Women, Gender, and Politics

N10(a) - Gender and Public Policy Frameworks

Date: May 31 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom - CL 417 Room ID:15723

Chair/Président/Présidente : Joan Grace (University of Winnipeg)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Susan Henders (York University)

Resilience: Gendering Mental Readiness in the Canadian Armed Forces: Leigh Spanner (University of Alberta)
Abstract: Resilience among military members, and their families, is a quality that is integral to the functioning of the Canadian Armed Forces. Resilience is the institutionalized strategy to combating mental health issues, and being able to tackle the challenges associated with military life. Military members, and their families, undergo a training cycle on resilience, entitled Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR), which spans the duration of their careers. The privilege afforded to resilience is (re)produced informally, through social stigmatization of post-traumatic stress disorder among members, and a “suck-it-up” mentality among military families, especially wives. Resilience is a deeply gendered concept, which has gendered implications. Military members who are not sufficiently resilient, and “succumb” to psychological injuries have failed to perform an appropriate iteration of militarized masculinity, characterized by physical and mental invulnerability. Moreover, the Canadian military’s inability to adequately identify and support members and veterans struggling with mental health issues has necessitated reliance on the unpaid labour of military spouses. This paper traces the ways resilience is embedded in Canadian Armed Forces through an analysis of policies and programs that feature resilience, and through interview data with military family members. This work contributes to the field of Feminist International Relations by highlighting how the institutionalization of a seemingly innocuous principle, resilience, perpetuates unequal gender relationships and idealizes dangerous performances of gender.

Emotional States: Transnational Motherhood, Policymaking and the Politics of Empathy in Canada: Stephanie Paterson (Concordia University), Lindsay Larios (Concordia University)
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the role of empathy in policymaking. Empathy is not simply feeling bad for someone; rather it requires that actors understand and share the feelings of others. It thus requires an emotional connection between actors. We suggest that this connection can be cultivated through an emotional analysis of policy. Segal (2007) outlines a three-step process for fostering social empathy, including (1) exposure to diverse experiences; (2) explanation or understanding and contextualizing difference; and (3) experience or participation in the day-to-day lives of others. This approach offers much promise in humanizing policymaking, but we question the feasibility of the third step within the current policymaking landscape. Instead, we illuminate the potential of an emotional policy analysis framework in cultivating empathic responses among policymakers. We examine the issue of family separation experienced by temporary foreign workers, specifically in the case of Canada’s Caregiver Program. ’Low-skill’ workers from abroad may enter Canada but are not permitted to bring family members. The negative implications are well-documented, yet programs have not responded to the need for recognition of workers’ roles as family caregivers. While we question whether policymakers can really experience long-term family separation of this nature, we demonstrate how emotional discourse analysis exposes the various subject positions of both the analyst and policy subjects, implicating disciplinary forces that hinder connection between actors. Once such forces are exposed, policymakers can reconfigure policy texts in more socially just ways. We thus emphasize the transformative potential of fostering empathy in and through policymaking.

Women and Residential Instability in Quebec’s Region: A Long Journey of Exclusion: Mélanie Bourque (Université du Québec en Outaouais), Katia Grenier (Université du Québec en Outaouais), Sylvie Thibault (Université du Québec en Outaouais), Josée Grenier (Université du Québec en Outaouais), Sylvie Plante (Maison de Sophia)
Abstract: This comprehensive research on residential instability of women was conducted in the Laurentians and Outaouais regions of Quebec, in partnership with La Maison de Sophia and Maison Libère Elles. The objectives were to better understand the reality of homeless women or residential instability outside major urban centers, to better understand their residential trajectories and to document this emerging phenomenon. 18 women between the ages of 18 and 64 who used shelter resources were met through semi-structured interviews. The results illustrate, among other things, the women's point of view, the diversity of the courses, but also the common aspects of their trajectories. Their discourses, analyzed in a twofold perspective (micro and macro) inspired by the work of Elder (1998, 2004), allowed on the one hand to highlight how these women build their life course: the choices, the actions that they pose (micro) and secondly, to take a critical look at how the state organizes the lives of women marginalized by various public policies (macro). Through their testimonies, women report difficult and oppressive journeys traversed by several factors and issues of precariousness - social, relational, economic and political, which highlight the diversity of forms of exclusion experienced, be they symbolic, identity-based, sociopolitical or institutional as identified by Billette and Lavoie (2010). These results challenge both the intervention community and decision-makers to develop adequate social and health responses.

Gender Policy Paradigms in Canadian Public Policy: Barbara Cameron (York University)
Abstract: Over the past two and a half decades, many scholars in the field of public policy have emphasized the importance to policy-making of policy paradigms understood as cognitive frameworks shared by communities of political actors. This paper argues that the concept of gender policy paradigm is useful for analyzing the coherence of and shifts in key areas of public policy. It outlines the main elements of a gender policy paradigm and distinguishes it from the concepts of gender order and gender regime frequently employed in feminist policy research. The paper identifies the dominant gender policy paradigm for four periods since the Second World War with illustrations from macroeconomic, social and labour market policies. It sees the current, fourth period, as a return to the equal opportunity paradigm of the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women but in a significantly changed social context. It links the feminist policy paradigm of the Trudeau Liberal government to the shift to “neoliberalism with a feminist face” reflected in recent approaches of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.