphere for harassment that disproportionately impacts young women is the
internet and all forms of social media. Studies of cyberbullying among teens show high
results for both genders. One survey of over 2000 high school students in the Toronto region
shows that 21% had experienced cyberbullying and 28% had witnessed it (Mishna et al.,
2008, pp. 5, 7). Although there was no gendered analysis of the results, elsewhere the authors
state that girls are far more likely to experience unwanted sexual comments online (Mishna
et al., 2010, p. 365). The multiple means of communication, the speed with which images
and gossip can be sent to many people on linked social networking platforms, and the pos-
sibility of anonymity make bullying through the internet much easier than face-to-face
abuse. The internet security firm McAfee surveyed 2000 11- to 17-year-olds about cyberbul-
lying in two consecutive years in the United Kingdom, finding that in 2013 16% reported
cyberbullying compared to 35% in 2014. Similarly, 22% had witnessed cyberbullying in
2013 compared to 40% in 2014. Clearly, this is a growing problem (The Guardian, 2014).
Adults also report cyberbullying. Statistics Canada asked questions about internet
victimization in the 2009 GSS. About 7% of all ages of adult internet users reported being
cyberbullied, but younger adults ages 18 to 24 years had a much higher incidence at 17%
(Perreault, 2011, p. 5). Although little systematic research has been carried out on this,
some of the worst cases of internet harassment take place in anonymous postings on mes-
sage boards, on Twitter, or in the responses to blogs. One university law student and
feminist blogger wrote about her experiences with online harassment. “When women
write about politics or technology, or when they pursue an education in a traditionally
male field like law,” she observed, “they are reminded of their secondary status through
sexualized insults, rape threats, and beauty contests” (Filipovic, 2007, p. 303). One recent
example of this was a widely publicized scandal that involved dental students at Dalhousie
University, who posted sexually explicit messages about their fellow female classmates on
Facebook (Hampson, 2015).
It is this chilly climate that is perhaps one of the most pervasive effects of the harass-
ment of women—whether they are subject to disparaging sexist comments in the office,
cat-calling on the street, or gossip and threats on the internet. This feeds into women’s
fear of violent sexual assault, which, as the VAWS showed, is a factor in their everyday
existence. Women are often forced to plan their lives around avoiding situations where
they might be at risk (Stanko, 1997). Some feminist scholars have gone so far as to label
this “sexual terrorism because it is a system by which all males frighten, and by frightening,
control and dominate females” (Sheffield, 2007, p. 111).
Violence Against Women and Intersectionality

In the overall statistics on violence against women, the differing experiences of many
women are left out of the picture. Kimberlé Crenshaw was the first to point this out in
1991 when she wrote about Black women in America.

Where systems of race, gender and class domination converge as they do in the experi-
ences of battered women of color, intervention strategies based solely on the experiences
of women who do not share the same class or race backgrounds will be of limited help to
women who because of race or class face different obstacles. (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1246)
One Canadian study on help-seeking behaviours of women who have been subjected
to intimate partner violence indicated that women of colour faced “unique barriers” to
seeking help. “Common deterrents to service utilization” included “a perceived lack of
cultural sensitivity and inaccessibility of services, social isolation, distrust of service pro-
viders, and lack of specialized services” (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 48). When inter-
viewing women who had reported their partners to the police, one study reported that
“not one woman of colour reported positive experiences within the legal-judicial system,
indicating that racist stereotypes and cultural barriers were in play” (Barrett & St. Pierre,
2013, p. 1163). If all women are seen as potentially inviting sexual assault, women of
colour are doubly so. Popular racial stereotypes portray women of other races as “exotic”
and more animalistic. They are seen as less reliable witnesses and their testimony is given
less weight. They do not fit the image of the stereotypical innocent victim to the police or
in court (Pietsch, 2009/10). Very often, they also do not fit the image of the innocent
“battered woman” (Goodmark, 2008) or the violence is seen to come from “the pathology
of particular cultural traditions” and thus is minimized (Jiwani, 2006, p. 106).
Immigrant women also experience obstacles in seeking help. Researchers who inter-
viewed immigrant women in Toronto found they “faced additional linguistic and cultural
barriers that prevented them from contacting the police. They often did not have access
to sufficient legal information and were unable to communicate their situations to
English-speaking police officers” (Gillis et al., 2006, p. 1158). Many were unfamiliar with
Canadian laws and what their rights were. “Some immigrant women believed that involv-
ing the police in domestic disputes could risk deportation of themselves and their partner”
(Gillis et al., 2006, p. 1152). Immigrant women are also vulnerable to violence from their
Canadian employers, since leaving a bad work situation may result in deportation. The
live-in-caregiver provision that allows women to enter the country on work visas requires
that they continue to be employed to stay in the country.
One particularly vulnerable Canadian group is Aboriginal women. In 2009, the GSS
reported that Aboriginal women had a rate of violence that was 2.5 times that of the gen-
eral population (Sinha, 2013, p. 19). In cases of spousal violence, more were likely to suffer
severe injuries than the non-Aboriginal population (59% to 41%) and to fear for their lives
(52% to 31%). “According to the 2011 Homicide Survey, between 2001 and 2011, at least
8% of all murdered women aged 15 years of age and older were Aboriginal, double their
representation in the Canadian population (4%)” (Status of Women Canada, 2013). These
figures do not include the high number of missing Indigenous women whose fate may never
be known. In 2005, The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) received
$10 million in funding over five years from the federal government to investigate this
issue. This was known as the Sisters in Spirit initiative. They developed a database of over

582 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls. Most of these disappeared,
not from First Nations communities, but from cities (70%) (Native Women’s Association
of Canada, 2010, p. ii). This information brought condemnation from such international
bodies as the United Nations and Amnesty International, which embarrassed the Canadian
government (see, for example, Amnesty International, 2009). At the end of the five-year
period, the Sisters in Spirit initiative was terminated and the funding and responsibility
handed over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). However, with the addition
of nationwide police resources, the RCMP were able to compile a much larger list of 1181
cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women across Canada from 1980 to 2012. In a
report released in 2014, it was admitted that this could even be an underestimate, given
mistakes, difficulty in the identification of victims, and under-reporting. These new figures
show Aboriginal women were 23% of all female homicides in 2012, more than five times
their percentage representation in the population in 2011 (4.3%) (RCMP, 2014). A United
Nations report on the situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada released in 2014 called for
“a comprehensive, nationwide inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal
women and girls, organized in consultation with indigenous peoples” (James, 2014, p. 21).
The reasons for the shockingly high prevalence of violence against Indigenous women in
Canada are not difficult to understand. The disadvantages experienced by all racialized and
immigrant women are compounded in the case of Aboriginal women by a history of colonialism
and discrimination. From the 1870s until the late 20th century, the Canadian government
promoted a policy of assimilation by removing Aboriginal children from their families and
placing them in residential schools where their culture and language was forbidden. Many of
the children in these schools were subjected to physical and sexual abuse. The NWAC has
called this “cultural genocide” (Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2010, p. 8). “These
schools had a profound impact on the traditional family, community and educational systems
of Aboriginal nations” (Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2010, p. 7).
An intersectional approach also reveals the way in which women with disabilities
experience violence. This group is often ignored but is extremely vulnerable to violence,
very often from those closest to them. Douglas Brownridge, in reviewing the research on
women with disabilities in Canada, found that they “tended to be more likely to experience
severe forms of violence and/or were more vulnerable to consequences associated with
violence” (Brownridge, 2009, p. 256). The 2009 GSS collected information on women
with what they called “activity limitations.” It was found that although men with
disabilities experienced no increase in partner violence, women “experienced rates of
spousal violence in the past five years that were nearly double those without limitations”
(Sinha, 2013, p. 60). Depending on the disability, it may be extremely difficult for such
women to leave abusive situations because of dependency on a caregiver, difficulty in being
employed, and low income. There is a severe shortage of services geared to their needs.
The Disabled Women’s Network of Canada reports that only one in 10 women with
disabilities were able to get help at a shelter or transition house because of lack of
accessibility. This is usually because of lack of funding to make the necessary renovations or
purchase the required services/equipment (Disabled Women’s Network of Canada, n.d.).

For those who do not fit comfortably in the stereotypical gender binary, the situation
may be even more difficult. Lesbian couples or transsexual women have very few commu-
nity resources available to them and may not feel welcome at agencies that were founded to
support heterosexual women. Further, although scholars such as Janice Ristock have identi-
fied lesbian abuse as a significant Canadian problem (Ristock, 2002), research on partner
violence in non-heterosexual communities has been sparse. Thus, “it is difficult to draw
firm conclusions about the nature and prevalence of IPV [intimate partner violence] in gay,
lesbian and bisexual partnerships” (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 5). The GSS has recently
started to ask questions that have allowed those who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual to identify
themselves. In the 2004 GSS, 372 persons identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual
and of these 186 reported current partners and so were asked questions about IPV. Research-
ers Barrett and St. Pierre reveal that of these, 65 people, or 34.9%, reported emotional or
financial abuse and 38, or 20.4% reported physical/sexual abuse from their partners. Of these
38 persons, “38.9% identified as bisexual women, 26.4% identified as gay men, 19.6% iden-
tified as lesbian women, and 15.1% identified as bisexual males” (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013,
p. 11). Although this is a small sample, it is nationally representative. Similarly:
The 2009 GSS indicates that women who self-identified as lesbian or bisexual were
significantly more likely than heterosexual women to report violence by a current or
previous spouse in the previous five years (20.8% versus 6.1%). . . . It should be noted
that the sex of the abusive spouse was not asked; therefore, the prevalence rates for les-
bian or bisexual women could include some opposite-sex spouses. (Sinha, 2013, p. 59)
Barrett and St. Pierre note that a 2011 American National Violence Against Women
Survey found that bisexual women were most likely to be victimized by their opposite-sex
partners, but warn against applying a heteronormative model to these relationships, that
is, assuming that their experience is just like that of heterosexual women (Barrett &
St. Pierre, 2013, pp. 17–18). The higher rate of violence experienced by bisexual women
is not just because they are women in a patriarchal society. It is also because their bisexu-
ality challenges the dominant heterosexual norm. As with other forms of intersectional-
ity, it increases their vulnerability to relationship violence. The same has been observed of
transsexual persons. An American survey found that:
Nineteen percent (19%) of respondents have experienced domestic violence at the

hands of a family member because of their transgender identity or gender
non-conformity. . . . MTF [male transitioned to female] respondents endured family
violence more often (22%) than FTM [female transitioned to male] respondents
(15%), while gender non-conforming respondents were victimized more often (21%)
than their transgender peers (19%). (Grant et al, 2011, p. 100)
A recent large Canadian internet survey on IPV found that just under 30% of those
who did not identify as heterosexual were being abused in current relationships, although
further details on their sexual identity were not provided (Wathen et al., 2014, p. 5).

These significant prevalence rates are regrettably not matched by services. Lesbian,
bisexual, or trans women may not be “out” to some friends or family or not want to expose
this information to strangers. Often they fear that they will be subject to homophobia
when they approach the police or social services (Hardesty et al., 2011). If the legal sys-
tem is a challenge for heterosexual women, it is even more fraught for lesbian, bisexual, or
trans women. As with all others who experience the multiple oppressions of race, ethnic-
ity, gender, or ability, IPV is a more difficult and complex problem for them.
Pornography and Prostitution

Pornography and prostitution have been areas of controversy for feminists. Those who
consider themselves to be “sex positive” have argued that sexuality of all kinds should be
celebrated and not subject to censorship. They point out that human self-expression and
especially those areas of sexuality deemed “queer” by the heterosexual majority will be
repressed. Pornography is framed more as free speech from this perspective than as a prac-
tice (see, for example, Taormino et al., 2013). Similarly, sex-positive feminists refuse to
condemn the practice of prostitution and the many ways of selling sex such as by phone,
erotic dancing and stripping, live streaming on the internet, videos, massage parlours,
escorting, and street prostitution. They are concerned about stereotypes of “easy” women
that result in “slut-shaming,” which denigrates the work done by women in the sex trade.
From a socialist feminist perspective, sex work is labour like any other and deserves to be
treated with equal dignity and respect, with good working conditions. However, both por-
nography and prostitution as they exist now commercially do not meet the standard of
good working conditions. Not all sex workers are at the top end of escort service, work in
well-run brothels (not legal in Canada), and appear at glittering porn awards ceremonies
in Las Vegas. Critics point to the dangers inherent in street-involved prostitution, the fact
that many who perform in porn films are poorly paid (usually by the act with no share of
the profits) and have increasingly been asked to perform painful acts involving multiple
penetration, choking, and verbal and physical abuse.1 In Canada, there are sex workers
who are recruited into prostitution at very young teen ages by exploiters who lure them by
a combination of seduction and coercion. This is considered human trafficking by law
enforcement agencies (and is also condemned by sex worker advocacy groups) because the
girls did not enter sex work of their own volition or for their own profit, in addition to
being underage. Almost all of those trafficked for sexual exploitation in Canada are
recruited from within our own borders (RCMP, 2010; 2013). A recent study on sex traf-
ficking by Nicole Barrett for the Canadian Women’s Foundation points out that no one
knows the exact numbers of women who are trafficked in Canada. The illegality, the fact
that the underage girls are rarely seen on the streets but are marketed through the internet
and work indoors, the reluctance or inability of exploited girls to report their abusers, and
the frequent connections with organized crime make it impossible to know the exact
numbers. The small number of prosecutions and convictions recorded by the police repre-
sent only a tiny fraction of the numbers suggested by qualitative reports (Barrett, 2013).

It is also difficult to distinguish those trafficked from those who entered prostitution on
their own initiative. Although a person might be lured or coerced into prostitution from
all sectors of Canadian society, those who are poor or Aboriginal are significantly over-
represented. Many come from violent homes or have been subjected to sexual abuse
(Barrett, 2013, pp. 20–21). The Native Women’s Association of Canada, in a comprehen-
sive review of qualitative research based mainly on interviews with front-line workers in
service organizations that supported sex workers, concluded that, “Human trafficking for
the purposes of sexual exploitation is a serious concern in Canada. The prevalence of
aboriginal women and girls who are drawn in through force and many other recruitment
strategies represents a dark, discriminatory practice in this country” (Native Women’s
Association of Canada, 2014, p. 67; see also Sethi, 2007, pp. 37–71; Sikka, 2009).
Sex-positive feminists who acknowledge the violent realities of women’s sex work
argue that legalization of prostitution will allow it to be better regulated and safer. They
point to the models of Australia and New Zealand where women work in legal brothels.
Feminists who feel that sex work is inherently exploitative of women and girls prefer what
has become known as the Nordic Model adopted in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland that
makes the buying of sex illegal, but not the act of selling, and provides state support to
assist women leaving sex work. Canada has recently adopted a variant of the Nordic
approach that mainly criminalizes the purchasers of sex. Will this approach support
women in leaving prostitution or will it expose sex workers to ever more secretive and
therefore dangerous situations? Alternatively, should the state endorse the sale of sexual
acts by turning pimps into respectable businesspersons? Even with legalization, there
could still be an exploited group of sex workers who do not meet the requirements of
brothel owners, because of physical appearance, age, race, or ethnicity, and who would be
forced to work in unregulated conditions on the streets. Feminists are deeply divided on
this issue, and it is clear that there are important arguments on both sides but as yet no
ideal solution to the violence that sex workers in Canada experience.
VIolence AgAInst Women InternAtIonAlly

In this chapter we have focused on the Canadian and sometimes North American realities of
violence against women. Domestic violence against women has been recognized as a serious
concern and violation of women’s human rights by major international bodies such as the
World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and Oxfam (Raab, 2012;
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010; WHO, 2010; 2013). There have
been two major international surveys done on violence against women. One was a collabora-
tive effort of the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, the United Nations
Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, in partnership with Statistics Canada’s
Holly Johnson that took place in eleven countries worldwide from 2002 to 2005 (Johnson
et al., 2008). The other was conducted by the WHO in 2000–2003 in ten other countries
(Garcia-Moreno et al., 2006; WHO, 2005). Results varied considerably from nation to
nation, and even in different regions of the same country. However, one systematic review of

all domestic violence prevalence studies worldwide has concluded that the accumulated evi-
dence shows that “violence against women has reached epidemic proportions in many soci-
eties” (Alhabib, 2010, p. 369). In a 2014 report on gender, the UN Statistics Division and
UN Women reported that an average of 30% of women globally have experienced intimate
partner violence in their lifetime (United Nations Statistics Division, UN Women, 2014).
If we compare this to the almost identical result from the VAWS, it appears that Canada is
consistent with the rest of the world in the amount of violence that women experience.
conclusIon: Is It PossIble to hAVe A socIety

Where Women Are free from mAle VIolence?
Many feminist activists, researchers, and policy-makers have sought to understand the
roots of male violence against women so that effective means can be taken to end it. 2
They have found multiple causes, ranging from personal history, family context, to broad
social values and influences. Particularly influential are such factors as witnessing domes-
tic violence as a child or being abused as a child. When the broader society and a boy’s
peer groups support or trivialize violence, they reinforce it.
Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has surveyed studies of 95 tribal societies where it
was possible to determine the presence of rape, classifying them as rape-prone or rape-free.
Of these 47% were classified as free of rape, or rape was a very unusual event. They differed
significantly from societies where rape was more prevalent. By far the most important indica-
tor of a rape-prone society was the high value it placed on male dominance and control over
women. The sexes were separated in such societies, with the men controlling community
wealth and dominating important rituals. The rape-free societies had a much more equal
distribution of power between genders and placed a higher value on women’s assets, such as
fertility. Sanday concluded that since the prevalence of rape is so varied in these tribal soci-
eties, it shows that it is not an act that is natural or inevitable in men. Men’s violence is
dependent on the social and cultural conditions men were socialized in. It follows that if we
change the dominant values of a society, we should be able to also reduce or eliminate vio-
lence against women (Sanday, 1981). This is not an easy challenge, but it is possible.
Everywhere we look in the media, it seems that almost daily there is a new report of
politically motivated kidnappings of girls, rapes and murders of women in both war zones
and peaceful communities, gender-based internet attacks, sexual harassment, and popular
male entertainment figures accused of being serial sexual assaulters. It may seem as if vio-
lence against women is increasing and out of control. However, it is also just as likely that
public consciousness and the media have been sensitized to the issue by the hard work of
feminists and are reporting events that would have passed unnoticed even a decade ago.
What is also encouraging is that many men are now speaking out about male violence and
working for positive change.3 What was previously ignored, seen as shameful and hidden
in private is now coming to light, and women are less afraid to speak out about the vio-
lence they have experienced. Viewed in this manner, these new public discussions are
indicative of real positive change in social values, which bodes well for the future.

endnotes
1. For critical perspectives on pornography and prostitution see: Gail Dines. (2010). Pornland:
How Porn has Highjacked Our Sexuality. Boston, MA: Beacon Press; S. Jeffreys. (2009). The
Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade. New York, NY: Routledge; and
M. Tankard Reist and A. Bray (Eds.). (2011). Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global
Pornography Industry. North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press.
2. For an overview of this research, see Johnson and Dawson (2011), 13–36.
3. See for example: W. S. Dekeseredy and M. D. Schwartz. (2013). Male Peer Support and
Violence Against Women. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press; J. Katz. (2006). The
Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. Napierville, IL:
Sourcebooks; M. Kaufman. (1993). Cracking the Armor: Power, Pain, and the Lives of Men. New
York, NY: Viking; M. Kimmel. (2008). Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.
New York, NY: Harper Collins.
1. How does the intersection of oppressions based on factors such as ability, gender, race,
class, ethnicity. and sexual identity affect gender-based violence?
2. What are “rape myths”? How do they disadvantage women of many different
backgrounds?
3. What is “slut-shaming”? How have different groups of women responded to this problem?
4. Why do some women stay in violent relationships? What would allow them to leave?
5. What actions have been undertaken by feminists to end violence against women?
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Chapter 9
Challenging Old Age: Women’s
t o ution
anc and and Ann u
Feminism and ageism

Will 21st century feminism successfully challenge ageism? Currently, most feminist
discussions of work, productivity, intimacy, body image, cultural images, and political
involvement remain based on taken-for-granted notions of age-appropriate behaviour and
feelings. Feminism too routinely continues to reflect society’s revulsion and disgust for the
elderly, shunning their aging bodies, their infirmities, and their issues. Rather than valuing
their experiences as some cultures do, in North America we discount and dismiss the
elderly. In turn, the elderly come to feel shame about being old, attempting to hide aging
through a variety of techniques of self-management aimed at projecting health, fitness,
and vitality. So unremitting is the negativity associated with being old that even young
feminists will do almost anything to avoid it (Gibson, 1996, p. 434). However, recent
work in critical feminist gerontology suggests the possibilities of significantly more
affirmative approaches to women’s aging (Freixas, Luque, & Reina, 2012).
Coined in 1975 by Robert Butler, ageism refers to:
a process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against older people because

they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this with skin color and gender. Old
people are categorized as senile, rigid in thought and manner, old fashioned in morality
and skills . . . Ageism allows the younger generation to see old people as different from
themselves, thus they subtly cease to identify with their elders as human beings.
(Butler, 1975, p. 12)
Feminists have long been aware of ageism in their ranks. Barbara Macdonald, an
American radical feminist of the second wave, first identified the problem of ageism in
feminism. During a “Take Back the Night” march to end violence against women, one of
the young feminist activists organizing the event asked Macdonald if she would be able to
keep up with the other marchers. Enraged, Macdonald later reflected on her anger and
concluded that for years she had put up with discrimination because she was a woman,
only to find she now had to put up with discrimination from other women because she was
old (Macdonald & Rich, 1991).
229
Feminists contribute to ageism by perpetuating a false dichotomy between the young
and the old. A 20-year-old woman is frequently described as energetic, vigorous, strong,
and resourceful while a 60-year-old woman is more likely to be characterized as tired,
weak, feeble, and ineffective. The former describes qualities ascribed to the powerful while
the latter are those traits associated with the powerless. Given that the most sought-after
and desirable women are those between ages 25 and 35, the farther we drift along the life
course from this standard, the less desirable we become as women. Look at who makes the
red carpet on movie, television, and music award nights and you quickly see the prefer-
ence for youth or, at least, a youthful facsimile (Freixas, et al., 2012, p. 54).
By seeing young/old as binary opposites, we see how the young get their meaning and
power from what they are not, namely old (Bennet & Gaines, 2010). It is also easy to see
why young women often side with patriarchy and male privilege since both of these struc-
tures imbue youth with feelings of power: a fleeting, but intoxicating, feeling and status
that lasts as long as women remain literally young.
As women begin to approach the age of 40, the first twinges of anxiety often emerge and
age management techniques take hold of many women’s time and resources. By 50, women
have begun to see themselves as “mature.” By 60, women know they are being socially
defined as the “young old” in contrast to the “old” (75 to 90) and the “frail elderly” (over 90).
Attempts to avoid ageism are generally futile. Young or old, the mandate for women
is to remain small and subjugated. The belittling term “little” is applied from their earliest
years as “little girls” until their oldest years as “little old ladies” (Reinharz, 1997, p. 84).
Gender-specific discriminatory attitudes and behaviours are always present, even if young
women feel momentarily powerful.
In this chapter we look at how ageism structures women’s paid and unpaid work and
their embodiment of age. Feminism seeks to increase women’s involvement in societal
decision-making, empower women, recognize their intrinsic value, increase their self-
esteem and quality of life, and protect their right to equal treatment. Ageism has made it
difficult for all women to achieve these goals. Women can begin to confront ageism by
unlearning their own biases and addressing the absence of age in so much feminist analysis
(Mandell, Wilson, & Duffy, 2008; Ray, 2006).
Theorizing age—FeminisT PoliTical

Economy PErsPEctivEs
Until recently, feminists have neglected age relations just as gerontologists have tended to
neglect both gender and feminism. If feminism is a political orientation designed to
“intervene in and transform” power inequities between men and women (Hollows, 2000),
then feminist age studies are a form of research and activism that similarly addresses the
unequal power relations between age groups as constructed around gender. As Ruth Ray
(2006) notes, feminist gerontologists study what aging looks like through a gender lens
that is sensitive to power relations in order to advance knowledge and to promote social
justice in the material world.
230 ha t r ha nging d Ag o n s t o ution

For feminists, age is a form of diversity that remains interconnected to, constitutive of,
and implicated in all other forms of inequality. Using intersectionality theory (Cho,
Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013), feminists pay attention to the complex relationships among
social differences that socially, economically, and politically marginalize women. As
Kathleen Woodward (1999) says, differences are produced by discursive formations, social
practices, and material conditions. Focusing on intersections allows us to see the
conjunction of old and young women’s issues as articulated, for example, in material
conditions such as wages, housing, and incarceration rates.
A feminist political economy perspective—our feminist “standpoint” (Armstrong,
2013)—focuses on how the material and social conditions of aging people are shaped by
their positions in the socio-economic structure. This means that age, like social class,
race, gender, sexuality, and other primary markers of social difference, is socially and
materially constructed. For example, one significant expression of aging women’s unpaid
work is the concerted efforts to construct and maintain an appropriate personal front by
drawing on the services and solutions provided by the consumer market (in everything
from cosmetics to exercise programs) (Liechty, 2012). This work is framed by factors other
than age, such as social class. Typically, major inequalities in the distribution of power,
income, and property affect people’s access to resources in later life, including health and
body maintenance, income, assets, and access to informal and formal care (Seabrook &
Avison, 2012). A feminist political economy of aging describes the role of the economy
(including the consumer economy) and the state in establishing interlocking systems of
domination that privilege some groups over others by structuring their access to material
resources. Calasanti and Zajicek (1993) substitute the term “paradigm of domination” for
the term “patriarchy” to reflect the interlocking system of oppression formed around the
complex intersections of age, race, class, and gender in particular.
The state, through its social policies and ideological commitments, props up ageism.
For example, pension and retirement income systems, as well as social welfare benefits and
entitlements, reflect the structure and culture of advantage/disadvantage as enacted through
class, race/ethnicity, gender, and age relations. Through these processes, the state promotes
and reproduces the dominant institutions that render many older women vulnerable and
dependent throughout their life course (McDaniel & Rozanova, 2011). The current
historical context adds a crisis ideology—the notion that “greedy geezers” are going to
“bankrupt” the Canadian economy—that, in turn, helps perpetuate ageism (Altman, 2014),
as do economic globalization and neo-liberal ideology, which frame the actions of the state
in relation to the family and the market (Estes, 2003; Philipson, 2006; Stanford, 2014).
Currently these realities tend to be obscured by the hegemonic ideology of individualism—
the dominant belief that individuals are and should be wholly responsible for their fate.
According to feminist political economists, there are three central processes—
production, reproduction, and distribution—that shape individual life experiences. For
example, the paid work you do, the amount of money you are paid, the security or
insecurity of the position, and the ability to save for retirement are all features of an
individual’s relationship to the economy, which shapes your current and future life
(Seabrook & Avison, 2012). Although Canadian feminists expanded definitions of
ha t r ha nging d Ag o n s t o ution 231

productive work to include unpaid economic activity such as consumption work, care
work, volunteerism, and domestic labour, paid labour continues to be the most valued and
socially recognized form of labour (Pupo & Thomas, 2009).
Reproduction refers to the unpaid work through which life is maintained both daily
and intergenerationally, including how children are socialized, how partners and the
elderly are cared for, how the household is maintained and presented, and how sexual
intimacy takes place. Reproduction includes, then, both the day-to-day social reproduc-
tion of dependents (children, parents, partners, friends, relatives) and the biological
reproduction of children. It includes the work of producing Canadians as educated,
healthy, knowledgeable, and productive citizens (Estes, 2003). Distribution refers to how
services are generated and rendered: Who does what for whom?
Feminists have long pointed out that women typically perform much of this social
reproductive work (care work, domestic labour, elder care) without pay, and, often, even
without acknowledgement. Yet, it consumes a large portion of women’s daily lives and
cuts into the time they can spend earning money, accumulating pension benefits, and
pursuing leisure. Often those women not in the paid workforce, despite their care work,
are considered to be dependent because paid workers are the socially accepted norm of
productivity. Those women under 19 and over 65 are considered to be “dependents” and
thus “burdens.” Interestingly, children are “light” burdens while the elderly feel “heavy,”
descriptions that reveal how dependence is socially constructed.
Feminists have also maintained that this privileging of paid, productive work over
unpaid, reproductive work spills over into cultural ideologies and personal relationships.
For example, we tend to treat social reproductive work as private matters of the household
even though we recognize that it is essential to making families work. In this context,
managing caregivers for senior family members or locating and liaising with seniors’ resi-
dences is seen as private. In Canada, we increasingly see senior migrants moving countries
in order to provide care for their adult children and grandchildren. Global domestic care
chains (Hochschild, 2012) increasingly consist of old women who disrupt traditional
retirement patterns to move home and country in order to provide care for others.
The fact of senior women providing essential care work for families reminds us that it
is not the mere existence of reproduction and production that inevitably leads to social
inequality, but rather the ways in which these functions are taken up. These profound shifts
in how women are spending their senior years reminds us that feminists need to rethink
traditional understandings of productivity and deconstruct outdated notions of depen-
dency. As age, gender, and ethnicity intersect with globalization and migration, women’s
senior experiences are being reshaped in previously unimagined ways (Zhou, 2012).
Aging And PovErty

Throughout their lives, women, as a group, have greater risk of experiencing poverty than
men. Higher poverty among older women reflects structural inequities experienced
throughout the life course: women’s lower lifetime earnings; their family and care work

responsibilities; the changing nature of the labour force, and the likelihood that women
will spend more time than men alone in old age. Within these overall patterns, particular
senior women—immigrant women, women with disabilities, single mothers, and Indige-
nous women—are at greatest risk (Murphy, Zhang, & Dionne, 2012; Preston et al., 2014).
The immediate link between the risk of poverty and gender is the fact that women are
less likely than men to be employed on a full-time, full-year basis throughout their working
lives. Women frequently manage care work for children and other family members by tak-
ing part-time employment or by taking work interruptions. However, even full-time
women workers earn a full 19% less than comparable men (Conference Board of Canada,
2013b). This pattern is reflected, for example, in the fact that licensed practical nurses,
90% of whom are women, earn a median $38 261 yearly while television service and main-
tenance technicians, 97% male and with comparable skill and educational assets, earn on
average $51 030 (Goar, 2014; Toronto Star, 2014, p. A16). Higher educational credentials
result in higher lifetime earnings for women, but women with university degrees still earn
somewhat less than men with a university degree (Statistics Canada, 2010). Even though
almost one-third of women in dual-earner households earn more than their male partners,
women in general still contribute less money than male partners to their two-income
households (Statistics Canada, 2010). Of course, women’s “in-kind” or unpaid contribu-
tion to propping up families and partnerships are inestimable and essential.
These employment patterns and inequities obviously affect senior women’s economic
well-being (Turcotte & Schellenberg, 2007). Into the early 2000s, poverty among seniors, as
a result of new, effective support programs for seniors, was dramatically reduced. By 1995 it
had plummeted to 3.9%. However, since that time poverty among older Canadians has been
slowly increasing, reaching 12.3% in 2010 (Conference Board of Canada, 2013a). Indeed,
while old age poverty fell in 20 OECD countries from 2007 and 2010, it grew in Canada by
about 2 percentage points. Within these patterns, elderly women remain at greater jeopardy
of being poor (OECD, 2013). Escaping poverty generally requires having a male partner;
widowhood and, in particular, divorce often translate into economic distress. Not surprisingly,
almost 60% of the 160 000 seniors who fell into poverty between 2006 and 2010 were women
(Citizens for Public Justice, 2012; Conference Board of Canada, 2013a; Turcotte 2014).
Reflecting this connection among age, single status, and poverty, research indicates
that older widows experience a steady decline in their median family income in the five
years after the loss of their husband (more than 15% lower) while men’s income rises in
the five years after their wives’ deaths (5.8% higher). Similarly, single and divorced women
experience a drop in income as they age compared to their married, attached female
counterparts. Since more than 20% of women in their late 60s are widowed, and by age
75, widows outnumber married women, most women in Canada will face this income
decline as they age (Burkhauser, et al., 2004; LaRochelle-Côté, Picot, & Myles, 2010).
This pattern is also confirmed by Statistics Canada reports. Women who remained
married at age 78 to 80 had a median income that was 83% of their family income at age 54 to
56. In contrast, women widowed after age 55 saw their income drop to 79% and among women
divorced or separated the drop was to 73%. Among women living at the top of the family

income distribution in Canada, the impact of becoming unattached was particularly marked,
with divorced women seeing their income level drop to 53% over the course of 25 years
(Statistics Canada, 2012a). Most recently, with improvements in male seniors’ health, there
has been an overall decline in the proportion of widows in the elderly population. However,
the sheer numbers of widows and duration of widowhood is increasing (Martin-Matthews,
2011, p. 340).
This prospect of poverty for senior women must be further contextualized in terms of
the dramatic demographic and inequality shifts facing Canada. First, seniors, male and
female, make up a growing portion of the Canadian population. For example, while
centenarians were once a social oddity, by 2011 there were 4870 women and 955 men
100 and over and analysts predict that seniors 65 and older will comprise one-quarter of
Canadians by 2061 (Statistics Canada, 2014a; Statistics Canada 2012c). Second, rates of
divorce are dramatically increasing among seniors. From 1981 to 2011 the proportion of
seniors who were divorced or separated increased from 4% to 8% and approximately
one-fifth of future seniors (currently ages 55 to 64) are divorced or separated (Bazel &
Mintz, 2014, p. 6; Milan, Wong, & Vezina, 2014, p. 1). Third, this growing economic
precarity of Canadian senior women is occurring in the middle of dramatically increasing
economic inequality.
Alarming reports from the Conference Board of Canada (2013c), the Broadbent
Institute (2014), and political-economic analysts (Banting & Myles, 2013; Gill et al.,
2014; Klein, 2014; Osberg, 2008) stress the rising income inequality gap in Canada
across all age cohorts. Rather than declining over the past 20 years, Statistics Canada
data from the Survey of Financial Security (SFS) show that income inequality has risen,
with the top 10% of Canadians in 2012 now controlling 47.9% of all the wealth in
Canada while the bottom 50% of Canadians together own less than 6% of all the wealth
in Canada (Broadbent, 2014). Wealth is increasingly concentrated and more and more
unequally distributed. Taken together, the top 20% of Canadians control 67.4% of all
Canadian wealth. Put another way, the poorest 20% of Canadians had a net worth of
$11 000 in 2010 while the poorest 10% had a median net worth of –$5,100, meaning
they owed more in debt than they owned in assets. Rather than democratizing wealth,
globalization has exacerbated inequality around the globe (Conference Board of
Canada, 2013c).
In the current context, with its dramatic decline in defined benefit pensions and rapid
growth in insecure employment patterns, it seems likely that growing numbers of Canadians
will struggle to save enough money for their retirement. Although women’s improved
education and increased participation in paid employment improve their retirement
prospects, significant gender differences persist (Drolet & Morissette, 2014). Most notably,
women are more likely than men to head the growing numbers of single-parent families
and many of these families struggle with low income (Milan, et al., 2014). Further, women,
more than their male counterparts, are likely to spend a considerable portion of their
senior years alone (reflecting differences in male/female longevity along with marital age
patterns). Inadequate pension coverage, economic struggles during prime working years,
and economic self-reliance in old age all translate into the increased risk of poverty.

