Gendered Intersections ; An Introduction to Women`s and Gender Studies 1552661547, 9781552661543

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G I An Introduction to Women's

and Gender Studies Lesley Biggs Pamela Downe editors

Gendered Intersections

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation?

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Copyright© 2005 C. Lesley Biggs and Pamela J. Downe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprod uced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Editing: Brenda Conroy Cover art: Zachari Logan Printed and bound in Canada by: Hignell Book Printing Limited A publication of: Fernwood Publishing Site 2A, Box 5, 32 Oceanvista Lane Black Point, Nova Scotia, BOJ 1 BO and 324 Clare Avenue W innipeg, Manitoba, R3L 1S3 www.fernwoodbooks.ca second printing 2006 Fernwood Publishing Company Lim ited gratefully acknowledges the financia l support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism and Culture and the Canada Council for Lhe Arts for Our publishing program.

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Librnry and Archives Canada Cc1taloguing in Publication Gendered intersections : an introduction to women's and gender studies/ C. Lesley Biggs and Pamela J. Downe, eds. Includes bibliographicaJ references. ISBN-13: 978-1-55266-154-3 ISBN-10: 1-55266-15 4-7 1. Sex role. 2. Women--Miscellanea. 3. Women--Social conditions. 4. Women--Literary collections. I. Biggs, Lesley II. Downe, Pamela, 1958HQl 233.C465 2005

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Contents Contributors .................................................................................................................... 11 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... 17 Gendered Intersections: Introductory Comments Pamela J. Downe and C. Lesley Biggs .......................................................................... 19

SECTION I SETTING THE STAGE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WOMAN? C. Lesley Biggs ... 22 Setti ng the Stage -

Hypatia Index .................................................................................. 29

1.

"If I can't sing, I don't wa nt to belong t o your revolution" : Teaching Feminist Theory Th rough Music C. Lesley Biggs ......................................... 32

2.

Negotiati ng Power in the Classroom : The Example of Group Work Linda Briskin .. 37

3.

Nat ion, Emp ire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race Ruth Roach Pierson ........... 42

4.

Rou Garous Maria Campbell ....................................................................................... 48

5.

Tai kin' 'Bout Whose Generation? Candis Steenbergen .............................................. 57

6.

The Signer Margaret Atwood ...................................................................................... 62

7.

E-Mail : I Want to Be a Woman ................................................................................. 63

SECTION II FORGING FEMININITIES AND MASCULINITIES THROUGH MEDIA AND MATERIAL CULTURES C. Lesley Biggs ... 65 Forging Femininities and Masculinities through Media and Material Cultures Hypatia Index ................................................................................................................. 70 8.

" Mrs. Slob's" Manifesto: A Case Study in Critical Reading of Chat elaine Magazine Valerie J. Korinek .................................................. 73

9.

The Work of Fashion in t he Age of Mechanical Reproduction Nicholas Packwood .. 79

10. "Specia l K" Advertisement ........................................................................................ 84

11. Music and Gender Virginia Caputo ............................................................................. 85 12. E-Mail: The Princess and the Frog ............................................................................ 91

SECTION Ill HIERARCHIES OF DIFFERENCE Pamela}. Downe ... 92 Experiencing Hierarchies of Difference -

Hypatia Index ............................................... 96

13. Peri ls of the Past and Strong Women: Contemporary Challenges and Promises for the Future of Aboriginal Women C Tawnye Plewes and Pamela}. Downe ............... 98 14. Excerpts from the Indian Act of Canada Edited by Pamela}. Downe ...................... 103 15. For and by Men: Colony, Gender and Aboriginal Self-Governm ent Anna Hunter .. 107 16. "Walking the Hyphen": Discourses of Immigration and Gendered Racism

Yasmin Jiwani ............................................................................................................ 112 17. Women and Poverty Denise Spitzer .......................................................................... 119

SECTION IV SEXUALIZING WOMEN AND MEN Pamela}. Downe ... 125 Sexualizing Women and Men -

Hypatia Index ............................................................ 130

18. Understanding Men: Gender Sociology and the New International Research on Masculinities R. W. Connell ............................................ 133 19. Coffee Boys Duncan Campbell .................................................................................. 138 20. "The Best I Could Say Was That It Was Like Bliss": Thinking about the Circuit, Pleasure and the Subject Russell Westhaver ............................................................. 139 21. Shelley's Story: A Narrative of Pregnancy Loss Jacquelyne Luce .............................. 144 22. We're Talking Vu lva! Shawna Dempsey ................................................................... 149 23. Tales of Selling Sex Pamela}. Downe ....................................................................... 151

