Canadian Liberalism and Gender Equality: Between Oppression and Emancipation
This chapter examines liberalism as the most salient ideology in Canadian politics through the lens of gender and sexualities. We consider the articulation by various waves of Canadian liberal feminists of the private/public distinction, which is constitu
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Canadian Liberalism and Gender Equality: Between Oppression and Emancipation Éléna Choquette
Introduction For more than 150 years, liberalism has been the backdrop of Canadian politics. In this chapter, we examine liberalism through the lens of gender and, secondarily, sexualities. By tracking the development of liberalism in Canada, it becomes clear that it has supported both the domination and emancipation of women and LGBTQ people. To the extent that liberalism developed the gendered idea that the private and public spheres should be distinct, it has reinforced the privatisation and domination of women and LGBTQ citizens. Concurrently, Canadian liberalism has supported certain forms of emancipation for gendered and sexualised communities. In this sense, liberal feminists and the liberal trend in the LGBTQ movement have made significant gains for women and LGBTQ people, most importantly by advancing equal rights. The first section draws important distinctions, including between different kinds of feminisms and trends in the LGBTQ movement. Next, we sketch the main tenets of early liberalism and examine the emergence of the private/public divide as constitutive of liberal theory and practice. We consider the consequences for gender and sexual identity of drawing that very distinction. The second section investigates what can be called the three “waves” of feminism in liberal Canada. If the first wave of Canadian feminism worked with the liberal distinction between the private and the public, the second wave problematised it. By making the argument that the divide continued their É. Choquette (*) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s) 2020 M. Tremblay, J. Everitt (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49240-3_2
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oppression, second-wave liberal feminists, especially in English Canada, participated in building programmes that assisted women, but mainly in the responsibilities they assumed as mothers and wives within heterosexual families. Feminists of the third wave have articulated the many limitations of mainstream liberal feminism, including by challenging the very understanding of the private/public distinction problematised by liberal feminists as inappropriate to address the concerns of many women. Finally, we examine Black, Franco- Québécois, Indigenous, and lesbian feminisms as four of the most important challenges to the legacy and perspectives of liberal feminism. In short, this chapter brings into view the contradictions that have inhabited liberalism in Canada since it emerged as an ideology in the nineteenth-century Western world. A century and a half of liberal rule may have produced some forms of formal (or legal) equality for gendered and sexualised groups, but not substantive equality (that which is reflected in daily living conditions). Despite that mixed legacy, most struggles and claims for equality continue to take place on liberal terms. Because o
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