A new book that explores how feminist strategies have influenced federal policy is based on research from York University’s Centre for Feminist Research (CFR).
Feminism’s Fight: Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada since 1970, published by UBC Press, is edited by York Professor Emerita Barbara Cameron and Professor Meg Luxton both of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
The book is one outcome of the Gender and Public Policy research cluster organized by associates of the CFR. This edited collection consists of 13 chapters based on the research collaboration of the cluster and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded grants housed in the CFR.
Feminism’s Fight assesses feminist strategies to advance gender justice through federal policy from the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to the present. It outlines the transformation in how feminism has been treated by governments and asks how new ways of organizing and emerging alliances can advance a feminist agenda of social and economic equality.
The authors examine the ideas that feminists have put forward in pursuit of the goal of equality and traces the shifting frameworks employed by governments in response, and evaluate changing government orientations through the 1970s to 2020, revealing the negative impact on women’s lives and the challenges posed for feminists.
Feminism’s Fight asks two key questions: What are the lessons from feminist engagement with federal government policy over fifty years? And what kinds of transformative policy demands will achieve the feminist goal of social and economic equality?
The book will help inform researchers, graduate students and faculty in gender and women’s studies, political science, sociology, history and social work as well as those engaged in work relating to, or with an interest in, inequality, social justice and activism.
Find more information on the book here.