6 I Gendered Intersections

SECTION V GENERATIONS Pamela J. Downe ... 156 Generations-Hypatia Index ........................................................................................ 162 24. Talking About "Us": Racialized Girls, Cultural Citizenship and Growing Up under Whiteness Jo-Anne Lee ........................................................ 164 25. Another Girl: An Atypical Story about a Typical Adolescent Stephen Gaetz ............ 170 26. Ann Harbuz: Playing With Convention Joan Borsa .................................................. 175 27. Cyborgs, Flower Ladies and Horse Women: The Changing Face of Menopause

Pat Kaufert ................................................................................................................ 183 28. E-Mail: Menopause Barbie ..................................................................................... 188

SECTION VI WAGED WORK C. Lesley Biggs ... 790 Waged Workers-Hypatia Index ................................................................................... 196 29. Gender and Employment Relations in the Information Economy: Call Centre Work Bob Russell ................................................................................................................. 198 30. Immigrant Garment Workers as the Embodiment of Gender, Race and Class Relations Roxana Ng ................................................................................. 204 31. Sites of Struggle/Vehicles of Resistance: Un ions and Women Workers

Linda Briskin .............................................................................................................. 210 32. Fema le Home Health Care Employees: Lower Status, Higher Risk

Allison Williams, P. Susan Wagner and Monie Buettner ........................................... 216 33. Gender among the "Guys": Reflections on Work, Family Life and Retention of Women in Engineering Gillian Ranson ............................................... 222 34. Without the Law Mary Nyquist ................................................................................. 227

An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 7

SECTION VII WORKING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION C. Lesley Biggs ... 228 Working for the Next Generation-Hypatia Index ........................................................ 230 35. Femin ist Perspectives on Mothering and Motherhood : Power and Oppression Andrea O'Reilly .......................................................................................................... 235 36. Becoming a Lesbian Mother Fiona Nelson ............................................................... 241

37. Daycare and "Other than Mother" Dilemmas Susan Prentice ................................. 246 38. Family Bed Frances Robson ...................................................................................... 251 39. Dancing with Disability and Mothering: Examining Identity and Expectations Heather Kuttai ........................ ................................................................................... 254

40. E-Mail: The Origins of Mother's Day ....................................................................... 259 41. Her/s Elizabeth MacKenzie .....................................,.................................................. 261 42. My Father's Dyi ng David Carpenter ................................................................, ......... 262

SECTION VIII FOOD WORK: PRODUCTION AND POETICS Pamela J. Downe ... 268 Food Work: Prod uction and Poetics -

Hypatia Index .................................................. 273

43. In Appreciation of the Goose: The Relationship between of Food, Gender and Respect among the liyiyu'ch of Great Whale, Quebec Naomi Adelson .................... 276 44. First t he Chores and Then the Dishes Aritha Van Herk ........................................... 280 45. Stories fron1 Field to Table: Women in the Global Food System Deborah Barndt .. 289 46. Breastfeeding at Night Susan Eisenberg .................................................................. 295

47. The Newfoundland Fishery: "No Place for a Woman?" Nicole Gerardo Power ...... 296 48. Cheerleader Practice Susan Joannou ....................................................................... 302 49. Hunger Carrie Smith ................................................................................................. 303 50. I Eat Kids: Yum Yum! Dennis Lee ............................................................................. 304

8 / Gendered Intersections

SECTION IX SPIRITUALITY AND PHYSICALITY Pamela J. Downe ... 305 Spi rituality and Physicality: Positioning of Pain and Empowerment- Hypatia Index 310

51. It All Began with Eve Morny Joy ................................................................... ...... ,...... 313 52. In Da Name of Da Fadder Louise Ha/Je ................................................................... 318 53. "I Didn't Know You Were Jewish": And Other Things Not to Say When You Find Out Ivan Kalmar ............................................................................................................... 320 54. Once Upon My Mind Tereigh Ewert-Bauer ................................................................ 326 55. Historical Perspectives on Women's Health Gina Feldberg ...................................... 330 56. Changing Perceptions of Health and Body Image over the Life Course Pam Wakewich .......................................................................................................... 335 57. The Fat Lady's Dance Lorna Crozier ......................................................................... 341 58. Bread R1-s1ng Mary Pratt ......................................................................................... 343 59. Connecting Our Lives with Yours: Why Disabilit y is Every Won1an's Issue Vera Chouinard .......................................................................................................... 344

