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Intersecting Identities and Inclusive Institutions: Women and a Future Transformative Politics
Abstract
This article sets out to ascertain what can be done to provide better, more substantive, representation for all women. It begins by discussing the representation of women as a group, then critically assesses various reform proposals, including the suggestions of advocates of group-based representation. Such recommendations, it is argued, tend to fall short, as they build on limited liberal democratic theories and practices. In contrast, this article makes a case for more and different kinds of democracy. What is required is a synthesis of the conventional and non-conventional, where liberal democracy is transformed by an infusion of radical democratic potential. A greater and more formal role for social movements in policy discussion and the decision-making process, a politics based on inclusion and intersecting identities, is contemplated through illustrations from Canada and abroad.
... This expansion entails increasing the number of groups represented in government and governance (Dobrowolsky 2001). In their most progressive forms, discourses of inclusion entail transformations from representative to radical/deliberative forms of democracy, characterized by poly-vocality and parity of participation among all citizens in decision-making processes and practices of implementation (Benhabib 1996;Fraser 2008;Lister 2007;Lister et al. 2007). ...
... The issue of individual versus collective bases of inclusion throws up another set of conundrums. On the one hand, inclusion needs to be theorized at the level of the collective to highlight the structural forces that produce marginality and exclusion in the first place (Dobrowolsky 2001). If inclusion is about individuals, it is destructured and therefore less likely to engender transformation; it can, in addition, become practically unfeasible to implement policies that are radically individuated (Gould 1996, 180). ...
... Groups may be homogenized in political and policy imaginaries (Humpage 2006). In addition, not only groups but also the issues they bring forward may be ghettoized, producing a situation where only representatives of particular groups are held responsible or have the legitimacy to act as spokespersons for issues related to those groups (Dobrowolsky 2001). Childcare as a woman's issue provides a case in point. ...
The inclusion of marginal groups is increasingly becoming part of contemporary governance. Critical appraisals categorize inclusionary mechanisms either as politically transformative or as regulative and part of the state's broader agenda of social control. In this article, we argue against both these positions and propose instead that inclusion is simultaneously regulative and transformative, that is, it is practiced in a state of—what Chantal Mouffe calls—“productive tension.” The article is divided into two parts: the first critically examines the theoretical literature on the tensions written into inclusive practices. The second part illustrates productive tensions in the case of inclusive strategies between ethnic/migrant groups and the government in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The article urges the reconceptualization of tensions and contradictions as part of the broader contours of contemporary radical democracy wherein erasures, assimilations, resistance, and transformations exist simultaneously.
... One means of dissent is to create positive spaces of inclusion, such as at the World Social Forum, in opposition to these summits. In this way, the voices excluded from the formal spaces of neo-liberal politics are asserted (Dobrowolsky, 2001). This paper explores the physical sites of resistance that develop to counter these exclusive meetings and the dominance of neo-liberal capitalism. ...
It is the time for celebrating the joy of collectivity, the exhilaration of creating something that snowballs into something much bigger, and more amazing than previously imagined possible. It is a moment when we can break free from the alienation that capitalism enforces in so many ways.
Notes from Nowhere (2003: 177)
Les activistes anticapitalistes créent des espaces de justice, dans lesquels la diversité et l'inclusion sont encouragées, sur les lieux de protestation contre les réunions de la mondialisation néolibérale et dans leurs propres lieux de rencontre. Adoptant un point de vue hybride à partir des idées de Young sur la justice en tant qu'inclusion et autonomie, de la notion de Maffesoli de justice divine et sociale, et du particularisme militant de Harvey, ainsi qu'à partir des voix des activistes, l'auteure de cet article examine les façons par lesquelles les activistes anticapitalistes de la mondialisation établissent des espaces de protestation ou de convergence en opposition au néolibéralisme et quelques-unes des caractéristiques importantes de ces espaces de justice. Les espaces ainsi créés sont des lieux émotionnels partagés dans lesquels des manières alternatives d'être et d'agir ensemble sont explorées.
Anti-capital activists create spaces of justice in which diversity and inclusion are fostered, both at the sites countering the meetings of neo-liberal globalization and in their own meeting spaces. Using a hybrid of Young's ideas of justice as inclusion and autonomy, Maffesoli's notion of the social divine and Harvey's militant particularism, as well as activists' voices, this paper examines the ways in which global anti-capital activists forge protest or convergence spaces in opposition to neo-liberalism, as well as some of the key characteristics of these spaces of justice. The spaces created are shared emotional spaces in which alternative ways of being and acting together are explored.