Today, the longer and more intense commitment of young women to paid employ-
ment does not negate these troubling prospects. Income reports paint an alarming portrait
of severe income inequality between those ages 25 to 35 compared with those ages 55 and
over. Using Canada Revenue Agency tax data from 1984 to 2010, the Conference Board
of Canada compared the relative employment income of older and younger five-year age
cohorts for individuals, couples, and between genders. The results clearly indicate that
the incomes of younger Canadians are significantly lower than those of young workers
30 years ago. These findings have important implications for social cohesion, the future
growth of the Canadian economy, and, inevitably, future retirement scenarios for younger
workers (Gill, Knowles, & Stewart-Patterson, 2014).
As a result, young women today face two significant challenges: not only the old
problem of balancing work and family life but also the new concern about making a decent
living in a structurally adjusted workplace characterized by depressed wages and employment
insecurity. The rise of the precarious labour market with more part-time, temporary, and
contract jobs has made it difficult to find secure, well-paying jobs with pensions and benefits,
despite increased educational qualifications (Uppal & LaRochelle-Côté, 2014a).
Furthermore, employed professional women continue to remain ghettoized in occupations—
notably nursing and teaching—blighted by cutbacks and reduced hiring (Uppal &
LaRochelle-Côté, 2014b).
oTher UnaTTached Women

The connections among gender, being alone, and poverty have only recently received
detailed research attention. In this context, consideration of the realities of aging for
unattached lesbians and transgendered women is in its infancy. Preliminary investiga-
tions do suggest that lesbians (and gay men) are more likely to be single, to live alone,
and to be childless in their senior years. Whether or not families (of choice) and friend-
ship networks are able provide a viable alternative social support system for older lesbi-
ans remains unclear (Gabrielson, 2011; Gabrielson, Holston, Dyck, 2014; McGovern,
2014). However, extensive past research does suggest that older women who are “alone”
are much more likely to be economically marginalized. This prospect is reflected in
recent studies. The MetLife survey of lesbian and gay baby boomers—those born between
1945 and 1964—reported that lesbians’ greatest retirement fear was outliving their
income as they age while gay men’s greatest fear is becoming sick or disabled and depen-
dent on others (MetLife Mature Market Institute, 2010). Until research further clarifies
the life conditions of senior lesbians, it is reasonable to suggest that economic struggles
remain a significant issue, especially for lesbians and transgendered women who live
alone as seniors.
The only group of unmarried women likely to reach old age in a materially secure
position is the highly educated, professionally trained single woman, a rising trend and
force changing the landscape of partnerships across the country. These never-married
women who spend their entire lives in the paid labour force tend to be better off materi-
ally than previous cohorts of single women. In a recent British study, never-married

women were found to have longer occupational careers and their own pension rights and
were more likely than married women to own a car (Arber, 2004).
Today, the elimination of mandatory retirement at age 65 means that these women
along with others who have interrupted their working lives may continue their careers
and improve economic well-being well into their senior years.
rAciAlizEd PovErty And immigrAnt WomEn

Race and immigrant status are also important ingredients in senior women’s impoverish-
ment (Elgersma, 2010; Wellesley Institute, 2009). Immigrants represent an aging demo-
graphic; almost 19% of the Canadian immigrant population is over age 65 (Durst, 2005;
Durst & Maclean, 2010). Except for those from Africa and Southeast Asia (Thailand,
Vietnam, Laos), all other immigrant groups—Eastern Asia (Hong Kong, China, Taiwan),
the Caribbean, Europe, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka)—have significant numbers
of seniors. Currently, two-thirds of racialized persons are immigrants. It is expected that by
2031, one in three Canadians could belong to a racialized group (Statistics Canada, 2013a).
More than a quarter of all Canadian seniors were born abroad, which means that
most immigrant seniors have aged in place or have lived in Canada for the past 30 or
40 years. Most of these migrants who arrived in Canada before 1960 were from Western
European countries. The majority of more recent migrants, those arriving since 1981,
have been racialized minorities, known officially as visible minorities (Chui, Tran, &
Maheux, 2007). According to the 2006 census, 70% of the visible minority population in
Canada is foreign-born (Preston & D’Addario, 2009). The three largest racialized groups
are South Asian (25%), Chinese (24%), and Black (15%). These groups also have about
half of all racialized persons living in poverty in Canada (NCW, 2012).
The retirement income of visible minorities—both Canadian-born and foreign-born—
is lower than those of whites (Preston et al., 2013). Ethnicity and time of arrival—including
both age at migration and year of arrival in Canada—affect senior economic security as
census data consistently indicate that immigrant seniors who settled in Canada in 1961 or
before are the least likely to be low income (16%) while those who arrived between 1991
and 2001 are most likely to be low income (24%) (Statistics Canada, 2010). Moreover,
immigrant men and women who are visible minorities are more likely to have incomes
below the low-income cutoff than their White and Canadian-born counterparts (Preston et
al., 2013). At the time of the 2006 Census, employment incomes were a median of $22 400
for racialized persons versus $27 900 for non-racialized persons. Subsequent years have seen
minimal changes in income levels.
Poverty rates among Canadian racialized groups have been rising among immigrants
and falling among the Canadian-born, a trend that results from the steep decline in the
relative earnings of immigrants between 1980 and 2000 (Creese, 2007; National Council
of Welfare [NCW], 2012). Almost two-thirds of the racialized immigrants living in poverty
came to Canada between 1996 and 2006, with seven out of ten arriving in the previous
five years, 2001 to 2006.

Ninety percent of racialized persons living in poverty are first generation immigrants
(NCW, 2012). Persons from racialized groups make up 54% of all immigrants in Canada
yet they make up 71% of all immigrants living in poverty (NCW, 2012). The number of
racialized families living in poverty increased between 1980 and 2000 at a rate far exceed-
ing their population growth of 21% (NCW, 2012). Among recent immigrants, the situa-
tion is even more dire. Even though immigrants have high rates of educational achievement,
their incomes remain very low. One-fifth of immigrants who arrive in Canada face low
income, a rate 2.5 times higher than for Canadian-born.
It can take more than ten years for immigrants to achieve the earnings of their Canadian-
born counterparts (Frenette & Morissette, 2003). If migrants arrived in the 1980s and 1990s,
or even recently in the past decade, they entered a grim economy, subject to downsizing,
plant closures, the rise of precarious labour, and a decrease in the creation of new jobs.
Further, as extensively discussed in the media, recent immigrants have had great difficulty
translating their education into well-paying work. When university credentials go
unrecognized by potential employers, visible minority immigrants often face the necessity of
accepting low-wage, low-skill employment. Research suggests that this pattern is particularly
oppressive among visible minority women immigrants (Creese & Wiebe, 2012). These bleak
economic environments have left many recent migrants economically marginalized and
many have never made up the financial losses as they face retirement (Preston et al., 2013).
Racialized women face cumulative structural disadvantages. Those who experienced
set-backs in economic security earlier in life too often end up in poorer health and reduced
economic security later in life. Interrupted and discontinuous employment histories and/
or low lifetime earnings, for example, reduce their CPP/QPP payments (McDonald,
2006a, 2006b). Their gendered life courses—occupational job ghettos, disrupted career
paths, and caregiving demands—when combined with the racialized wage gap mean that,
over time, racialized women are less likely to accumulate resources and more likely to end
up with financial insecurity in old age.
TransnaTional seniors
Although most senior migrants age in place, Canada is also home to a second type of
migrant senior: those who move to Canada, either permanently or for part of each year, as
a senior. Globalization has precipitated this new category of the mobile aging migrant
who follows the migration paths of their adult children in order to live with them or close
by (Mandell et al., 2015). Recent data indicate that about 5% of seniors aged 65 and over
lived with relatives in 2011—79% of women and 3% of men. About 7% of senior women
and 2% of senior men live as lone parents with adult children who have no spouse, part-
ner, or children while about 2% of senior men and women live with non-relatives such as
a roommate (Milan, et al., 2014; Statistics Canada, 2012b).
Migrant seniors play a significant role in the lives of their adult children and grand-
children providing crucial financial, care, and emotional support for adult children and
grandchildren. Most report gratitude to Canada for providing them with homes, pleasure

in taking care of family members, and pride in their adult children and grandchildren’s
accomplishments (Mandell et al., 2015). Sponsored seniors play a critical role in promot-
ing the success and survival of their extended families by providing ongoing emotional
nurturing, wisdom, and material help (Mandell et al., 2015; Treas, 2008; Zechner, 2008).
Living with adult children presents its own challenges (Cook, 2010). International social
security arrangements allow migrant seniors to count their work experience in other countries
toward the Canada Pension Plan, which then also includes access to retirement, disability,
and survivor benefits (Durst, 2005). Most transnational seniors arrive with very few resources
making them financial dependent on their adult children and relatives. Their lack of English
proficiency, lack of access to Canadian Old Age Security, and lack of traditional sources of
social support leave many dependent seniors isolated and lonely (Mandell et al., 2015). Given
that a very small number of seniors use public transportation or taxis and participation in
social activities is recognized as promoting healthy and successful aging, inadequate access to
transportation or difficulty in getting around represents a barrier (Turcotte, 2012).
Fortunately, ethnically diverse and responsive community groups have begun to fill
this gap providing healthy living programs, retraining courses, and information sessions
on available services, thus mitigating the overwhelming loneliness many experience (Din,
Mandell, & Bhatti, 2012; Trask 2013).
Transnational seniors challenge traditional conceptualizations of aging by disrupting
traditional life course trajectories of aging in place and diversifying family structures
(Frank & Hou, 2012; Torres, 2006). When we look to emerging aging narratives, this is
the group to whom we should first turn. For this group aging has turned out to be far from
their youthful expectations because most never expected to move countries as seniors.
Most have become significant vehicles for the transmission of transnational family
connections as they stretch family ties across multiple boundaries (Arxer & Murphy,
2013). By staying connected with and influenced by more than one culture at a time,
transnational senior migrants bring about a hybridization of cultures (Torres, 2006).
The FUTUre: PrecarioUs Pensions and

PosTPoned reTiremenT
The rise in income inequality; the increase in precarious, unstable working conditions;
and women’s continued responsibility for care work that interrupts their paid employment
all add up to a perfect storm. Younger women today remain at risk of senior poverty. From
1977 to 2011, the proportion of male workers covered by a registered pension plan
declined from 52% to 37% while women’s coverage increased modestly from 36 to 40%
(reflecting their high levels of employment in public sectors such as education and health)
(Drolet & Morissette, 2014, p. 1; Statistics Canada, 2013b). Currently 61.6% of all
employees are not covered by a registered pension plan (Statistics Canada, 2014b). At the
same time, fewer than one-quarter of tax-filers contribute to Registered Retirement
Savings Plans [RRSP] (Statistics Canada, 2014c). The continuing impact of the 2008
economic recession and the proliferation of short-term, contract, part-time work as well as

self-employment mean than hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers are unable to put
aside adequate pension funds for their future retirement. Predictably, this inadequacy of
pension coverage is more pronounced among not only younger workers but also women
who are immigrants to Canada (Drolet & Morissette, 2014, 5–6).
In this context, governments have been shifting responsibility for senior economic
support from social insurance to private investments by encouraging Canadians to invest
in RRSPs and to set aside part of each paycheque for their retirement (Folbre, Shaw, &
Stark, 2005; Townson, 2006). With runaway housing prices, increased educational costs,
depressed wages, and high unemployment, particularly among Canadians 18 to 25, savings
have all too frequently been supplanted by growing household debt. Moreover, those
Canadians fortunate enough to have workplace pension plans are watching employers
increasingly shift economic risk and responsibility for pensions onto employees. Specifi-
cally, defined benefit pension plans that guarantee a specified payout to retirees upon
retirement are being replaced by defined contribution and blended pension plans. Among
the latter, actual payouts to retirees will depend on the health of the overall economy and
the financial well-being of that particular pension fund. Finally, some public and private
employers, notably in cases of bankruptcy (for example, Atlas Steel [Welland, Ontario]
and the City of Detroit) have successfully managed to reduce their economic obligations
(and, therefore pension incomes) to retirees by pleading financial distress.
The extreme vulnerability of many senior women’s pension income typically becomes
apparent if they outlive their husbands (which they are likely to do). Typically, the death of
the male breadwinner and workplace pension-holder results in an immediate 50% reduction
in pension payouts from a workplace pension. In a 2013 global report looking at economic
security among seniors, the OECD found that 61% of the gross income of Canadian seniors
comes from such workplace or private pensions (OECD, 2013). The remaining 39% of gross
income for seniors emanates from government support payments, which in 2012 would
mean $13 079.50 in Old Age Supplement for a married couple or approximately $24 000 in
Canada Pension Plan payments. These government transfer payments would similarly be
reduced by approximately half since they are determined on a per person basis (Bazel &
Mintz, 2014, p. 11). Given women’s greater longevity and reduced labour force participation,
it is not surprising that women are more dependent than men on government income
security programs. In 2008, women 65 and older received 52.6 % of their total income from
government transfer payments (including Old Age Security, Canada/Quebec Pension Plan,
Guaranteed Income Supplement), while only 37.5% of senior men’s total income came
from government sources (Milan & Vezina, 2011, p. 22). Obviously, the lower your lifetime
earnings (for example, as a result of work interruptions and periods of part-time employment),
the more an individual relies on government transfers in their senior years. However, in the
absence of private or workplace pensions, these government transfers are barely sufficient to
raise a single person above the poverty line. Furthermore, home ownership is not necessarily
a solution for seniors. Even though Canadians as a whole have a high rate of home
ownership—around 70% of people aged 65 and over own their houses—of these, 6.5% were
still repaying their mortgages in 2011 (OECD, 2013). Downsizing from a family home to an

urban condo, for example, does not necessarily result (given the high cost of urban housing)
in a significant influx of new capital into seniors’ savings.
Given these various considerations and the current economic and employment con-
text, it is not surprising that Canadian workers are increasingly delaying retirement. In
2009, a 50-year-old worker could expect to retire at age 66. At all education levels, com-
pared to 20 years ago, men age 50 retired 2.1 years later and women age 50 retired 2.6
years later. Overall, retirement has been pushed back by about three years. Retiring early
or involuntarily usually means less income, a lower standard of living, and higher costs for
income support programs (Carriere & Galarneau, 2012; Statistics Canada, 2012c).
For most people, income declines with age (LaRochelle-Côté, Picot, & Myles, 2010).
Even so, of those who are retired, the vast majority—eight in ten—report feeling their
financial situation is as expected or better than before they retired; similarly, 86% say their
income is sufficient to cover monthly expenses (Marshall, 2011). However, retiring with
debt is increasing. One-third of those fully retired hold debt, owing an average of $19 000
compared with their non-retired counterparts who owe $40 000 (Marshall, 2011). Divorcees
have the highest rate of debt followed by the never-married and widows/widowers (Marshall,
2011). Older retirees—those over age 75—are far less likely, in all categories, to carry debt.
One way that workers can seek to avoid post-retirement struggles is by returning to
the labour force. Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of women 65 and older who
held a paid job increased from 3.2% to 6.4%. More than 58% of employed women were
working part-time in 2009 (Milan & Vezina, 2011, 18–19). However, senior women are
less likely to re-enter the paid labour force than senior men and, if they do, their employ-
ment is shorter term (Statistics Canada, 2014d). At the same time, many senior women
and men remain withdrawn from paid work. Less than 3% of both women and men ages
55 plus reported returning to work in 2009. About 60% of women ages 55 plus compared
to one-half of men in 2009 were fully retired and out of the labour force.
Overall, senior women are less likely to be present in paid employment and men are
more likely than women to never retire fully (38% versus 30%) or to partially retire (13%
versus 11%) (Park, 2011). Predictably, senior women’s continued caregiving responsibili-
ties, especially parental and senior care, means they tend to retire earlier than men, often
in response to a spouse’s retirement or the needs of aging parents, and they are less likely
to return to paid employment post-retirement (Mandell & Wilson, 2011). Proulx and
Le Bourdais (2014), for example, report from their research that women (in contrast to
men) are particularly vulnerable to leaving employment when they are providing care to
a parent. Men were more likely than women to never retire (38% versus 30%) or partially
retire (13% versus 11%) (Park, 2011). Women’s withdrawal from paid employment in the
form of early retirement, full retirement, or the absence of post-retirement employment
further jeopardizes their economic well-being as they age.
The move back into paid employment for both men and women is triggered by a
constellation of factors including ongoing good health, opportunities to move into part-
time and contract employment (often in their previous sphere of employment), and
financial need. Poor health is a frequent reason for retirement (Park, 2011). Those

employees who had previous jobs offering “good pay, interesting work, and few physical
demands” appeared more likely to return to paid work: professionals, managers, and
technicians (Uppal, 2010).
Minority and immigrant status can also influence patterns of both retirement (Honig,
1996) and timing and reasons for retirement (Bulanda & Zhang, 2009). In a 2009 study
done among Canadians ages 55 plus, of the workers fully retired, the members of visible
minority groups and immigrant workers retired, on average, two years later than other
retirees (Park, 2011). Stobert and Cranswick (2004) found that 47% of recent Canadian
newcomers who are predominantly visible minorities either did not know when they
would retire or never planned to retire.
When asked if they felt financially prepared for retirement, in 2009 almost 40% of
aged 55 plus never-retired workers said their financial plans for retirement were less than
adequate (Park, 2011). Schellenberg and Silver (2004) found a large difference between
the desired and actual financial preparation for retirement reported by recent immigrants,
who were also mainly visible minorities. Forty-five percent of recent immigrants expressed
concerns about their financial preparation for retirement.
Many Western nations are embarking on schemes to entice senior workers to remain
in the labour force as a way to reduce the state and individual financial pressures brought
about by the aging population (Carriere & Galarneau, 2012). Keeping people working
allows them to save more for retirement, allows pension plans to remain sustainable, and
delays skills shortages in certain sectors of the economy. Moreover, as Canadians become
better educated, healthier, and live longer, they are less likely to see themselves as “old” at
age 65. When they do think about retirement, many seniors ages 55 plus say they would
prefer a gradual transition into retirement by way of reduced or more flexible hours while
others say they are financially and psychologically unprepared for retirement (Park, 2011).
As a result of these diverse social and economic pressures, women face a variety of prob-
lematic outcomes as they age. Economic insecurity and inadequate financial resources are
certainly a concern for the many women who, for diverse reasons, end up unattached and
elderly. There is likely to be increasing pressure on many older women to continue their paid
employment in some form and delay retirement, despite the continued likelihood that they
will be expected to assume the lion’s share of responsibility for caring for other family mem-
bers. Government reductions in social services and health care funding typically will in all
probability translate into more time spent in individualized care work by women of all ages.
Given these growing caregiving responsibilities along with persistent gender inequities in
paid employment, senior women turning to paid employment will often find a problematic
option since they are likely to be funneled into marginal, poorly paid, and insecure work.
Aging And cAring: giving And rEcEiving cArE

A cornerstone of many women’s lives is their caregiving obligations. A feminist political
economy perspective understands the unpaid care work that women routinely perform is an
experience of moral obligation, structured by the gender-based division of labour. On average,

women spend 35 years of their lives devoted to caring for children, grandchildren, and older
people (Calasanti & Slevin, 2006). Some women begin the caring process in adolescence
while others do not actively begin until the birth of their first child. Regardless of when it
begins, cultural scripts of femininity assume that women will take responsibility for others,
care for others, and put the needs of others before their own, even if this means sacrificing
employment and leisure opportunities. Neither the demands for care work nor women’s feel-
ings of obligation to perform care work lessen with age. In fact, women’s caregiving actually
increases as they age, peaking between the ages of 45 to 64 (Marshall, 2006; Sinha, 2012).
Data from 2012 indicate that nearly half of Canadians aged 15 and older (46%), or
13 million Canadians, provide some type of care to a family member or friend with a long-
term health condition, disability, or aging need (Sinha, 2012). Of all caregivers, 54% are
women, who typically spend the longest hours in caregiving. In 2012, 17% of women
providing care spent 20 or more hours a week versus 11% of men (Sinha, 2012). Whether
we are discussing parental care, spousal care, child care, neighbour and friendship care, or
elder care, despite an increase in men’s time spent in unpaid work, in each age group,
women devote more of their time and more time overall in a lifetime than men to unpaid
work and less time than men to leisure.
care work is shaped by social structures and is subject to the social
and material conditions within which it occurs Personal and social
identities are embedded in social relationships. By accepting the cultural mandate of
responsibility for care work and engaging in it, women construct their social identities as
gendered, classed, and raced subjects (Twigg, 2004). By engaging in care work—mothering,
grandmothering, and elder care—women produce their identities as females as well as
reproduce the very structures that shape their lives. In this context, it is important to note
that these “care” roles are significant in the lives of lesbians, bisexual women, and,
presumably, transgendered women. Recent preliminary research into lesbians’ enactment
of grandmothering suggest that lesbian grandmothers often accept and perform a very
similar caregiving role to that of heterosexual grandmothers (Whalen, Bigner, & Barber,
2000; Kimmell, Rose, & David, 2006).
But herein lies the dilemma. A significant investment in family care work means a
lowered investment in the labour market, which results in women’s reduced economic
security in old age. A key barrier to labour force participation remains women’s time spent
in unpaid domestic and care work. In 2005, women ages 55 to 74 devoted 4.8 hours a day
to unpaid work while men spent considerably less time (men ages 55 to 64 devoted
3.1 hours and those 65 to 74 devoted 3.9 hours per day to unpaid work). Currently, even
in senior years the traditional domestic division of labour appears to persist with men
spending more time working for pay (and in leisure) and women spending more time on
unpaid work (Statistics Canada, 2012b).
Over-engagement in care work renders women poor in old age; then society blames
them for their own poverty (Holstein & Minkler, 2003). Yet to ignore the responsibilities
associated with caring for others leaves women open to social censure and ostracism—
women are “bad women” if they do not put the needs of others before their own. Discourses

of love co-mingle? with discourses of obligation, leaving many women feeling conflicted
and trapped, unable to ignore care work even though the work itself remains socially
undervalued and largely unrewarded.
care work is gendered Women provide 70 to 80% of in-home care to family

members at every stage of the life course (Marshall, 2006). Despite high levels of female
labour force participation, many Canadians believe that home and children take prece-
dence in women’s lives over working for pay. The expectation remains that even when
employed, women maintain primary responsibility for home and family. In 1995, 46% of
both men and women agreed or strongly agreed that “while a job is all right, what most
women really want is a home and family” (Ghalam, 1997). In the past decade, women
have increased the time they spend in paid employment without a significant correspond-
ing decrease in the time they spend on domestic labour and child care. In 1997, of all
women in two-parent families, 62% of women with children under the age of 16 were
employed. In 1998, employed mothers with children under the age of five spent double
the amount of time on personal child-care activities than men: 91 minutes per day for
mothers compared to 47 minutes per day for fathers (Hunsley, 2006).
Men are more likely than women to support aging family members financially; women
are more likely to support them emotionally and in daily tasks such as household chores,
shopping, and basic hygiene (Chisholm, 1999). Women take on the direct hands-on
personal care duties while men generally assist in tasks such as home maintenance and
financial management (Habtu & Popovic, 2006). Male and female subjectivities are thus
constituted in and through gendered practices of caring (Twigg, 2004).
care work is unevenly distributed Who receives care? Interestingly, while

women are most likely to be providing care, they are also most likely to be receiving care.
Since women tend to live longer than men and tend to marry men who are older than
they, women are more likely to end up in need of caregiving as they age. As a result, while
almost half (48%) of men turn to their spouse as their main caregiver, only 21% of women
are able to do the same. Yet senior women, particularly if they are on their own and as
they age, will need assistance with everyday activities (Milan & Vezina, 2011, 27, 32). Of
course, as increasing numbers of women remain childless or have fewer children, family-
based social support for aging Canadian women will become a problem (Penning & Wu,
2014). Of all seniors ages 65 to 74, women account for 58% of all care receivers and 65%
of all care receivers among those age 75 and older (Sinha & Bleakney, 2014). Women age
65 and older represent one of the fastest growing segments of the population. Among this
group, the female cohort age 85 and over is the fastest growing segment of the senior
female population. This group, predictably, tends to be the most in need of social support
from their communities and families as they are vulnerable to ill health and likely live
alone (Milan & Vezina, 2011).
Who is providing the care and which age groups are receiving the most care? Again,
not surprisingly, closest family relationships provide the primary sources of care. In 2012,
39% of Canadians were receiving help primarily from a spouse or common-law partner,

while 24% were receiving care primarily from an adult child and 19% from a parent.
The least common were extended family member or siblings (9%) and friends or
neighbours (8%) (Sinha & Bleakney, 2014).
Ailing parents are the most common recipients of care. About 39% of caregivers look
after the needs of their own parents and another 9% do so for parents-in-law. Spouses are
8% of care recipients while children represent 5% (Sinha, 2012). Caregivers of spouses
and children devoted the most time to helping activities. These figures reveal that care-
givers between the ages of 45 and 64 are the busiest as this is the age group most likely to
be providing parental care and care to grandparents.
Seniors age 65 and older actually provide the least amount of care compared with
every other age group but they also provide the longest hours in care provision. Twenty-
three percent of senior caregivers provide 20 hours or more a week of care (Turcotte, 2013).
Caring for their ailing partners requires an intense amount of time.
Here, once again, there are important diversities. Immigrant senior women,
particularly recent immigrants, are much more likely to live with relatives than their
Canadian-born counterparts. A full 40% of recent immigrant senior women who arrived
in Canada between 2000 and 2006 lived with relatives, in contrast to about 7% of
Canadian-born senior women (Milan & Vezina, 2011, p. 12). Similarly, low-income
families facing challenging economic circumstances and with more limited support
options may be choosing to turn to their families to meet their needs (McDaniel & Gaszo,
2014). Caregiving for elders is also markedly different in Indigenous communities. Issues
ranging from geographic remoteness to a lack of family caregivers and limited access to
health services are embedded in concerns about distinctive cultural values and community
development (Habjan, Prince, & Kelley, 2012). Social support and care for the aging may
also be problematic for lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered women. What happens to
members of the LGBT community when they develop dementia or other needs for chronic
care? Increasingly, analysts are drawing attention to innovative support and caregiving
options being constructed within lesbian communities as well as the pressing need for
social service agencies to also address the care needs of an aging LGBT community
(Gabrielson, 2011; McGovern, 2014). Although in 2011 only a small percentage of senior
couples identified as same-sex, there is every indication that same-sex couples and
marriages among seniors will significantly increase in coming decades (Humble, 2014;
Milan, et al., 2014).
Keeping in mind these intersectionalities, how much care is provided and by whom?
While men and women report spending similar weekly amounts of time in caregiving—
three to four hours a week—women spend far longer in caring than men. Women are
more likely than their male counterparts to spend 20 or more hours per week on caregiv-
ing tasks (17% versus 11%). Spousal caregivers typically spend 14 hours a week on some
sort of care activity while caregivers of children, including adult children, spend 10 hours
per week (Simha, 2012). Caregivers of parents, the largest segment of caregivers, spend
four hours a week while caregivers of grandparents and friends spend the least amount of
time at two hours a week (Turcotte, 2013).

care work is affected by global economic shifts Globalization has not
brought the economic prosperity expected by middle-aged generations who increasingly
rely on their families to help out. Half of contemporary three-generation households are
headed by immigrants or are Aboriginal families (Che-Alford & Hamm, 1999; Milan &
Hamm, 2003). Parents born in Asia and Central and South America are far more likely to
live with their adult children than those in some other ethnic groups (Turcotte, 2006).
care work is shaped by state policies Ideologies that see reproductive work as
private and primarily the domain of women are used to justify minimal state involvement
in long-term care and to draw old women into caring for family members (Estes, 2003).
Old people, not always by choice, continue to work as unpaid caregivers in the home look-
ing after grandchildren, spouses, and relatives (King, 2006). Grandmothers may be called
upon to perform care work so that younger women can be “free” to engage in paid labour.
Some 40% of American adult children with children under the age of five receive babysit-
ting help from parents (Spitze & Logan, 1992). In Canada, in 1996, about 54% of grand-
parents in three-generation households helped out with household finances (Che-Alford &
Hamm, 1999). Gender ideologies are also used to justify transferring care work from the
formal sector of hospitals and state-run nursing homes to the informal sector of the home.
care work is associated with quality of life Caregivers experience both
objective burdens (the actual demands they experience as caregivers) and subjective bur-
dens (feelings of worry, sadness, resentment, anger, or guilt) (Hooeyman & Gonyea, 1999).
Caring obligations are thought to account in part for the poorer health and higher levels of
physical disability experienced by older women, as well as their limited financial resources.
When asked in the 2002 Canadian General Social Survey to evaluate their experi-
ences, both middle-aged and senior caregivers rate their elder care positively. Between
80 and 90% feel that helping others strengthens their relationships with the care receivers
and repays some of what they themselves have received from others and from life (Stobert &
Cranswick, 2004). In fact, 20.6% of men and 22.2% of women felt they should be doing
more (Habtu & Popovic, 2006). Feelings of love and duty intersect across the life course.
aging: embodimenT
Our examination of paid and care work highlights the importance of the material in struc-
turing the lives of old women. However, age is more than the sum total of material condi-
tions. Age arises from the recursive interaction between structure, culture, and agency. In
this view, age is less a biological prescription—years lived—than a social and cultural
inscription. Aging is not a “natural” process but occurs within culture and history. It is
through our involvement in culture that we give age meaning. Media images, representa-
tions, symbols, and metaphors offer important cultural descriptions from which women
construct identities of aging.
Age is a key way in which women perform or accomplish gender. Like gender, age is
not a property of individuals but rather a socially prescribed relationship, a process, and a

social construction (Ray, 1996). Both aged gender identities are created and maintained
through the social constructs by which we give them historical, material, and cultural
meaning. We all tend to become who we are addressed as being. Gender and age identities
represent ways of being in the world that take their meaning from our shared language,
history, and culture (Clarke & Korotchenko, 2011).
Gender, like age, is too often presented dichotomously—male versus female, young
versus old. Gender and age come together in the culture’s “double standard” that pits
young women against old and aging men against aging women. Defined by Sontag as a
process by which women suffer scorn and exclusion as they grow old—a “humiliating pro-
cess of gradual sexual disqualification” (Sontag, 1972, p. 102)—the double standard of
aging represents a form of double marginality (Montemurro & Gillen, 2013). Racialized
women experience a “triple jeopardy” as derogatory stereotypes of ethnicity intersect with
unflattering images of women and the elderly.
Ironically, although young women are quite rightly concerned with sexual exploitation,
aging women see themselves as sexual cast-offs. In fact, young women benefit from the
negative sexual portrayal of old women because it enhances their social value and their
opportunities with privileged men (Thompson, O’Sullivan, Byers, & Shaughnessy, 2014).
Along with racism and ableism, sexual disqualification creates painful situations for some
women while others welcome having outlived narrow, sexualized definitions of attractiveness.
Bodies are discursive, meaning they are shaped, represented, and constructed both
materially and socially. James Paul Gee (1990) describes discourses as “ways of being in
the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and
social identities as well as gestures, glances, body postures and clothes.” Gee refers to dis-
courses as “identity kits” because they come with complete “instructions on how to act,
talk and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize” (p. 142).
Because bodies represent continuing sites of identity construction, age and gender are
identities accrued over time by adhering to and performing body norms. In fact, bodies are
so centrally implicated in the process of gender identity construction that Kontos (1999),
following Butler, argues that bodies have no significant existence without the mark of
gender. There are age- and gender-based standards by which people manage their identity
kits and this management is directed toward the body. Women of all ages, races, genders,
classes, and ability types mould, pressure, push, and cajole their bodies into becoming
public representations of how they want to be viewed.
What is the ideal body in our society? First, the cultural ideal is the same for all
women: unblemished, untainted, youthful, and vigorous bodies are considered perfect.
Visible signs of impairment, disability, or aging indicate failure and reinforce fears of
bodily suffering and infirmity.
Second, the ideal body is an ageless body. Successful aging means not aging at all—
avoiding becoming old altogether. If a body has to age, the ideal old body is a youngish
looking and acting body (Holstein & Minkler, 2003). The emphasis on youth and vitality
subjects old people to a kind of cultural imperialism, a lifelong project of disciplining and
managing the aging body by appearing not to age.