SECTION X SCIENCE AND CYBERSPACE:INTRODUCTION C. Lesley Biggs ... 349 Gen dered Patterns in Science and Cyberspace- Hypatia Index .................................. 354

60. Quality: Simone Weil, 1909- 1943 Stephanie Strickland .......................................... 356 61. Are Boys Better than Girls at Math? Paula J. Caplan and Jeremy B. Caplan .......... 357 62. Primatology is an Equal-Opportunity Science: Women, Minority Groups and Third World Students are Particularly Encouraged to Apply Linda Marie Fedigan ........... 362 63. Feminist Ecology Is the Answer Vandana Shiva ...................................................... 367

64. Women and Indigenous Technology Anoja Wickramasinghe ................................. 371 65. Computer, Male or Female? ................................................................................... 375 66. The All-Girl Onli ne Revolution Krista Scott-Dixon .................................................... 377

An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 9

SECTION XI CHANGING THE WORLD: ACTIVISM FOR EQUITY Pamela}. Downe ... 381 Changing the World -

Hypatia Index .......................................................................... 384

67. Critical Autobiography in Integrative Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Carol Schick and Verna St. Denis ............................................................................... 387 68. Globalization and Women Elaine Coburn ................................................................ 393 69. War Frenzy Sunera Thobani ...................................................................................... 399 70. Husbands' Wives and Other Myths of Activism by Forestry-Town Women

Maureen G. Reed .................................................................................................... 405 71. The Courage to Act as a Male in a Democratic Society: An Examination of the Limits Placed on Men by Patriarchy Gerry Coulter ........................................ 410 72. Revolutionary Tea Party Lillian Allen ....................................................................... 414

10 / Gendered Intersections

Contributors NAOMI ADELSON is a medical anthropologist and an associate professor of anthropology, York University. She has worked with the Whapmagoostui Cree for fifteen years, expanding her original health-related research to include the politics of identity, religion and emergent traditionalisms, the sociai meanings of stress and social suffering. LILLIAN ALLEN is a poet, lyricist and vocalist and Canada's foremost dub poet. Born in Spanish Town , Jamaica and now living in Toronto, Lillian Allen teaches at the Ontario College of Art. She is the author of numerous books of poetry and winner of two Juno Awards in 1986 and again in 1988. MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. She is the recipient of many awards including the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin, and the Giller Prize and the Premio Modello (Italy) for Alias Grace. Her most recent book, Oryx and Crake, was short-listed for Canada Reads, 2005. DEBORAH BARNDT is a mother, popular educator, photographer and professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her extensive publications include Women Working the nafta Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization and Tangled Routes: Women Workers on the Tomato Trail. C. LESLEY BIGGS is an associate professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Her main research interests lie in the sociology of the professions and alternative health, focusing on the history of the midwifery and chiropractic professions. Teaching feminist theory through music is a new venture for her.

JOAN BORSA is an independent curator, cultural critic and art historian , whose current resea rch focuses on the shifting nature of contemporary curatorial practice. She lives in Saskatoon with her son and is an associate professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Saskatchewan. LI NDA BRISKIN is a professor in the Social Science Division and the School of Women's Studies at York University. She is an activist and has a scholarly interest in the documentation and development of feminist strategies for change. She has published widely on women and unions, community-based organizing and inclusive pedagogies. MONIC BUETTNER works as a policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Service of Environment Canada in Hull, Quebec. Her MA research work at the University of Saskatchewan, Department of Geography, related to quality of work life for women working in Saskatoon Home Care in the midst of labour process change. DUNCAN CAMPBELL, born and raised in Newfoundland, completed a degree in Fine Art at the Nov;:i Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax before moving to Saskatchewan. Duncan works as a book designer and art director at a literary press and lives in Regina with his partner and their cat. MARIA CAMPBELL is a Metis author, director, playwright, filmmaker, activist, and Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Her first book, Halfbreed, is now considered a classic in Aboriginal literature. Maria Campbell has been awarded many prizes including the Molson Prize in the Arts for the Canada Council, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for playwrighti ng. JEREMY B. CAPLAN is a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, and has been primarily trying to link measures of brain activity with models of memory behaviour. PAULA J. CAPLAN , PhD, is a clinical and research psychologist, visiting scholar at Brown University,

