Power and wound: A study of the intersection of privilege and disadvantage in <italic>Symes</italic> v. <italic>Canada</italic>.

In the early 1990s, Beth Symes challenged the constitutionality of the Canadian <italic>Income Tax Act</italic>, arguing that business women should be able to deduct their child care expenses as tax deductible business expenses. The case ignited public controversy: was Symes disadvantaged on the basis of gender, or unfairly advantaged on the basis of class? Taking the <italic> Symes</italic> case as a starting point, this study asks how legal notions of justice and equality are applied in contexts where people are located at the intersection of both power and wound. What perils and potentials do such intersections pose for those who wish to use the law as a tool of social justice? And what impact do these intersections have for issues of child care? This study provides a brief introduction to intersectional theory; explores the history of legislative and litigative struggles around child care; follows the dramatic unfolding of the case through the courts; and considers both expert and non-expert public debate about the case. On this journey, we see how intersectional cases such as this are influenced by broad social debates about the division between the so-called public and private spheres, individual responsibility for child care, 'selfish' mothers, and the role of individual choice in governmental (and judicial) determinations about the allocation of the social and economic costs of child care. We also see how frequently the rhetoric of choice, responsibility and selfishness is invoked in response to women's attempts to place issues of child care on the public agenda. While the case was generally seen as either a failure, or as revealing the dispiriting impasse caused by the intersection of class and gender, I argue that this case and others like it should rather be reclaimed as important sites of struggle, sites that can help us theorize uses of law that avoid the gendered deployment of the rhetoric of choice and selfishness, and that provide deeper insights into the role that problematic intersections play both in maintaining systems of oppression, and in providing opportunities for resistance and rebellion.

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