Third, a successful old body is an active body. Productive activity—economic,
physical, and social—becomes the norm against which everyone is judged. “Staying
active” becomes a type of moral obligation for the elderly, promoted as a way to avoid
decline and dependency. Illness becomes a transgression of cultural rules because it
prevents activity. Entire groups become marginalized when our societal vision of aging
means staying economically engaged, socially active, and physically vigorous: Katz (1996)
calls this emphasis on vitality a way of disciplining old age: less active elderly are
considered less attractive and less socially valuable.
If bodies are public presentations of our identities, then individuals need identity kits
or body practices to maintain the ideal. Wendell (1996, p. 88) calls these body practices
“disciplines of normality.” “Keeping up”—being active—and “passing for normal”—
dressing, talking, and acting like someone who is younger—reduce the likelihood of being
the target of ageist or ablest prejudice. Go into any women’s clothing store and you’ll find
all ages trying on the same type of jeans, shirts, sweaters, and dresses. No one wants to be
characterized as an “old lady” (Twigg, 2013).
Disciplinary norms generate experts who monitor and dictate how women should age
successfully. Social regulation works when we all participate in the widespread conspiracy
of pretending there are no impaired or aged people. Women willingly buy into the anti-
aging industry by purchasing cosmetic surgery, joining gyms, and signing up for diet plans,
all gendered body practices marketed as tools to help women fight aging. In 2013, Americans
spent over 12 billion dollars on cosmetic procedures and 7 billion of that was spent on sur-
gical procedures. The most common surgery in 2013 for people ages 19 to 34 was breast
augmentation, for ages 35 to 50 was liposuction, for ages 51 to 64 it was also liposuction,
and for ages 65 and older it was a facelift (ASAPS, 2013). These numbers will likely con-
tinue to increase as a greater percentage of the population enters their senior years.
conclUsion
In this chapter, we have looked at the material and social effects of the double standard of
aging and the ways in which ageism is embodied. Why is it that men are “allowed” to age
naturally without social penalties but the aging female body arouses revulsion? As
Reinharz (1986 to 1997) reminds us, the double standard is more than a matter of aesthet-
ics; it is the beginning of a whole set of oppressive structures that keep women in their
place. And as women age, the gap between men and women, young and old, widens.
The development of feminism and ageism owes a huge debt of gratitude to disability
studies (Overall, 2006). Disability, like age, is socially and materially constructed. This
does not deny the reality of the aging body, but says that how we define it is socially
constructed. Positive definitions of aging seem to have disappeared historically just at a
time when women gained the possibility of achieving social capital by way of their own
personal and professional development. The energy women could have used to affect their
lower status and dependency has been re-channeled into worries about aging—worries for
which the consumer economy offered resources such as makeup, surgery, and fashion

literature. Ultimately, ridding the body of visible signs of aging requires spending large
sums of money.
In 1921, women age 65 and older made up a scant 5% of Canadian women. By 2031,
one in four Canadian women will be seniors. It is possible that this demographic bulge will
translate increased engagement of older women into the creation of new age norms and
social policy. The Canadian-originated activist group—The Raging Grannies—speaks to
this range of new possibilities (Sawchuck, 2009). Analysts are also calling for women of
all sexual orientations to advance plan for social support as they age (Boehmer, Clark, &
Sullivan, 2010). The mass media encourage all boomer women to not only care for their
physical health but also their financial well-being. Successful aging is, of course, in large
measure dependent on being healthy enough to enjoy the benefits of retirement or
reduced workload, but this is complexly intertwined with financial security.
Women who lack adequate financial resources have reduced opportunities to enjoy
retirement (for example, travel, involvement in community activities, further education,
and artistic endeavours) and increased pressure to take on poorly paid, marginalized
employment. While public health campaigns concerning breast cancer and heart disease
have drawn boomer women’s attention to potential health threats, there has been less
information for aging women about securing their financial well-being. Given persistent
ageist and sexist patterns in the labour force, continuing pressure on aging women to
assume care work, and their likelihood of becoming unattached, it is essential that older
women be alerted to the financial problems of aging. However, a lifetime of caring for
others continues to leave many women financially insecure in old age. Intermittent or
part-time employment, combined with low-wage jobs, means far too many women face
economic marginalization and, therefore, social powerlessness in old age, with racialized,
immigrant, Indigenous, and low-income women particularly vulnerable.
We end by reminding our readers that feminist discourses offer us new ways to think
about ourselves. Feminists, along with everyone else, have been socialized into what
Reinharz (1986 to 1997) termed a geronto-phobic culture. Eliminating ageism begins by
confronting our own fears and misgivings of aging. Deconstructing these derogatory
narratives offers a way to begin this project.
1. An aging o u ation tsuna i is about to hit anada. hat ar th a or socia issu s
g n rat d b this d ogra hic nt and h is it articu ar r ant to o n.
2. onsid r th a s in hich o d r o n ar i act d b oth r id ntiti s such as i i-
grant status, rac thnicit , socia c ass, and s ua id ntit
3. ritica a in t o i s about aging. hat i ag s o o d o n ar ortra d o is
ag r or d Ar th di rsiti s int rs ctiona iti s in o d r o n s id ntiti s r s nt d
4. hat t s o car or do o d r o n r or and h o do s this ar b i i-
grant status, rac thnicit , socia c ass, and s ua id ntit

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Chapter 10
Mothers’ Maintenance of Families
Through Market and Family Care
Relations
Amber Gazso
IntroductIon
Since the mid-20th century, there have been significant and observable changes in the
market and family care relations of Canadian families. Women have entered the labour
force in ever-increasing numbers and are combining paid work with raising and caring for
children, either with a partner or alone. Canadian families are also increasingly racially/
ethnically heterogeneous. This diversity is reflected in differences in women’s labour mar-
ket participation and provisions of caregiving and is linked to changes in immigration
policy. In addition, ever-growing awareness of the market and family care relations of les-
bian and gay couples has coalesced with the legalization of their marriages in 2005, greater
recognition of their reproductive rights, and entitlement to social programs and benefits
(e.g., pension and health benefits) associated with maintaining families. Finally, for all
families, there is the pressing economic need for all adult earners to be involved in some
form of labour market attachment.
Intricately related to many of these changes is the neo-liberal weakening of the
Canadian welfare state. As both an economic doctrine and a political ideology (Hartman,
2005), a neo-liberal agenda demands governments’ increasing openness to national and
international market competition and the reduced role of the state in individuals’ lives.
Since the 1980s, governments have spent less on social programs and more greatly prioritized
individuals’ responsibility for their own and their family’s social and economic well-being.
For example, core social policies and programs that provide much needed income support to
families, such as social assistance (or welfare) and Employment Insurance (EI) have been
scaled back. Families therefore have a much weaker safety net to turn to in times of need.
In the contemporary political economy, the way mothers maintain their families,
including their dependent children, through their market and family care relations is a
challenge. In addition to their participation in paid work, mothers who share parenting
with male partners continue to perform the bulk of domestic labour and manage their
child care needs with limited state support to do so. Regardless of the family structure,
mothers’ disproportional engagement in gender-segregated employment accompanied by
256
few benefits (e.g., paid leaves, and health and dental coverage) translates into fewer
resources to provide for their own and their children’s income security. This is particularly
problematic for lone mothers, who must often stretch limited resources to meet food, shel-
ter, transportation, and child-care demands. Bringing all of these trends together, it is
apparent that mothers experience a complex state-family-market nexus in the organiza-
tion of their daily lives. Mothers’ maintenance of families by participating in the labour
market and providing care—and juggling both—is indeed the stuff of feminist concern.
In this chapter, I take these changes in Canadian families as our starting point. I focus
on how families—in whatever shape or form—are maintained through mothers’
engagement in and managing of market and family care relations. Whereas I use the term
“market relations” to refer to the structure of the labour market and mothers’ paid work
experiences, “family care relations” encompasses the caregiving relationships mothers
have with their children and other family members. In this chapter, I specifically outline
mothers’ contemporary labour market and child-care experiences, the challenges associated
with these, and the strategies mothers adopt to manage them. I also show how the state,
via federal and provincial social policies and programs, intersects with mothers’ market
and family care relations. In doing so, I assume a focus on mothers who engage in paid and
unpaid work. I resist focusing on only heterosexual mothers who are part of white, middle/
upper-class, nuclear families with children and instead adopt a more inclusive definition of
the family, drawing attention to mothers of varying sexuality and race/ethnicity and how
they engage in similar or different ways of maintaining families. I focus primarily on
Canadian mothers, but where national scholarship is limited, I draw upon literature from
other “liberal welfare states,” such as the United States, that share with Canada these
changes in market and family care relations and lesser state responsibility for citizens (see
also Baker, 2006; Esping-Andersen, 1990). This chapter unfolds with a brief review of
some of the ways feminists have understood the connections between women’s participation
in paid and unpaid work, including housework and child care.
Some BrIef femInISt InSIghtS

Feminist scholars have long been concerned with women’s (and men’s) experiences of
paid work and family care responsibilities. All feminisms at some time have shared a con-
cern with women’s experiences of inequality in one or both domains compared to men’s
(and other women’s) and argued that these experiences are public and political issues.
Although space does not permit a comprehensive analysis of the historical evolution of
these feminisms, I will make brief mention of how these perspectives are applicable to a
focus on mothers’ maintenance of families.
Liberal feminists are concerned with women achieving equality of opportunity with
men. Liberal feminists have advocated for women’s equal education, employment and wage
opportunities, equality before the law, choices surrounding their reproduction, and state-
endorsed parental leave and child care provisions. Women’s and men’s equal participation
in unpaid work within nuclear families has also been a concern (Garey, Hanson, Hertz, &
Chapter 10 Mothers’ Maintenance of Families 257

MacDonald, 2002). These goals and advocacy for change are intended to improve mothers’
ability to balance their participation in paid work and family caregiving.
Not all feminists agree that women can better compete with men in the marketplace
if more equal opportunities are available to them. Marxist feminism is cognizant of the
economic and structural conditions of society and blends Marxist interests in deconstruct-
ing class-based inequalities with feminist interests in deconstructing gender-based
inequalities. Of great concern to many Marxist feminists has been the creation of aware-
ness for and among mothers that their caregiving, nurturing, and domestic activities
within the home constitutes work and has a productive capacity much like any outside
market activities. Women’s unpaid housework and caregiving activities within the home
produce and reproduce workers capable of participating in the labour market on a daily
and generational basis (Fox, 1980; Luxton, 2006; Seccombe, 1980).
Marxist feminist scholarship also stresses how the patriarchal character of gender
relations “maintain[s] and reproduce[s] the social relations of capitalism” (Weedon, 1999,
p. 143). In her classic treatment of housework, for example, Hartmann (1981) argues that
the nuclear family is a site of power struggles between women and men that arise over
what appear to be unequal efforts at producing and redistributing. By and large, husbands’
greater privilege in the labour market and dominance in the home translates into their
earning for a family’s survival and lesser participation in housework (Hartmann, 1981).
Men’s domination and power in working-class households is grounded materially in their
possession of a primary wage (Seccombe, 1980). When women contribute to the house-
hold income through wage work, this does weaken the patriarchal basis of power in the
home. And yet, as Fox (1980) highlights, married women’s involvement in wage work is
still a product of their primary responsibility for maintaining families. Managing total
household income against everyday needs is part of this responsibility.
Socialist feminists also critically consider the inequality that characterizes women’s
and men’s market and family care relations. Like Marxist feminists, socialist feminists
have stressed how unpaid work performed by women is necessary for the capitalist mode of
production (Luxton, 2006). They have particularly highlighted the exploitative condi-
tions of this work. As part of heterosexual couples, mothers’ primary responsibility for
managing child care and the workforce attachment of their partners and themselves ben-
efits their families. However, this same primary responsibility has a negative impact on
mothers’ own careers and incomes. More women than men engage in part-time work to
manage these demands, a point I will return to later in this chapter.
Socialist feminist approaches also highlight how structures other than class underpin
women’s oppression, including gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. For exam-
ple, racialized lone mothers (or “visible minority” mothers in government and policy dis-
course) are understood to bear greater responsibility for managing child care and market
attachment than other mothers. In addition, socialist feminists have emphasized how
institutionalized heterosexuality is implicated in the power relations of class and patriar-
chy (Dunne, 2000; Weedon, 1999); sexuality cannot be divorced from the material world.
As Dunne (2000, p. 137) explains, when we understand men’s labour market participa-
tion is facilitated by women’s unpaid labour in the home, it is important to recognize that
258 Chapter 10 Mothers’ Maintenance of Families

heteronormative assumptions about families “provide the logic that translates women’s
labour into men’s material advantage.”
Radical feminists, on the other hand, place a greater deal of emphasis on sex oppression
as the root of women’s and mothers’ inequality in the home and labour market (Calixte,
Johnson, & Motapanyane, 2005). As Hamilton (2007) explains, they do not dispute
patriarchal capitalist relations, but rather argue that this sex oppression is buried far deeper
historically and psychically. For some radical feminists, the family has been understood to be a
site where men control women’s sexuality (Nicholson, 2010/2013); women’s roles within the
home are created and maintained by men for their own purposes.
Since some of these feminist perspectives were largely articulated by white women for
white women, they initially suffered from an inherent racism. Not all of these perspectives
accurately matched the realities of racialized women and therefore marginalized women’s
differences (Hamilton, 2007; Harnois, 2005). Arguably, it was the work of anti-racist and
Black feminists who have revealed the Eurocentric and white-centred bias of feminist schol-
arship from these perspectives. For example, the above feminist perspectives (perhaps with
the exclusion of socialist feminism) overlooked how Black women and mothers have been
historically denied fair participation in the labour market (e.g., through the practice of slav-
ery before and during the 19th century) and/or have had a lengthier history of participating
because of economic necessity (Calliste, 2003; Harnois, 2005; hooks, 1981). Anti-racist
feminists therefore attempt to correct these oversights. They prioritize how overlapping and
historically specific power relations, discourses, and processes—such as colonization, imperi-
alism, slavery, and systemic racism—affect non-white and white women’s social location and
thus their historical and contemporary experiences of subjugation and oppression (Bannerji,
2000; Dua, 1999; Hamilton, 2007). As Lerner (1993, p. 245) observes: “Race, class, and
gender oppression are inseparable: they construct, reinforce, and support one another.” Some
anti-racist scholarship incorporates the emphasis on material relations embedded within
socialist feminism by examining, for example, how race and gender intersect in the division
of paid and unpaid labour to the advantage of white women and men (Mandell, 2005).
Other scholarship critiques the radical feminist emphasis on families as a site of sexual
oppression. Anti-racist scholars have demonstrated that some women of color have sought
the family as a place of refuge from a racist society (Dua, 1999; Mandell, 2005).
As explained by hooks (1981, p. 124): “The first white women’s rights advocates were
never seeking social equality for all women; they were seeking social equality for white
women.” Black feminist scholarship works against this feminism. Specifically, Black femi-
nist standpoint theory assumes that Black women exist within an “intersectionality matrix”
that refers to their specific location within multiple systems of oppression (Few, 2007). In
any explorations of women’s and men’s experiences of market and family care relations,
Black feminists are concerned with injecting a Black consciousness or standpoint into such
studies to represent the unique experiences of Black women (Collins, 1989; Few, 2007).
Finally, feminist scholars have also approached the study of women’s market and family
care relations by using a feminist political economy lens. As understood by Clement (2001,
p. 406), the political economy encompasses the state, including government and gover-
nance (the political), and the social, political, and cultural constitution of markets,

institutions, and actors (the economy). Scholars who use this approach explore society from
a materialist perspective and so are theoretically informed by Marxism; social relations are
connected to economic relations of production and reproduction (Clement, 2001; Luxton,
2006). Feminists who adopt a political economy approach focus their attention on how
political, economic, and cultural processes intersect to create societal conditions of inequal-
ity for women. Like other feminisms, emphasis is placed on unpaid work in households and
its non-market value (Safri & Graham, 2010). Recent uses of this perspective draw upon
insights from the above feminisms to show how capitalist processes of labour, exchange, and
production are connected to the changing distribution of power, resources, and rights
among citizens (e.g., welfare state restructuring) within households and nation states.
The inequalities that women experience within their market and family care relations
are also understood as interlocked with their identities and social structures of race/ethnic-
ity, class, gender, and sexuality (Bezanson, 2006; Danby, 2007; Vosko, 2002). For example,
the insights of Marxist and socialist feminists are incorporated into analyses of how the state
is not gender neutral and is instead embedded with gendered assumptions surrounding wom-
en’s and men’s participation in market and family care relations (Hamilton, 2005). The
scholarly insights of anti-racist and Black feminists are implied in analyses that have shown
that poor racialized women have the least capacity to make rights-based claims upon the
state to achieve economic security and the well-being of their children. Scholarship in queer
theory has sensitized feminist political economy to the need to critique heteronormative
assumptions that filter into family, state, and market relationships (Danby, 2007). Finally,
migration scholars have used feminist political economy to account for global family and
market care relations, relations that occur across borders. Family members may reside in dif-
ferent countries with different political and economic contexts but participate in paid and
unpaid work that benefits each other and their respective countries (Safri & Graham, 2010).
With such a myriad of feminisms, the challenge for feminists is to articulate the approach
used in their own explorations of women’s material everyday realities. I approach the content
of this chapter using a feminist political economy lens. I show how Canadian mothers’
management of their market and family experiences is shaped by gender, race/ethnicity,
sexuality, and class in relation to the structural constraints imposed by the political and
economic context in which they live. Stated more specifically, I limit my attention to the
contemporary labour market and the changing structure of only some federal and provincial
social policies and programs. I show how these institutions affect women’s structural positions,
their entitlement to government income support, and their everyday family experiences as
informed by both assumptions about and actual sexuality, gender, race/ethnicity, and class.
the contemporary market and famIly care

relatIonS of motherS
Families, in whatever shape and form, are increasingly maintained through two key
processes: market and family care relations. As lone parents or co-parents or living in
extended family households, mothers intricately combine their work for pay with family

care responsibilities, which include provisions for their children’s emotional, physical, and
material needs. Depending on the composition of their families, mothers can also provide
this care to partners and other adult dependents. However, relations of production (e.g.,
paid work) and reproduction (e.g., unpaid work or domestic labour, including child care)
are not always equally divided among family members. In this section, I explore the
inequality that characterizes mothers’ market and family care relations and demonstrate
how it is created through individual decisions as well as economic and structural forces. To
contextualize this focus, it is useful to first explore and compare the employment and
income patterns of women and men more generally.
While differences in women’s labour force participation have always varied on the
basis of their race/ethnicity and class, women on average have steadily increased their
labour force participation since the 1950s. Whereas 42% of all women over the age of 15
were part of the paid work force in 1976, 58% of all women were employed and earning
wages in some capacity in 2004. During this same period, the proportion of men employed
slightly decreased, from 73% in 1976 to 68% in 2004 (Statistics Canada, 2007). By 2009,
the percentage of women employed remained steady; almost 60% of Canadian women
were employed (Statistics Canada, 2011).
Despite these significant gains made by women, their experiences of the labour mar-
ket are characterized by differences in the types of work performed and inequality in earn-
ings compared to men (Gazso, 2004; Krull & Sempruch, 2011). Canadian men still occupy
employment with higher status and higher pay than do women (Brooks, Jarman, &
Blackburn, 2003), such as supervisory or administrative positions in the manufacturing or
industry sectors. In contrast, women continue primarily to occupy positions in the services
and sales sectors (Wilson, 2005).
Various reasons are cited for this wage inequity, including hourly commitment to paid
labour, education level, and occupations chosen. Women are more likely to work part
time and accounted for seven out of ten part-time workers in 2009 (Statistics Canada,
2011). Their part-time work falls into the category of non-standard jobs that are charac-
terized by short-term contracts, low skill, low wages, and few benefits (Benoit, 2000).
Men, however, are more likely to be employed on a full-time, full-year basis (Baker, 2006;
Frenette & Coulombe, 2007). Although the gap between women’s and men’s earnings has
narrowed over time (Heisz, Jackson, & Picot, 2002), 2011 data reveal that for full-time,
full-year workers, the average income for women was $47 300 and $65 700 for men;
women made 72% of the earnings of men (Statistics Canada, 2013).
In light of women’s increasing education levels but continuing income inequality,
Frenette and Coulombe (2007) examined the linkages between education and occupations
chosen by using census data. They found that women ages 25 to 29 with university degrees
who worked full-time for a full year still earned less money than men. Frenette and Coulombe
considered that their lower earnings were because they had completed degrees in gendered
fields of study (e.g., education, arts, humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and health) that
are associated with lower economic returns. For example, whereas 20.6% of women completed
a university degree specializing in education in 2001, only 9.4% of men did. And whereas

18.4% of men completed a university degree in engineering in 2001, only 4.3% of women did.
Women’s and men’s choices of education and eventual earnings are also linked to labour
market demands. Throughout the 1990s, the high tech sector (e.g., engineering and computer
science)—predominantly the purview of men—experienced considerable growth and
increased earnings whereas employment in the public sector—predominantly the purview of
women—was affected by downsizing and reduced earnings (Frenette & Coulombe, 2007).
Women’s unequal experiences within the labour market are further contextualized by
their age, immigration status, race/ethnicity, and relationships with state policy. Immigrant
women who have been in Canada for some time and are engaged in the labour market earn
far less than immigrant men and slightly less than other women (Statistics Canada, 2011).
Recent immigrant women are more likely to experience low income or have incomes that
fall below Statistics Canada’s low income cut offs (LICOs) than Canadian-born women.
This is even despite the fact that recent immigrants to Canada are generally more highly
educated than Canadian-born women. As well, many women who immigrate to Canada
do so as dependents on their spouses (Statistics Canada, 2011) and are unable to work for
pay. In general, immigrant women also experience weaker connections with education and
training opportunities for future employment and a greater likelihood of being dependent
on the state for income support (Statistics Canada, 2007). Like all women, immigrant
women who do work for pay are more likely to experience non-standard work conditions
(Zeytinoglu & Muteshi, 2000); among all foreign-born women ages 25 to 54 who were
employed in 2006, the majority were engaged in non-standard employment in sales and
service or in financial, administrative, and business positions (Statistics Canada, 2011).
In general, Canadian-born Aboriginal women, who make up 3% of the population,
are less likely to be employed, earn less from their paid work, and are more likely to expe-
rience low income than white women. According to the 2006 Census, 51.1% of Aborigi-
nal women over the age of 15 were employed compared to 57.7% of non-Aboriginal
women (Statistics Canada, 2011). Similar to other women, Aboriginal women’s work is
concentrated in non-standard occupations. White, Maxim, and Gyimah (2003) found
that Aboriginal women’s 1996 labour force activity varied by their Aboriginal status (e.g.,
registered versus non-registered), education, labour force activity, and family structure.
White et al. also found that unemployment among registered Aboriginal women was
related to their residence on reserves, low education levels, and the presence of young
children. Compared to Aboriginal women who were married or living alone, women with
higher education were more likely, and lone mothers with dependent young children less
likely, to be employed (White, Maxim, & Gyimah, 2003).
Regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, racialized women also experi-
ence income inequality and segregation in the labour market. They are disproportionately
unemployed, underpaid, or underemployed in non-standard occupations compared to
white Canadian-born women (Galabuzi, 2006; Status of Women Canada, 2005). Women
who are immigrants and racialized are triply disadvantaged in the labour market (Palameta,
2004; Wilson, 2005). Age is also a factor connected to income and employment opportu-
nities. Mandell and Wilson (2011) find that many senior women migrate to countries to

perform care work for their adult children, for example, caring for their grandchildren (see
Chapter 9 in this volume). Racialized, senior immigrant women, especially those who are
sponsored to come to Canada, are more likely to have lower incomes than women who
have lived in Canada for some time (Mandell et al., 2015).
Women’s labour force participation is distinctly linked to their mothering and pro-
viding child care. Women with children are less likely to be employed than women with-
out children (Statistics Canada, 2011). Generally speaking, having children is a deterrent
to women’s engagement in continuous full-time, full-year paid work (Statistics Canada,
2011; Wilson, 2005). Mothers are more likely to leave the workforce when rearing and
caring for pre-school children. However, recent information does demonstrate that moth-
ers with very young children and male partners have increased their labour force partici-
pation, a finding that is not surprising considering the increased cost of living and need for
dual-earner families. In 2009, 64.4% of all mothers with children under the age of three
participated in the labour market, whereas in 1976 only 27.5% of women did (Statistics
Canada, 2011). Whereas 36.8% of women with children ages 3 to 5 engaged in paid work
in 1976, 69.7% of mothers with children of these ages did so in 2004. The paid work
engagement of mothers also varies by parental status. Lone mothers are less likely to be
employed than mothers in two-parent families, although lone mothers’ paid work partici-
pation has also increased since the mid-1970s (Statistics Canada, 2011).
In nuclear families where mothers work for pay, their experience of inequality in the
labour market dovetails with their greater responsibilities for domestic labour (i.e., house-
work and child care) compared to their partners. Although studies over the last two
decades have demonstrated that men have increased their time in domestic or household
work and child care (see Marshall, 2006; Sayer, 2005), women still perform a greater
amount of this unpaid work, especially when their partners are male (Gazso-Windle &
McMullin, 2003; Marshall, 2006; Sayer, 2005). This greater responsibility continues for
women into their later years (Krull & Sempruch, 2011).
Marshall (2006) conducted a study of the time Canadians spent in paid and unpaid
work and found that the total work day amounted to 8.8 hours on average in 2005, up
from 8.2 hours in 1986 (see Figure 10.1). Men’s increase in total work hours is attributed
to the increased time spent in daily housework, for example, food preparation and vacu-
uming, whereas women’s increase stemmed from their greater time spent in paid work.
Figure 10.1 also shows that although gender inequality appears to be slightly reduced in
terms of women’s and men’s time spent in housework, in both 1986 and 2006, women
spent more time providing care than men.
In another more recent study of paid and unpaid work, Marshall (2011) compared how
the differences in time spent among those ages 20 to 29 varied by those born between 1957
and 1966 (late baby boomers), those born from 1969 to 1978 (Generation X), and those
born between 1981 and 1990 (Generation Y). Among nuclear families, she found that
women’s time spent in housework decreased such that Generation Y women spent 2 hours
and 29 minutes on housework in 2010 compared to the 3 hours spent by late baby boomers
1986. Men’s time spent in housework has increased. Whereas late baby boomers spent

fIgure 10.1 Time Spent on Paid and Unpaid Work Among Men and
Women, 25–541
1
Source: Marshall (2006, p. 5), using data from the 1986 and 2005 General Social Surveys.
2
Numbers may not add up due to rounding.
1 hour a day doing housework in 1986, Generation Y men spent 1 hour and 30 minutes in
2010. What is interesting about this data is that the number of minutes spent in housework
differs by only about a half hour, whether an increase or decrease. Further, Marshall (2011)
observes that the presence of children had no significant effect on men’s time in paid work
whereas it significantly lowered the hours of paid work for women. In essence, while men
in nuclear families may have increased their time helping around the home, they have not
necessarily shifted their orientation to paid work as their primary responsibility.
Feminist scholars have devoted considerable energy to offering explanations for the
unequal amounts of paid and unpaid work performed in nuclear families, especially given
women’s increased labour force participation. For example, many scholars point to women’s
greater family responsibilities or gendered workplace structures (e.g., glass ceilings) as
contributing to their less than equal experiences compared to men (see, e.g., Cotter,
Hermsen, Ovadia, & Vanneman, 2001). Other scholars argue that the gendered division of
paid and unpaid work is linked to stereotypical distinctions between the types of work
women and men perform as well as women’s and men’s “doing” of gender in everyday

workplace and family activity (see, e.g., Gazso-Windle & McMullin, 2003; West &
Zimmerman, 1987). Many of these explanations coalesce into a useful distinction between
pragmatic strategies and patriarchal dynamics and their role in producing unequal divisions
of unpaid work. Pragmatic strategies refer to time availability and resources (financial and
social) and capture many of the time demands associated with managing market and family
care responsibilities. Patriarchal dynamics refer to gender and gender ideology and capture
how individuals’ behaviours are linked to their internalization and identification with
particular constructions of gender behaviour in egalitarian or non-egalitarian ways
(McFarlane, Beaujot, & Haddad, 2000). Together, pragmatic strategies and patriarchal
dynamics are intricately linked to the unequal amounts of time mothers and fathers spend in
paid work, housework, and child care. For example, in a study of the division of domestic
labour among married and common-law couples, Gazso-Windle and McMullin (2003) found
that men’s time spent in paid work decreased their time spent in child care, but the same was
not true for women. In addition, women who believed that they are primarily responsible for
domestic labour spent more time doing housework whereas women who considered paid
work to be important to their families’ lives spent less.
Examining the market and family care relations of lesbian couples reveals unique dif-
ferences in how responsibilities for market and family relations are divided. Indeed, the
experiences of lesbian couples clearly illustrate how assumptions and beliefs about gender-
appropriate behaviour have less power in families where partners share genders. Scholar-
ship on lesbian relationships suggests that a lesbian lifestyle facilitates employment
experiences of both women in interesting ways. Or as Dunne (2000) puts it, a lesbian
lifestyle “necessitates and facilitates lifelong financial self-reliance” (p. 138; italics in origi-
nal). Based on her interviews with women, Dunne concluded that although women’s
dependence on men over time (often linked to women’s exits and entrances into the
labour market associated with child-bearing and -rearing) can vary in heterosexual cou-
ples with children, lesbian relations are based on mutual dependence. And women’s rela-
tionships with women facilitate their engagement in the labour market because of the
more equitable division of domestic labour within their homes.
Although Arnup’s (1995) caution that not all lesbian mothers share the same view of
themselves and their children is important to note, several scholars agree that lesbian
couples share the quantity of tasks. The tasks are divided based on personal characteris-
tics, each partner’s capacity and availability to complete them, the material or subjective
value attached to them, and the individual’s satisfaction with or preference and
justification for engaging in them (see, e.g., Esmail, 2010; Nelson, 2001; Sullivan, 2004).
Esmail (2010), for example, interviewed 22 dual-earner lesbian couples and found that
even if labour was divided unfairly, justifications that centred on time availability or
higher standards of cleanliness were what enabled the couple to come to the agreement
that their division of housework was fair.
This review shows that the contemporary market and family care relations of women
and men are characterized by differences in occupation and income and by differences in
care responsibilities for children. Variations in how mothers participate in these processes

must also be understood as contextualized by broader structural forces such as the quality
of the labour market and the related availability of family-friendly workplace policies
(e.g., benefits). These variations are also linked to how mothers make choices and take
advantage of opportunities as they are informed by their gender, racial/ethnic, and sexual
identities. Given the layers of inequality that face mothers’ efforts to maintain their fami-
lies, it is no surprise that conflict and challenges can erupt.
motherS’ experIenceS of Work-famIly conflIct

For many mothers, the challenge is to meet family needs through market and family care
relations without their efforts suffering in either of these activities. When this challenge
cannot be met, conflict occurs. As a sociological concept, work-family conflict generally
characterizes parents’ experiences of being unable, or perceiving that they are unable, to
meet the challenge of juggling competing and incompatible time demands associated with
their market and family relations (Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994; Tuten & August, 2006).
For example, problems can arise in working mothers’ relationships with their male partners
and others as a result of their attempts to juggle their mothering with their roles as partners
and professionals (Guendozi, 2006; Nomaguchi, 2012). Mothers’ experience of work-
family conflict illustrates an important feminist assumption—that the spheres of family
and work life are not separate (Hammer, Neal, & Perrin, 2004; Krull & Sempruch, 2011).
Although scholars do define various forms of this conflict, many also tend to agree that
there are four major inter-related types: a time crunch, overload, interference, and stress.
Mothers experience a time crunch when the time demands associated with paid work
reduce their available time for housework and child care, or vice versa. When experienc-
ing a time crunch, mothers feel that they have insufficient time to complete any task well
enough and experience stress in undertaking tasks. Using time-use data from the 1998
General Social Survey, Beaujot and Anderson (2007) found that married Canadian
women ages 30 to 59 who were engaged in paid work experienced a greater time crunch if
their partners spent more time working for pay than the women did themselves and if they
had greater responsibilities for unpaid work within the home. Many women’s perceptions
of a time crunch are linked to their performance of a “double day” of work—both paid and
unpaid—or a “second shift” of unpaid work after the first shift of paid work is complete. In
Arlie Hochschild’s (1989) oft-cited study of couples where both mothers and fathers
worked for pay, she found that the performance of a second shift was distinctly gendered;
more mothers performed a second shift than fathers. Among working class families in her
study, tensions erupted that were related to the perceived contradiction between couples’
beliefs in stereotypical gender roles (e.g., men’s breadwinning, women’s caregiving) and
their family’s economic need for two earners. Among middle- or upper-class families, ten-
sions concerned beliefs in the importance of a family’s need for care, but differences
between partners in the valuation of the work that is needed to produce this care.
Sometimes the mental, physical, and emotional work involved in negotiating time
spent meeting market and family care demands is so great for mothers that they experience
overload—juggling too many demands at once (Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994). Mattingly

and Sayer (2006) find that the availability of free time affects women’s and men’s percep-
tions of feeling rushed in different and gendered ways. Because women feel more overloaded
and pressured in their attempts to combine a high level of paid work engagement with
unpaid work responsibilities, Mattingly and Sayer call that experience a “family penalty.”
Family care demands can hinder mothers’ participation in paid work. For example, when
a young child is ill and outside care is unavailable, a mother may have to take an unexpected
day of leave. For many mothers, meeting the care needs of their children when they are
engaged in paid work is a costly and precarious endeavour. High-quality child care spaces are
often limited and expensive and have hours of operation that must be negotiated alongside
paid work hours. In fact, since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada’s
recommendations for better child care resources in 1970, the lack of a universal, affordable
national system of child care has been cited as a major detriment to women’s balancing of
market and family care relations (Hamilton, 2005). In a reciprocal manner, mothers’ paid
work experiences can have a negative effect on their participation in family care activities.
Receiving an unexpected assignment at the end of a work day may interfere with a mother’s
ability to pick up her child from school on time. Not all workplaces pursue family-friendly
policies such as employer-provided child care or flex-time to manage child care needs.
Scholars refer to these particular time conflict dynamics as “spillover” or “interference”
(Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994; Skrypnek & Fast, 1996). Interference can be characterized
more specifically as work-to-family or family-to-work conflict (Hammer et al., 2004).
Whereas work-to-family conflict stems from characteristics of the workplace, such as a
parent’s work role or hours, family-to-work conflict is an outcome of characteristics of family
life, such as the family or gender role of a parent and having young children (Roehling,
Jarvis, & Swope, 2005). These dynamics of interference are intricately inter related: “if one’s
work-related problems begin to interfere with the completion of one’s family-related
obligations, these unfulfilled family obligations will begin to interfere with one’s day-to-day
functioning at work and vice versa” (Hammer, Neal, & Perrin, 2004, p. 98).
Another way to see work-family conflict is as work- or family-related stress or psycho-
logical distress (Rosenberg, 1995). Young and Wheaton (2013), for example, conceptual-
ize work-family conflict as a chronic stressor. Not surprisingly, mothers can experience
considerable stress when they cannot be in two places at once or negotiate competing
demands. In their own study of working mothers, Young and Wheaton (2013) find that
mothers’ work-family conflict and overall distress is linked to the perception that their
experiences are unusual relative to other residents in their communities.
In essence, all of these types of work-family conflict are distinctly related to a moth-
er’s overall experience of satisfaction with her paid work and family life, and can have a
significant impact on her own mental and physical well-being as well as her relationship
with her partner or children. However, as Guendozi (2006) observes, although stress is a
typical outcome of managing market and family care relations, it is also important to rec-
ognize that engagement in paid work often provides mothers with an outlet to express
their identity in a positive manner.
The majority of scholarship on work-family conflict has focused on white professional
women who are part of heterosexual, dual-earning unions (Ciabatteri, 2007; Gazso, 2007a;