An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 11

adjunct professor at Washington College of Law at American University, and author of eleven books, including Thinking Critically About Research on Sex and Gender (with Jeremy B. Caplan). VIRGINIA CAPUTO is an associate professor of women's studies at Carleton University. As an ethnomusicologist and social anthropologist, her work lies at the intersection of feminism, anthropology and expressive cultures. Her publications address issues including gender and music, the politics of childhood and youth, women and technology, and third wave fem inism. DAVID CARPENTER is a full-time writer, an avid angler and Professor Emeritus in the Department ot English at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of a number of novellas, novels, a collection of essays and a ''how-to" book on angling. His first book of poetry, Trout Stream Creed, was published by Coteau Books in 2003. VERA CHOUINARD is currently director of women's studies and a professor of geography at Mc Master University. Her research interests include: the impacts of neoliberal state restructuring on disabled peoples' lives, international differences in employment rights and programs for disabled people, disabled women's activism and processes of marginalization in contemporary cities. ELAINE COBURN has a PhD from Stanford and is currently at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her interests are in neoliberal globalization and resistance as well as classical sociological theory. Her recent work appears in Global Shaping and Its Alternatives, edited by Yildiz Atasoy and Willam Carroll. R.W. CONNELL is a professor of education at the University of Sydney and was formerly at the University of California Santa Cruz and Macquarie University. His research focuses on gender, masculinities, education, social class, intellectuals and social theory. He is author of Gender (2002), The Men and the Boys (2000), Masculinities (1995) and other books. B. GERRY COULTER is a professor and chairperson of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bishop's University. His research interests include gender and masculinity, museums and art, and contemporary theory. He is the founder and editor of the (Internet-based) International Journal of

Baudrillard Studies. LORNA CROZIER isa poet, author and Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Victoria. Lorna has published twelve books of poetry, the most recent being Apocrypha of Light (2002). Her books have received the Governor-General's Award, the Canadian Authors' Association Award, two Pat Lowther Awards, the Dorothy Livesay Award, the National Magazine Awards' Gold Medal, a CBC national writing competition. SHAWNA DEMPSEY has worked collaboratively with LORRI MILLAN for the past sixteen years. Together they create feminist performances, films, videos, publications and public art projects. They are infamous for We're Talking Vulva, A Day in The Life of a Bull-Dyke, and Lesbian National Parks and Services. This duo tours extensively, nationally and abroad, but Winnipeg is their chosen home. PAMELA J. DOWNE is an associate professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Saskatchewan. As a medical anthropologist, her work focuses on the health repercussions of violence, sex work and infection. She has conducted research in Central America, the eastern Caribbean and western Canada. SUSAN EISENBERG is a licensed master electrician, poet, playwright, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts. Her book, We'll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1999) was selected as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and is currently under development by MGM as a feature film. Her most recent book is Susan Eisenberg Greatest Hits 1982-2003. TEREIGH EWERT-BAUER is a graduate of English at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research focuses on the I iterary constructions of race and identity, particularly Whiteness, in Canadian women's life writing. As an author of her own life writing, she strives to blur the lines between academic theory and subjective experience. 12 / Gendered Intersections