This paper critiques the deployment of the term “identity politics” in Canadian political science. Through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of research articles in leading English language academic journals in the Canadian social sciences, we examine whose politics are labelled identity politics and what intellectual work transpires through this label. Identity politics tends to be applied to scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, but with a lack of analytical rigour, indicating a degree of conceptual looseness. Moreover, the designation identity politics is not neutral; it is often mobilized as a rhetorical device to distance authors from scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, and to inscribe a materialist/culturalist divide in claims-making. We argue that the effect of this demarcation of identity from politics is to control the boundaries of political discourse, limiting who and what gains entry into the political. This serves to reassert an exclusionary conception of Canadian identity.
By the end of New Labour's first term in office (1997- 2001), children and youth had begun to figure prominently in its words and deeds. In fact, child-centred discourse continues well into the party's second mandate as still more child-related policies are advanced. While references to children can merely reflect rhetorical flourish, such child-based appeals have also led to action. The Labour government has launched a succession of policy initiatives, created institutions and committed funds to a range of concerns relating to children and youth.
This article compares the backgrounds, political experiences and social characteristics of men and women who served in the Canadian House of Commons during the twentieth century. This examination is based on two hypotheses: (1) that the former polarisation of female and male politicians has given way to harmonisation; (2) that harmonisation has occurred because women's profiles have changed to become more like those of men. This study finds that a straightforward linear model of initial polarisation between women and men followed by a period of convergence resulting in harmonisation receives only partial support. Gender continues to act as a causal variable shaping the characteristics and careers of federal politicians, but its effects are complex and multi-dimensional.
This paper offers a survey of the current Government review of Britain's equality framework, including the proposal to create a new Commission for Equality and Human Rights, and the adoption of gender mainstreaming strategies. These discourses and practices issue new theoretical and practical challenges, in that they are required to address an increasingly complex range of inequalities and are required to engage with 'equality and diversity'. Theorising mainstreaming in the context of diversity represents a significant challenge, and makes the role of inclusive deliberation particularly central. This transforms mainstreaming from a technocratic tool to an institutional manifestation of deliberative democracy.
Despite growing attention to both public engagement in policy development, and youth civic engagement, the engagement of young women and young mothers receives little attention. This article proposes guidelines for engaging with young women in provincial public policy development via their participation in public engagement initiatives. Developed in the context of a small Canadian province, the guidelines are based on an existing public engagement framework, modified to consider young women's identities and engagement strategies. The guidelines are presented relative to the context, process, tools, and outcomes of public engagement initiatives. In presenting the guidelines, this article grapples with paradoxes of young women's engagement, including the role of policy and policy discourses in creating and governing their identities, the role of public engagement in upholding and dismantling neoliberal policy agendas, and the challenges and benefits of reconciling appropriate conceptualisations of young women with a positivistic, masculine engagement framework.
This paper argues that while quotas can quite easily be used rapidly to address the
problem of insufficient numbers of women in representative political institutions, effective
representation requires us to pay attention to far more than merely the numbers of
women present. This article suggests that, in particular, we need to look at which kinds
of women are made present by quotas, how these women gain office and what they do
once they are there. Using the South African example as a case in point, the paper
suggests that where women become representatives through mechanisms controlled
by party political hierarchies rather than by way of more broad-based political processes
reflecting real social change, quotas can act to legitimate and
As historian E.R. Forbes (1989) has ably demonstrated, a conservative stereotype is often substituted for research when seeking reasons for the Atlantic region's alleged political and social backwardness. Nowhere is this insight more usefully applied than in the scholarship relating to the participation of Atlantic Canadian women in formal political life. This paper questions the notion that women in the region are uniquely hobbled by conservatism and traditionalism, arguing instead that resistence to women's full participation in formal political structures is a national phenomenon and that Atlantic Canada's marginalization within the federal framework serves as the context for women's political marginalization in the region. It also argues that the failure to address the exclusivity of our political structures constitutes a "democratic deficit," a serious loss of talent that we in Atlantic Canada can ill-afford at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
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