Roehling, Jarvis, & Swope, 2005). Other scholars have responded by focusing on how
work-family conflict is linked to parenthood/marital status, class, race/ethnicity, and sexu-
ality. Nomaguchi’s (2012) research, for example, reveals that single mothers and fathers
perceive greater work-family conflict associated with job pressures than married mothers
and fathers. Nomaguchi (2012) attributes this to parents having fewer child care resources,
such as when asked to work overtime. Using data collected from a sample of working-class
couples transitioning into new parenthood, Goldberg, Pierce, and Sayer (2007) found
that mothers’ and fathers’ working evening or night shifts correlated with higher levels of
depressive symptoms but only mothers experienced a greater deal of conflict in their rela-
tionships as a result of working rotating shifts.
Low-income lone mothers who manage paid work and family demands, particularly
those who receive income support from the government, face even greater challenges.
They have few economic and social resources and more time constraints, experience more
barriers in the labour market, and face great pressure to exit assistance through paid
employment (Crouter & Booth, 2004; Gazso 2007a, 2007b; McMullin, Davies, & Cassidy,
2002; Roy, Tubbs, & Burton, 2004). In Canada, lone-mother families constitute the great-
est proportion of families on social assistance. Increasingly, social assistance policy and
programs (which are managed and administered by each province) require that mothers
demonstrate that they are seeking employment either by conducting job searches or par-
ticipating in welfare-to-work programs in order to maintain their receipt of monthly ben-
efits. Mothers must meet these employment expectations when their children are very
young (e.g., six months old in Alberta, three years old in British Columbia) and so require
greater amounts of caregiving support and in view of limited economic resources (their
total welfare benefits fall below low income cut offs).
In my own past research, I interviewed 28 white or Aboriginal/Métis lone mothers on
social assistance in three provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, to see
how they manage policy expectations and their caregiving responsibilities. I found that
lone mothers who were expected to conduct job searches or attend programs in order to
prepare for paid work experienced a time crunch and felt overloaded or overburdened try-
ing to meet the demands of paid work and care for young children, much like that experi-
enced by middle- or upper-class mothers who engage in paid work (see also Gazso, 2007a).
Lone mothers also experienced interference when family care responsibilities hindered
their employability efforts and vice versa. Indeed, mothers’ experiences of conflict are
linked to how they cannot afford good quality child care in order to participate in employ-
ment readiness programs. Not only do child-care subsidies provided by governments fail
to provide the full costs of day care, but there is also a shortage of licensed daycare spaces
(Breitkreuz, 2005). The main difference between the work-family conflict experiences of
low-income lone mothers and other working mothers is that lone mothers on social assis-
tance are under surveillance and have their efforts at managing work and family scruti-
nized by caseworkers in order to remain eligible for income support.
My research also revealed that compared to white mothers, Aboriginal and Métis
lone mothers understood their contemporary experiences of interference as linked to their

families’ historical experiences of colonization and assimilation, as well as to their family
composition. In particular, Aboriginal mothers from a major city in Saskatchewan
acknowledged that their opportunities for good jobs were limited due to racism. They also
indicated that many of their extended kin networks that could help with child care were
unavailable in their urban communities; mothers’ access to these networks would be
greater if they lived on reserves.
Other scholarly research shows that labour market participation can interfere with
racialized women’s satisfaction with their marital unions. In their survey of married Black
and white mothers in paid labour, Bridges and Orza (1996) found that Black women’s
employment in managerial or professional careers was more significantly related to marital
conflict with their partners than white women’s employment. Marital dissatisfaction
among Black married and cohabitating women and men has, in turn, been found to be
related to high levels of work-family conflict (St. Vil, 2014). However, in a study con-
ducted on work-family spillover among diverse families, Grzywacz, Almeida, and
McDonald (2002) found that Black families experienced lower forms of negative spillover
from work to family compared to white families. Grzywacz et al. state that this difference
is likely due to how employed Black family members can rely upon more instrumental
assistance, such as caregiving support from extended families, than white families. On the
basis of their study of Black, white, and Hispanic families, Roehling, Jarvis and Swope
(2005) found that work-to-family interference was experienced more by Hispanic women
than men, particularly when women perceived their paid work activity as inconsistent
with gender role expectations of them in the family home.
Like women in relationships with men, the spillover of work life into family life can
negatively affect lesbian mothers’ family care relations. In their survey of lesbian mothers
engaged in paid work (predominantly as managers or professionals) while in long-term
relationships, Tuten and August (2006) found that their experiences of work-family conflict
were linked to hours worked, job role autonomy, and elements of the workplace culture. In
particular, autonomy in a mother’s job did not reduce her experience of work-family conflict,
leading Tuten and August to argue that a more autonomous job might be accompanied by
greater responsibility and more obligations. What is significant about this study is that when
coupled with the above findings it can be understood that irrespective of a mother’s sexuality,
the particular dynamics of her workplace are linked to her perceptions of work-family conflict
and therefore her subsequent experiences of stress and overall life dissatisfaction.
To summarize, at some time or other most mothers feel that their family lives are
spilling over into their paid work lives and vice versa. Their experiences of work-family
conflict are contextualized by broader normative ideological assumptions about gender
and caregiving and cultural assumptions specific to their membership in particular racial/
ethnic groups. Whether they are lone parents or have male partners, mothers’ experiences
of work-family conflict are connected to their efforts to reconcile changing but often
contradictory gendered and cultural expectations in what are still ideologically separate
spheres of work and family. While the rigidity of gender stereotypes and ideologies appear
to disappear for lesbian couples with children, they too can experience conflict in trying

to manage labour market and family care relations. Mothers’ experiences of work-family
conflict are also linked to the structure and culture of their workplaces, their income, and
their relationships with income support and child care policies. In response to their
experiences of work-family conflict, many mothers rely upon one or more strategies to
juggle their competing demands.
StrategIeS for managIng and SuStaInIng

market and famIly care relatIonS
Existing scholarship shows that mothers adopt a variety of strategies for managing work-
family conflict. Although couple unions can dissolve when mothers and their partners
cannot reconcile competing paid work and family demands, this section focuses on some
of the strategies mothers use when parenting with a partner. I also show how low-income,
lone mothers, and mothers who are domestic workers and part of transnational families
use various strategies to manage their market and family care relations in light of their
relationships with state policies.
Some mothers respond to work-family conflict by simply engaging in an “overload” of
unpaid work, doing housework and child care on top of paid work hours to the point of expe-
riencing exhaustion or burnout (Luxton, 2001). Other mothers will manage the competing
demands of paid and unpaid work by engaging in what Hochschild (1997) identifies as a “third
shift”: many mothers understood the home as another workplace. On the basis of her research
Hochschild argues that a cult of efficiency associated with modern workplaces has materialized
in the home and creating parents’ perceptions of a time bind. Parents then become compelled
to schedule quality time with their children or their spouses just as they would schedule
meetings at work. The efforts that are required to perform this scheduling—to manage
children’s resistance and their own emotions in the process—constitute the third shift.
In nuclear families, mothers also have the option of convincing their partners to
share the unpaid labour. As we observed earlier, this is far more difficult than it might
seem because of pragmatic factors associated with partners’ workplace expectations, as
well as ideological assumptions surrounding income earning and caregiving. Moreover,
the fact that mothers still do more housework and child care than men, even when both
are engaged in paid labour, confirms the difficulty of adopting this strategy. However, as
Ranson (2010) found, there are a small number of families in which mothers and fathers
go against the grain of conventional divisions of domestic labour. Ranson’s study of
32 couples, including gay and lesbian couples, revealed three patterns: 1. “crossovers,”
where mothers work full-time, full-year and fathers take on greater homemaking responsi-
bilities; 2. “shift workers,” where mothers and fathers organized their paid work at differ-
ent times of day so that one parent could be with the child at all times; and 3. “dual
dividers,” where both parents worked full-time and shared housework and child care. And
as Doucet’s (2006) research additionally shows, some fathers in nuclear families actually
“mother” and it is their wives who are the primary earners.
As noted earlier, the sharing of unpaid work in an egalitarian manner does seem to be a
suitable option for lesbian mothers who co-parent. Because creativity, cooperation, and the

denial of gendered meanings can shape the lesbian parenting experience, couples with children
will often take turns in being the main care provider for children, or the birth mother and her
partner may each reduce their hours of work to part time (Dunne, 2000; Sullivan, 2004).
Lesbian mothers may also use another strategy to manage their perceptions of conflicting
time demands. Tuten and August (2006) found that some lesbian mothers could reduce
their work-family conflict, including perceptions of time-based and strain-based (e.g., strain
in one role affects performance of another role) work-family conflict, by being “out” in their
workplace. The act of making their sexual identity and family care responsibilities visible in
the workplace lessened some lesbian mothers’ experiences of work-family conflict.
Another way in which mothers cope with balancing market and family care relations
is to change occupations or time spent in paid work. Recent American research suggests
that this way of managing work-family conflict is connected to race/ethnicity. Scaling
back paid work hours, for example, is more common among white and Asian mothers
than Black mothers (Landivar, 2013). Mothers may also seek a workplace that is more
accommodating of work-family challenges. Some workplaces are indeed successful at this.
Kelly, Moen, and Tranby (2011), for example, demonstrate the positive effects of employ-
ees’ participation in ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment), which shifts the work-
place culture so that is normal for employees to decided when and how to work, providing
the work is completed. ROWE accommodates people who want to work traditional work
hours and those who would like the flexibility to work in different environments and at
different hours. In a survey of employees at a large corporation, Kelly et al. (2011) found
that ROWE can reduce work-family conflict and spillover and can increase mothers’ per-
ceptions of schedule control. Still other workplaces endorse “family-friendly” policies
(e.g., child care provisions or flex-time [shorter or condensed time]) that can reduce
mothers’ levels of stress (Glass, 2004). However, the risk of these policies is that they may
be used to justify mothers’ lower wages, job security, and opportunities for advancement
because working women with children are perceived to be on a “mommy track” (Konrad &
Cannings, 1994; Mandel, 2005; Weedon, 2005).
Many mothers rely upon networks of social support to manage their market and
family care relations, including formal and informal support (Connidis, 2001). “Formal
support” refers to financial or material assistance provided to families by agencies and
services on behalf of state programs or community organizations. The general trend toward
weakening the welfare state, discussed previously, has reduced the formal supports
available to families today. Mothers can turn to fewer social policies and programs to
support their own and their children’s material and emotional needs. Provincial
governments increasingly assume that mothers will turn to support provided by community
non-government and non-profit organizations, as well as relying on informal support from
others (Gazso & McDaniel, 2015). Indeed, in light of these circumstances, many mothers
turn to family, friends, and neighbours for “informal support” that can include expressive
or emotional support—affection or intimacy—and/or instrumental support in the form of
financial or physical aid (Langer, 1995).
Exchanges of informal support among family members often involve reciprocity or
exchange within and across generations (Offer, 2012). As well, the amount, type, and source

of informal supports exchanged within mothers’ families are linked to their composition.
Census data suggests that Canadian families are increasingly characterized by “cluttered
nests” (Mitchell, Wister, & Gee, 2004), where more children are living at home with a parent
or parents and grandparents (Milan, Vézina, & Wells, 2006). In extended and multi-
generational families, mothers draw upon several family members for support in order to meet
their labour market and family care relations (Gee & Mitchell, 2003). In my own research, I
have found that, in addition to income support from the government in the form of social
assistance, lone mothers rely on other supports. These included formal support from
community organizations (e.g., food banks) and exchanges of instrumental and expressive
support (e.g., child care, transportation) with parents, siblings, friends, peers, or neighbours in
order to meet employment and caregiving needs (Gazso, 2007b; Gazso & McDaniel, 2013).
Racially/ethnically diverse families in Canada also involve other family members and
friends in social support networks to manage paid work and family demands. Among
Black families, extended family ties, involving multiple generations in care relations, play
an important role in their lives (Calliste, 2003; Mays, Mays, Chatters, Cochran, &
Mackness, 1998; Stack, 1974). Fiske and Johnny (2003) illustrate the importance of
Aboriginal families’ reliance on extended family networks for expressive and instrumental
support. These families’ use of support networks today are linked to history, specifically
past family members’ need to rely on each other in response to their experience of social
and economic oppression, racism, and colonization. Penha-Lopes (2006) further argues
that the historical and cultural conditions requiring Black mothers to engage in paid work
demanded that they socialize their children in ways that impacted their own and their
children’s future market and care relations. In her study of Black men, she found that as
boys they were especially socialized to be competent at housework, and this domestic
independence has continued into later life.
Kobayashi’s (2000) study of the support relations between generations of Japanese
families shows that third-generation adult children conform to oya koh koh, or filial obliga-
tion, to their second-generation parents; they are more likely to provide expressive sup-
port to aging parents and more so to mothers than fathers. If adults do provide their
parents with financial support, this is related to their parents’ actual need for assistance
rather than the children’s endorsement of oya koh koh. Kobayashi maintains that, when
contextualized by the support relations among generations in Japan, support relations and
the traditional cultural ideas that have informed them among Japanese-Canadian families
have been transformed with each successive generation.
Paying someone else to perform housework, child care, and other family care
responsibilities in the home is another strategy that some mothers may use to manage
competing work and family demands. In some cases, mothers hire outside domestic services
to visit their home on a weekly or biweekly basis. In other cases, mothers hire live-in
domestic service workers or nannies, many of whom are immigrant women. This strategy
particularly highlights how the dynamics of gender, race/ethnicity, and class intersect with
state policy. More than one family is affected by a Canadian mother’s purchase of another
mother’s services to manage her market and family care relations, as we will see.

transnational management of paid Work
c
Many domestic workers migrate to Canada from countries such as the Philippines to take
on mothering and domestic roles—or women’s work—for other Canadian mothers’
families. The work of domestic workers permits some Canadian mothers to engage in paid
work with less tension and fewer time constraints associated with also meeting family care
responsibilities. Arat-Koc (2006) argues that the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP), the
federal social policy that shapes domestic workers’ lives in Canada, is based on an implicit
assumption that domestic workers are single woman. The majority of migrant
domestic workers who enter Canada, however, are mothers with children. They perform
domestic labour for pay in order to provide for their families in their countries of
origin; domestic workers usually send at least half of their earnings home. The money that
domestic workers earn not only helps meet their families’ social and material needs, but also
contributes to the economic development of their countries of origin (Arat-Koc, 2006).
Mothers who are domestic workers are thus part of “transnational families” and so
engage in trans-border management of paid work and family relations. One way that
these mothers manage their paid work and their own family care demands from afar is to
leave children behind in the care of another female family member. This can create ten-
sions for mothers in their new country surrounding the affordability of family life in two
places and their need to blend cultural traditions with adaptation if not full assimilation
(Cohen, 2000; Gazso & McDaniel, 2015; Salazar Parrenas, 2000). Moreover, transna-
tional mothering invokes mothers’ feelings of responsibility and guilt over family sepa-
ration and deprives mothers of meeting their own needs for intimacy (Arat-Koc, 2006;
Cohen, 2000). Women who engage in domestic work must care for someone else’s chil-
dren while being unable to care for their own, as they had before they accepted overseas
employment (Brigham, 2015; Salazar Parrenas, 2000). Brigham’s (2015) study of undoc-
umented Jamaican mothers who perform domestic work for others illustrates how they
manage family income needs and caring from afar and find it to be an anxiety-inducing
process. Often, mothers feel that their provisioning for the economic security and well-
being of their children back home conflicts with the gender normative prescription that
mothers best provide for their children immediately and in their presence, not from afar.
In many ways, the guilt that Canadian mothers can experience when juggling market and
family care relations can be decreased by hiring another woman. Domestic workers who are
mothers, however, bear a similar guilt, compounded by their desire to meet their children’s
needs. Moreover, other contradictions emerge along gender, race/ethnicity, and class lines
when we consider this coping strategy critically. Reproductive labour is a commodity
traditionally bought by class-privileged women (Salazar Parrenas, 2000), as it is predominantly
middle- to upper-class white mothers who employ domestic workers (most often racialized
women) to perform caregiving services (Cohen, 2000; Hodge, 2006). Although mothers in
Canada might be seen as liberated because of their ability to engage in paid work and hire
others to facilitate this engagement, their purchase of other women’s labour power demonstrates

that gendered assumptions about caregiving as a women’s domain are still strong (Arat-Koc,
2006; Pratt, 2003; Salazar Parrenas, 2000) and are supported by social policy. At the same time
that domestic workers benefit their families through their paid work and Canadian mothers
benefit from receiving assistance with juggling multiple demands, the practice of employing
domestic workers continues to effectively devalue and feminize domestic work.
Despite these contradictions, Arat-Koc (2006, p. 87) makes the significant observa-
tion that domestic workers and their female employers share a common condition.
Although they may be different in race/ethnicity and class, “they both experience paid
work as incompatible with their reproduction roles and responsibilities.” For Arat-Koc
(2006), this common condition is even more strikingly visible when we see that domestic
workers are needed precisely because the Canadian state does not provide enough sup-
port, such as accessible and affordable high-quality child care, for mothers to manage their
paid work and caregiving needs.
The varieties of strategies mothers use to manage their competing demands reflect
the particular market and family care relations of families, total household income, family
members’ values and beliefs, state policies that facilitate the hiring of domestic workers,
and structural and economic forces beyond families’ control. While space does not permit
a comprehensive analysis of how neo-liberal restructuring has affected all programs and
policies that support families, the next section does specifically consider whether and fed-
eral parental leave policy alleviates the conflict associated with mothers’ and fathers’
management of their labour market and family care relations.
the role of the State: parental leave polIcy

The list that follows outlines some federal and provincial policies and programs that support
provisions of care and children’s social and economic well-being. Parental leave falls under
the federal government’s jurisdiction, specifically Employment Insurance. The Canada Child
Tax Benefit is a federal program aimed to help families with the costs of raising children
under the age of 18 years; it is targeted at working families with incomes below a particular
threshold. As discussed earlier, social assistance programs and some specific health benefits
targeted at low-income families also fall under provincial jurisdiction.
1
s P c
Federal
Medicare
Employment Insurance
Maternity and Parental Leave
Compassionate Care Benefit
Canada Child Tax Benefit
National Child Benefit Supplement
Child Disability Benefit

Universal Child Care Benefit
Old Age Security
Provincial/Territorial2
Adult/child health benefit plans (for low-income families)
Child benefit and credit programs
Child care subsidy programs
Social assistance programs
Workers compensation boards
Structural/compositional and heteronormative assumptions about families and the

way they are maintained have always been deeply embedded in Canadian federal and
provincial policies and programs for families. In many ways, current family policies tend to
prioritize nuclear family relations, assuming that a “family” consists of two cohabitating
heterosexual partners and one or more children. In effect, policies for families can obscure
and deny the diversity of families as well as the multitude of ways market and family care
relations are organized.
In the final section of this chapter, my intent is to show the problematic assumptions
that are embedded within parental leave policy. In doing so, I also illustrate how mothers’
access to parental leave may not necessarily facilitate more equitable divisions of paid and
unpaid work in Canadian families.
Some employed mothers in Canada have had access to cash benefits for maternity
leave from employment since 1971. Under what was then called the Unemployment
Insurance (UI) Act, mothers’ eligibility for leave was based on the number of weeks
worked for pay (Pulkingham, 1998). Mothers were entitled to 15 weeks of leave, whereas
both parents were entitled to 10 weeks of unemployment insurance compensation (Baker,
1997). Pregnant women who decided to use both maternity and parental leave benefits
could receive a total of 25 weeks of compensation, originally 60% of their previous earn-
ings. Provisions of maternity leave (leave for childbirth) were based upon the assumption
that it was necessary to compensate for the employment-related hazards, preparation, and
recuperation of pregnant mothers. It was not until 1990 that adoptive parents and bio-
logical fathers were also entitled to these benefits. The availability of parental leave dem-
onstrated the state’s acknowledgement of the participation of both adoptive parents and
biological fathers in childbirth and child-care responsibilities.
As part of the general trend of welfare state restructuring, Unemployment Insurance
(UI) was replaced with the stricter Employment Insurance (EI) Act in 1996. With fewer
funds for this program, changes were made to mothers’ and fathers’ eligibility. When EI
was introduced, parents’ eligibility for either maternity or parental leave became deter-
mined on the basis of their hours of work (as opposed to weeks of work under UI). To be
eligible, parents had to work a minimum of 700 hours or 20 weeks of work at 35 hours per
week in the past 52 weeks (Benoit, 2000); this change also involved an extension of the
work time—35 hours per week (instead of 15) over 20 weeks. Under EI, mothers were

entitled to 55% of their previous earnings for up to 25 weeks if they took both maternity
and parental leave.
More recent changes to EI have extended the time parents can access benefits. As of
2001, providing mothers meet 600 hours of insured work, they can access 15 weeks of mater-
nity leave and 35 weeks of parental leave at 55% of their earning, for a total of 50 weeks of
paid leave. In addition, new opportunities exist for women to engage in some paid work while
on maternity leave. According to then Human Resources Development Canada (2001)
(now Human Resources and Social Development Canada, or HRSD) the changes made in
2001 ensured that maternity and parental leave benefits were more accessible, more flexible,
and better adapted to families’ lives. However, a more critical analysis reveals otherwise.
Expectant mothers who participate in non-standard jobs can be excluded from receiv-
ing maternity benefits simply because they may not work the 30 hours of work per week over
20 weeks that makes them eligible (Benoit, 2000). Even if mothers are able to access bene-
fits, a drop in their monthly income may drive some mothers into poverty. As Ruhm (2012)
observes, Canada provides lower wage replacement rates for maternity leave than many
European countries. Moreover, race/ethnicity and class intersect and shape women’s ability
to access parental leave. As observed, recent immigrant women are less likely to be employed
and, if they are, they are likely to work in non-standard and insecure occupations.
Upon introduction of the new policy, HRSD claimed that the new leave duration is
more flexible: there is no waiting period for the second claim if parents in a two-parent family
decide to share the benefits. And yet, this claim is also misleading. Leave benefits policy did
and still does assume nuclear families. Flexibility may exist in terms of access, but not in terms
of how leave time is divided among parents. The 55% benefit rate tends to assume that preg-
nant women who qualify for maternity benefits have partners who are primary income earn-
ers. If the lower income earner, usually the mother, applies for leave benefits, this thereby
ensures that the family income is maintained at a higher level. This also ensures that the
mother is primarily responsible for caring for children and is economically dependent on her
partner for her own and her children’s economic security. If we acknowledge how cultural and
ideological beliefs shape mothers’ and fathers’ gendered identities across race/ethnicity and
class, we can see how leave policy can perpetuate inequality in paid and unpaid labour.
Finally, we must question whether the new leave is better adapted to all Canadian
families. Parents can now engage in paid work when they take parental leave. Although
parents may benefit from the ability to earn a small income while accessing benefits, it is
possible that this capability is limited. For example, it is not clear what type of employment
is amenable to this provision, and not all employers would agree to a limited employment
situation. Moreover, the claim that parental leave is more adaptable is questionable when
we consider that the present policy assumes the availability of affordable, accessible, and
high-quality child care that will enable parents eventually to return to their paid employ-
ment. Some women in two-parent families will choose to stay at home for their children’s
first few years because it would cost more to put children in day care than the wage they
are earning. As to whether this is an actual “choice” of mothers is a matter of debate—the
parameters of leave policy and the inadequate day care provisions suggest that many

women’s choices are actually structured and shaped in varying degrees. And yet, it may
also be impossible to afford to stay at home.
To summarize, the state, via parental leave policy, supports the management of work and
family demands for some but not all working mothers. Parental leave policy therefore does
not universally alleviate mothers’ experiences of conflicting demands associated with earn-
ing a living and providing care. This is not to discount the important role that leave policy
plays for eligible mothers; it allows them temporarily to negotiate paid work and family care
demands associated with having and rearing children. However, considering mothers who
parent with male partners, the way leave is divided can predict mothers’ future experiences
of work-family conflict. If mothers in two-parent families access all available leave, their
partners may expect them to continue their primary caregiving, and thus, they will be more
likely to experience work-family tensions when they re-enter the labour market.
concluSIon
This chapter began with a brief overview of how feminist scholars have devoted
considerable attention to how mothers manage their family’s economic and social well-
being through an intricate juggling of labour market participation and provisions of
care to all members. The contemporary labour market experiences of mothers were
shown to not equal those of men, reflecting structural and discriminatory barriers in
workplaces and policies that inhibit their labour market participation, as well as
mothers’ choices about meeting their families’ care needs. Mothers’ experiences of a
time crunch, overload, interference, and stress were strongly linked to their unequal
responsibilities for meeting market and family care demands. The challenges mothers
face vary with their race/ethnicity or sexuality and can be further exacerbated by low-
income and ideological expectations of nurturing and caregiving, in addition to
available employment, weak state support, and their own choices. Furthermore, some
of the coping strategies mothers use to juggle demands and alleviate conflict may have
the desired impact of relieving time pressure, while other strategies may have
problematic implications, such as perpetuating gender roles in two-parent families or
denying mothering to domestic workers who are part of transnational families. Still
other policy-endorsed strategies, such as mothers’ entitlement to parental leave, reveal
how state support is not adequately available to all.
To conclude, I have used a feminist political economy lens in this chapter to high-
light how mothers’ maintenance of families through their market and family care relations
is related to the unequal structural conditions that characterize workplaces in the capital-
ist labour market and the constraints imposed by social policy subject to a neo-liberal
agenda. I also showed how mothers’ maintenance of families is linked to their own choices
and opportunities in light of these social, political, and economic forces that affect their
everyday material realities. Clearly, a state-family-market nexus informs and shapes labour
market and family care relations—relations that are predominantly maintained and man-
aged by mothers and thus continue to be of feminist concern.

endnotes
1. This list of examples is not exhaustive but includes the most common policies that families
with children can access.
2. Provincial and territorial offerings of these programs vary in availability, accessibility,
structure, benefit amounts, etc.
d
1. What is one way in which each feminist perspective reviewed in this chapter has been
concerned with women’s experiences of inequality in their market and family care rela-
tions, compared to men’s (and other women’s)? Which perspective do you think best
explains this inequality?
2. How do gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and class intersect to influence women’s and
men’s experiences within the Canadian labour market and of work-family conflict?
3. How are the strategies used to balance work and family demands by lesbian mothers dif-
ferent than those adopted by mothers in heterosexual unions? Could the strategies used
by lesbian mothers be the basis for a more equitable work-family balance model adopted
by mothers in heterosexual unions?
4. In what ways has the Canadian state worsened or facilitated mothers’ and fathers’
negotiation of their market and family care relations?
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Chapter 11
Women and Education
Michelle Webber
IntroductIon
In this chapter I challenge the prevailing discourse of education as the great equalizer. Despite
our best attempts to ensure equity, schooling continues to display gendered, raced, and classed
practices that have both material and social effects. Schools, through their organization,
interactions, and curricular materials, are engaged in the work of re/producing and regulating
particular normative constructions of masculinity and femininity that are associated with
middle-class, heterosexual, white bodies. Both the organization of schooling and people’s
experiences of schooling demonstrate that the privileging of masculinity, which is generally
afforded an advantaged social position over femininity, continues to afford men and boys with
social capital, earnings, and so forth. Through a hidden curriculum, girls still learn that they are
not as important as boys, which can affect girls’ self-esteem and occupational aspirations. Further,
women are graduating in increasing numbers with university degrees, yet this does not seem
to translate into wide occupational rewards as women still earn less than their male counterparts
(with comparable levels of education) and are not well represented in the top positions of
power hierarchies. Gender inequality, as it intersects with race, class, and sexuality, persists.
This chapter explores gender, race, and class in relation to both lower and higher
education, predominantly focusing on Canada. First, I trace the history of the gender debate in
education, beginning with a brief overview of feminist perspectives on education. I show how
gender is a persistent concern for educators. Then I turn to the contemporary situation and
examine what happens in schools today at both lower and higher education levels. I explore
the differential treatment and experiences of girls/women and boys/men as students, teachers,
and faculty at the elementary, secondary, and university level. Also examined are contemporary
preoccupations and emerging areas in gender education research: the so-called crisis for boys,
intersections of race and gender in schools, sexuality and schooling, and the corporatization of
higher education. The development of women’s studies and feminism in the academy is also
considered alongside a brief discussion of feminist pedagogies.
HIstorIcal Background
The preoccupations of researchers in the field of gender research in education have
shifted. Early work in the 1970s focused on sex roles. Social relationships were seen as tied
to biological differences between men/boys and women/girls. Feminist work critiqued the
284
socializing role of schools as promoting behaviour that conformed to essentialist notions
of gender distinctions (Dillabough, 2006). Critiques were launched against patriarchal
language used in textbooks and calls for the equal representation of girls and women in
both curriculum and the education profession itself arose (Dillabough, 2006). This early
work relied on a liberal feminist framework that assumed cognizance of injustices in the
educational system was sufficient motivation to engender change (Reynolds, 2001).
Wanting to expand the liberal feminist framework, British feminist scholars of sociol-
ogy and education sought to highlight “larger, macro-questions of structure and their role
in shaping gender relations as a historically grounded set of gender relations and codes”
(Dillabough, 2006, p. 49). In this approach, which came to be known as feminist repro-
duction theory, schools were understood as sites for both possibilities and limits for the
“democratization of gender relations” (Dillabough, 2006, p. 49). In other words, schools
are sites where changes can be enacted and realized.
A more culturally oriented concern emerged in the 1990s when gender education
research began to explore how culture, discourse, and identity intersect with macro con-
cerns about men’s and women’s positions in education (Dillabough, 2006). In addition to
critiques about the sex/gender distinction, researchers are critical of “singular or binary
notions of gender identity as they have been expressed through schooling” (Dillabough,
2006, p. 53). One strand of this critique aims to disrupt the notion that there are singular
categories of “girl” or “boy” (Arnot & Dillabough, 1999); multiple femininities and mas-
culinities exist in our classrooms at any given time. Another critical strand aims to under-
stand how colonialism, culture, race, and gender intersect for youth identity formation
(Dillabough, 2006). Someone working in this area might, for example, be concerned with
how colonialist and racialized discourses shape students’ subjectivities.
Contemporary feminist approaches to theorizing gender and education remain diverse.
We continue to see the enduring relevance of feminist reproduction theory as well as the
significant increase of studies influenced by poststructuralist and culturalist approaches to
the field of gender and education (Dillabough, 2006). This chapter uses a poststructuralist
approach in that it deconstructs the prevailing discourse of education as the great equalizer.
lower educatIon
In this section, I explore the ways in which lower education is gendered, racialized, and classed.
By examining schooling practices—including teachers’ behaviour and expectations, parental
behaviour and expectations, and curricular materials—I show how students remain schooled
in gendered practices despite widespread acceptance of the importance of gender equality.
teachers and Principals

Teaching at the elementary and secondary levels in Canada remains a gendered profession.
Women have been overrepresented, when compared with the general population, as
teachers in Canadian elementary and secondary schools since the late 1880s (Wotherspoon,

2004). More than 90% of Canadian kindergarten teachers are women (Wotherspoon,
2009). In Ontario, women represented 71% of all elementary and secondary school
teachers, administrators, and early childhood educators in 2011–2012 (Ontario Ministry
of Education, 2012). In Canada, the proportion of women who are both elementary and
secondary school teachers has fluctuated between their lowest representation of 55.6% in
1980 to their highest proportion of teachers in 1915 (83.4%) (Wotherspoon, 2004).
Women as teachers are congregated at the elementary level compared with the secondary
level, a pattern also found in the United States and Western European countries (Abbott,
Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; Nelson, 2006; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2012).
Women accounted for 47% of principals in Canada in 2004–2005 (Statistics
Canada, 2006). However, the proportional share of women principals differs between the
elementary and secondary levels. At the elementary level, women now account for 53%
of principals (Statistics Canada, 2006). This is a strong improvement from the 1980s
when women made up just under 20% of elementary school principals (Cusson, 1990)
and the early 1990s when women accounted for only 22% of elementary school principals
and only 8% of secondary school principals (Wotherspoon, 2004). We still see room for
progress at the secondary level, as women only represent 42% of principals (Statistics
Canada, 2006). Overall, though, these statistics represent great improvement for women’s
representation in the administrative ranks of Canada’s elementary and secondary schools.
Women’s and men’s unequal distribution in the educational power hierarchy remains
“one of the most salient features of the profession, one that undermines its status” (deMarrais &
LeCompte, 1999, p. 191). Tyack’s (1974) classification of schools as “educational harems”
remains today where women predominantly teach and men predominantly supervise and
administer. Such feminine teaching and masculine administrative patterns communicate to
students “that men hold positions of authority and power in society while women play
subordinate roles, having control only over the children in their classrooms” (deMarrais &
LeCompte, 1999, p. 313).
students
differential treatment Historically, Canadian educational institutions were
organized to prepare boys and girls for particular societal roles (Davies & Guppy, 2006). In
the mid-1800s, citizens were encouraged to commit new tax monies for compulsory
schooling for girls and boys. Education leaders lobbied the public on a platform of needing
a common moral education. This “common” education was not, however, to be understood
as the “same” education (Davies & Guppy, 2006). Even though schooling for students in
the early years was similar, by age 10 boys were directed to vocational training and higher
education in preparation for the labour market and girls were streamed into domestic
science courses (Davies & Guppy, 2006).
Even though boys and girls attended the same schools, they were often segregated
within those schools. There were separate entrances and separate playgrounds (often with a
286 Chapter 11 Women and Education

wall between the two areas). Girls were seated separately from boys and were even required
to perform different recitations (Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky, 1989; Prentice, 1977).
Gendered expectations reinforced teachers’, and presumably parents’, notions that girls and
boys were to be prepared for different occupational and social roles: girls were to be prepared
to be housewives or for a limited set of nurturing occupations (nurse, elementary school
teacher) while boys were prepared for vocational trades or advanced studies (Davies &
Guppy, 2006). Overt gender streaming remained firmly in place until at least the 1950s
(Davies & Guppy, 2006).
Contemporary studies continue to document the often unintentional differential
treatment afforded to girls and boys by their classroom teachers. The difference now,
though, rests in the formal assumption that schools are to educate girls and boys in the
same manner. Do boys and girls receive equal classroom treatment? Regardless of whether
their teachers are women or men, boys have more interaction with their teachers than do
girls (Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; deMarrais & LeCompte, 1999; Renzetti & Curran,
1999; Skelton, 1997). Boys are more likely to call out answers in class without raising
their hands, and teachers typically accept their answers; however, when girls engage in
the same calling out without hand-raising, teachers tend to “correct” the girls and tell
them their behaviour is inappropriate (Renzetti & Curran, 1999).
Research on teacher/student classroom interactions in Canada, the United States,
and the United Kingdom shows how this gendered treatment of students is also racialized
(Brown, 2011; Codjoe, 2001; Dei, 2008; Sadker & Sadker, 2009; Skelton, 1997). White
boys are the most likely recipients of teacher attention, followed by boys of colour, white
girls, and girls of colour (Hood, 2005; Sadker & Sadker, 2009). Morris’s (2007) research
on working-class Black girls and their middle school classroom experiences demonstrates
how teachers encourage the girls to conform to a normative model of a docile femininity.
Morris argues that the predominantly white teachers hold racialized perceptions about the
undesirability of the Black girls’ femininity, seeing the girls as “coarse and overly assertive”
(p. 91). Teachers focused on the girls’ social etiquette more than their academic develop-
ment (Morris, 2007). The girls drew the teachers’ attention because their actions were
seen as “challenging to authority, loud and not ladylike” (Morris, 2007, p. 501). Black
students often report being ignored in their classes, and treated as unimportant by teach-
ers, administrators, and fellow students (Codjoe, 2001).
Teachers’ gendered, classed, and racialized notions about appropriate practices and
behaviours for girls and boys affect their interactions with students. Boys are often praised
by their teachers when they complete a task successfully, while girls may be applauded for
their attractive appearance or quiet behaviour (Giraldo & Colyar, 2012; Nelson, 2006).
Girls and boys may be afforded support for different kinds of activities—boys may receive
more support for succeeding in science and math while girls may receive more support for
succeeding in literacy and the arts (Eccles, 2011; Gherasim, Burnaru, & Mairean, 2013).
These kinds of gendered interactions can contribute to the promotion of girls’ dependence
and boys’ independence. Girls are praised for being “congenial” and “neat” while boys’ work
is praised for its intellectual quality (Giraldo & Colyar, 2012; Renzetti & Curran, 1999).

