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Feminist Organizing for Change: the Contemporary Women's Movement

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Feminist Organizing for Change: the Contemporary Women's Movement FEMINIST ORGANIZING FOR CHANGE THE CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN CANADA NANCY ADAMSQN LINDA BRISKIN MARGARET McPHAIL TORONTO OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario, M3C 1J9 Toronto Oxford New York Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Adamson, Nancy Feminist organizing for change Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-540658-3 1. Feminism - Canada. I. Briskin, Linda, 1949-. II. McPhail, Margaret. III. Title. HQ1453.A28 1988 305.4'2'0971 C88-093823-4 Cover design based on a poster by Barbara Klunder. © Nancy Adamson, Linda Briskin, Margaret McPhail 1988 OXFORD is a trademark of Oxford University Press 234-109 Printed in Canada Contents Acknowledgements iv I SETTING THE STAGE 1 Entering the World of the Women's Movement 3 2 Our History/Histories 27 II CONSTRUCTING A FRAMEWORK 3 Socialist Feminism: An Analysis of Power 97 4 The Politics of Making Change 136 III ANALYZING THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT 5 Feminist Practice: Organizing for Change 165 6 The Ideology of the Women's Movement 198 7 Feminist Organizations and Feminist Process 229 8 Conclusion 256 Appendix A: Documents 263 Appendix B: Abbreviations 296 Appendix C: Chronology 298 Appendix D: NAC Member Groups 303 Bibliography 307 Index 329 Acknowledgements It is impossible to thank each of the many feminists with whom we worked over the years, but without the shared experiences of con- structing a movement, building organizations, and struggling for change, this book would not have been possible. Many women generously shared their time to provide information and to critique our work. Our thanks to Sandy Steinecher, who participated in the discussions leading up to this book; Alice de Wolff, Debbie Field, Maureen FitzGerald, Tori Smith, and Lynda Yanz, who read an early draft and offered very important comments and suggestions; Meg Luxton, Anne Molgat, and Lorna Weir, who made detailed and insightful comments on portions of the first manuscript; Patricia Bush, our research assistant, who did excellent work compiling the bibliography; and Sally Livingston of Oxford University Press, for her careful editing of the manuscript. This is a better book because of them; however, any errors or omissions are entirely our own. This project was supported by grants from the Ontario Arts Coun- cil's Writers' Stimulation Grants, administered by the Women's Press, and from the small grants program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, administered by York Uni- versity. We would also like to thank Secretarial Services, York University, for help with the data entry. Without the Canadian Women's Movement Archives we could not have written the history chapter, nor could we have illustrated the other chapters with Canadian examples; our thanks to the collective for bending some of the rules to make our research easier. The three of us were supported through the long process of writing this book by friends and family and owe many individual debts, too numerous to mention. Finally, we would like to thank each other. This project has been a long one, at times difficult and discouraging, at times challenging and exhilarating. We have struggled to be supportive and construc- tively critical of each other's work throughout this process; the existence of this book is a testament to our success. iv I SETTING THE STAGE This page intentionally left blank 1 Entering the World of the Women's Movement THE IMPACT OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT The women's movement has been and is still one of the most sig- nificant and successful social movements in Canada. In its recent re-emergence in the last twenty years—what we call the second wave, in contrast to the first wave when women organized for suf- frage, property rights, and so on in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries1—it has challenged images of women and of femininity; the sexual division of labour in the home and the workplace; outdated laws and inadequate social services; the organization and delivery of health care to women; and the reproduction of stereotypic choices for girls and women within the education system. It has uncovered and named violence against women—sexual harassment, incest, rape, and wife abuse; it has identified the discrimination women face in the workplace, such as lack of access to the male-dominated trades, to training, or to executive promotion ladders; it has exposed the heterosexism and racism that pervade the entire social system and contribute to the double and triple oppression of lesbians, immi- grants, and women of colour.2 This list is far from complete. These challenges and revelations have led to some changes. We might begin by noting the legislative changes that have occurred as a result of organized pressure by women. In 1988 the Supreme Court ruled that the federal abortion law, which had seriously restricted women's access to abortion services, was unconstitutional.3 In 1986 the federal government passed Bill C-62, dealing with affirmative action for women, visible minorities such as native Canadians, and the disabled; in 1985 the Manitoba government passed equal-value legislation. In 1981 the Ontario Human Rights Code was amended to include protection against sexual harassment; also in 1981 wom- en's right to equality was inscribed in section 28 of the new Canadian constitution.4 Despite financial restraints, governments have been increasing the 4 | Feminist Organizing for Change funding to services required by women. In 1987 the federal govern- ment announced major funding initiatives to deal with the problem of wife abuse in response to a new report, Battered But Not Beaten, which estimated that one million women in Canada were abused each year;5 over the last fifteen years the numbers of licensed child- care spaces have risen significantly (from 28,373 in 19736 to 192,374 in 19867) and both federal and provincial governments are promising large-scale initiatives in this area. Perhaps the most important victories lie in the change in public consciousness. These may be the hardest to document, but there is no doubt that the public consciousness about and acceptance of women's issues have altered dramatically in the last twenty years. Even a cursory glance at a recent report on public-opinion polls, released by the Women's Bureau of Labour Canada, shows such evidence:8 Most Canadians thought that women could run most businesses as well as men, and this increased over time, from 58 per cent of the respondents in 1971 to ... 83 per cent in 1983. Although Cana- dians increasingly believed that women can run most businesses as well as men, they were equivocal about whether men and women have equal chances. In fact in response to the question on whether or not women in Canada get as good a break as men, the percentage indicating 'yes' declined over time. Nearly two thirds said yes in 1971. ... By the early 1980s, over half of the Canadians polled believed that women did not get as good a break.9 . Canadians increasingly believe that married women [without children] should take a job outside the home. ... In 1960, nearly two thirds of the respondents thought that married women should take a job outside the home ... in 1982 87 per cent polled indicated agreement.10 ... in 1960, only one out of twenty Canadians indicated that married women with young children should take a job outside the home, by 1982 38 per cent held similar views.11 A recent update of this poll, released by Gallup in 1987, showed that Canadians are now almost evenly divided on whether married women with young children should work: 47 per cent favour married women with young children taking jobs, a dramatic increase of 9 per cent in only five years.12 These few examples show increased acceptance of women's rights as well as increased awareness of women's inequality. The statistics are strongly reinforced by our subjective experience of the last Entering the World of the Women's Movement | 5 twenty years. For example, the legitimacy accorded to women's demands in newspapers like The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, inside the trade-union movement, and by the government con- trasts sharply with the recent past, when women's issues were com- pletely ignored and the women's movement ridiculed. Another dramatic change has been in the self-organization of women themselves. In 1965 in Canada there were few women's organizations, no women's bookstores (because there were almost no books about women), and no women's studies courses in schools and universities. In contrast, today almost all large urban centres, as well as many small towns and rural communities, have rape crisis centres, shelters for battered wives, self-defence courses, women's bookstores/music events/art galleries; all universities have women's studies courses (and many have extensive degree-granting programs in women's studies) as well as women's centres and/or centres to deal with campus sexual harassment; and the numbers of women's groups continue to grow. For example, the National Action Com- mittee on the Status of Women, the umbrella organization to which most women's groups in Canada belong, had 530 member groups in 1987; in 1984 it had 280, and in 1977 only 130.13 These changes in legislation, services, self-organization, and pub- lic consciousness have occurred in the context of shifting social and economic realities for women: perhaps most important, the increase of women in the work-force, especially married women with young children.
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