LINDA FEDIGAN holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary. She has conducted field work in St. Kitts, Japan, Guatemala and Costa Rica. In addition to publishing on gender and science, she is the author/editor of several books and many articles on primate life histories and relations between the sexes. GEORGINA FELDBERG is the mother of an adopted daughter. She teaches social sciences and health studies at York University, where she has served as director of the Centre for Health Studies and founding academic director of the National Network on Environments and Women's Health. Her interdisciplinary research aims to incorporate the multiplicity of women's experiences. STEPHEN GAETZ is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at York University. His areas of interest include the study of adolescence and youth culture, homelessness, health promotion and community development. Stephen previously worked at Shout Clinic, a health service for street youth in Toronto. LOUISE BERNICE HALFE, also known as Skydancer, is a poet1 addictions counselor, and author of two books of poetry- both of which were short-listed for numerous prizes: Bear Bones & Feathers was awarded the Milton Acorn Award in 1996. Louise Halfe was appointed Saskatchewan's Poet Laureate in 2005. ANNA HUNTER is a member of the Ktunaxa Nation and resides in Saskatoon with her daughter Alexandra. She holds a Master of Law and a Master of Public Administration, and teaches in the Department of Political Studies in the Indigenous Peoples Justice Initiative at the University of Saskatchewan . SUSAN IOAN NOU's books include the poetry collections Clarity Between Clouds (Goose Lane Editions). Where the Light Waits, (Ekstasis Editions), and Coming Home (Leaf Press), the young adults novel, A Real Farm Girl (Hodgepog Books) and the literary study, A Magical Clockwork: The Art of Writing the Poem (Wordwrights Canada). YASMIN JIWANI is an assistant professor in communications studies at Concordia University and former Executive Coordinator of the FREDA Centre. Her interests lie in mapping the intersections of intimate and systemic forms of violence and identifying the various ways in which violence is communicated in everyday thought and talk. MORNY JOY is a professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary and past president of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion. She has published widely on feminism and religion . Her most recent work is a co-edited volume (with Kathleen O'Grady and Judith Poxon), Religion in French Feminist Thought: Critical Perspectives. IVAN KALMAR is an associate professor of anthropology in Victoria College at the University of Toronto. He is the author of several books on topics ranging from orientalism and the Jews; semiotic and linguistic anthropology; and the lnuktitut. His most recent book isOrientalism and thejews(with Derek Penslar). PAT KAUFERT specializes in the fields of medical sociology and medical anthropology. She is a professor of community health sciences in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba. Her research is in the area of women's health and focuses on menopause, mammography, midwifery and, more recently, women and the new genetics. VALERIEJ. KORINEK isa cultu ral and gender historian at the University of Saskatchewan. She is author of Roughing it in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties (University of Toronto Press, 2000). Currently, she is writing a history of gay and lesbian communities in the prairies, entitled Prairie Fairies. HEATH ER KUTTAl is a graduate student in the College of Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan and former director of Student FIRSTop and Disability Services for Students at the University of Saskatchewan. With three paralympic medals, she is active in amateur sport and represented Canada An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 13

at the Paralympics in September 2004. She lives in Saskatoon with her husband and six-year-old son. DENNIS LEE is the author of many books of poetry, critical essays, and sound recordings. Winner of the Governor General's Award (1972} for Civil Elegies and Other Poems, Dennis Lee has served up Alligator Pie to countless children and as well as composing the song lyrics for "Fraggle Rock," a popular television program. JO-ANNE LEE is an assistant professor of women's studies at the University of Victoria. As a sociologist and adult educator, she has worked in community development with immigrant women, youth, and ethnic minority and urban planning organizations. Currently she is resea·rching citizenship, social cohesion and ethnic minority women's resistance at the neighbourhood and national levels. ZACHARI LOGAN produced the cover art for this book. He is a Saskatoon-based artist and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan. His work can be found in many collections across Saskatchewan. JACQUELYNE LUCE has a doctorate in anthropology from York University and is a research associate at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Institute in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Her research explores lesbian/bi/queer women's experiences of assisted conception, adoption and pregnancy loss; pregnant performativity; and midwifery. She is currently studying embryo donation for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and stem ce-11 related research. ELIZABETH MACKENZIE is a Vancouver artist whose widely exhibited projects represent maternal ambivalence and other expressions of the psyche. A commitment to collaboration sustains her as she juggles the demands of a life shared with two active daughters, a perpetually travelling partner and a sporadic teaching practice. FIONA NELSON is the director of women's studies at the University of Calgary and the author of Lesbian Motherhood: An Exploration ofCanadian Lesbian Families (University of Toronto Press, 1996). After researching motherhood, both lesbian and heterosexual , for over a decade, she is now focusing on the experiences of children of lesbian families. ROXANA NG teaches at OISE/University of Toronto. Her major specialization concerns the lives of immigrant women . In the last decade she has focused her research and activism on the changing conditions of garment workers. Her most recent writings on immigrant garment workers can be found in Canadian Woman Studies. MARY NYQUIST holds a joint appointment in the Department of English and the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. Her interests include early modern English literature ; critical race, feminist and political theory; gendered violence; and post-colonialism. She is currently completing a poetry manuscript entitled Wet Toes. ANDREA O'REILLY is the mother of three children, founding president of the Association for Research on Mothering, and an associate professor of women's stud ies at York University. She has edited five books on motherhood and authored another on Toni Morrison. An award-winning teacher, she pioneered the first course on motherhood in Canada. NICHOLAS PACKWOOD is a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at York University. He is also an educator who has taught at York University, Wilfred Laurier University and Humber College, as well as the University of Toronto. He is passionate about everything there is to discover in the fields of anthropology and archaeology. RUTH ROACH PIERSON is Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto where she taught women's history and feminist studies. She is also a poet and published her first book of poetry, Where No Window Was, in 2002. TAWNYE PLEWES has served as a senior policy analyst with the Department of Justice, Government 14 / Gendered Intersections