A chart of kindergarten awards that was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal demonstrates
how gender infiltrated a kindergarten classroom: Girls were awarded with “all-around
sweetheart,” “cutest personality,” and “best manners,” whereas the boys received awards for
“very best thinker,” “most eager learner,” and “most scientific” (Renzetti & Curran, 1999).
Teachers’ differential practices have material effects. Girls learn that boys are more
important than themselves, that boys are superior to girls (Bourne, McCoy, & Smith, 1998;
Thompson & Armato, 2012). Teacher attention is an important contributing factor both
for students’ academic achievements and their sense of selves (Sadker & Sadker, 2009).
Further, schools (and teachers) reinforce, and thus reproduce, narrow, restrictive normative
constructions of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy—what Bob
Connell refers to as emphasized femininity and hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2002).
curriculum As early as 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women took
up the issue of gendered practices within schools. By examining the curricular materials
used in Canadian schools to teach reading, mathematics, and social studies, the
Commission argued:
a woman’s creative and intellectual potential is either underplayed or ignored in the

education of children from their earliest years. The sex roles described in these text-
books provide few challenging models for young girls, and they fail to create a sense of
community between men and women as fellow human beings. (Quoted in Gaskell,
McLaren, & Novogrodsky, 1989, p. 36)
The commission offered a liberal feminist critique of gendered schooling—boys and girls
are being treated differently—and a liberal feminist solution—treat them the same. Following
the commission’s report, numerous studies examined curricular materials and noted the
virtual absence of women and girls (Gaskell, 1977; Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky,
1989). When present, women and girls were constructed traditionally as mothers who baked
cookies or girls who played with dolls. Boys were subject to equally sexist treatment as active
and powerful people, playing sports while their fathers worked outside of the home, preferably
as educated professionals (Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky, 1989). Clearly, liberal
feminists argued, sexist images prevailed.
As a result of feminist agitation around sexist curricular materials, guidelines were
developed to create non-sexist materials. Has this intervention been successful? More
diverse gender images are present in contemporary materials; however, a study 20 years
ago by the Ontario federation of women teachers argued that many problematic images
remain (Federation of Women Teachers Associations of Ontario, 1988). The authors of the
study argued that school materials need to portray an idealistic world, free from gender
segregation, such that children are able to imagine a future for themselves full of possibility
(Federation of Women Teachers Associations of Ontario, 1988; Gaskell, McLaren, &
Novogrodsky, 1989). Gaskell, McLaren, and Novogrodsky (1989, p. 38) argue that
textbooks should not go to an extreme where children are only exposed to “androgynous
superpeople” but rather there should be a balance of images. An inclusive approach should

show women “as secretaries as well as carpenters and girls playing with dolls as well as
playing baseball” (Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky, 1989, p. 38).
Although curricular materials are no longer blatantly sexist, they nevertheless continue
subtly to communicate the authority of the status quo—that of white middle-class masculinity
(Arnot, 2002). For example, Bourne, McCoy, and Smith’s interviews with schoolgirls in
Ontario (grades 6 to 12) reveal accounts of history courses that trivialize, marginalize, or
exclude women (Bourne, McCoy, & Smith, 1998). Studies also reveal how Indigenous
cultures are problematically constructed in curricular materials (Archibald, 1995). Indigenous
people are frequently represented as living in the distant past, before pre-European contact,
which stereotypes and homogenizes Indigenous peoples (Dion, 2009). Such depictions allow
teachers to skip over discussions of the impact of colonialism and Indigenous peoples’
resistance to institutions such as the residential school system (Dion, 2009). Both George
Dei’s (1997, 2008) and Henry Codjoe’s (2001) work on race, schooling, and Black Canadian
students also finds evidence of racial stereotyping; the students cite a desire for courses that
are more inclusive of who is in their classrooms, rather than always being exposed to a white
Eurocentric curriculum that is dominated by white men with an occasional nod to a white
woman or Black man, but never to a Black woman (Codjoe, 2001; Dei, 1997, 2008).
Further, lesbian students speak of an absence of any discussion in their class materials
of sexualities other than heterosexuality (Bourne, McCoy, & Smith, 1998). Research on
high school textbooks across a range of subject areas reveals that there is virtually no
reference made to same-sex sexuality (Macgillivray & Jennings, 2008; Temple, 2005). In
these texts, same-sex sexuality, when it appears, is constructed in negative contexts—in
discussions of “sexually transmitted diseases, sexual abuse, and prostitution” (Macgillivray &
Jennings, 2008, p. 173). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons are portrayed as
“hapless victims” (Macgillivray & Jennings, 2008, p. 179). Heterosexuality is a pervasive
assumption running through school materials and practices (Bazzul & Sykes, 2011;
deMarrais & LeCompte, 1999; Wilmot & Naidoo, 2014).
The forms of masculinity and femininity portrayed in curricular materials are
ideologically driven. Many forms of masculinity and femininity exist, yet these materials
generally show two dominant constructions: hegemonic masculinity and an emphasized
femininity (Connell, 2002). These gendered constructions intersect with race (they are
white), class (they are middle class), and sexuality (they are heterosexual); thus alternative
masculinities and femininities are rendered inferior and invisible.
contemporary research
crisis for Boys? Are girls outperforming boys? Some critics argue that there is
widespread male underachievement in schooling. What do the Canadian statistics tell us?
Every three years, Canadian students take part in the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) (run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
OECD). “PISA is designed to provide policy-oriented international indicators of the skills
and knowledge of 15-year-old students” (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007, p. 9).

Students are tested on their mathematical literacy, reading literacy, and scientific literacy.
Whether girls “outperform” boys depends on which levels of data are examined. For example,
when looking at the overall science scale for the 2012 assessment, Canadian students showed
no statistically significant gender difference (OECD, 2014). However, when examining the
sub-scales within the science category, noticeable gendered differences are apparent.
Canadian boys (and those in most other countries) scored higher than girls in “explaining
phenomena scientifically,” while Canadian girls (and those in most other countries) scored
higher than boys in “identifying scientific issues” (OECD, 2014). These results are consistent
with earlier test results (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007; OECD, 2014).
The 2012 test scores are consistent with past scores for both mathematics and reading.
Canadian boys score higher than girls in mathematics while girls score higher than boys in
reading (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007; OECD, 2014). There is a greater differ-
ence between boys’ and girls’ scores in reading than there is in mathematics. The Cana-
dian data are consistent with the performance average of OECD countries (OECD, 2014).
The Canadian data released from the 2006 PISA tests do not analyze performance by
race but do provide data based on immigrant status (second-generation immigrants and first-
generation immigrants). Non-immigrant Canadian students outperformed both groups of
immigrant students in the science category (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007). The
data also tell us that parental levels of education correspond with student achievement.
“Youth with at least one parent who had post-secondary education outperformed their peers
whose parents had high school education or less” (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007,
p. 40). Further, one’s social class influences one’s test scores—those students in the top quar-
ter of socio-economic status have higher scores (equal to one proficiency level) than those
whose socio-economic status is in the lowest quarter (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007).
So what can we make of what appears to be almost a moral panic about the state of
boys in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom? In their analysis of literature
that takes up the general claim that boys are experiencing a crisis in schooling, Bouchard,
Boily, and Proulx (2003) point to three arguments used in masculinist education discourses.
The first argument is one of victimization or the “poor boys discourse” (Bouchard, Boily, &
Proulx, 2003). To achieve equality in schools, attention must be turned toward boys as
they are “in distress, losing their identity, in crisis, disoriented, guilty, lost . . . at the mercy
of feminist teachers” and so forth (Bouchard, Boily, & Proulx, 2003, pp. 54–55). Michael
Kimmel (2000) argues that these concerns for boys’ struggles are really veiled critiques of
feminism (Bouchard, Boily, & Proulx, 2003). Women are understood as the source of the
boys’ problems as schools are feminized spaces that promote feminine practices (Bouchard,
Boily, & Proulx, 2003; Hodgetts, 2010; Lucey, 2001).
The second argument focuses on the school system itself—that schools themselves are
failing boys (Bouchard, Boily, & Proulx, 2003). The logic of this line of work asserts that
schools have not adapted to boys and accordingly boys develop both learning and behav-
ioural problems that lead to poor scholastic attainment (Bouchard, Boily, & Proulx, 2003).
The third argument uses the essentialist trope of “boys will be boys” (Bouchard,
Boily, & Proulx, 2003). In this discourse, boys’ troubles in education are reflective of their

innate characteristics. Boys are assumed to be “violent, predatory beasts; uncaged, uncivi-
lized animals” (Kimmel, 2000, p. 8).
All of these anti-feminist arguments used in masculinist discourses about the gen-
dered performance gap generalize an occurrence that affects boys and girls on an entire
group (boys) (Bouchard, Boily, & Proulx, 2003). Further, the rhetoric that circulates
about the crisis among boys fails to take an intersectional look at the data. Underachieve-
ment in schools is both classed and racialized (Hood, 2005; Skelton, 2001; Thompson &
Armato, 2012). As we saw from the Canadian data, social class and immigrant status
affect school performance. We do not have Canadian data by race, but similar testing in
the U.K. reveals that “the highest achieving group is Chinese girls, followed by Chinese
boys, while the lowest-performing are Black Caribbean girls and boys” (Abbott, Wallace, &
Tyler, 2005, p. 95). Bouchard, Boily, and Proulx (2003, p. 89) conclude:
The phenomenon of school achievement gaps between boys and girls exists only in
industrialized countries, where there are co-educational and democratic public educa-
tion systems that give girls (and children who do not come from well-to-do families)
access to the same education as boys (and the well-to-do). In the past, each gender
received differentiated—and hierarchical—training in different venues. For the first
time, it is now possible to compare boys and girls enrolled in the same school programs.
Kimmel directs us not to see feminism as the root of boys’ “problems”; rather he wants
us to see that feminism can help us address male entitlement in such a way that we can
“confront racism, sexism and homophobia—both in our communities and in ourselves”
(Kimmel, 1999, p. 90, as cited by Reynolds, 2001, p. 247). The current debate about boys
is really about “restabilizing power and authority that . . . has never actually been unseated”
(Kehler, 2007, p. 261).
Intersections of race and gender Many scholars are undertaking research that
recognizes the simultaneity of race and gender in the area of education. These researchers
argue that education continues to be a site for reproducing racialized notions of gender
(Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; Codjoe, 2001; Kenny, 2002; Rollock, 2007; Youdell, 2003).
In her review essay, Phoenix (2001) presents results from numerous studies docu-
menting educational performance in the U.K. by ethnicity. Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and
Black Caribbean students are the most poorly performing groups, although girls from these
minority groups fare better than the boys (Phoenix, 2001). As stated earlier, Chinese girls
and boys are the highest achieving subgroups in the U.K. (Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler,
2005). In one Canadian study, Jun Li (2004) shows how parental expectations by Chinese
immigrants strongly affect their children’s school achievements. There is also much evi-
dence documenting “a positive relationship between parental expectations and children’s
school achievement” among Asian immigrants in North America (Li, 2004, p. 167).
Several researchers (Codjoe, 2001; Dei, 1997, 2008; Phoenix, 2001) argue that students
from racialized groups are treated differentially from white students, and that students
themselves actively contribute to reproducing gendered and racialized disadvantage.

Phoenix (2001) cites studies demonstrating Black girls’ willingness to “forgive” the racist
practices at their schools because they need their schooling credentials for future success.
Mac an Ghaill (1988) calls this “resistance within accommodation.” Young Black men do
not appear to engage in such accommodation strategies (Phoenix, 2001).
Mirza and Reay’s (2000) research aims to redefine “citizenship” in relation to education
and illustrates the possibilities for challenging the white hegemony of schools. They outline
how Black African Caribbean U.K. communities (specifically, Black women educators in
supplementary schools) developed a “third space”—a space of “strategic engagement.” “It is
in the ‘third space,’ a de-essentialised but invisible counter-hegemonic space, where the
marginal and the excluded—those situated as such through their gender and radicalized
construction—find a voice” (Mirza & Reay, 2000, p. 70). The work of these women educa-
tors destabilizes fixed constructions of citizenship (distinction between private and public
spheres) and demonstrates new inclusive forms of citizenship (Mirza & Reay, 2000).
Closer to home, Canadian teacher Alnaaz Kassam reflects on his approach to teaching
English and challenges the Eurocentric biased curriculum in light of the multiple and
heterogeneous identities of his students, and the insistence by many of his students that
“there is no racism in Canada” (Kassam, 2007, p. 356), despite research that shows otherwise
in the sphere of education (Codjoe, 2001; Dei, 2008). Through the poem “The Hijabi
Girl,” written by one of his students outlining the racism she experiences daily as a Muslim
girl wearing the hijab in Canada, Kassam explores how students’ identities are negotiated
through curriculum, media, and global politics and signals the importance of creating
classroom spaces that enable students to deconstruct the social relations around them.
sexuality and schooling Researchers are finally turning their attention to how
schools work to reproduce gendered sexualities. A main focus in this area examines how
schools (through both social and curricular practices) are heterosexualized institutional
spaces. Further, schools’ assumed heterosexuality often goes unchallenged.
Louisa Allen’s 2007 research in New Zealand schools demonstrates how schools both
produce and regulate students’ sexual identities. Allen points to the “official culture” of
schools as a discursive strategy for producing students as “non-sexual.” Allen traces how a
discourse of sexual “risk” and an absent discourse of desire in sexual education simultane-
ously produce students in contradictory ways as both “childlike” and as “sexual decision
makers” (Allen, 2007, p. 231). Allen encourages schools to change their official culture such
that student sexuality is understood as “legitimate and positive.” Understanding students’
sexuality in this way “may open up more spaces for young people to be the kinds of sexual
subjects desired by the Health and Physical Education curriculum” (Allen, 2007, p. 232).
Michael Kehler’s research on young men in Canadian high schools demonstrates that
male students are expected to perform a “coherent heterosexual masculinity” (Kehler,
2007, p. 262). Those youth who attempt to resist practices associated with masculine het-
eronormativity often find themselves cast to the periphery—subject to homophobic
taunts. Kehler argues that as a result of such practices, young men avoid developing close
friendships with other male youths for fear of being labelled homosexual.

Research on men teachers also reveals the connections between gender and sexuality
in educational contexts. Martino and Frank (2006) document how male teachers in a
single-sex school negotiate their masculinities. For example, like the students in Kehler’s
study, the teachers speak of having to establish a “normalized heterosexualized masculinity”
(Martino & Frank, 2006, p. 22). The teachers perceive the male students as policing their
masculinities—that as an art teacher, one teacher has to somehow demonstrate strong
masculine traits to assure the students of his heterosexual identity. The art teacher in this
instance drew on his position as a football coach to reaffirm his heterosexual masculinity
(Martino & Frank, 2006).
Lesbian and gay teachers are also subject to regulation in school contexts (Ferfolja,
2008; Jackson, 2006; Khayatt, 1994). Despite harassment, these teachers are hesitant to
report abuse for fear of losing their jobs and experiencing further harassment, ostracism,
and even violence (Ferfolja, 2008; Jackson, 2006; Khayatt, 1994). By keeping silent about
such harassment, teachers contribute to the institutional invisibility of a range of sexuali-
ties (Ferfolja, 2008).
Rebecca Raby’s (2005) Canadian research on student codes of conduct also takes up
schools’ regulation of students’ sexuality. Raby argues that school rules about displays of
affection aim to restrict adolescent sexuality while simultaneously developing academic
settings that are “separate from the body, rational and self-disciplined” (Raby, 2005, p. 81).
Emma Renold’s U.K. research similarly explores schools as settings that aim to reproduce
compulsory heterosexuality. Renold (2006, p. 504), drawing on Judith Butler, argues that
schools are key spaces for the production of children’s gendered identities that “are per-
formed within a constraining and regulatory hegemonic heterosexual matrix.” When
sexuality is addressed, it is situated within a heteronormative framework such as passing
around condoms (Taylor, 2006). This presumed heterosexuality often goes unchallenged,
rendering alternative sexualities problematic.
HIgHer educatIon
We now shift our attention to higher education, which also remains gendered, racialized,
and classed. Women are graduating with university degrees in increasing numbers, yet this
has not yet translated into wide occupational rewards as women continue to earn less than
men (with comparable education) and are not well represented in the top positions of
power hierarchies in their respective fields (Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; Hogan,
Perucci, & Behringer, 2005; Mandell & Crysdale, 1993). Despite popular sentiment, edu-
cation does not appear to be the great equalizer.
In this part of the chapter I look at contemporary trends in student enrolment and
the professoriate as well as people’s experiences of higher education. I then turn to address
the development of women’s studies and feminist pedagogies in the academy, which both
spatially and practically challenge the masculinism of the university. Lastly, I examine the
rise of the McUniversity and how such corporate challenges are problematic for women
and feminism on campus.

students
statistical overview Gendered trends exist of women students’ concentration in
particular disciplinary areas in higher education. In Canada, the late 1980s marked the shift
from men comprising the majority of undergraduate students to women being the majority.
By 1988 women’s and men’s enrolment as undergraduates were the same in Canadian
universities and 1989 was the first year that women’s enrolment exceeded the enrolment of
men as undergraduates (Drakich & Stewart, 2007). In undergraduate programs overall,
women now account for 57% of full-time students (2010–2011) (Canadian Association of
University Teachers [CAUT], 2013). However, when women’s participation as undergraduates
exceeded men’s, rather than hearing celebration about equal participation we heard concerns
“of equity for men and the feminization of universities” (Drakich & Stewart, 2007, p. 6).
We see the highest proportional representation of undergraduate women in health,
parks, recreation, and fitness (71.3%) and in education (76.4%) while the lowest proportion
of women undergraduates are in mathematics and computer and information sciences
(24.9%) (CAUT, 2013). Currently, women represent 54% of master’s level students and
47% of doctoral level students (CAUT, 2013). At the master’s level, education again has the
highest proportion of women students (72%) with health, parks, recreation, and fitness
having the second-highest concentration of women (64%). There are fewer graduate women
students in architecture, engineering, and related technologies (27%) (CAUT, 2013).
When we further subdivide graduate enrolment to differentiate between master’s and
doctoral students, we continue to find greater categories of gender divide. Women account for
47% of doctoral students (CAUT, 2013). Again, this is a significant improvement from the early
1970s when women accounted for only 19% of PhD students (Drolet, 2007). The 1980s also saw
tremendous improvement in women’s representation at the graduate level, with women
representing 40% of master’s students and 30% of PhD students (Association of Universities
and Colleges of Canada [AUCC], 2007). Education once again has the largest proportion
of women doctoral students (69%) whereas the field of architecture, engineering, and
related technologies have the lowest proportion of women doctoral students (22%) (CAUT, 2013).
There are little systematic data on visible minority students in Canada. From survey
data, 16% of undergraduates self-identified as a member of a visible minority, while 24%
of first year undergraduates in 2010 self-identified as a member of a visible minority
(AUCC, 2007; CAUT, 2013). This percentage representation mirrors the proportion of
the general Canadian population who identify as visible minorities. However, for Aborig-
inals, the picture is not as encouraging. The proportion of Aboriginals ages 25 to 64 with
a university degree is 6%, compared to 20% of the general Canadian population and only
5% of first year undergraduates in 2010 self-identified as Aboriginal (CAUT, 2013).
Aboriginals are significantly under-represented in their participation as students and as
faculty in higher education in Canada (AUCC, 2007).
The continued gendering of particular subject areas leads to differences in career
options and salaries for women and men, with men continuing to earn higher annual
salaries than women with the same levels of education.

the Professoriate
statistical overview In the realm of higher education we can celebrate gradual
improvement in women’s presence as academics in Canadian universities. Recent Canadian
statistics (2010–2011) illustrate that women represent 36.6% of all full-time faculty in our
universities (CAUT, 2013). This representation is a strong improvement from 11% women
faculty in 1960–1961 and 20% in 1989–1990 (AUCC, 2002; Sussman & Yssaad, 2005).
However, women are disproportionately represented in lower academic ranks. In 2010–2011,
women accounted for only 22.8% of full professors (the highest academic rank in Canada),
38% of associate professors, 46.4% of assistant professors, and 53% of lecturers (CAUT, 2013).
Figures for academic women’s participation change little when we look at other Western
countries. In OECD countries, collapsing college and university level teaching into one
category, women represent 47.7% of teachers in Canada and 47.1% in the United States.
The highest representation of women teachers in post-secondary education in OECD
countries is found in New Zealand (51.5%) and the lowest representation of women is
found in Japan (18.5%) (CAUT, 2013).
The numbers above demonstrate a definite accomplishment in women’s increasing pres-
ence as full-time faculty in the academy. This change in presence is due in part to the
increased hiring of women into full-time appointments. For instance, women represented
39.4% of all new full-time Canadian university appointments in 2004–2005 and 44.2% of
new hires in 2011 (CAUT, 2007a; 2013). However, a puzzling scenario comes from the social
sciences, where women doctoral graduates have outnumbered men since 1997, yet only 40%
of new appointments were awarded to women between 1999 and 2004 (Drakich & Stewart,
2007). Another factor contributing to women’s increasing presence among university faculty
is the retiring of older male faculty (Acker & Webber, 2006; AUCC, 2002).
Despite such appearances of improvement, we still see a persistence of gendered
trends. Women in universities continue to be concentrated in the lowest academic ranks,
are more likely than men to be employed in part-time (non-secure) academic appointments,
are concentrated in particular subject areas (such as the humanities and education), and
earn lower salaries than men faculty (Acker & Webber, 2006; CAUT, 2007a; 2013).
Further, Canadian research demonstrates that women are less likely to be promoted from
associate professor to full professor than men, and when they are promoted, they are
promoted to the position more slowly than men (spending more time at the rank of
associate professor) (Drakich & Stewart, 2007; Dusseault, 2007). In the United States,
women are less likely than men to be awarded tenure (Mason, Wolfinger, & Goulden,
2013). As Baker (2012) notes, in Western countries, “male academics are more likely to
work full-time with fewer career interruptions, to publish more peer-reviewed articles, and
to be promoted to higher ranks with higher salaries in a promotion system that often
favours research over teaching and service” (pp. 8–9).
The racial and ethnic representation of women is also not evenly dispersed (Gaskell &
Mullen, 2006). It is difficult, though, to provide a statistical profile of the racial and ethnic
representation of Canadian university faculty as there is virtually no systematic reporting or

collecting of such data (CAUT, 2007b). However, it is clear that the growing diversity of
Canadian universities’ student population is not yet matched in the professoriate as both
people of colour and Aboriginals are under-represented (Henry & Tator, 2007). In 2006
only 14.9% of all university faculty members identify as visible minorities, which represents
a small increase from 11.7% in 1996 (CAUT, 2007b; 2013). Aboriginal Canadians are
significantly under-represented in faculty positions, and account for only 1.0% of total
faculty appointments, compared with 2.3% of positions in the Canadian labour force
(CAUT, 2013; Gaskell & Mullen, 2006). In 2013 in the United States, 79% of full-time
faculty positions are occupied by whites, yet whites represent only 69% of the total United
States population, leaving Blacks, Hispanics, and American Natives under-represented
among faculty ranks (Gaskell & Mullen, 2006; NCES, 2015).
There is also gender segregation in the academy in disciplinary areas. Overall in Canada
36.6% of full-time faculty (all ranks) are women, however only 14.2% of architecture,
engineering, and related technologies faculty; and 20.4% of mathematics, computer, and
information sciences faculty are women. On the other side, there is greater overall represen-
tation of women in the health, parks, recreation, and fitness (47.1%), visual and performing
arts (42.8%), humanities (44.2%), and education (57.4%) (CAUT, 2013).
A prestigious government initiative, the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC),
awards research faculty positions to outstanding faculty in an effort to both attract and
retain exceptional faculty. The strongest criticism against the CRCs is one of gender dis-
crimination. After the first four rounds of CRC appointments, just under 15% of the 532
chairs were awarded to women (Kondro, 2002). In 2003, eight women academics filed a
complaint against the CRC Program alleging discrimination against women and other
minority groups (Birchard, 2004; Tamburri, 2007). In 2004, women accounted for 20% of
all CRCs and 26.6% in 2014 (Birchard, 2004; CRC, 2014), still well below their overall
representation in Canadian universities. A “theoretical victory” occurred in 2006 when
the CRC Program reached an agreement with the eight women complainants (Tamburri,
2007). Universities are now compelled to develop targets for appointing women, Aborigi-
nals, visible minorities, and people with disabilities to the CRC Program (Tamburri, 2007).
While women are increasingly taking up administrative posts in Canadian universi-
ties, they remain a minority in senior positions (Drakich & Stewart, 2007; Grant, 2005).
In 2004–2005, 30% of senior administrative posts in universities were held by women, a
number unchanged since a survey in 2000 (Grant, 2005). The largest concentration of
women in administration is at the level of chair or head of department, which is consid-
ered a junior administrative position (Drakich & Stewart, 2007). Experiences in these
positions tell us that gendered expectations follow women even in these senior adminis-
trative posts; women administrators experience expectations to be “wife to the dean and
mother to the faculty” (Acker, 2007, p. 10). Overall, as Drakich and Stewart (2007, p. 8)
argue, there is considerable growth in terms of women’s presence in Canadian universities,
yet women have “failed to penetrate the still largely male world of academic prestige.”
The same pattern prevails in United States universities, a problem that Mason (2011)
refers to as “the pyramid problem” (cited in Castaneda & Isgro, 2013, p. 4).

A worrisome trend in the contemporary academy, connected to the growing corpora-
tization of universities, is the increasing reliance on part-time faculty. Hiring part-time
faculty (also called contingent or non-permanent faculty) is an effective fiscal strategy for
universities (Bauder, 2006; Mason, 2011). Curtis (2005) argues that the reliance on con-
tingent faculty members symbolizes the most definitive change in the past 20 years in
higher education. Part-time women academics proportionately outnumber their full-time
counterparts, as almost half (42%) of part-timers (1997–1998) are women (Omiecinski,
2003). In the United States, women are overrepresented in non-tenured appointments
(Mason, 2011; Mason, Wolfinger, & Goulden, 2013). As Muzzin (2003, pp. 6–7) notes,
contingent academic workers are a “feminized (and somewhat racialized, though still
mostly white) group supporting the still largely white male academic enterprise.” Such a
trend raises important questions with respect to the working conditions and career pros-
pects in terms of job security, wages, and academic freedom, as well as opportunities for
promotion for women employed in these positions.
Persistent patterns of segregation or lack of representation have profound effects on
the academy. When we see an under-representation of groups from the general population
(in the case of university faculty, it is members of equity-seeking groups), the academy
lacks equity. Lacking equity in our universities may mean that the range of pedagogical
approaches may be diminished, particular areas of research may go unexplored, the kinds
of questions that should be asked may not be posed, and the range of research methodologies
may be narrowed (CAUT, 2007b). The university is still a masculinist, Eurocentric
organization (Henry & Tator, 2007). Feminist faculty and faculty of colour both argue that
only certain forms of knowledge are legitimized in the contemporary academy (Henry &
Tator, 2007; Webber, 2005).
Faculty experiences Much of our information about the diverse experiences of

women academics comes from personal narratives. The narrative approach seems espe-
cially suited to highlighting the complexities of the intersection of gender with other
processes such as racialization (Carty, 1991; James & Farmer, 1993; Lewis, 2012; Medina,
2011; Medina & Luna, 2000; Monture-Angus, 2001; Rios, 2013), generation (Looser &
Kaplan, 1997), ableism (Chouinard, 1995/1996), or sexuality (Bensimon, 1997; Lewis,
2012; Renn, 2010). In some cases (e.g., Bannerji, 1991; Chavez Silverman, 2000) the
impact of a person’s identity on pedagogy as well as career is discussed.
Canadian research on women of colour and Aboriginal women academics outlines
the constant inhospitable environment of the white-dominated, male culture of the acad-
emy (Henry & Tator, 2007). These faculty members point to the hostility and tension of
their white colleagues and students “as a minefield through which they constantly have to
navigate” (Henry & Tator, 2007, p. 25). Students’ racist behaviour toward them is not
considered problematic by their colleagues, department chairs, or deans. The “culture of
whiteness” remains dominant in Canadian universities (Henry & Tator, 2007, p. 25).
There is considerable tension for women academics who combine career and family
(Baker, 2012; Castaneda & Isgro, 2013; French & Baker-Webster, 2013; Wolf-Wendel &

Ward, 2003). Research demonstrates that (heterosexual) women academics in full-time
tenured positions in the United States are significantly less likely to be married and have
children than full-time tenured men (Mason & Goulden, 2004). Further studies in
Canada and the United States document higher rates of childlessness for younger women
academics. For those considering children, women wrestle with how to synchronize
progressing in their academic careers (tenure and promotion) with having children
(Acker & Armenti, 2004; Baker, 2012; French & Baker-Webster, 2013; Meyers, 2012;
Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004; Williams, 2000; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2003). Women
academics with young children find it difficult to balance the demands of their careers
alongside the demands of their children (Acker & Armenti, 2004; Dillabough, 2007;
Raddon, 2002; Wajcman & Martin, 2002). These women speak of high levels of pressure,
anxiety, exhaustion, and sleeplessness, and those at research-intensive institutions worry
about the effect of taking maternity leaves on their research productivity and colleagues’
perceptions about their commitment to their scholarship (Baker, 2012; Conley & Carey,
2013; Mason, Wolfinger, & Goulden, 2013; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). As a result of
this thinking, many women opt not to take advantage of leaves available to them (Wolf-
Wendel & Ward, 2006). As Dillabough (2007, p. 14) argues, “the traditional model of the
independent scholar, autonomous and unencumbered, is a fraught one for any whose goal
is to become a learned female in the academy. To embrace this powerful, inherited image
is to inflict high levels of guilt upon women academics who are also parents.”
the chilly climate In the United States, Roberta Hall and Bernice Sandler (1982)
wrote the first report that documented faculty members’ often unintentional differential
treatment of men and women students in their classes, coining the phrase “the chilly
climate” when representing women’s experiences on university campuses. Hall and Sandler
demonstrate that small instances of inequity exert a cumulative effect when experienced
constantly. Some examples of differential interactions between faculty members and women
and men students are calling on the men students more than the women (even when
women have their hands up), and engaging more with the men in classroom interactions
(praising, criticizing, giving feedback). Further, women’s issues (such as violence against
women) are often downplayed or trivialized. The chilly climate concept illuminates the
micro processes of power—the little things that may seem insignificant really do matter.
Canadian research documents that the chilly climate also exists in our universities.
A group of faculty members from the University of Western Ontario, calling themselves the
Chilly Collective, published a collection called Breaking Anonymity: The Chilly Climate for
Women Faculty (1995). In the preface to this collection, the Chilly Collective point to Sheila
McIntyre’s experiences in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University and subsequent publication
(McIntyre, 1988) of her infamous memorandum (“Gender Bias within a Canadian Law
School”) as impetus for putting the anthology together. In this memo, McIntyre details “the
patterns of stereotyping, sexualization, overt harassment, exclusion, and devaluation” (Chilly
Collective, 1995, p. 1) she experienced in her first year as a faculty member.
Following this publication a group from York University published York Stories:
Women in Higher Education (York Stories Collective, 2001). The York Stories collection

includes chapters from undergraduate and graduate students and faculty members. The
majority of chapters are interviews with women students and faculty and detail horrific
experiences of sexism, racism, elitism, heterosexism, and homophobia.
women’s studies and Feminism in the academy

Women’s studies is heralded as a “site of promise for social and intellectual transformation”
(Braithwaite, Heald, Luhmann, & Rosenberg, 2004, p. 10). It became an institutional
support for feminism in Canada in the early 1970s (Eichler with Tite, 1990). Individual
women’s studies courses were first offered in 1970 at the University of British Columbia,
University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Waterloo, York University,
Université de Montréal, University of Guelph, and Sir George Williams (later renamed
Concordia) University (PAR-L, 2008). The first formalized program in women’s studies
came in 1973 at the University of British Columbia (PAR-L, 2008). In the United States,
California State University at San Diego (1969) housed the first women’s studies program
while Cornell University followed suit the following year (Bracken, Allen, & Dean, 2006).
The Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970) “stated that Women’s Studies
courses indicated the necessity for change, helped show the ways this could be accomplished,
and suggested that such courses could improve the conditions for women in future
educational systems” (Reynolds, 2001, p. 248).
Prior to the formal institutionalization of women’s studies in universities, some indi-
vidual faculty members introduced students to the topics of women’s liberation and sexism
in their classrooms. Women’s studies offers a challenge to the masculinist regime that
operates in the academy (Smith, 1992) and brings with it the promise of using liberatory
pedagogies in its classes. Feminist faculty are supposedly able to “do” academia differently:
use feminist perspectives in their research and publications, employ feminist pedagogies in
their classrooms, and draw upon feminist principles in their contributions to university
governance. The National Women’s Studies Association of the United States (NWSA)
describes women’s studies as
the educational strategy of a breakthrough in consciousness and knowledge. The

uniqueness of Women’s Studies has been and remains its refusal to accept sterile divi-
sions between academy and community, between the growth of the mind and the
health of the body, between intellect and passion, between the individual and society.
(NWSA, 2002, p. xx)
The field of women’s studies is now firmly entrenched in Canadian universities, with
over 40 institutions across the country offering programs or housing women’s studies
institutes. Around the globe, there are over 700 women’s studies programs, departments,
institutes, and/or research centres (Korenman, 2007).
Women’s studies is not a static monolith; rather, vigorous debate among feminists
pushes its boundaries and landscape (HCWSC, 2005). We have seen how women students
and faculty of colour, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans* people have criticized feminist

theories and projects that only seem to account for white, middle-class, heterosexual
women’s lives (HCWSC, 2005). We have seen how these debates have changed feminist
theories, research agendas, and preoccupying questions. We have also seen how these
debates have affected university programs—as we now see many programs changing their
names from “Women’s Studies” to “Women’s and Gender Studies” or “Gender Studies”
(WGSRF, 2012). After much dialogue, the professional association changed its name
too—from the Canadian Women’s Studies Association to the Women’s and Gender
Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF, 2012).
Women’s studies (and gender studies) also offers opportunities “to challenge the most
egregious effects of a masculinist culture, both within the university and beyond” (Webber,
2006a, p. 62). Women’s and gender studies continue to be a key space for engendering
feminist identities and encouraging feminist agency (Webber, 2006a).
Feminist Pedagogies
The impetus for addressing the importance of pedagogical practices came not from theo-
retical deliberations on feminism (or education or teaching) but from practical concerns
of both feminist academics and schoolteachers who wanted strategies to be able to attend
to gender, as well as other equity issues, in their classrooms (Weiner, 2006). Interest in
feminist pedagogy surfaced from a dissatisfaction with masculinist schools and universities
as well as dissatisfaction with non-existent analysis of gender in pedagogic theory (Luke &
Gore, 1992; Weiner, 2006).
Building on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy as developed in The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (Freire, 1972), feminist pedagogies revolve around intentions to understand
and make visible gender relations/gender oppression (also, as connected to race, class,
sexuality, and so forth), value the realm of experience, be aware of and attempt to recon-
struct power relations in classrooms, interrogate the status quo, and engender social
change/social transformation (Bignell, 1996; Briskin, 1994; Fisher, 2001; hooks, 1988;
Hornosty, 2004; Lewis, 2012; Morley, 2001; Pereira, 2012; Rinehart, 2002; Welch, 2002).
In her work on queer pedagogy, Deborah Britzman (1995; 2012) calls for pedagogies that
go beyond binary constructions of “the tolerant and the tolerated and the oppressed and
the oppressor” (Britzman, 1995, p. 164) in order to have pedagogies that make “all bodies
matter” (p. 165). Such an approach requires an engagement with “difference as the
grounds of politicality and community” (Britzman, 1995, p. 152).
Feminist pedagogies are not above criticism. One of the core tenets of feminist
approaches to teaching is the inclusion of personal experience in the classroom (of both
faculty/teacher and student) (Briskin, 1994; Welch, 1994). Yet in these prescriptive writ-
ings, the use of experience is rarely troubled; there is rarely a discussion that takes up how
expressions of experience are discursively constructed (Webber, 2006b). Another goal of
many feminist pedagogues is to create “safe” and “respectful” classroom spaces (Lewis,
1992; Shrewsbury, 1998). While a laudable goal, classrooms “like all social spaces are
imbued with spoken and unspoken assumptions about sexuality, gender and ‘race’” (Nairn,

