Description

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A history of the struggle for social and economic gender equality in Canada.

Feminism’s Fight explores and assesses feminist strategies to advance gender justice through Canadian federal policy over the past fifty years, from the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to the present. The authors evaluate changing government orientations through the 1970s to the 2000s, revealing the negative impact on most women’s lives and the challenges for feminists. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated misogyny and related systemic inequalities. Yet it has also revived feminist mobilization and animated calls for a new and comprehensive equality agenda for Canada.

Feminism’s Fight tells the crucial story of a transformation in how feminism has been treated by governments and asks how new ways of organizing and new alliances can advance a feminist agenda of social and economic equality.

About the Author

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Barbara Cameron is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at York University and is a research associate at York’s Centre for Feminist Research. She has served on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action since 2008. 

Meg Luxton is a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University. She has served as director of the Graduate Programme in Women’s Studies/Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies and of the Centre for Feminist Research. Her books include More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home and (with Susan Braedley) Neoliberalism and Everyday Life.
 

Praise For…

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"The fiftieth anniversary of the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the persistence of the unequal socio-political systems investigated by the commission. Feminism’s Fight offers a stocktaking of the period since the RCSW, exploring the often troublesome legacy of the commission. Many of the contributions adopt an intersectional and/or anti-colonial lens, drawing on the best of feminist scholarship to offer a balanced assessment of the lasting impact of the RCSW. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in gender and politics in Canada and beyond."
— Stephanie L. Paterson, professor, Political Science, Concordia University