Women and Political Representation in Canada

Chapter 10: Representation and the Struggle for Women's Equality: Issues for Feminist Practice

10 Representation and the Struggle for Women's Equality: Issues for Feminist Practice SUE FINDLAY Introduction Representation has been a central issue for feminists in the struggle for women's equality in Canada. Feminists continue to document the limiting effects that the underrepresentation of women in political institutions has had on these struggles (see Lynda Erickson's chapter in this volume). The roots of this underrepresentation are deeply embedded in Canada's political and economic development. In spiteof claims to universality, governance in Canada has been organized to reflect the interests of a ruling class of men. In the beginning, participation in the electoral process and hence in representative institutions was restricted to men of property. Their interests were embedded in the policy-making process of the government by the rules and regulations used to organize state bureaucracies and to appoint the bureaucrats that worked in them. Resistance to change is strong. Although women had won the right to participate in the political system by the end of World War I, they have been and are still seriously underrepresented in Parliament and in the Senate, as well as in the political parties that determine election and appointment to them. They have been and are still also seriously underrepresented in the management of state bureaucracies (Royal Commission on the Status of Women 1970). Rather than developing ways to increase the participation of women in policy and management positions throughout the bureaucracy as a strategy to represent women's interests in the 1970s, the Canadian government simply created new positions to advise them on status of women issues (for example, Status of Women Canada, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, advisors on the status of women in key departments). Unlike the Australian government, which brought 294 WOMEN AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN CANADA community-based feminists (femocrats) into the policy process to advise them on ways to promote women's equality in the 1970s (Watson 1990), the Canadian government filled these new positions with women noted for their experience in the bureaucracy. In the context of this underrepresentation, women have created organizations in civil society to represent the political interests of their members. At certain points in history, organizations such as the National Council of Women, the Federation of Business and ProfessionalWomen, the University of Women's Club, the Young Women's Christian Associations, the Junior League, have all successfully pressured governments for significant social and economic reforms (Royal Commission on the Status of Women 1970).In 1966, the leaders of many of these organizations formed the Ad Hoc Committee for the Equality of Women to persuade government leaders to appoint the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Their tradition of lobbying and their successes in these instances led them to ground feminist politics in lobbying strategies. In 1972, they organized the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC)to pressure the government for the implementation of the Royal Commission's report. The NAC became the model for the widespread network of feminist groups that has lobbied federal,provincial and municipal governments for policies to promote women's equality. But, the struggle for women's equality has alsobeen contained by the form that representation has taken in Canada. Unlike the system of representation in Sweden, where representatives of the key social groups in civil society (for example, unions, business organizations, environmental groups, women's groups) have been formally incorporated into the policy process along with elected and appointed officials, representatives from social movements in Canada are kept at arm's length. Few of the political leaders in Canada have recognized the need to extend the system of representation to give these groups a formal or permanent voice in the policy process as a strategy to integrate their interests in the making of government policies. As the pressure on liberal democratic states to create a more democraticform of governance waned, so has government's willingness to support a more representative form of policy making. In a retreat to the more limited form of representation that has traditionally characterized policy making in Canada, the government is abandoning many of the special measures created in the 1970s to reflect women's interests in the state bureaucracy and limiting its consultations to carefully selected "partners." The social REPRESENTATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN'S EQUALITY 295 movements that were courted in the 1960s and 1970s are now considered to...