2003, p. 67). Institutional relations of power make it difficult for feminist faculty to sig-
nificantly alter power relations in classrooms (Webber, 2006b). Finally, much feminist
pedagogical writing is predicated on “modernist and progressivist views of transformative
projects” (Weiner, 2006, p. 87) that assumes that the subjectivity of students in their
classes will be one of having a drive for betterment and social change. In reality, numerous
subject positions are constantly at work in classrooms (Grant, 1997; Webber, 2006b).
The Rise of the McUniversity

Much contemporary higher education research concerns the corporatization of the acad-
emy. One intriguing anthology connects women in the academy to our corporate universi-
ties (Reimer, 2004a), and argues that the corporate restructuring of universities can be
linked to globalizing processes (Currie & Newson, 1998). Hornosty’s chapter explores the
links between university corporatization, academic freedom, and gender equity (Hornosty,
2004) and details how feminists successfully used academic freedom as a tool to be able to
institutionalize women’s studies and incorporate feminist pedagogies and course content
in their classrooms. Hornosty is concerned that in a market-based approach to education
in which students value skills that prepare them for the marketplace, women’s studies’
courses will not be seen as marketable. Further, as private sector interests more and more
drive research priorities, research areas of interest to women academics may come to be
seen as irrelevant to market and business interests. Reimer (2004b) worries that women’s
studies departments may not survive as university administrators become less willing to
provide financial resources to departments with little to no commercial incentive.
When considering the effects of globalization on universities, Ritzer’s (1998) notion of
McUniversity needs to be addressed. The term “McUniversity” represents an aspect of the
McDonaldization of society—students are consumers who seek low-cost, accessible education
(Rinehart, 2002). Rinehart argues that these student goals are potentially incongruent with
feminist educators’ goals. Universities as businesses aim to please and satisfy their customers
whereas feminist educators explicitly aim to challenge the status quo, to challenge their
students. Rather than give up feminist goals in the McUniversity, Rinehart challenges
feminists to continue to resist McDonaldization and its accompanying passivity. “The
classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility” (hooks, 1994, p. 207).
ConClUsion
Education in Canada and elsewhere is gendered, racialized, and classed. Through differen-
tial experiences (based on interactions with teachers, administrators, and curricular mate-
rials), girls still learn that they are not as important as boys. Girls and boys learn to conform
to the desired dominant forms of femininity and masculinity or risk marginalization.
Rather than education acting as the great equalizer for girls/boys/women/men, schools
(through their organization, interactions, and curricular materials) re/produce and
regulate particular normative constructions of masculinity and femininity that are

associated with middle-class, heterosexual, white bodies. Despite concern over boys’
achievements (or lack thereof), masculinity, which is generally afforded an advantaged
social position over femininity, continues to privilege boys and men, affording them social
capital, earnings, and so forth. Gender inequality, as it intersects with race, class, and
sexuality, persists.
Recent developments in gender education research point to the need for more
intersectional and nuanced research. It is difficult to speak of girls/women and boys/men
as homogenous, distinct categories. Rather, we need to pay closer attention to the ways
that these groups experience schooling and education as differentiated by social class,
processes of racialization and ethnicization, sexuality, and physical abilities.
1. In your own institution, find out the gender enrolment breakdown by discipline. Does this
breakdown reflect national statistics? How does it vary? What might account for variations?
2. What is the educational history of the women in your family (sister/s, mother, aunt/s,
grandmother/s, great grandmother/s)? Are their educational experiences likely to be simi-
lar or different from your own? In what ways?
3. Does your institution have a women’s studies program? How is it viewed on campus? Do you
have a Gender Issues Office or a Diversity Office? What kinds of initiatives does this office
undertake? If your campus does not have such an office, how might you go about lobbying
for such an office? Why should administrators support such an endeavour on your campus?
4. Think back to your elementary and secondary schooling. Can you name instances where
there was overt differential treatment of girls and boys? Can you reflect on subtle ways
that gender operated in your schools?
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Chapter 12
Health As a Feminist Issue
Carrie Bourassa
With contributions from Mel Bendig, Eric Oleson, Cassie Ozog
IntroductIon
Feminism and health are inexorably linked. Historically, feminist movements have
grappled with diverse views on women’s health, health care, health policy, sexuality, and
the role that medicine (particularly biomedicine) plays in women’s lives. Even when they
disagree about the movement’s goals, values, ideologies, and strategies, feminists are
united in their attempts to understand how gender and sex are implicated in our under-
standing and treatment of women’s health. Moreover, many feminists recognize that social
constructions of race and class intersect with other social determinants of health to con-
tribute to different health outcomes for women around the globe.
This chapter examines the intersection of feminism and health. It defines “health”
and examines social determinants of health—emphasizing the role social environments
play in generating and maintaining health, and the connections between oppression and
health. The theory of intersectionality demonstrates how identities and lived experiences
intersect to create both inequity and opportunities (Cho, Williams Crenshaw, & McCall,
2013). We argue that race is a social construction and that Indigenous people, in particu-
lar, but also racialized minorities experience poorer health outcomes than their white
Canadian counterparts because gender, race, and class combine in complex ways with
socio-economic determinants of health in producing health outcomes. In order to help us
understand gender inequities in health in relation to other social identities and circum-
stances, we provide a brief overview of international and national health trends as well as
specific information pertaining to Canadian immigrant and Indigenous women.
The chapter concludes by examining women’s health policy, contemporary women’s
health activism in Canada, issues of cultural safety, and women-centred health care.
defInIng HealtH
As early as 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO, 1948) defined health as “a state
of physical, mental, or social well-being, not merely an absence of illness or disease.”1
Definitions of health continually evolve and are influenced greatly by individual and
societal values, experiences, and worldviews. Individuals and communities understand
311
health and well-being differently as culture, geography, and time shape our interpretations.
Even though people have individual definitions of health, commonalities exist across
regions and groups of people, confirming that our perspectives on health are partially
developed, maintained, and altered socially by both history and culture. As an example of
a cultural influence on health, many Indigenous populations in the Canadian plains
traditionally held eco-centric views of health. In these communities, the environment
(Mother Earth, plants, animals, the air) is inextricably connected to both an individual’s
and a community’s well-being. Another example can be found in manifestations of mental
illness. In the United States, Asian Americans are more likely than other Americans to
express psychological distress as physical complaints (Kramer, Kwong, Lee, & Chung,
2002). Symptoms of mental illness and depression are reported as physical complaints and
pain, rather than as emotional or mental distress. Although common discourse outlines
health and ill health as objective, consistent, and diagnosable, we see that, in fact, how
we understand health and how illness manifests itself is subjective and influenced by who
we are and the environments in which we live.
For much of the 20th century, a biomedical model of health dominated the health
field, focusing largely on physical illness, symptoms, and cures. In this model, individual
genetics and behaviour were seen as causes for ill health. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s
that mainstream health discussions began to acknowledge the impact of environment on
well-being. Contemporary conceptualizations of health often extend beyond a biomedical
illness-based model to include holistic elements, which encompass emotional, spiritual,
and social aspects of health (Smylie, 2013). In this way, everyday life is seen as inter-
twined with producing health and well-being.
In 1974, Marc Lalonde, then minister of National Health and Welfare in Canada,
authored a paper for Canada’s Department of Health entitled “A New Perspective on the
Health of Canadians.” This influential document shifted perspectives of health from a
focus on biomedical care to consideration of the social and environmental determinants
of health (Groff & Goldberg, 2000). Focusing on four main areas of health determinants—
lifestyle, health care organization, human biology, and the environment—the report
acknowledged the complexities affecting health, and argued for the conceptualization
of health beyond that of medical care (Glouberman, 2001). By moving conversations of
health promotion beyond individual risky behaviour, the report discussed the role of
communities as advocates for social and economic change, and encouraged policy that
generates “good” health. The report’s overemphasis on lifestyle did, unfortunately, limit
comprehensive consideration of the social environment.
In 1980, this deficit was addressed by the Black Report; published in the United
Kingdom by the Department of Health and Social Security (McIntosh Gray, 1982). This
report outlined that even though the overall health of the United Kingdom’s population
had increased with the introduction of the welfare state, significant health inequalities
still existed. These health inequalities and differences in disease rates were associated
largely with economic inequities. The Black Report initiated global consideration of the
effect of income and socio-economic status on health.
312 Chapter 12 Health As a Feminist Issue

The most recent phase in health discussions has extended ideas discussing social
impacts on holistic health and the importance of physical and social environments. The
Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion was produced as a result of the first International
Conference on Health Promotion, held in Ottawa in 1986 (WHO, 1986). The Charter
outlines prerequisites for health that include peace, shelter, education, food, income, a
stable eco-system, sustainable resources, social justice, and equity. It acknowledges that
health status is directly connected to the social environment.
It is important to understand that these discussions on the shifting perspectives of
how health is understood focus on mainstream, dominant, Western discourses of health.
An understanding of holistic health and the environmental influences on health have
existed within many North America Indigenous communities for many years. This is true
for many communities in other regions around the globe. Although these ideas have
infiltrated into some mainstream health documents and conversations, health care sys-
tems in many countries, including Canada, remain rooted in biomedical models of health.
However, these frameworks that see health inequities as a result of limited income,
resources, and social injustice do set the scene for discussions to evolve and acknowledge
the impacts that social environments have on health, creating ideological space for
collaborations between those working in social justice and health delivery.
SocIal determInantS of HealtH

The social determinants of health model provides us with a framework for understanding
health and the factors that influence it. Social determinants of health acknowledge that
social structures govern people’s experiences as individuals and populations. This model
has gained increasing attention in the last decade. Many local and national health agen-
cies throughout Canada have incorporated a social determinants of health model. In
2011, the World Health Organization convened the World Conference on Social Deter-
minants of Health (WHO, 2011), validating the model at an international level and
encouraging action from member states to address social determinants.
Various social determinant models exist within Canada, and depending on the source,
different social determinants of health will be outlined in the model. Some determinants of
health presented throughout these models are income, education, employment, working
conditions, social security, food security, social supports, social exclusion, class, housing, early
childhood development, access to health care, culture, gender, race, ability, Aboriginal status,
and colonization. This model does not deny that there are biological and genetic influences
on health. These models instead acknowledge that the many social structures impacting
physical and biological health have, for many years, been neglected in health discussions.
As an example, let us look specifically at socio-economic status. It is well established
in the literature that income is positively correlated with many health indicators—as
income increases, so does health and well-being. The same applies for education, a
correlation demonstrated continually in population level data. Even at a surface level,
these claims seem reasonable. Individuals living with lower incomes have fewer resources

with which to purchase healthy food, participate in recreation, or purchase health care
or products not covered by public health insurance. Income also intersects with other
determinants of well-being such as food security; decent housing; and access to health
care, employment, and education. A higher level of education means that people are
more likely to have the ability to secure continuous employment opportunities, which
increase lifetime earnings and increase their likelihood of living long and healthy lives.
Critically investigating the social determinants of health furthers our understanding of
how many health inequalities and disease disparities result from economic inequalities.
However, some theories of the social determinants of health fail to provide a critical
analysis and often overlook the underlying factors that cause social inequality in the first
place. What factors contribute to income inequality between and within populations?
Why do certain populations in Canada not experience the same health as other groups?
Ill health results from both individuals’ health choices and differential access and oppor-
tunity to make good health choices. There are concrete social factors limiting individual
choices and opportunities that are connected to social values and systems that privilege
some groups of people over others. Health models need to acknowledge the role of social
structures in creating unjust and avoidable differences in well-being. It is in this
acknowledgement that the social determinants of health model and feminism converge.
Acknowledging gender as a social construct, the arbitrary societal importance it receives
and its ability to shape relationships connects feminist ideologies to this model. Gender,
class, race, religion, culture, ability, and sexual preference are examples of factors that
affect the position of groups and individuals in the hierarchy. Social location or posi-
tionality shapes experiences, opportunities, and, subsequently, health.
A model outlining the social determinants of the health of Aboriginal peoples in Canada
organizes determinants of health into proximal, intermediate, and distal categories that create
a framework for a more in-depth analysis. It outlines proximal determinants of health as those
that have direct impact on health (physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual). Examples
include: health behaviours (such as smoking), physical environments (such as overcrowding),
income, employment, education, and food insecurity (Loppie Reading & Wein, 2009).
Intermediate determinants delve further into understanding the structural influences
underlying the inequalities that exist within the proximal determinants, such as commu-
nity infrastructures and institutions (Loppie Reading & Wein, 2009). Take for example
education and the institutions of education that historically have limited education among
Aboriginal populations, while simultaneously utilizing education to repress Aboriginal
culture and identity. These features were not only detrimental to past but also future gen-
erations since well-educated parents pass on social mobility opportunities and the value of
education to their children. These historical contexts have intergenerational effects. Part-
nered with contemporary schooling in which education does not genuinely focus on Indig-
enous knowledge systems or ways of learning (and potentially negating interests and skills
of Indigenous children), the result is a significant barrier to educational mobility. Lastly,
the distal determinants of health outline historic, political, social, and economic contexts
within which the intermediate determinants are generated. This includes determinants
such as colonization, self-determination, racism, and social exclusion.

The above model demonstrates the necessity to look beyond individual health behaviours
and understand that socially generated circumstances that surround the construction of
identity create circumstances that influence health. Reading Loppie and Wein focus on
racism within their distal determinants of health (as their model pertains particularly to
Aboriginal peoples); however, it also extends to include sexism, classism, homophobia,
ableism, among other forms of oppression. For example, there are clear connections between
oppression, stress, and health outcomes. Chronic stress has been connected not only to
mental and emotional health, but also physical health. With limited self-determination and
continual everyday acts of oppression (including exclusion), non-dominant populations are
often subjected to related stresses that contribute to chronic disease (Cohen et al., 2012).
Discussions put forth by Loppie Reading & Wein focus on oppression as a social
determinant of health. However, other discussions within the fields of medicine, nursing,
and public health often label the identity of a person as a determinant of health, or a risk
factor for ill health. For example, Aboriginal status has been labelled as a social
determinant of health and a risk factor for various diseases. Although this presentation
(of identity as a risk factor) may correctly identify groups that are at a greater risk, and
likely overrepresented in reported cases, it becomes dangerous to oversimplify a risk factor
to a socially ascribed identity. Labelling an identity as a risk factor insinuates that there is
something inherent with the identity that underlies ill health. Without adding historical
and social contexts to this conversation, this discussion becomes reminiscent of historical
race and gender theories that incorrectly assumed a person’s gender or race was the root
causes of disease. “Infected” groups were thought to be biologically and genetically
inferior and therefore more susceptible to disease. Throughout history, “hysteria” (or
mental illness) was associated, incorrectly, with various aspects of women’s biology or
sexuality and femininity was pathologized as a precedent for disease (Tasca et al., 2012).
In regards to race, infectious disease (smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza) among Canada’s
Indigenous populations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was attributed to “racial
weakness.” Although politically motivated policies of starvation and relocations and the
stresses associated with colonization contributed significantly to the high rates of
infectious disease, the prevailing scientific and medical experts attributed them solely to
a racial, biological inferiority (Green, 2006; Lux, 2001).
It is imperative that models emphasize that identities are socially constructed,
changed, reaffirmed, or challenged dynamically. Health emerges within certain groups
because of their social status and experiences. If social contexts change, then so too do
the social determinants of health. Let us now look specifically at gender and the ways in
which health is a feminist issue.
HealtH aS a femInISt ISSue

Feminism has had a long history of trying to understand how gender, class, race, sexuality, and
other systems of inequality intersect to create health inequities. Though deeply problematic
in their proposed solutions, early liberal and maternal feminists made direct links between
poverty and the health of women and children (Mann, 2012). Early Canadian feminists

advocated for birth control as a solution to the unending state of pregnancy that plagued
many women’s lives; most women wanted some control of their fertility (as both biomedical
and “country” methods of birth control and abortion had been illegal since the 1890s). This
call was disproportionately directed at growing immigrant populations in urban areas and later
at Indigenous populations in various parts of Canada. For example, Dr. Helen MacMurchy
(1862–1953) and her contemporaries advocated for birth control as much out of concern for
women’s ability to control their own fertility, and by extension their overall health, as she did
out of concern for the growing population of non-Northern European immigrants in Canadian
urban areas (Valverde, 1992). By extension, though, the work of feminists in some communities
did bring attention to the connections between poverty, poor housing conditions, education,
gender, and poor health outcomes (Valverde, 1992). This work contributed somewhat to the
basis for Canada’s early public and community health care systems.
A focus on women’s health emerged with the second wave of feminism in the 1960s
and 1970s that pushed to acknowledge the role of gender in shaping health and well-
being and to fill gaps within the health care field (Varcoe, Hankivsky, & Morrow, 2007).
With a much wider base of diverse women contributing to it, the Canadian women’s
health movement of the 1960s and 1970s took a different approach than its forebears at
the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. In this later period, systems of inequality were
acknowledged as socially constructed, many were ideologically driven, and they have
become pervasive in our everyday lives (Weber & Castellow, 2012). For example, feminists
see gender as a structural driving force for health inequities (Connell, 2012). Certainly,
when we are discussing health, there are biological differences underlying some health
disparities exhibited between males and females. Sex, in mainstream discourse is regarded
as a biological truth, whereas gender and its meanings are socially constructed and ever-
changing (Juschka, 2014).
Feminists define gender as a social and ideological construction in which social roles,
opportunities and limitations, and social status are shaped by gender identification.
Women’s bodies are differentially valued depending on geography and social and historical
context. Socially, gender categorizes humans into roles and “life limitations” based on
genitalia, ideology in terms of social relations with others, with nature, with deities, which
were used to legitimize roles and assert limitations on behaviours, roles, and statuses
(Juschka, 2014). In short, depending on geography, social context, and time, gender roles
and their related social expectations play a direct role in how women and their bodies are
valued in both health care and society. While the second wave of feminists achieved
many successes for women in general—equal pay for work of equal value, legislation
against sexual harassment, educational achievement for women, the emergence of
women’s studies programs, and a range of sexual assault services—the second wave was
criticized for being mainly a white, middle-class women’s movement that excluded many
women of colour, Indigenous women, lesbian women, minority women, poor women, and
women with disabilities (Biggs, 2011). Those who felt marginalized and excluded began to
explore how race, class, dis/ability, and sexuality intersect to produce or compound various
forms of oppression and offer sites for resistance and opportunities for change.

Third wave feminists extend ideas about the social construction of gender (Biggs,
2011) by focusing on intersectionality and poststructionalist theories, often incorporating
post-colonial narratives (Mann, 2012). Not only is gender a source of inequity, but race,
class, migration, nationalization, cultural movements, colonization, and decolonization
must also be taken into account (Biggs, 2011). Third wave feminists, sometimes referred
to as “Generation X,” often focus on reproductive rights including subsidized fertility
treatments and freedom from sterilization abuse; reduction of sexually transmitted infec-
tions (STIs) among women; eliminating violence against women; equitable access to
health care for women regardless of income; and liberating women and youth from “slut”-
bashing, sexual harassment, and bullying (Mann, 2012).
Intersectionality looks at the simultaneous connections that exist among multiple
social determinants of health, aspects of social identity, or multiple forms of oppression.
These intersections happen on a variety of levels and are complex and interdependent
(Browne, Varcoe, & Fridkin, 2011; Dhamoon & Hankivisky, 2011). Intersectionality
attends to manifold identities (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation) and lived
experiences (i.e., sex work, homelessness) that produce both inequity (e.g., sexism, racism)
as well as opportunity (i.e., social support, resistance, resilience) (Logie, 2014; Logie et al.,
2011). American critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw popularized the concept of
intersectionality, but the analysis of multiple oppressions and their complex relationships
has been crucial to anti-slavery and anti-colonial work for a long time (Dhamoon &
Hankivsky, 2011). As discussed in Chapter 2, feminist critical race theorists have even
fine-tuned these theories to underscore that gender is embedded in complex relations of
power. Razack’s (1998) discussion of “interlocking oppressions,” for example, acknowledges
that there are multiple forms of oppressions and that they are connected to interrelated
social identities that are forever evolving. When applied to health studies, intersectionality
reminds us that while a single social determinant of health can have a drastic effect on an
individual’s ability to generate and maintain health, when two or more social determinants
intersect, they can have an even more complex outcome (McGibbon, 2011).
Intersectionality is often utilized to deconstruct categories and focus attention on the
relationships between and within groups (Connell, 2012). For example, so-called margin-
alized populations have, within them, smaller subsets of marginalized groups. Within the
Indigenous community in Canada, low-income Indigenous women may be faced with
challenges associated with ethnicity, such as discrimination and cultural differences in
how health is perceived, as well as barriers created by poverty, such as the inability to take
time off of work or to travel for care. Taken together, all these obstacles limit women’s
access to health care (McGibbon, 2011). In contrast, a white man of average income
might face barriers and obstacles in accessing care, but discrimination, sexism, cultural
differences, and lack of resources inherent in belonging to the three previous groups would
not factor into his ability to access and utilize health services. The intersection of social
determinants compounds the barriers faced by those outside of the majority.
Though many Indigenous women have raised issues of gender inequality within their
communities as well as in relation to the Canadian state and its health care system,

Indigenous feminism has more recently emerged as a body of activism and scholarship.
A highly debated issue within many Indigenous communities and academia, Indigenous
feminism is the preferential designation with which many Indigenous women identify.
Indigenous women experience “multiple oppressions” of race, class, gender, and colonization,
both within and outside of Indigenous communities. These obstacles intersect in complex
ways to create multiple oppressions that result in inequities and produce poor life chances
for Indigenous women.
As Joyce Green (2007, p. 23) notes:
Aboriginal feminism brings together two critiques, feminism and anti-colonialism, to

show how Aboriginal people, and in particular Aboriginal women, are affected by colo-
nialism and by patriarchy. It takes account of how both racism and sexism fuse when
brought to bear on Aboriginal women by Indigenous men and Indigenous governance
practices. Aboriginal feminists are the clearest in linking sex and race oppression. They
are identified as political adversaries not only by colonial society but also by male Indig-
enous elites whose power they challenge. And they are also criticized by some Aboriginal
women, who deny their analysis and question their motives and authenticity.
Kim Anderson (2010) explains that Indigenous feminism is rooted in our traditional
understandings and responsibilities as Indigenous women. Indigenous women are, after
all, the carriers of our culture and the strength of our nations. We are the mothers of our
nations and honoured for our abilities to give birth and nurture our children and female
authorities within families. Gender roles, traditionally equitable until colonization, forced
patriarchal notions onto Indigenous communities. “Feminism of all stripes,” Anderson
says, “can help us to tease out patriarchy from what is purportedly traditional and to avoid
essentialist identities that are not to our advantage as women” (p. 86).
Like gender, Indigenous feminism also sees race as a social construction. Race and
ethnicity, or rather, racism and ethnic discrimination, have an impact on the well-being of
both immigrant and Indigenous women. Race is not seen as biologically innate or
inevitable. Rather, it is a tool, a social construction, an arbitrary classification of persons
into categories based upon real or imagined characteristics. Without empirical validity or
scientific merit, race is a concept used to manipulate people and “reinforce unequal
relations between dominant and subordinate groups” (Fleras & Elliott, 2003, p. 386). Race
in society permeates our political, economic, and social structures. It is found in our insti-
tutions including the state, justice, health care, business, work, and education, to name
but a few (Bourassa, 2004) and complicates even basic discussion about its definition.
Terms such as race, “immigrant,” and ethnic or “visible minority” are often used
interchangeably in problematic ways. We do not intend to further this error but note that
the use of these words in a great deal of health and statistical literature should be made
visible and critiqued. For instance, the term “immigrant” simply means one who has
recently moved to a new country, such as Canada. It says nothing directly about whether
a person is white or a person of colour. Likewise, the term “ethnicity” may or may not
refer to someone who happens to be a person of colour, and has more to do with national

membership, language, and, possibly, religion. In both these cases Valverde notes that in
different historical periods the term might nearly guarantee one was speaking of one of
these groups or another within Canada’s restrictive immigration policies (Valverde,
1992). Although the term “visible minority” has been challenged by many, including the
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, it is still used
by the Canadian government throughout policy and data collection. Therefore, most
discussions surrounding the health experiences associated with race or ethnicity must
rely on data that is collected utilizing the term visible minorities. The term, as defined by
the Employment Equity Act, refers specifically to “persons, other than Aboriginal peo-
ples, who are non-caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (Statistics Canada, 2015).
Race and racism serve the interests of the most advantaged groups (Cherland &
Harper, 2007, pp. 109, 117). Albert Memmi (2013) argues that racism is ingrained in
actions, institutions, and the nature of colonialist methods of production and exchange
(p. xxiv). As an ideology, race emerged from the imperial and colonialist efforts of
Europeans, and in Canada’s case, specifically, the British and French. Colonial racism is
built from three ideological components (Memmi, 2013, p. 71):
1. The gulf between the culture of the colonialist and the colonized;
2. The exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the colonialist; and
3. The use of these supposed differences as absolute fact.
Race and racism, like class and gender, are social constructions used to oppress those
who are not in power within capitalist societies. Operationalized through ideology
(Smedley & Smedley, 2005, p. 19), race continues to be used to justify class inequality.
Critical race theory argues that white privilege is reinforced as both race and class
privileges intersect and strengthen each other (Cherland & Harper, 2007, p. 109). Race
reinforces white privilege, and as Peggy McIntosh explains, white people are taught to not
recognize their unearned privileges (McIntosh, 1988). Whether one welcomes privilege
or not, privilege is a societal norm reinforced daily by societal structures and practices.
Race is a relatively modern concept. It arose not only out of a need to exert control
over people, land, and resources, but also to justify such actions. With the collapse of the
feudal system in Europe in the late 15th century and the rise of capitalist economies, new
systems were needed to enforce privilege at the individual, local, national, and interna-
tional levels. Europeans spread a specific worldview that was required to uphold and justify
European dominance and expansion:
The expropriation of property, the denial of political rights, the introduction of slavery
and other forms of coercive labor, as well as outright extermination, all presupposed a
worldview which distinguished Europeans—Children of God, human beings, etc.—
from “others.” Such a worldview was needed to explain why some should be free and
others enslaved, why some had rights to land and property while others did not. Race
and the interpretation of racial differences, was a central factor in the worldview. (Omi &
Winant, 2004, pp. 13–14)

While concepts of patriotism, ethnocentrism, and Eurocentrism existed prior to
capitalism, the concept of race and the effects of this concept (such as racism and discrimina-
tion) did not exist (Liggio, 1976). Ethnocentrism is defined as a tendency to see reality from
a specific cultural perspective, which believes in the superiority of one culture over all other
cultures. Eurocentrism is a specific form of ethnocentrism, which advocates the moral supe-
riority of European thoughts and practices as the standard by which others should be judged.
These concepts existed prior to the rise of capitalism but were not based on skin colour,
height, brain size, or other elements common to the concept of “race” (Bourassa, 2004).
Race and racialization lend legitimacy to the actions of the dominant power. Histori-
cally, it allowed the dominant power, European colonizers in the case of Canada, to exert
control over “other” racial groups. Race became a societal norm and an unquestioned
privilege. Pittz (2005, p. 7) argues that health disparities can be attributed to “racism and
its social and institutional manifestations.” Structural racism is the normalization and
legitimization of the domination of one group over another. Structural racism lies beneath
social and economic inequities that are at the root of a vast majority of health disparities
(Pittz, 2005; Smedley & Smedley, 2005).
While examining social and health disparities on a societal level for women, visible
minorities, Indigenous groups, and others, it is essential to situate these trends in their wider
social and historical contexts. In exploring the concept of intersectionality further, we will
break down the effects of the social constructs of gender in creating inequality, and then apply
these concepts to discussions of health trends for different populations of women in Canada.
gender equIty and bIaS

Gender inequity is rooted in social structures, in particular, power structures. For example,
gender intersects with economic inequality, class inequality, differences in sexual orienta-
tion, racial or ethnic differences, and other social markers including ability or disability or
geographical location (Sen & Ostlin, 2008). Like other constructions, gender is governed
by and exists in relation to social structures. Sen and Ostlin (2008) note that sex and
society interact to determine who is well and who is not.
Ultimately, women and girls around the globe have less land, have less wealth and
property, have lower social status, have higher burdens of work in the economy, have
higher health burdens, have lower educational attainment, have higher rates of violence
perpetrated against them, are often viewed as less capable compared to boys or men, are
often seen as objects in their own homes or communities; and often have lower participa-
tion rates in political institutions (Sen & Ostlin, 2008). Although we have seen some
improved trends for women over the past several decades, global illiteracy rates among
women have remained unchanged over the past twenty years. Women still represent two-
thirds of the world’s illiterate adult population (United Nations Department of Economic
and Social Affairs, 2010). Globally, women and girls are burdened more by poverty than
are men and boys. Although regional variances exist, at a household level, most often
female-headed households face higher rates of poverty than male-headed households
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).

Furthermore, women tend to be caregivers for both young and old; have poorer access
to health care/services; and experience a societal bias that often expects women to
sacrifice their own health, happiness, and well-being for the betterment of their families,
communities, and husbands (Sen & Ostlin, 2008). Globally, women are predominantly
responsible for maintaining and caring for families (United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). These caregiving responsibilities create unique
experiences for women and their health.
canadIan demograpHIcS
Although Canada continues to experience economic growth, one in seven women live in
poverty (CRIAW, 2006). Furthermore, 38% of lone female parents had after tax incomes
that were less than the low-income cut-off (LICO) compared to only 13% of lone male
parents and 7% of two-parent families (CRIAW, 2006). In Canada, according to 2006
census data, visible minority women were generally more susceptible to unemployment
than their male counterparts as well as non-visible minority women. In the week prior to
the 2006 census, 8.4% of visible minority women ages 25 to 54 were in the labour force but
unemployed compared with 5% of non-visible minority women and 6.2% of visible minority
men. In fact, there was a bigger gender gap in unemployment rates between visible minority
women and men (2.2%) than between non-visible minority women and non-visible
minority men (0.1%). Finally, there was an earnings gap between men and women. The
median employment income of visible minority women ages 25 to 54 who worked full-time,
full-year was close to $7000 less than that of visible minority men, whose median earnings
were $40 800. This difference revealed that visible minority women of core working age
earned about 83% of their male counterparts’ earnings (Statistics Canada, 2010–2011).
According to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW),
visible minority women are also overrepresented in precarious (part-time and temporary)
work and often have to live in substandard and segregated housing. They are also more
vulnerable to violence and other health risks (CRIAW, 2005, p. 2).
gender equIty, SocIal determInantS of HealtH

and InterSectIonalIty—let tHe data Speak
How do the theoretical concepts discussed above translate into health disparities? How do
they play out in health practices and in the daily lives of girls and women, in particular? As
outlined, sex and society interact to determine who is well and who is not, and as a result,
health outcomes can be significantly different for men and women. Gender inequity
affects millions of women and girls: transgendered, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and two-
spirited individuals. Gender inequity impacts the social capital of women and girls around
the globe and therefore impacts the abilities of individuals and communities to gain and
maintain holistic health. Additionally, other determinants of health intersect with gender
inequity to produce varying health disparities across different populations. This section

will first look at some general health trends of women, both globally and within Canada,
and then will move to look at specific health trends for immigrant women, and Indigenous
women to highlight the health impacts of multiple, intersecting oppressions.
tranSnatIonal HealtH concernS

Although there is significant regional variance when we discuss health trends among
women, several patterns are consistent. We suggest that many of these patterns are intercon-
nected transnationally because local experiences of health can be affected by global events
and vice versa. For example, the availability of a new drug for HIV/AIDS treatment, which
is subsidized by a national health care plan in one part of the world might be detrimental to
the life expectancy of those in another part of the world if that drug’s availability is beyond
the means of most people in most countries without a national health care plan. The avail-
ability of the drug can also be artificially managed by a variety of players whose influence
extends beyond the reach of individual countries, such as hospitals that accept international
medical travellers, national governments, multi-national corporations, and insurance com-
panies, making the wellness of people who need the drug a cross-border transnational issue,
not just a local or individual problem. Economic and political disparities between nations,
not just between individuals, necessarily complicate discussions of gender and health.
Life expectancy is a standard, although sometimes simplistic, indicator of health that
bears scrutiny from a transnational perspective. In all regions of the world, women live
longer than men (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010;
Stevens, Mathers, & Beard, 2013). This difference is partially accounted for by a natural
biological advantage; however, in some countries, this advantage is diminished by social
and economic factors. For example, if we look at low-income countries, the complications
associated with pregnancy and childbearing significantly impact women’s life expectancy
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).
Globally, between 2005 and 2012, maternal deaths decreased approximately 3.1%
each year (WHO, 2013). All regions saw a decrease in maternal deaths; however, some
regions saw a greater decrease than others. Unfortunately, it was the countries with the
highest maternal mortality rates that saw the least progress when it came to decreasing
rates (WHO, 2013). During the same year span, 81% of women had at least one prenatal
care visit. The statistics drop significantly to only 55% of women who had the recom-
mended four prenatal visits (WHO, 2013). Births attended by skilled professionals were
above 90% in three of the six WHO regions. In the WHO African region, this rate dropped
to under 50% (WHO, 2013). Maternal health issues significantly impact the health of
adolescent women in low and middle-income countries, and complications from preg-
nancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for this age group. It is also estimated
that this age group is highly exposed to unsafe abortions. In 2008, it was estimated that
3 million abortions were performed on adolescent women in unsafe conditions (WHO,
2013). Globally, in 2014, more than 140 million women had unmet family planning needs,
which significantly impacts maternal health, child health, and community health (United
Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, 2014).
Although deaths associated with maternal health do influence life expectancy dis-
crepancies between men and women, if we look at high-income countries, we see region-
ally consistent low rates of maternal mortality but variant gaps in life expectancy. In 2011
the gaps in Malawi, Canada, Japan, and the Russian Confederation consisted of 1, 4, 7,
and 12 years respectively (WHO, 2013). The one-year variant in Malawi provides an
example from a low-income country where maternal deaths likely play a significant role in
decreasing the life expectancy gap. Canada, Japan, and Russia are all deemed high-income
countries with relatively low maternal death rates, but here there is significant variance.
These regional variations outline the fact that although there is a biological component
to life expectancy variations between males and females, it is also affected by behavioural
and environmental factors shaped by social factors.
As a result of women living longer than men, there are more elderly women than
men. As maternal mortality rates decrease globally, this demographic difference is growing
larger. Although we have seen that maternal mortality and reproductive health are sig-
nificant issues in some parts of the world, there are other health needs surfacing, particu-
larly in regards to non-communicable disease. Despite the continually growing health
needs of middle-aged and elderly women, the global health response to women’s needs
remains largely concentrated on reproductive matters (Stevens et al., 2013). As the detec-
tion, prevention, and management of non-communicable diseases has received less focus
globally, there is a need to shift broader health systems to accommodate women’s health
issues that extend past reproductive health (Stevens et al., 2013).
Another universal global health trend is women’s increased exposure to violence.
Although rates do very from region to region, statistics continually demonstrate that
violence against women is a universal phenomenon. This violence takes a variety of forms
and can include physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence that is perpetrated
both by intimate partners and others outside the home (United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).
Other global trends for women’s health include an over-representation of HIV cases
and higher mortality from cardiovascular disease. Women constitute the majority of HIV
cases in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East, where there are social
and cultural factors that often increase women’s vulnerability to HIV (United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). Lastly, women, on a global scale, are
more likely than men to die from cardiovascular disease—especially in Europe (United
Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).
canadIan HealtH trendS