of Canada._Sh~ holds a Master of Arts in Legal Studies from Carleton University. Her experience ranges fro~ work1~g in concert with Aboriginal communities across Canada to consulting with the Assembly of First Nations on Aboriginal health issues. NICOLE GERARDA POWER teaches in sociology and women's studies at Memorial University and currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship with the Institute for Social and Economic Research . She received her PhD in 2002 from the University of Essex. Her research focuses on gender, fisheries and development. MARY PRATT is one of Canada's most respected realist painters, and is known for her perceptive depiction of light and the themes of domestic life. Pratt's work, which can be found in public and private collections, has been widely recognized. She has received several honorary degrees from Canadian universities, was named Companion of the Order of Canada (1996), and was awarded the Molson Prize in the Arts for the Canada Council (1997). SUSAN PRENTICE lives and works in Winnipeg, where she is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba, a long-time member of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba and mother of two small children. GILLIAN RANSON is an associate professor in Sociology at the University of Calgary with research interests in gender, family life and paid work. Current projects include a book on families with nontraditional ways of sharing paid work and childcare, and participation in an international study of information technology workplaces. MAUREEN REED is an associate professor of Geography at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research introduces feminist perspectives to environmental policy analysis and links ecosystem management to rural identity and community development in Canadian contexts. She also spends time admiring other peoples' gardens while on family vacations across the country. FRANCES ROBSON has an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught photography in the Department of Art and Art History at the Un iversity of Saskatchewan since 1987. Her work, exhibited across Canada and the United States, uses portraiture to speak about women's lives, especially her own. BOB RUSSELL teaches employment and work relations in the School of Management at Griffith University. Prior to that, he was a member of the Sociology Department at the University of Saskatchewan. His recent publications include the monograph, More with Less (University of Toronto Press) . CAROL SCHICK is an associate professor of educational foundations at the University of Regina, where she teaches anti-oppressive education including feminist and anti-racist courses. She often deconstructs her own position -as oppressor and oppressed - in her favourite lecture: How I Became a White Woman. Her publications include The University as Text (Fernwood 1994). KRISTA SCOTT-DIXON (PhD, Women's Studies) is a researcher, contract faculty, and project manager of the Gender and Work Database, a web-based research tool, at York University. She recently published her dissertation research on women's experiences in technology as "Doing IT: Women Working In Information Technology" (2004). VAN DANA SHIVA trained as a physicist and is the author of thirteen books and over 300 papers. Dr. Shiva has received many awards for her work in sustainable agriculture, the ecological paradigm , and women's rights. Most recently, she was awarded the Special International Literary Prize ''Ken Saro Wiwa" by Acquiambiente, Italy. Her latest book is Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005). CARRIE SMITH participated in a project entitled "Re-Righting Reality: Young Women on their Search for Self" with British Columbia's Feminist Research, Education, Development and Action Centre for Research on Violence Against Women and Children. She writes about eating disorders to help herself and others understand what girls with anorexia endure on a daily basis. An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies I 15

