Feminism's Fight: Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada Since 1970 Barbara Cameron and Meg Luxton, eds. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023, pp. 392. 10.59962/9780774868051
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada Since 1970 is a comprehensive work on the relationship between feminism, politics, and policies in Canada over the past five decades.Editors Barbara Cameron and Meg Luxton have assembled a thorough collection that explores the challenges, accomplishments, and ongoing struggles encountered by feminists and asks how new ways of organizing and engaging with federal government policy can advance the feminist agenda of social and economic equality.The chapters tell the story of how feminism has transformed and evolved, and how Canada's feminist movement has interacted with governments from the 1970s to 2020.At its core, this collection grapples with the role feminism has played in shaping Canadian politics and policies since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (RCSW).One of the key strengths of the book is its diverse range of perspectives and topics covered.Part one of the book, "Challenging Dominant Paradigms," serves as a foundational framework for the subsequent discussions.Cameron and Luxton in chapter 1, deftly navigate through the complexities of the RCSW, providing a balanced critique that acknowledges its contributions while also highlighting its limitations.Their analysis sets the stage for a comprehensive examination of various facets of Canadian feminism, ranging from Indigenous decolonization to LGBTQ+ rights, underscoring the interconnectedness of feminist activism with broader societal transformations.In chapter 2, Shelagh Day and Pamela Palmater provide a powerful narrative on the long history of discrimination against Indigenous women in Canada, laying bare the systemic failures of the Canadian government in addressing these injustices.Part two, "Reclaiming the Economy," delves into the economic dimensions of feminism in Canada.Cameron's chapter on macroeconomic policy provides an accessible analysis of the interaction between the economy and feminism, offering balanced critiques of neoliberalism and highlighting the intersectional experiences of women across different social strata.Luxton's examination of socialist feminism further enriches the discourse, offering practical policy solutions for addressing entrenched gender inequalities in domestic labor, and Amber J. Fletcher discusses the history of Canadian farm women and presents actionable recommendations for equity.In part three, "Reimagining Policy," contributors analyze the ideas proposed by feminists and track the approaches adopted by governments in response.Lise Gotell scrutinizes the RCSW's gender-neutral liberal feminist approach while also recognizing its significant gains, and Christina Cabriel exposes the deficiencies of the RCSW in addressing immigration and citizenship issues.Alana Cattapan traces the evolution of reproductive freedom in Canada and how the concept of responsibility of governance over reproduction has evolved.Ann Porter discusses evolving obstacles to economic security for Canadian women since the RCSW.Part four, "Reframing Representation," challenges conventional notions of political representation.Alexandra Dobrowolsky exposes a recurring pattern of "strategic, cynical, and
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".