Within Canada, there are a variety of health indicators, largely focused on morbidity and
mortality that outline health disparities between males and females. For some indicators, such
as cancer, we see shared disparities where the mortality rates are higher for one sex depending
on the specific type of cancer (Health Canada, 2012). Reports from 2012 show that women
are disproportionately affected by the following: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
asthma, arthritis, osteoporosis, chlamydia, high blood pressure, and self-reported stress (Health
Canada, 2012). These trends are very general and don’t allow for detailed understanding of
how various social determinants of health intersect and influence health. To better understand
how gender, race, class, and other social positioning and circumstances shape well-being, we
will now examine some health trends among immigrant and Indigenous women of Canada.
Immigrant Women’s Health

When examining the health of immigrant women, we need to consider structural inequali-
ties associated with immigration. Often, race and ethnicity are considered as factors in stud-
ies of immigrant health; however, is it essential to look at how racism intersects with other
forms of marginalization to influence immigrant health (Viruell-Fuentes, Miranda, &
Abdulrahim, 2012). Not only does discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, and
class intersect to create health challenges for immigrants, but also cultural integration and
social inequity associated with immigration policies influence health outcomes (De Maio &
Kemp, 2010; Viruell-Fuentes et al., 2012).
In 2011, 20.6% of Canada’s population was foreign-born. Of the foreign-born popula-
tion, 17.2% are recent immigrants, having arrived in the last five years. The majority of
immigrants come from Asia and the Middle East (approximately 60%), followed by Europe
(approximately 15%), and Africa (approximately 9%). Nearly 6 264 800 people identified
themselves as a member of a visible minority group. They represented 19.1% of the total
population. Of these visible minorities, 30.9% were born in Canada and 65.1% were born
outside the country and came to live in Canada as immigrants (Statistics Canada, 2011b).
Varying circumstances surround immigration. Although it is not the experience of all
newcomers to Canada, many immigrants have low socioencomic status, live with limited
economic means in low resource communities, and face residential segregation (Viruell-
Fuentes et al., 2012). Results from a Canadian-wide longitudinal study demonstrated that
34.4% of recent immigrants did not have enough money to meet their basic needs, and
only 9% of immigrants reported having more than enough money (De Maio & Kemp,
2010). Additionally, new immigrants to Canada may experience culture shock, reduced
autonomy, loss of previous social supports, social isolation, exposure to violence, and addi-
tional caregiving responsibilities resulting from language and cultural barriers.
Based on immigration policies, the health of immigrants upon migration to Canada is
often better than that of Canadian-born populations. However, health status usually
decreases once people have settled in Canada. Some have termed this the “healthy immi-
grant effect” (De Maio & Kemp, 2010). Declines in health status occur as early as the first
two years after immigration (Newbold, 2009). Immigration to Canada has been associated
with unhealthy levels of weight gain, increased risk for chronic disease, and increased
rates of depression (De Maio & Kemp, 2010). The highest levels of health were reported
among immigrants with high economic status. Refugees report the lowest levels of health
and are more likely to transition into poorer states of health (Newbold, 2009).
Some studies have shown drastic decreases in health status. One Canadian
longitudinal study found that at six months after immigration, 43% of immigrants reported

their health as excellent, but after two and four years this rate fell to 30% and 23%
respectively. The study also found that at six months only 5.1% of recent immigrants
reported persistent feelings of sadness or depression, but after two years the rate increased
to 30% (De Maio & Kemp, 2010). Women were most likely to experience increasing
persistent feelings of sadness, depression, and loneliness as their time spent in Canada
increased (De Maio & Kemp, 2010).
Immigrant women in British Columbia and Quebec reported higher rates of diabetes
than their Canadian-born counterparts. In Quebec this trend was not found in immigrant
men. Rates varied by birth region and language ability (Wang et al., 2012). Diabetic
immigrants had lower rates of physician visits in comparison to Canadian-born diabetics;
however, this trend did not appear to be related to language ability (Wang et al., 2012).
One study from California speaks directly to the health effects of discrimination on
visible minority women, many of whom are immigrants. Although this study is not
Canadian, national borders do not limit social perceptions of race and ethnicity, and Canada
and the United States are similar in many cultural ideals and norms. The study explored
birth outcomes of Arabic-named women during the six months following 9/11. Elevated
risks for preterm and low-weight births were found for Arabic-named women but not for
other groups (Lauderdale, 2006). This study further supports the connection between
discrimination and health impacts. It demonstrates how larger social understandings
influence our behaviours, perceptions, and subsequently our health.
IndIgenouS Women’S HealtH

In Canada’s Indigenous population (referred to as Aboriginal in census data), Aboriginal
women face multiple health disparities. As noted earlier, this is due to multiple oppressions.
According to Statistics Canada’s four-year estimates (2007–2010), 47.2% of First Nations
women living off reserve, 54.1% of Métis women, and 53.7% of Inuit women reported
their health as very good or excellent. The share of Aboriginal women describing their
health in these terms was smaller than the percentage of women in the total Canadian
population who reported their health as excellent or very good (62.4%). If we look
specifically at First Nations women living on reserve (for the years 2008–2010), we see
41.7% of females reporting very good or excellent health in comparison to 46.4% of males
(Health Canada, 2012). Rates of diabetes on reserve were 17.9% among women. This rate
is higher than the rate for men living on reserve (14.5%), as well among non-Aboriginal
women (4%) in the following years (Health Canada, 2012; Statistics Canada, 2010).
Women living on reserve have significantly higher rates than other women living in
Canada. Unfortunately, there are significant lags in the analysis of health statistics. The
most recent Aboriginal Peoples Survey from 2012 has only released information pertaining
to Inuit health even though it does outline a higher rate of chronic conditions among
Inuit women in comparison to Inuit men (Wallace, 2014). Although data collection and
survey methods for Indigenous health information are complicated by jurisdictional issues
that limit the comparability of information (different years, age ranges, and so on), we can

still identify trends that outline varied health trends between Aboriginal men and women
as well as between Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal women.
Most health statistics and health indicators in Canada demonstrate disparities
between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. Let’s take a look at that information
with a specific focus on female health trends. For example, between 2007 and 2010 rates
for arthritis were 16.7% for First Nations women, 15.3% for Métis women, and 14.8% for
non-Aboriginal women. Asthma rates demonstrate a similar disparity, where rates were
16%, 15%, and 9.7% respectively (Statistics Canada, 2010). In regards to mental health,
Aboriginal women do not experience the same levels of health as non-Aboriginal women.
Between 2007 and 2010 perceived rates of excellent or very good mental health were
recorded for 74.6% of non-Aboriginal women in comparison to 61.7%, 64.1%, and 67%
respectively for Inuit, First Nations, and Métis women (Statistics Canada, 2010). Food
security is another indicator of health directly connected to the prevention and manage-
ment of both physical and mental health conditions. The rates of food insecurity are sig-
nificantly higher among Aboriginal women (26.4% and 16.8% among First Nations and
Métis women in comparison to 8% of non-Aboriginal women), and result in diminished
physical health as well as additional stress for Aboriginal women (Statistics Canada, 2010).
Métis specific health data is sparse, particularly mortality and morbidity rates; how-
ever, a recent study revealed that mortality rates for Métis were much higher compared to
non-Aboriginal Canadians particularly for women. In addition, Métis women were more
likely to have higher rates of circulatory, digestive, and respiratory system diseases
compared to non-Aboriginal Canadians. Finally, for both Métis and First Nations people
socio-economic indicators (income, education, occupation) explained two-thirds of the
excess mortality in men and almost 30% of excess mortality in women (Tjepkema,
Wilkins, Senécal, Guimond, & Penney, 2009).
Aboriginal people are also over-represented in HIV cases. Between the years of 1989
and 2009, Aboriginal people represented 24% of HIV cases, although Aboriginal popula-
tions represented only 4.3% of the Canadian population in 2011 (PHAC, 2014). This
over-representation is even more significant for Aboriginal women who account for
47.3% of HIV cases reported among Aboriginal people (between 1998 and 2012) in com-
parison to women of other ethnicities who make up 20% of cases (PHAC, 2014). Aborig-
inal women are also more likely to be diagnosed late and present with AIDS in comparison
to non-Aboriginal women (PHAC, 2014). Aboriginal women have had, and continue to
have, distinct experiences with colonialism, and these experiences can manifest them-
selves in adverse determinants of health. Intergenerational impacts of assimilation, accul-
turation, sexist policies in the Indian Act, and residential schools, have created
environments ridden with poverty, violence, and social immobility for Indigenous women.
These environments of risk influence Aboriginal women’s susceptibility to HIV.
Global trends clearly outline that women are significantly more likely than men to be
victims of violence. When we review rates of violence against Aboriginal women, we see
how gender, race, and colonization intersect to create health disparities. Aboriginal women
aged 15 and older are three and a half times more likely to experience violence (defined

as physical and sexual assault and robbery) than non-Aboriginal women (Amnesty
International Canada, 2004; Statistics Canada, 2006). According to the 2006 census data,
36% of Aboriginal women were living in poverty compared to non-Aboriginal women in
Canada (Statistics Canada, 2010). According to the Canadian Research Institute for the
Advancement of Women, “Aboriginal women face interconnected disadvantage due to
the intergenerational legacies of racism, colonization, residential schools, and cultural
devaluation that contribute to vulnerability to intimate partner violence, sexual violence,
femicide, and the normalization of this violence” (CRIAW, 2013, p. 6).
CRIAW notes that Aboriginal women in Canada “also experience racially-motivated
attacks and are harassed on the streets by the public and police more so than non-Aboriginal
women.” (CRIAW, 2002, p. 2). In 2013 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
released the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview
report. The report documented 1181 missing or murdered Aboriginal women. The report
also indicated that this was an over-representation, most of the women knew their
perpetrators, and many of the murders were intimate partner violence situations. While the
solve rate was the same for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women, the over-representation
of Aboriginal women is of concern. Between 1980 and 2012, there were just over 20 000
homicides in Canada. Females represented 32% of the victims. There were just over 1000
female Aboriginal homicide victims during this same time period, which represents 16% of
all female homicides—a much higher representation of Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal
women. Further, the number of Aboriginal female homicides has remained constant while
the number of non-Aboriginal female homicides has been decreasing (RCMP, 2014). For
example, in 1984 Aboriginal women accounted for 8% of all female victims and 23% in
2012. Keep in mind the total national Aboriginal population in Canada according to the
2006 census was 3.8% (Statistics Canada, 2010). Unfortunately the risk factors listed in the
report were not very insightful. The risk factors cited in the report that made Aboriginal
women more “vulnerable” included employment status, use of intoxicants, and involvement
in the sex trade. Other determinants not discussed included gender, race, class, education,
and the experience of colonization. Further, Aboriginal women experience racism both
within and outside of their communities (Kubik et al., 2009).
relevant polIcy analySIS

In 1995 the Fourth United Nation’s Conference on Women was held in Beijing. The
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action revealed at the conference had the goal of
empowering women around the globe. The Platform for Action outlined a number of
goals aimed at removing barriers to women’s full participation and equal share in eco-
nomic, social, cultural, and political decision-making. Changes were to occur by 2000
with achievable targets to improve women’s health, economic prosperity, education, and
legal reforms to reduce discrimination against women. Participants included 189 govern-
ments and 2100 non-governmental organizations from around the world (United Nations
Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, n.d.).

The Beijing Declaration sets the stage for Canada’s Women’s Health Strategy in 1999.
In keeping with the Beijing Declaration, the main goal of the Women’s Health Strategy
was to improve the overall health of women in Canada by improving the health system
particularly through policy and program restructuring including gender-based analysis;
increasing knowledge and understanding of women’s health needs; supporting the deliv-
ery of appropriate women’s health services; and women’s health promotion, prevention,
and reduction of risk factors (Hankivsky, 2006).
In Canada, efforts by grassroots organizations to close the inequality gap between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous women have been obstructed by many policy barriers. Notably,
the cutting of funding for the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), particularly
their Sisters in Spirit project that focused on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous
women in Canada, demonstrates the urgent need for the experiences of Indigenous women to
be taken seriously in social policy development, not only for the continued use of gender-based
analysis (GBA), but to advance culturally relevant gender-based analysis (CRGBA) in policy
development and programming in Canada (see Health Canada n.d.; NWAC, n.d.).
The goal of GBA is to create inclusive approaches in policy development that respond
to inequities faced by women in all aspects of society by viewing women in relation to
men as opposed to examining women’s issues separately (NWAC, n.d.). While great
improvements have been made by utilizing GBA in challenging contemporary inequities
faced by women, utilizing only this process still isolates Indigenous women’s experiences
in all aspects of society from health care to economic development. Though both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous women face ongoing personal and structural experiences
of sexism in Canada, Indigenous women face multiple forms of oppression through both
sexism and racism (NWAC, n.d.). Thus, there is a need for CRGBA in order to properly
consider the unique circumstances of Indigenous women, and incorporate Indigenous
ways of knowing, historical circumstances and experiences, and contemporary realities in
Canada into public policy analysis and development (NWAC, n.d.).
In response to the lack of culturally relevant policy development and to improve the
knowledge of the experiences and realities of Indigenous women with policy makers and
stakeholders, NWAC developed a tool to apply the principles of CRGBA, the Culturally
Relevant Gender Application Protocol (CR-GAP) (NWAC, n.d.). This tool is guided by
four key principles:
■ The CR-GAP will revitalize the value of Aboriginal women’s roles within Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal society and reconnect race and gender to positively impact
health and healing;
■ The CR-GAP reflects cultural values and practices, highlighting the principles of
balance and equilibrium, with gender being one component of balance;
■ The CR-GAP complies with the laws of the Creator, Aboriginal world view and law,
inherent right, Constitutional and International law; and
■ The CR-GAP captures the diversity and different circumstances of Aboriginal
women based on their distinctive cultures and cultural practices (NWAC, n.d., p. 5).

Though GBA is an effective tool in analyzing and developing good public policy and
programming, it is ultimately limited in scope because it does not take into account the
needs of Indigenous women and could potentially silence these needs through homoge-
nous assumptions about all women’s experiences in Canada. CRGBA, and the CR-GAP
tool developed by NWAC, can aid in breaking down barriers in understanding the
experiences and needs of Indigenous women through deepening the understanding of
colonization and its impacts, recognizing both the historical effects of trauma and the cur-
rent, ongoing impacts in our contemporary society and the intersectionality of multiple
oppressions experienced daily by Indigenous women in Canada. This tool could also argu-
ably be adapted for other cultural and ethnic populations.
IntersectIonal FemInIst Frameworks

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) developed
policy frameworks called Intersectional Feminist Frameworks (IFFs). The goals of the IFFs
are to promote understanding of the complex and often discriminatory social practices
that produce inequality and exclusion. IFFs examine systems of discrimination including
colonialism and globalization and how these affect a person’s social and/or economic
status, race, class, gender, and sexuality (CRIAW, 2006). IFFs
■ promote the use of tools for analysis that consider the complexities of women’s lives
(i.e., GBAs);
■ ensure policy analysis is focused on those who are most marginalized;
■ promote holistic thinking when developing policies;
■ promote and value self-reflection of how we are all part of a system of privilege and power;
■ are specific to people’s experiences of history, culture, politics, geography, and ecology;
■ are based on women’s specific locations and situations rather than generalizations;
■ focus on many types of discrimination;
■ are locally and globally interconnected;
■ incorporate worldviews that have historically been marginalized;
■ understand that women are diverse with varied histories and social identities which
place them in different positions of hierarchical power;
■ make efforts to challenge binary thinking that sustains inequities (gay/straight, white/
Black, etc.);
■ and recognize that binary thinking is a result of unequal power relations (CRIAW, 2006).
IFFs in policy and practice can be difficult and complex work. They can result in
tensions and pressures as one oppression emerges and is pitted against another. For example,
if an organization employs a GBA, will that address the needs of say, Indigenous women? Or
immigrant women? As noted, the GBA was critiqued for not being inclusive to Indigenous

women and CRIAW acknowledges that this can occur. This is why they encourage IFFs as
a framework so that organizations can understand that there are no magic tools that can be
implemented. Organizations must make serious commitments to the principles of social
justice and realize that change will take time. They note, “The process of implementing
IFFs has brought about tensions and struggles both internally and externally. People have
had to set aside focusing on one existing framework to learn to open up to multiple
perspectives and different voices” (CRIAW, 2006, p. 19). Ultimately, attempting to
eradicate sexism alone will not address the myriad issues faced by women—racism, ageism,
disabilities, poverty, discrimination, poor health—and the list goes on. As argued in this
chapter, IFFs promote the idea of addressing those issues that intersect with gender.
Current human rights approaches to addressing and mitigating discrimination do not
incorporate intersectional discrimination into their tools. Therefore, generalizations
about discriminatory actions are placed into a larger category of gender or racial discrimi-
nation, when in fact, the discrimination may lie at the intersection of race and gender. For
example, problems or circumstances known to affect women who are newly landed immi-
grants might be framed as a women’s issue, ignoring the discrimination faced by newly
landed immigrants in general. Because of this approach to human rights, the experiences
of subsets of people within a larger group are often painted with as broad a brush as
possible, thus limiting the ability to identify and address the full scope of the discrimina-
tion (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2001). Any efforts made to mitigate the dis-
crimination can, at best, be considered incomplete, as the process by which the analysis of
the problem was undertaken was in itself flawed by design.
Women’S HealtH actIvISm In canada

The women’s health movement in Canada has focused on three primary issues:
1. the health care delivery system;
2. the development and analysis of the social determinants of health;
3. a commitment to increase participation of all women in all aspects of health care
(Boscoe et al., 2006).
The women’s health movement was founded on an understanding of the intersections
of racism, sexism, and paternalism, as key social constructions and sources of power shaping
health outcomes and delivery (Boscoe et al., 2006). The movement had some success,
lobbying for the creation of women’s health bureaus or departments within provincial and
federal governments and the establishment of women’s health research centres across
Canada. They also advocated for women-centred programs and services within the health
care system, which included equity in hiring practices and promoted the idea that women
were the experts in terms of their bodies and their health needs (Boscoe et al., 2006). In
1993 the Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN) was launched. After years of
networking and consultation, and in spite of funding challenges, the network still exists
(www.cwhn.ca/en/node/44838) with a mandate to improve the health of women and girls

through research and information sharing, education, and advocacy (Boscoe et al., 2006). In
recent years, there have been massive cuts to women’s programs and services, including the
CWHN. Boscoe et al. (2006) note that despite evidence that understanding women’s health
has more to do with social determinants, health care systems still place heavy emphasis on a
biomedical model and invest substantially in the medicalization of women’s health. Women’s
lives are more likely to be medicalized in comparison to men’s, particularly in the areas of
mental health and reproduction (Boscoe, et al., 2006; Lippman, 2004; McGibbon &
McPherson, 2013). Often, serotonin uptake inhibitors are prescribed for depression and
mental health issues. McGibbon and McPherson (2013) point out that depression and stress
among women are often associated with violence, oppression, and structural systemic
problems (for example poverty and housing). Although oppression associated with gender
(or other social identities connected to marginalization) is often a root cause of mental
illness and stress among women, current models of health care tend to over-medicalize
women’s mental health and fail to address structural change or even alternative therapies or
interventions (Boscoe, et al., 2006; McGibbon & McPherson, 2013). Another example is
the continued funding of breast cancer screening through mammography, but limited
funding for prevention programming such as smoking cessation/awareness or addressing
food insecurity (Boscoe et al., 2006). Although mammography is an essential tool in
diagnosing many cases of breast cancer, it is limited by over diagnosis (Marmot et al., 2013)
and is often the sole focus of breast cancer prevention funding (Boscoe et al., 2006).
In 2012, Health Canada eliminated the Women’s Health Contribution Program,
which funded both the CWHN and the National Network on Environments and Women’s
Health. The cuts also severely impacted the Native Women’s Association of Canada, the
Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence in
Winnipeg, and the Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health. In 2012, sweeping
cuts to funding for many Aboriginal wellness programs were made by the federal govern-
ment. This came just six years after the same government had made drastic cuts to Status
of Women Canada (SWC), forcing most of their offices across the country to close. The
Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) faced further budget cuts a year later in
2013, effectively shutting down many of their operations. In 2010, funding for the Sisters
in Spirit project, a database created by NWAC that documented missing and murdered
Indigenous women was terminated. The project had only begun to receive federal funding
in 2005. Continued funding cuts limit research, advocacy, and ultimately women’s health.
Race and class create multiple oppressions and cause more maltreatment for women
of different races or ethnicities and in lower classes (Govender & Penn-Kekana, 2008).
Bias and inequity are engrained within our institutions—including the health care sys-
tem. Govender and Penn-Kekana (2008) note that health care providers end up per-
petuating societal biases and discrimination in health care settings on the basis of class,
gender, and ethnicity/race, and thus the cycle continues. Unfortunately, this bias can
also result in blatant abuse of patients. Govender and Penn-Kekana (2008) document
several experiences of verbal and physical abuse of young women in childbirth or while
trying to access contraception. They found that women who were socio-economically
marginalized were particularly vulnerable to abuse. Therefore, they recommend more

gender sensitization training for health care professionals and women-centred programs
(Govender & Penn-Kekana, 2008).
cultural Safety
Cultural safety is a concept that originated in the 1980s in New Zealand and is rooted in
the strength of Maori self-determination and decolonization as a response to their unpleas-
ant experiences with nursing care (National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2006).
While transcultural nursing promotes the idea that nurses (and other health practitio-
ners) should provide the same care to everyone regardless of differences, cultural safety
espouses that that nurses become respectful of differences including nationality, culture,
age, sex, and political and religious beliefs (NAHO, 2006).
Cultural safety is a post-colonial approach to interactions between subjects and
researchers or patients and health care practitioners (Anderson, et al., 2003). Recognizing
the power differentials that exist among cultural groups is the key to ensuring fair and equi-
table care and research. Reflecting on the political, social, cultural, and historical relation-
ship between the groups reduces the risk of re-victimization, oppression, and power
imbalances. Cultural safety is most commonly used in the health care field, where providers
are encouraged to reflect on historical relationships in order to eliminate their own preju-
dices that might impede their ability to treat and care for a patient (Anderson et al., 2003).
While cultural safety opens the dialogue on power imbalances based on race, some
may argue that it does not address class, gender, or sexuality, all of which affect the treat-
ment and care of patients. Although in theory cultural safety does expand to address these
points, often a unilateral focus is placed on culture when it is implemented. The impor-
tance of acknowledging all of the power imbalances that exist between patients and
health care providers is critical to ensuring the safety of clients (Anderson et al., 2003).
Many health practitioners are being made aware of and applying the concept of cultural
safety. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada include the concept in their
Indigenous Health Values and Principles Statement released in 2013. They note that cultural
safety can reveal the underlying causes of health inequities for Indigenous people—oppression
and a legacy of colonization. Through critical thinking skills and self-reflection, physicians
can nurture cultural safety and better understand upstream barriers (e.g., structural racism,
discriminatory laws, historical legacies, uneven distribution of economic opportunities, and
so on) and their connection to downstream effects (e.g., person-to-person mediated racism,
classism, cycle of poverty, and so on) influencing the health and healing of those defined as
under threat (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 2013).
In 2009, the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada (IPAC) produced a
curriculum framework entitled First Nations, Inuit, Métis Health Core Competencies: A
Curriculum Framework for Undergraduate Medical Education. The curriculum framework was
developed based on a joint IPAC and Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
(AFMC) meeting in 2005 to increase the content of Aboriginal curricula. Strategies include
content that is culturally safe and engaging in patient and community-centred approaches.

They note: “Taking a cultural safety approach to dealing with inequities enables physicians
and other care providers to improve healthcare access for patients, aggregates, and
populations; acknowledge that we are all bearers of culture; expose the social, political, and
historical context of healthcare; and interrupt unequal power relations” (IPAC, 2009, p. 10).
Similarly, in 2009 the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), the Aboriginal Nurses
Association of Canada (ANAC), and the Canadian Association of the Schools of Nurs-
ing (CASN) released their curriculum document entitled “Cultural Competence and
Cultural Safety in Nursing Education—A Framework for First Nations, Inuit and Métis
Nursing.” Their focus was on recruitment and retention of Aboriginal nurses in Canada.
They remind us that cultural safety takes us beyond cultural awareness (acknowledge-
ment of difference), cultural sensitivity (respecting difference), and cultural competence
(focus on skills). Cultural safety is about addressing inequities through education and
power disparities and understanding that cultural safety is actually defined by those access-
ing care (Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, 2009).
Two essential aspects of cultural safety are challenging privilege and addressing power
imbalances. This is accomplished primarily through self-reflection and critical thought
that aims to disrupt oppression, discrimination, and racism within the health care system.
Self-reflection is the first step for the practitioner in creating culturally safe care. In
particular, a person must self-reflect on her or his privilege as a practitioner and the power
infused in that position alone, as well as any other privileges that individual may have.
The practitioner then moves from critical self-reflection into active practice that
challenges racism and stereotypes and addresses inequities (Lavallée, et al., 2009).
An excellent example of incorporating cultural safety into a clinical practice is
Dr. Mona Loutfy’s HIV/AIDS clinic for women in Toronto.2 The clinic’s health question-
naire for HIV-positive patients includes a checklist of the patients’ main concerns outside of
direct health-related concerns, including personal finances, support systems, housing, men-
tal health, relationship health (which opens the door for discussions of intimate partner
violence), parenting, and food security. These practices are adapted to the unique setting
and marginalized situation of clients being served. Recognizing that their clients are not a
single group with homogeneous beliefs, experiences, and values, Dr. Loutfy’s cultural safety
model allows for the clients to explain their own experiences and challenges to accessing
and sticking to their health care interventions. By enabling the clients to identify the barri-
ers they may have to access, the clinic is able to customize their services to better meet the
needs of their client base.
According to Dr. Loutfy and her team, women’s experiences of HIV are unique and
health services must be adapted to their needs. Many women who are HIV positive or who
have AIDS experience stigma in the health care system and need appropriate supports by
health care providers; however, women-centred care is still very rare in Canada (Carter,
et al., 2013). Based on her team’s recent literature review, they found that women will
access holistic, safe, welcoming environments where they feel respected and involved in
the decision-making (Carter et al., 2013). In particular, women want and need to be
involved in the planning, delivery, and evaluation of the service. This may require health

care providers to provide childcare, transportation, care for other family members, or
honoraria. However, women-centred programs have an empowering effect on women and
challenge systemic racism, sexism, power, and privilege.
Dr. Loutfy’s clinic is one of only six in Canada that is women-centred and she regu-
larly provides childcare, honoraria, and transportation to ensure HIV-positive women or
women living with AIDS access much needed culturally safe programming. As you can
see from her digital storytelling video,3 she is addressing particular social determinants of
health, understanding that they interact in complex ways to produce poorer outcomes for
women particularly those whom also are racialized, poor, or experience stigma because of
their health status. She also provides sample exercise and nutritional plans for her patients
as well as a checklist of issues that she discusses with her patients, which includes every-
thing from the flu vaccine to bone density testing to housing and intimate partner vio-
lence. Dr. Loutfy sees many diverse women including Indigenous women, visible minority
women, poor women, wealthy women—they all have one thing in common—they live
with HIV and AIDS and experience stigmatization. By using a model of cultural safety,
holism, and women-centred care she adapts her practice to meet the needs of her patients.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has provided an overview of important discussions within the feminist move-
ment regarding health. We have argued that feminism and health are linked and that all
feminist movements have grappled with the concept of health. Important theories and
frameworks including intersectionality, the social determinants of health, gender-based
analysis, culturally relevant gender-based analysis, cultural safety, and intersectional femi-
nist frameworks. All of these are important when either examining or addressing the
health disparities among women in Canada and around the world. We argued that it is
critical to look beyond biology when examining both individual and community health
and examining root or systemic factors including gender, race, class, sexual orientation,
and a whole variety of social determinants of health that interact in complex and multiple
ways to create a variety of health outcomes for women. These different health outcomes
were measured using socio-demographic data to demonstrate these complex interactions.
Endnotes
1. Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the Interna-
tional Health Conference, New York, June 19–22, 1946; signed on July 22 1946, by the
representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2,
. 00) and entered into force on A ril , .
2. Dr. Loutfy provided the authors with permission to discuss her work. More about her work
can be read at www.mlmedical.com. See also Loutfy, Dr. Mona. “They Call Her Dr Mona.”
Retrieved from an online video cli . outube, January 2, 20 .
3. htt : youtube Mbak e fBA

discussion questions
1. What do theories of intersectionality add to the social determinants of health model?
2. How do race, class, and sexuality intersect to affect an individual’s health?
3. What are some examples of obstacles in accessing health care services that might be faced
by members of different genders, classes, races/ethnicities, and sexual orientations?
4. Discuss social and ideological constructions and the ways in which these constructions
affect health and well-being.
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Index
A LGBT community, 244

