Introduction by: Jacquetta Newman

(This introduction is edited from a conversation with Jacquetta Newman, facilitated by Natalie Catney)

What do we mean by “Women, Gender, and Politics”? Why is it important to the study of Canadian Political Science?

In the past, when we talked about “women and politics,” we were expressly talking about including the perspective of how women were impacted by, navigated and participated in politics. This early approach was informed by feminist theory and the notion of patriarchy as an over-arching set of social norms or ideology that guided how women lived their lives or approached their studies that centered on the notion of the male universal. Early feminist theory, and teaching then, was about addressing the notion of the male universal and making a claim for the inclusion of women in our understanding of the world. This claim disrupted the notion of the universal male, opening the universal up to others.

We talk about gender which comes down to the idea as Simone de Beauvoir pointed out, “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman.” The roles, positions, and behaviours ascribed to a person in society are not natural. They are socially constructed through behavioural, cultural, and psychological norms that define the feminine and the masculine. Within academia, women’s studies and women’s politics have developed this understanding of the social construction of persons in a way that has broadened and expanded our notions of gender and identified the importance of intersectionality or the multi-dimensional definition of who people are. This has been driven by an underlying desire to address the overarching idea of male universality.

In Canadian politics we see the practice of social construction most obviously in law and policy. For example, the BNA Act of 1867 (Constitution Act,1867) used the term “person” in a way that was inherently masculine. It had to be taken the Justice Committee of the Privy Council in the UK to get a ruling that defined women as “persons.” Similarly, the Indian Act defined what constituted an “Indian” as a male universal category which could not account for “Indian women,” hence the failure of Lavell and Bedard’s discrimination case in the early 1970s. While progress has been made in addressing such legally and policy defined distinctions between women and men, the issue of determining who someone is under the Indian Act even with the addition of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is still an unresolved issue. In fact, when we look at the definition of “equity seeking persons/groups” in Section 15 we see a continuation of a definition of “otherness” in duality or opposition to a male universal. This ascribes identity and expected behaviours that are not multi-dimensional or intersectional. So, the idea of a male universal still dominates as everyone else is an “other” or a category apart. As I’ve said elsewhere, category making is an exercise in power, historically that power has been wielded by dominant groups, typically white male elites. This makes the study of Canadian politics with a feminist intersectional lens all the more necessary.

How has Women, Gender, and Politics usually been taught?

In the context of a Canadian politics class, a traditional approach to teaching was inspired by the earlier notions of how women were impacted by and participated in politics. This usually led to an “add and stir” approach, adding a week on women and politics to the course schedule, alongside topics such as federalism or the executive. Women’s politics would largely be confined to this single week on the syllabus, creating issues for understanding how gender intersects with pre-existing institutions. Some topics are easier than others. For example, parliament and representation is easy because discussion of the role of representatives as delegates or trustees automatically turns to a discussion of mirror and substantive representation a topic that derives from gender scholarship. Classes on Canadian social policy are also easily integrated with a focus on women. However, this also plays into that duality of “women’s otherness” versus the male universal, in that much social policy has been associated with women and women’s interests. The challenge is to integrate women into topics that we don’t automatically associate with gender politics, such as federalism and political leadership as seen in the executive. I don’t always achieve that integration myself, recently in a class discussion on federalism where students talked about how federalism impacted their everyday lives, I could have asked them to consider how federalism affected them in terms of their intersectional positioning. It was a lost opportunity, which illustrates that the challenge is to be constantly aware that all of the topics we cover in a Canadian politics class affect different people differently.

How is this area changing?

So even with the best of intentions, when considering the topics that need to be covered in an introductory Canadian politics class, there is still an element of “adding women and stirring.” It is more common now to bring women and gender in each week. For example, if the topic is the constitution, spending time discussing the sections of the constitution that have to do with women and gender and how certain parts of the constitution define who people are and therefore confirm and help construct social norms. This sort of approach is reflective of the broader environment of Canadian politics, which is about accommodating and navigating the plurality and social cleavages we have in this country. While this is an improvement, we still have not gotten to a point where we truly integrate the study of women and gender, by weaving these topics into the scope of what we consider Canadian politics. While women now make up more than 50 percent of many undergraduate classes, we often still approach topics from their traditional male lens.

Opportunities for further change?

One important avenue for change is listening to the topics that students are interested in. In this way, students can challenge professors to be more inclusive in their approach to standard topics such as federalism, regionalism, the judicial system or the parliamentary system.

Student’s awareness is usually more in tune with what is happening in Canadian society, because they are living that every day. When looking at institutions like Parliament, we do not live parliament every day, but by starting where students are, in terms of their day-to-day realities as Ontarians, international students or Indigenous students, or someone who is concerned about indigenous issues, we can start teaching from these social realities. This way we are much more likely to make Parliament and parliamentary representation relevant to them. Then we can go back to political institutions and trace how they are imbued with patriarchal traditions inherited from the United Kingdom and therefore constructed a white colonial male norm. Then we need to complicate the story by showing for example how French Canada wanted to be represented in these institutions, even if it was also white men at the start. The story can then expand from there to show the claims of other white men, such as men from new ethnic groups who fought to be included and build on the existing structure, then women, people of colour, and indigenous peoples. We can continue this story through to the present day, as additional groups push for recognition and accommodation within institutions.

As educators, we can use the enthusiasm and interest of our students in the social conflicts that surround them in the present, to focus our examples on people other than white men. So, if we are discussing parliamentary procedure, we can highlight that Parliament is not only a place for white, educated male lawyers. We can have students look at female leaders in Parliament or diverse candidates during election campaigns.

We can implement this approach by changing how Canadian politics classes are normally taught. Instead of focusing on institutions first, and the political environment (gender, Indigenous peoples, social movements, etc.) second, we can focus on these political actors and movements first. In this way, we can demonstrate how institutions were created and evolved to accommodate difference, even though they have not always been accommodating. As different groups have emerged over time and they make claims for recognition, this has been done within the confines of the existing state, albeit sometimes pressing the state to the breaking point. We have to clearly show that women and other groups are included in this process; it’s not just about white men. You cannot understand institutions if you do not understand the social relationships and social struggles that led to their creation, and that have continued to inhibit, expand and evolve those institutions.