material and social conditions, 231
police, 211
violence, 101
Aboriginal Canadians, 296
natural process, 245 Atwood, Margaret, 16
Aboriginal Peoples Survey, 325
population, 241 AUCC, 294
Aboriginal women, 39, 40, 217, 218,
and poverty, 232–235 August, R. A., 269, 271
221, 245, 262
spots, 158 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Canadian-born, 262
white women, 158 (1792), 2
CRC Program, 296
Alberta Human Rights Act, 142
health statistics and health
indicators, 326
alienation, 25
Allen, Louisa, 292 B
Métis lone mothers, 268 Alleyne, G., 331 Babbage, Charles, 92
abortion, 316 Almeida, D. M., 269 baby boomers, 235, 263
adolescent women, 322 Always Causing Legal Unrest Bailey, J., 102
birth control, 316 (ACLU), 20 Bannerji, Himani, 39
illegal, 110 Amanda’s testimonial, 101 Barrett, Nicole, 220
in Canada, 16 ambiguous birth genitalia, 129 Bartky, Sandra L., 25, 101
rights, 14 American Academy of Cosmetic Basen, G., 331
services and workplace Surgery, 165 Battered Woman Syndrome
equality, 220 American lesbian feminist, 18 (BWS), 207
Abu Ghraib prison, 49 American Society of Plastic BBC Urdu service, 105, 106
Ghraib, Abu, 49, 50, 51 Surgeons, 165 Beaujot, R., 266
academy, lack of representation, 297 America’s vulnerability, 153 beauties
ACLU, 20 Anderson, Kim, 188, 318 breast augmentation, 164–167
Adams, Mary Louise, 194 Anderson, R., 266 face bleach, 158
Adorno, Theodor, 94 Angélique, Marie-Joseph, 38 hair, 160–164
Advertising Anglo-Western countries, 162 racial hierarchy of, 160
abject before and ideal after shots anti-colonial revolutionary, 43 recovering, 167–168
featuring, 160 anti-feminist arguments, 291 skin complexion, 157
feature, 159 anti-racist feminism, 48 beauty culture, 148, 162
Natrelle Breast Enhancement critical race and, 26, 56 beauty myth, 166
Collection, 165 and Indigenous feminism, 48 beauty pageants, 152
AFMC, 332 anti-racist scholars, 259 Beck, Glenn, 192
African American women, 164 anti-sex education, 133 Bedford, Terri Jean, 19
ageism, 229–230 Arat-Koc, S., 273, 274 Beijing Declaration and Platform for
attempts to avoid, 230 Arden, Elizabeth, 149 Action, 327
eliminating, 248 Arnup, K., 265 Beliveau, Jean, 194
eradicate sexism, 330 Asian mothers, 271 Benhabib, Seyla, 26
feminists and, 229 assimilation, families’ historical Berger, John, 101
theorizing age, 230–232 experiences of, 268 Beyond Gender Equality, 81
women, 230 Association of Faculties of Medicine binary gender constructions,
aging, 232–235, 241–245 of Canada (AFMC), 332 124–126
attempting to hide, 229 Association of Universities and Canadian culture’s investment, 124
and caring, 241–245 Colleges of Canada biomedicine, 311
embodiment, 245–247 (AUCC), 294 Bird, Florence, 5
feminist political economy Atkinson, Ti-Grace, 15 birth control, 316
of, 231 attitudes, 246 bisexual, 289
financial problems, 248 impact on Black women’s Bi-White, 159
immigrants, 236 beauty, 161 Black Canadians, 48
340
Black feminism, 36, 47, 56 Bouchard, D., 71 Canadian federal and provincial
Combahee River Collective trace Bouchard, P., 290 policies, 275
origins of, 47 bourgeoisie, 9 Canadian frontline anti-violence, 213
history of, 35 Bourne, P., 289 Canadian government’s Live-in
theory, 45 Bourrier-LaCroix, B., 331 Caregiver Program, 73
Black Feminist Thought, 48 Bowlus, Audra, 209 Canadian health trends, 323–324
Black lesbian feminist, 45 Brazilian wax, 164 immigrant women’s, 324–325
Black people, 22 breast augmentation, 164–167 indigenous women’s, 325–327
Black racism, 192 Bridges, J. S., 269 Canadian Journal of Women and
Black Skin, White Mask, 43 Briggs, Laura, 67, 75 Law, 47
Black women, 26, 148, 259, 289 Brigham, S. M., 273 Canadian Labour Code, 215
beauty, 160 Brown, Gordon, 106 Canadian mothers’ management, 260
Black mothers, 271 Brownridge, Douglas, 218 Canadian Nurses Association
intersectionality matrix, 259 burdens, 232 (CNA), 333
lives, 46 Butalia, Urvashi, 81 Canadian Old Age Security, 238
long-standing ghettoization in butch/femme culture, 139 Canadian Research Institute for the
service professions, 48 Butler, Judith, 24, 91, 124, Advancement of Women
mainstream/white feminist 126, 185 (CRIAW), 321, 329
movement, 47 Butler, Robert, 229 Canadian sex workers, 19
political organizing of, 4 BWS, 207 Canadian welfare state, 256
sexually wild and Canadian Women’s Health Network
aggressive, 148
Blackwood, Evelyn, 132, 133, 134
C (CWHN), 330
Canadian Women’s Suffrage
Canada
bloggers, 95 cultural explanations, 79 Association in 1883, 3
BlogTV, 104 Disabled Women’s Network, 218 caregivers
BMI. See Body Mass Index (BMI) female university, 2 ailing parents, 244
bodies foreign-born, population, 324 objective/subjective burdens, 245
beauty (See beauties) gay and lesbian bookstores, 17 of parents, 244
Black feminists, and Indigenous health insurance to cover, 166 of spouses and children, 244
feminists, 36 immigrant women, 262 unpaid, 245
breasts, 164–167 labour force participation, 6 caregiving, 241–245
cis-male and cis-female, 140 lone-mother families, 268 care work, 72, 232
fit, 149 minority students, 294 for adult children, 263
hair, 160–164 mother’s duty, 149 gendered, 243
hyper-sexualizing looks, 151 reserves and residential schools, 44 global economic shifts, 245
ideal, 246 same-sex marriage, 124 migration, 72
projects today, 151–152 violence against women, 201–222 quality of life, 245
projects, women, 151–152 woman abuse, 213 shaped by social structures, 242
skin, 157–160 women’s equality with men, 5 shaped by state policies, 245
victimization, 104 women’s health activism, 311 unevenly distributed, 243–244
vs. #mind#technology, 93–95 working-class, 149 caring, 241–245
weight, 153–155 Canada Child Tax Benefit, 274 global economic shifts, 245
women’s (See women) Canada Pension Plan, 238 quality of life, 245
bodily perfection, 25 Canada Research Chairs Program receiving, 241–245
Body Mass Index (BMI),153, 154 (CRC), 296 social structures, 242–243
body projects, women, Canada’s Criminal Code, 19 state policies, 245
151–152 Canadian Association of University work, gendered, 243
body weight, eating, 153–155 Teachers (CAUT), 294 work, unevenly distributed,
Boily, I., 290 Canadian-born populations, 324 243–244
bondage, 161 Canadian Charter of Rights and Cartesian philosophy, 94
Booth, Karen, 67 Freedoms, 20 Cartesian dualism, 92, 93–95, 111
border crossing, 79 Canadian families Cartesian dualistic matrix, 111
Bordo, Susan, 26, 101, 157 market and family care Cartesian separation of mind and
Boscoe, M., 331 relations, 256 body, 91
Index 341
Carty, Linda Communist Manifesto (1848/1998), 9 CWHN, 330
Linda Carty states, 21 comparative feminist studies, 69 cyber-and offline space, 108
Casgrain, Thérèse, 3 “Compulsory Heterosexuality and cyberbullying, 102
CAUT, 294 Lesbian Existence,” 137 cyberspace, 91, 92
celebrated, 152 Conference Board of Canada, 234 post modern quilt-like nature
CEO, 183 conflating race with of, 92
Chapin, Harry, 177 indigeneity, 46 cyborgs, 111–113
chief executive officers (CEO), 183 conflict tactics scale (CTS), 211 cycle of abuse, 207
child-bearers, 2 Connell, Raewyn, 175
child care, paying, 272
Children’s Aid Society, 209, 211
consciousness-raising (CR)
groups, 202
D
dangerous sexual offender, 206
children’s charity commercials, 156 sessions, 14
dark skin, 159, 160
Chilly Climate, 216, 298 constantly cutting, 103
Darwin’s theories of evolution, 163
Chilly Collective, 298 contemporary Davis, Angela, 21
Chowdhury, Elora Halim, 79 conceptualizations, 312 Dawson, Emily, 119
chromosomal make-up, 130 context collapse, 97 Dawson, M., 205
chronic traumatic encephalopathy contingent faculty, 297 Dean, Michelle, 100
(CTE), 193 Cooky, C., 191 de Beauvoir, Simone, 23
cis-bodied folks, 140 corporal modernity, 70 Declaration on the Elimination of
civil rights, 46 Cosmo, 150 Violence against Women, 77
Cixous, Hélène, 24, 112 Costa, Mariarosa Dalla, 10 decolonizing anti-racism, 48
class Coulombe, S., 261 Dekeseredy, Walter, 214
capitalist economic foundation, 93 CPP/QPP payments, 237 Deleuze, Gilles, 53
Marxist theory and, 8 CR, 202 deliberate self-harm (DSH), 103
and masculinities, 186–187 Cranswick, K., 241 Democratic Republic of
multiple oppressions, 318 CRC, 296 Congo, 77
social, 231 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 46, democratization, of gender
classroom 216, 317 relations, 285
all-female, 3 CRIAW. See Canadian Research Denison, Flora MacDonald, 4
feminist solidarity model, 69 Institute for the dependents, 232
safe and respectful, 300 Advancement of Women depression, 312
Clinton, Bill President (CRIAW) Derrida, Jacques, 23, 24
United States President Bill critical race theory, 35, 319 Desai, J., 71
Clinton, 121 cross-cultural sexuality studies, Desai, Manisha, 83
clitoris, 129 123–124 Detournay, D., 71
cluttered nests, 272 Papua New Guinea, 122 diabetes, 325
CNA, 333 CTE, 193 Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94
Codjoe, Henry, 289 CTS, 211 disabilities, 188–190
Coleman, Rebecca, 168 cultural feminism, 18 disability, 45
Collins, Patricia Hill, 48 cultural genocide, 40, 218 Black woman, 26
colonialism, 12, 36–37 cultural historians, 148 Disabled Women’s Network of
definitions, 37–41 culturalization of racism, 44 Canada, 218
legacies of, 35 culturally different, 50 disciplining, 23
settler, 40, 57 Culturally Relevant Gender lifelong project, 246
social and/or economic status, 329 Application Protocol norms, 247
colonial racism, 319 (CRGAP), 328 distributive resources, 73
colonization cultural norms, 150 Dobson, Amy Shields, 91
families’ historical experiences cultural safety, 332–334 Doe, Jane, 206
of, 268 cultures Domestic Abuse Intervention
multiple oppressions, 318 and race, 44–45 Project, 208
strategies, 42 of rape, 81 domestic violence, 221
Combahee River Collective, 47 culture values, 148 domestic workers, 273
common interests, 70 uneasy primacy of images, domination of nature, 94
Communist, 127 148–151 dowry murders, 77, 79, 81
342 Index
DSH, 103 enlightenment, 1 gerontologists, 230
Dua, Enakshi, 7 Ensler, Eve, 17 girl-power, 110
Duggan, Lisa, 141 epidemiologists, 153 “global” and “international,” 63
Duggan, M., 98 EPZ, 78 intersectionality, 45–49
Dworkin, Andrea, 17 Esmail, A., 265 lesbian, 18, 125
essentialism, 20, 21, 46, 75 Marxist, 9–12
E ethnic, 318
ethnicity, 236, 317
myriad of, 260
post-colonial, 36
eating disorders ethnocentrism, 320 race problem, 35
psychiatric treatment, 155 European Institute for Crime scholars, 257
young women in North Prevention and Control, 221 Marxist, 258
America, 155 European liberal democratic socialist approaches, 258, 260
economic benefits, 186 rule, 7 socialist, defining, 8–9
economic privilege, 15 European scientific racism, 37 social reproductive work, 232
economic self-reliance, 235 exhaustion, 298 Western/white, 42
education export processing zones (EPZ), 78 writing, 147
challenge, 284
Feminism Blog, 108
global partnership for, 104
higher (See education, F Feminism without Borders:
Decolonizing Theory,
higher) Facebook, 44, 93, 98, 103, 105,
165, 216 Practicing Solidarity, 69
Hornosty’s market-based feminist
approach, 301 Fallopius, Gabriel, 128
Faludi, Susan, 179 anti-violence, 210
lower (See education, lower) health issue, 311–334
McUniversity, rise of, 301 family, 14–15
family care, 266 intersectionality, analytical
pedagogies, 300–301 tool, 186
relations, 257
education, higher, 293 pedagogies, 300–301
transnational management of,
professoriate political economy, 13
273–274
Chilly Climate, 298–299 perspectives, 230–232
family friendly policies, 271
faculty experiences, postmodern feminism
family penalty, 267
297–298 challenges, 22
family policies
statistical overview, poststructural and postmodern, 21
in Canada, 2014, 274–277
295–298 sex positive, 220
Family policies in Canada,
education leaders, 286 work critiqued, 284
2014, 274
contemporary research, 289–293 feminist aesthetic, 167
Farrell, Barry, 176
crisis for boys, 289–291 Feminist as Explorer Model, 70
Farrell, Warren, 176
race/gender, intersections of, feminist faculty, 299
fashion magazines, 152
291–292 feminist pedagogies, 300
Fateau, Marc Feigen, 176
schooling, 292–293 female body, excess hair, 162 feminist political economy, 231
sexuality, 292–293 female genitalia, 131 reproduction, 232
gender research, 284–285 female-headed households, 320 feminist scholars, 264
students, 286–289 female separation, 18 feminist solidarity model, 69
curriculum, 288–289 female sexual relations, 16 Feminist Theory: From Margin to
differential treatment, 286–287 female transitioned to male Center, 48
teachers/principals, 285–286 (FTM), 219 feminization of poverty, 11
Ehrenreich, B., 73 feminism, 1, 109, 229–230 feminization of work, 13
Ellick, Adam B., 105 in academy, 299–300 femme femininity, 139
embodied offline, 102 American radical, 229 Fernadez, L., 69
embodied world, 102 anti-racist and Black, 36, 259 Fernandez-Kelly, M. P., 84
embodiment, 245–247 critical-race and anti-racist, 26 Figueroa, Mónica, 168
Employment Equity Act, 319 cultural, 18 Fiske, J., 272
Employment Insurance (EI) Act, decolonizing research, 75–77 FitFat, 154
256, 275 decolonizing thought, 74–75 Fluri, Jennifer, 70
empowerment, 147 docile and dexterous, 73 Focus on Black Women, 47
Engels, Friedrich, 9 gender and education, 285 football safety, 192
Index 343
forced marriages, 77 Ghomeshi, Jian, 184 Harstock, Nancy, 26
Foucault, Michel, 23, 101, 131 Gill, Rosalind, 150 Hartmann, H., 258
Frank, B., 293 Gimlin, Debra, 166 having sex, 120
Franklin II, Clyde W., 187 girlhood health
Franks, Mary Anne, 91 age of social media, 90 Canadian demographics, 321
freedom of choice, 2, 4, 5, 7 girls’ dependence, 287 Canadian health trends, 323–324
freer, 134 Glamour, 161 immigrant women’s, 324–325
Freire, Paulo, 300 global care chain, 13, 73 indigenous women’s, 325–327
Frenette, M., 261 global economic restructuring, 72 cultural safety, 332–334
Fresh, Joe, 66 impacts of, 64 defining, 311–313
Friedman, Jaclyn, 80 global feminism, 68–72 as feminist issue, 315–320
FTM, 219 Global Gender Gap, 6 gender bias, 320–321
globalization, 12 gender equity, 320–321, 321–322
critics of, 63 social determinants, 313–315,
G cultures, social interactions, 321–322
Garland-Thomson, Rosemary, 151 political structures, and transnational concerns, 322–323
Gaskell, J., 288 national economies, 64 healthy self-governance, 97
gay baby boomers, MetLife survey feminist scholarship, 80 healthy sex, 136
of, 235 modern world system, 37 hegemonically, 95
Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), 142 negative effects of, 80 Hernandez Jarvis, L., 269
gay teachers, 293 role of gender, 12 Hess, Amanda, 99–104, 107
Gazso-Windle, A., 265 transnational feminists, 63–65 heterosexual privilege, 138
GBA, 328 violence against women, 78 The Hijabi Girl, 292
GDP, 11 globalization-cum-imperialism, 63 Hinduja, S., 103
Gee, James Paul, 246 global sisterhood, 21 Hindustan Lever Limited, 159
gender, 42, 45, 317 global warming, 153 historical materialism, 23
based materialist analysis, 13 Goffman, Erving, 96 HIV/AIDS treatment, 322, 323, 326,
binary constructions, 124–126 Goldberg, David Theo, 36 333, 334
coherence of, 124 Google Plus, 98 Hochschild, A. R., 72, 73
conforming behaviour, 125 Govender, V., 331 Hollywood action movies, 182
cross-culturally, studying, 123–124 Gramsci, Antonio, 181 Homicide Survey, 217
differences in cultural context, grandmothering, lesbians’ enactment homophobia, 184
122–123 of, 242 homophobic name calling, 125
distinctions, 285 grassroots, 76 dyke, 125
hierarchies, 191 Green, Joyce, 318 pussy, 125
identity, 131 Gremillion, Helene, 155 sissy, 125
inequality, 284 Grewal, I., 65, 70, 80 homosexuality, 25, 130
inequity, 321 gross domestic product (GDP), 11 American males, 177
intersections of, 291–292 Grover, Vrinda, 81 compulsory institution of,
looking relations, 148 Grzywacz, J. G., 269 137–138
multiple oppressions, 318 GSS (Statistics Canada General grandmothers, 242
organization of subjectivity, 95 Social Survey), 203, 218 naturalness of, 126
regimes, 181 Guendozi, J., 267 penetrative sex, 139
research, 284–285 homo-social enactment, 185
specific discriminatory, 230 H honour killings, 17, 77
teachers/principals, 285–286 hair, excess, 162 Horkheimer, Max, 94
vs. sex, 122 Hall reading, 104 housework, paying, 272
work, 125 Hall, Roberta, 298 HRSD, 276
gender-based analysis (GBA), 328 Hall’s media model, 102 Huffington Post, 107
gender equity, health, 321–322 Hall, Stuart, 74, 95 humanize, 43
George, Pamela, 51, 52 Handmaid’s Tale, The, 16 Human Resources and Social
German Ideology, The, 9 harassment, 161, 215 Development Canada
Gerschick, T. J., 189 Haraway, Donna, 92, 111, 112 (HRSD), 276
Ghaill, M., 292 Harris, Angela P., 46 human sexual variation, 124
344 Index
human trafficking, 77
Hunt, Sarah, 48
J Levine, Judith, 143
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 23
Jackson, S., 93
hygiene, 243 Lewinsky, Monika, 121
James, Carl E., 187
hyper-capitalism, 183 LGBTQT2-S people, 119, 140
James, Lebron, 188, 192
hyper-heterosexual playboy, 182 liberal feminism, 1–5, 4
James, Selma, 10
hyperpigmentation, 158 contemporary, 5–7
Janeway Children’s Hospital, 103
critiques of, 7–8
Jemimas, Aunt, 48
I Jiwani, Yasmin, 212
global dimensions, 5–7
liberal feminists, 1, 3, 5, 8, 257
identity John, Mary E., 81
liberal welfare states, 257
kits, 246 Johnny, R., 272
LICO. See low-income cut-off
sextortian, 91 Johnson, H., 205
(LICO)
terrorist, 188 Juarez, Ciudad, 78
Liu, Laurin, 7
ideological construction, in social
Live-In Caregiver Program
roles, 316
IFFs, 329–330
K (LCP), 273
Kaplan C., 65, 70, 80 Loppie Reading, C., 315
image technologies, 149
Kassam, Alnaaz, 292 L’Oréal, 159
imagined community, 39
Katz, Jonathan, 131 Loutfy, Mona, 333, 334
immigrant women, 236–237, 263, 318
Kauanui, J. Kéhaulani, 46 low-income cut-off (LICO), 262,
immigration, 72
Kehler, Michael, 292 268, 321
imperialism, 37
key-lock analogy, 128 low-income lone mothers, work-
definitions, 37–41
Kimmel, Michael, 290 family conflict experiences
incest, 17
Kimmel, M. S., 175 of, 268
Indigenous feminists, 48, 55
King, Tiffany Lethabo, 56 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 23
Indigenous Physicians of Association
Kobayashi, K. M., 272
of Canada (IPAC), 332
Indigenous societies, 123
Koedt, Anne, 16, 136–137
Kontos, P. C., 246
M
Indigenous theory, 35 MacKinnon, Catherine, 17, 18, 47
Kozyra, Katarzyna, 150
inferiority complex, 158 MacLeod, Linda, 202
Kristeva, Julia, 24
informal support, exchanges, 271 MacMurchy, Helen, Dr., 316
Innes, Robert Alexander, 188 Madden, M., 99
Instagram, 93, 96 L Mahmood, S., 71
International Day of the Girl, 90 labour, gender-based division of, 241 Makai, Gul, 105
International Monetary Fund, 64 Lacan, Jacques, 23, 25 male-headed households, 320
internet, hub-based system of, 95 land theft, 40 male sexual relations, 16
interrupt unequal power relations Lang, Sabine, 123 Malson, Helen, 157
(IPAC), 333 Laqueur, Thomas, 128 Manalansan, Martin F., 141
Intersectional Feminist Frameworks Latina/Chicana feminist theory, 45 Mandell, N., 262
(IFFs), 329–330 Lawrence, Bonita, 38 Manet’s Olympia, 150
intersectionality, 47, 49, 55 LCP, 273 maquiladoras, 78
concept of, 49–53 LEAF, 17 Maracle, Lee, 45
possibilities and limitations, 53–57 learned helplessness, 207 Marchand, M., 73
intersectionality, tracing, 45–49 Lebovitch, Amy, 19 marginalized populations, 317
intersex, 130 Lee, D.-H., 91 Married Women’s Property Act, 4
inter-sex challenges, Platonic Legal Education and Action Fund Marshall, Katherine, 263, 264
ideal, 130 (LEAF), 17 Martino, W., 293
Intersex Society of America Lerner, G., 259 Martin, Stephanie, 213
(ISSA), 131 lesbians, 125, 132, 289 Marxist feminists, 9–12
intimate partner violence, 219 feminism, 18 Marx, Karl, 9, 23, 93
IPAC, 332 and cultural feminism, 18 masculine elite, 193
Irigaray, Luce, 25 gay movements, 136 masculinities, 175
Islamophobia, 188 identification, 137, 138 acceptable manhood, 185
Islamic fundamentalist political MetLife survey of, 235 anti-feminist arguments, 291
movement, 105 mothers, 271 appropriate, 185
Islamic laws, 70 teachers, 293 class, 186–187
Index 345
masculinities (continued) migration, 72–73 National Football League
disabilities, 188–190 Miller, A. S., 189 (NFL), 193
early writings, 175–180 Mill, Harriet Taylor, 2 National Hockey League (NHL),
hegemonic, 191, 193, 194, 289 Minh-ha, Trinh T., 42 191, 193
concept, 181–185 minoritizing, 138 National Women’s Studies Association
heteronormative, 182 Mire, A., 158, 159 of the United States
intersectionality, 186 Mirza, H. S., 292 (NWSA), 299
later writings, 180–181 misogyny Native Women’s Association of
manual labour, 186 mainstreaming misogyny, 180 Canada (NWAC), 52, 217,
marginalized, subordinate, and Mitchell, Margaret, 202, 215 221, 328, 331
complicit, 184 MNCs, 63 nature body vs. media technology,
North American writings Moallem, M., 71 93–95
on, 175 modernity, 36–37 neo-colonialism, 12
as performance, 185–186 modern world system, 37 neoliberal globalization, 183
race, 187–188 Mohanty, C. T., 41, 69, 74–76 neo-liberal policies, 12
social location, 190 mommy track, 271 neo-liberal weakening, 256
social production of hegemonic, 190 Mongia, Radika, 67 NFL, 193
sporting culture, 190–195 Montreal Massacre, 203 NHL, 191, 193
subordinate, concept of, 184 Monture, Patricia, 40 Nichols, Jack, 176, 178
understanding, 181–195 Morgan, R., 68 Nixon, Kimberly, 21, 24
maternal feminists, 3, 4 Morimura, Yasumasa, 150 Nomaguchi, K., 268
Mattingly, M. J., 266 Morris, E., 287 non-Aboriginal populations, 326
Maxim, P., 262 motherhood, 14 non-permanent faculty, 297
McAfee survey, 216 marriage and, 127 non-suicidal self-harming
McCall, Leslie, 45 naturalness of, 15 behaviours, 103
McClung, Nellie, 3 work–family conflict, 267 non-Western sexualities, 134
McCormick, Gladys, 67 mothers’ experiences of, North American Free Trade
McCoy, L., 289 266–270 Agreement (NAFTA), 78
McDonald, D. A., 269 mummy-baby relations, 133 Novogrodsky, M., 288
McElroy, Wendy, 91 mother’s duty, 149 Nuclear families, 263
McGibbon, E., 331 Mount Allison University in New
McLaren, A., 288
Brunswick, 2
MRM, 179, 180
O
McMullin, J. A., 265 Obama, Barack, 192
multiculturalism, 48
McPherson, C., 331 Obeng Gyimah, S., 262
multinational corporations
McRobbie, Angela, 91 obesity epidemic, 154
(MNCs), 63
McUniversity, 293, 301 objectivity, 96
Mulvey, Laura, 101
Mead Old Age Supplement, 239
Murderball, 189
Tchambuli, 123 Ong, A., 84
Muslim culture, 134
media ideology, 93 online space, 90, 91
MySpace, 103
media technology vs. nature body, On Male Liberation, 176
“Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, The”
93–95 Ontario Human Rights
16, 136
Mediterranean, 163 Commission, 330
Mytho-Poetical Men’s Movement, 179
Memmi, Albert, 319 O’Reilly, Andrea, 15
Men Organisation for Economic
early writings, 175–180 N Co-operation and
liberation movement, 177, 178 Nagar, R., 66, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77 Development (OECD),
sport, social location, 190 Naples, N., 68 289, 290
Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), Narayan, Uma, 78, 79 post-secondary education, 295
179, 180 Nari Samata Yojana (NSY), 76 orientalism, 41
mental ill health, 312 Nash, Jennifer, 45 Origin of the Family, Private Property
Messner, M., 191, 192 Nasser, Mervat, 157 and the State, The, 9
MetLife survey, of lesbian and gay National Basketball Association Orza, A. M., 269
baby boomers, 235 (NBA), 192, 193 Overall, Christine, 139, 184
346 Index
P poststructuralism, 23
poverty, 232–235
radical feminism, 14, 20, 259
analyses, 15
paid labour force, 10
racialized, 236–237 critiques of, 20–21
paid work, transnational management
rates, among Canadian racialized definition of, 14
of, 273–274
groups, 236 global and contemporary
Panjabi, Kavita, 81
Power and Control Wheel, 208 dimensions, 19–20
parental leave policy
primitive societies, 123 male violence against women, 16
role of state, 277
Programme for International pornography, 16–17
ParticipACTION, 154–155
Student Assessment reproduction, 16–17
partner
(PISA), 289 sites of oppression, 14–15
care to, 261
proletariat, 9 theoretical engagement, 13, 17
and children, 205
Pronger, Brian, 191 Raewyn Connell’s theory, of multiple
sexual demands, 214
prostitution, 220 masculinities, 181
stalking behaviour, 201
Proulx, M., 290 Ramamurthy, Priti, 76
violence, intimate, 207–214
psychological distress, 267 rape, 17, 21, 202
Pastrana, Julia, 163
psychosocial emergency, 130 in Canadian law, 204
Patchin, J. W., 103
Puar, Jasbir, 53 crisis centres, 206
patriarchy
Pygmy, Aka, 122 gang, 80
Father Land, 15
heteropatriarchy, 56 gang raped, in South Delhi, 80
male privilege, 230 Q illegal for husband, 202
by men, 15, 184
sites of oppression, 14–15 Quebec legislature, 3
traditional female subject, 69 Queer Assemblages, 54 rape-prone/rape-free, 222
patriotism, 320 in South Delhi, 80
the Indian gang rape, 80, 81
Peiss, Kathy, 149
Pelley, Scott, 193 R Vancouver Rape Relief and
Penha-Lopes, V., 272 Raby, Rebecca, 293 Women’s Shelter, 21
Penn-Kekana, L., 331 race, 2, 12, 35, 36–37, 45, 180, Raymond, Janice, 21
187–188, 317 Razack, Sherene H., 39
pensions, precarious, 238–241
and culture, 44–45 RCMP, 218, 327
Phadke, Shilpa, 81
definitions, 37–41 Reality TV, 165
Phoenix, A., 291, 292
physical violence sexual, 208 feminist scholars of, 41 Reay, D., 292
PISA, 289 ideas and representations, 41 reformulation, 189
Plaza, Rana, 66 intersections of, 291–292 refugees, 324
plugged-in girls, 97–99, 113 masculinities, 187 Registered Retirement Savings Plans
police attitudes, 211 multiple oppressions, 318 (RRSP), 238, 239
political-economic analysts, 234 racial hierarchy, of beauty, 160 Renold, Emma, 293
pornography, 16–17 racialization, 43–44, 158 representation, 41–42
anti-pornography proponents, 17 genealogy of, 43 Results-Only Work Environment
child, 127 racialized immigrants, poverty rates (ROWE), 271
popular media and online, 16 among Canadian, 236 retirement, postponed, 238–241
and prostitution, 220–221 racially/ethnically diverse revolutionary, anti-colonial, 43
post-colonial theory, 35 families, 272 Revolutionary Association of
postmodern feminism racism, 12, 40, 324, 328 Women of Afghanistan
defining, 21–22 adolescent girls, 166 (RAWA), 71
feminist critiques, 25–26 anti-black, 36 Rice, Ray, 184
historical influences, Black people, 2 Rich, Adrienne, 18, 137–139
23–25 colonial, 319 Riel, Métis Louis, 40
postmodernism, 23 culturalization of, 44 Ritzer, G., 301
poststructural feminism gender-based oppression, 12 Roehling, P. V., 269
definng, 21–22 social and institutional Rooks, Noliwe, 158
feminist critiques, 25–26 manifestations, 320 ROWE, 271
historical influences, systemic, 259 Royal Canadian Mounted Police
23–25 radical cultural feminists, 18 (RCMP), 218, 327
Index 347
Royal Commission on the Status sexual assault, 207, 217, 327 SFS, 234
of Women, 1970 services, 316 Shuttleworth, R., 189
(RCSW), 5 victims of, 201 Silver, C., 241
RRSP, 238, 239 Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, 205 Sisterhood Is Global Institute, 20
Rubin, Gayle, 91, 135 sexual attraction, 124 skin complexion, 157
Rubinstein, Helena, 149 sexual coercion in a dating skin-lightening market, 159
Ruhm, C., 276 relationship, 77 skin-whiteners, 159
Runyan, A., 73 sexual disqualification, 246 skin whitening, 159
sexual exploitation, 246 slavery, 2, 35, 157
S sexual harassment, 62, 184,
214–216, 316–317
slut-shaming, 220
SlutWalk, grass-roots action, 206
Sabo, Don, 191
sexual identity vocabulary, 125 Smith, Andrea, 40, 123
Said, Edward W., 41
sexuality, 45, 135, 180 Smith, D., 289
Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 222
assault underage girls, 184 Smith, Dorothy E., 94
Sandler, Bernice, 298
charting human sexual diversity, 132 SMSs, 111
Sangtin Yatra, 77
coherence of, 124 Snapchat images, 96, 98
SAPS, 13
concepts, 135 SNS, 92
Sawyer, Jack, 176
constructing, 119–120 social anxiety, 124
Sayer, L. C., 267
Schellenberg, G., 241 cross-culturally, constructing, social censure, 242
Schwartz, Martin, 214 133–135 social class, 180
Scott, S., 93 expendable, 136 social determinants
Scott, Valerie, 19 first thoughts, 120–121 health, 321–322
Second Sex, The, 23 heterosexual socialist feminism, 8, 11, 258
Sedgwick, Eve, 138 compulsory institution of, contemporary analyses, 12–13
Segal, Lynn, 139 137–138 critiques of, 13–14
Seitz, Shannon, 209 invention of, 131–132 defining, 8–9
Self Employed Women’s Association privilege, 138–139 global trends, 12–13
(SEWA), 84 queering, 139–142 historical background, 9–12
self-harming behaviours, 103 history of, 126–127 situated knowledge, 26
self-harming competitions, 103 human variation, 129–132 social media, 90, 95–97, 111,
self-identified Third World intersex, 129–132 112, 113
feminist, 79 one-sex model, 128 shameless photos, 91
self-injury behaviour, 103 sexual differentiation, perilous social mobility, 188
self-starvation, 156 route of, 128–129 social networking sites (SNS), 92
self-surveillance, 101 sexual normalcy social reproductive work, 232
Settler colonialism, 40 constructing, 136 social transformation, 300
SEWA, 84 feminist challenges, 136–137 socio-economic structure, 231
sex strong social constructionist Sohn, S.-H., 91
assignment, at birth, 120 view, 135 somatic dimorphism, 129
coherence of, 124 two-sex model, 128 Somerville, Siobhan, 131
first thoughts, 120–121 young people’s, antinomies of, spaces in-between, 96
needs, 121 142–143 speak bitterness, 14
oppression, 14 sexually transmitted infections Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 42, 68
response, 121 (STIs), 317 sporting culture, 190–195
vs. gender, 122 sexual orientation, 189, 317 Staples, Robert, 187
sex/gender distinction, 285 sexual potential, 132 state, 14–15
sexism, 328 sexual regulation, 136 parental leave policy, role of, 277
cultural approaches, 44 sexual stereotypes, 102 Status of Women Canada (SWC), 331
sexist visual society, 148 sexual undifferentiation, 128 Steeves, V., 102
sex role, 177 sex vs. gender, 122 STIs, 317
sex trafficking, 19 sex work, 22 Stobert, S., 241
sexual abuse, 127, 134, 135, 218, sex worker advocacy groups, 220 Stowe, Emily Howard, Dr., 3
219, 221, 289 sexy activities, 91 stress, chronic, 315
348 Index
structural adjustment programs Tuana, Nancy, 136 Violence Against Women Survey
(SAPS), 13 Tuten, T. L., 269, 271 (VAWS), 203
stylization, 185 Twitter, 44, 93, 98, 192 Canadian anti-violence policy, 209
subjectivity, gendered organization Tyack, D., 286 women’s fear of violent sexual
of, 95 tyranny of reproduction, 16 assault, 216
Sumatra, West, 134 visible minority, 258, 318
surveillance, 96
Survey of Financial Security U Vogue, 150
Ugly Betty, 106, 107
(SFS), 234
Swarr, A., 66, 71, 74 “Under Western Eyes”, 75 W
Unemployment Insurance (UI) Walia, H., 67
Swat Valley of Pakistan, 90, 105
Act, 275 Walker, Madame C. J., 149, 160
Valley, Swat, 106
UNIFEM, 19 Wallcott, Rinaldo, 187
Swift, John, 188
United Nations Department of War on Terror, 70
Swope, H. E., 269
symbolic order, 23 Economic and Social Affairs, Way, J. T., 67
2010, 320, 322 Wedgewood, N., 189
United Nations Development Werbin, Kenneth, 96
T Fund for Women Western colonization, 158
Taguba, Antonio M., 49 (UNIFEM), 19 Western cultures, 147
Take Back the Night, 14, 229 United Nations Gender Equality uneasy primacy of images, 148–151
Taylor, Sanchez, 166 Index, 6 weight/eating, 153–155
teachers’ gendered, 287 United Nations, site for women, 148
TERF, 21 advocacy, 83 Western societies, 184
terrorist identity, 188 Wheaton, B., 267
Third World women, 75
This Sex Which Is Not One, 25
V White Ribbon Campaign, 181
White, S., 331
Vachani, Shweta, 81
Thobani, Sunera, 39, 71 Wiegman, Robin, 55
vaginal orgasms, 137
Thomas, Calvin, 140 Wien, F., 315
VAWS, 203
Thomas, W., 141 Williams, George, Sir, 299
veiling practices, isolating, 71
Thornhill, Esmeralda, 47 Willis, Paul, 186
Todd, A., 99, 104 victims, of sexual assault, 201 Wilson, N., 189
Toronto Women’s Literary Club, 3 Vines, 96 Wilson, S. J., 262
traditional-modern binary axis, 71 violence, 40, 194 Winant, Howard, 37
trans-exclusive radical feminist dating violence, intimate Wing, Adrien K., 71
(TERF), 21 partner, 214 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 2
transgender feminists, 21 domestic, 221 Woman Of Color (WOC), 53
transnational, 68 gender symmetry, intimate partner, women
business masculinity, 183 211–213 Aboriginal, 39, 40, 217, 218, 221,
families (See transnational identifying problem, 202–204 245, 262
feminism) against Indigenous women, 218 Canadian-born, 262
transnational seniors, 237–238 intimate partner, 207–214 CRC Program, 296
transnational feminism, 62, male violence free society, 222 health statistics and health
76, 273 men’s, 222 indicators, 326
globalization, 63–65 offline threats of, 107 Métis lone mothers, 268
international/global, 67 types of, 204 absolute difference, 129
learning and teaching model, 70 intimate partner, 207–214 Canadian immigrant, 324–325
local/global, 65–66 sexual assault, 204–207 Canadian indigenous, 325–327
representation, 74 sexual harassment, 214–216 experience in film, 101
solidarity activism, 80 against women, 16–17, 77–80 globalization and violence, 78
teaching practices, 70 women and intersectionality, health activism in Canada, 330–332
transnational feminist theory, 54 216–220 help-seeking behaviour, 213
transnationalism against women in Canada, heterosexual, 219
role of gender, 12 201–222 immigrant, 236–237
Truth, Sojourner, 45 women internationally, 221–222 labour force participation, 264
Index 349
women (continued) Women’s Christian Temperance World Conference on Social
minority immigrants, 237 Union (WCTU), 3 Determinants of
racial and ethnic representation, 295 Women’s Health Contribution Health, 313
saving, 80–83 Program, 331 World Economic Forum, 6
sexual urges, 127 Women’s labour force World Health Organization (WHO),
single-parent homes, 11 participation, 263 221, 311
studies/feminism in academy, women teachers, Ontario World Rio Corporation, 160
299–300 federation, 288 WWF, 84
unattached, 235–236 Woodward, Kathleen, 231
violence against, 77, 208 worker solidarity, 83–84 Y
violence in Canada, 201–222 strategies for managing, Young, M., 267
Women Against Pornography 270–272 Young Women’s Christian
(WAP), 20 Working Women’s Forum Association (YWCA), 3
Women in Public Space, 108 (WWF), 84 Yousafzai, Malala, 90, 104–111,
Women’s and Gender Studies et workplace policies, family-friendly, 105, 106
Recherches Féministes 266 YouTube, 93
(WGSRF), 300 World Bank, 64 YWCA, 3
350 Index

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Feminist

Sixth Edition Nancy Mandell • Jennifer Johnson

Vice-President, Cross Media and Publishing Services: Gary Bennett

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Chapter 1 Theorizing Women’s Oppression and Social Change: Liberal,

1 Theorizing Women’s Oppression and Social Change: Liberal,

2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 35

4 Stitch the Bitch: #girl#socialmedia#body#human 90

5 Constructing Gender, Regulating Sexuality 119

6 Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture 147

7 Men, Masculinities, and Feminism 175

8 Violence Against Women in Canada 201

9 Challenging Old Age: Women’s Next Revolution 229

10 Mothers’ Maintenance of Families Through Market

11 Women and Education 284

12 Health As a Feminist Issue 311

Carrie Bourassa is Professor of Indigenous Health Studies at First Nations University of

xii Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors xiii

xiv Notes on Contributors

LIberaL FemInIsm: Key HIstorIcaL PoInts,

contemporary and Global dimensions of Liberal

critiques of Liberal Feminism

Historical background: marxist and

the contemporary and Global Landscapes

critiques of socialist Feminism

sites of oppression: Patriarchy, the state,

critiques of radical Feminism

PoststructuraL and Postmodern FemInIsm

Feminist critiques of Poststructural

race, colonIalIsm, modernIty

36 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

some definitions: colonialism, Imperialism,

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 37

38 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

In North America, settler colonialism is predicated on land theft, genocide, and

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 39

40 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Race and Representation

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 41

42 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Much of western European history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 43

Race and Culture

[C]ulture talk is clearly a double-edged sword. It packages difference as inferiority and

44 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 45

46 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 47

48 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

The “How” of Intersectionality

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 49

50 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 51

52 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

some Possibilities and limitations

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 53

54 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 55

Indigenous feminists prioritize the goal of decolonization. Intersectionality may be an

The challenge is to advocate for an approach to intersectionality (and feminism in

56 Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism

Chapter 2 Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism 57