DENISE L. SPITZER is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Her research focu ses on embodiment and the impact of marginalization on hea Ith and wel 1being; the intersections of gender, culture and class; transnational identities; and the health implications of policy. VERNA ST. DENIS is an associate professor of Education and Academic Coordinator of Aboriginal Education at the University of Saskatchewan. She teaches cross-cultural education to pre-service education students. Her research includes promoting a critical race analysis in Aboriginal education as well as critiquing and historicizing cultural discourses of difference in Aboriginal education. CANDIS STEENBERGEN isa PhD Candidate in interdisciplinary studies in society and culture at Concordia University in Montreal. An instructor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Women's Studies and in interdisciplinary studies (at Carleton), her work investigates the interplay of generational rhetoric, nostalgia and feminisms in Canada. STEPHANIE STRICKLAND is a print and new media poet. Her book, V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una (Penguin), has a Web component, . Prizewinning works include V, True North, The Red Virgin, and "Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot." She is also the author of Give the Body Back. SUN ERA THOBANI isan assistant professor at the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Thobani was the first woman of colour to serve as president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Her research includes an SSH Re-funded project, "Television Representations of Women and the War on Terrorism." ARITHA VAN HERK is an award-winning novelist, writer, and professor in the English Department at the University of Calgary. Aritha van Herk carries on active work in education, culture, international discourses, community values, and literacy issues. Her irreverent but relevant history of Alberta, Mavericks, (2001) won the Grant MacEwan Author's Award for Alberta Writing. SUSAN WAGNER isa professor of nursing at the University of Saskatchewan. She has expertise in home care program eva luation, quality management and regional health board governance. Her research and publications focus on case management, home care nursing worklife, program evaluation, health policy and nursing education. PAM WAKEWICH is an associate professor in the Departments of Sociology and Women's Studies at Lakehead University. Her previous research has focused on gender, body and health over the life course, and rural and northern health. She is currently co-authoring with Helen Smith a book on history, memory and women's wartime work and identities. RUSSELL WESTHAVER is an assistant professor of sociology at Saint Mary's University, where he teaches qualitative and quantitative research methods. His contribution to this volume is based on his doctoral research, completed in 2003. ANOJA WICKRAMASINGHE is a Professor and Head of Geography at the University of Peradeniya , Sri Lanka, and Coordinator of the Collaborative Regional Research Network in South Asia (coRRENSA). She is the author of many publications including Deforestation, Women and Forestry: The Case ofSri Lanka (1995). ALLISON WILLIAMS is an assistant professor in the School of Geography and Geology at McMaster University. Her research examines how environments operate as determinants of and pathways to health. Along with numerous other grants, she holds a CIHR New Investigator Career Award.

16 / Gendered Intersections

Acknowledgments The proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the National Anti-Poverty Organization. •

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Copyright Perm ission Lillian Allen, (1985), 1988, "Revolutionary Tea Party," Revolutionary Tea Party, Toronto, Music Manufacturing Services. Also the written version appears in Lillian Allen, 1993, Women Do This Every Day (Toronto: Won1en's Press/Canadian Scholars' Press). Reprinted by permission of the author. Margaret Atwood, 1995, "The Signer," Morning in the Bunied House (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart). Reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Linda Briskin, 1998, "Negotiating Power in the Classroom: The Example of Group Work," Canadi,111 "Women~ Studies 17 4 . Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Maria Campbell, 1995, "Rou Garous," Stories of the Road Allowance People (Penticton, BC: Theytus Books). Repdnted by permission of the author. Paula J. Caplan and Jeremy B. Caplan, 1999, Thinking Critically About Research on Sex and Gender (New York: Addison-Wesley Educational P ublishers). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. David Carpenter, 2003, "My Father's Dying," Troutst1·ea111 Creed (Regina: Coteau Books). Reprinted by permission of the author. R.W. Connell, 2002, "Understanding Men: Gender Sociology and the Ne,v International Research on Masculinities," Socia/Thought and Research 24. Reprinted by pern1ission of the author and the publisher. Lorna Crozier, 1992 [1985), "The Fat Lady's Dance," The Garden Going on Without Us (foronto: McClelland & Stewart). Reprinted by permission of publisher and author. Susan Eisenberg, 1995, "Breastfeeding at Night," In Susan Thames and Marin Gazzaniga (eds.), 1995, The Breast: An Anthology (Global City Press). Reprinted by permjssioo of author. Louise Halfe, 1994, "In Da Name of Da Fadder," Bear Bones and Feathers (Regina: Coteau Books). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Susan Ioannou, 1987, "Cheerleader Practice," in J\1argaret Atwood, The CanLit Foodbook: Fro111 Pen to Palate -A Collection ofTasty Literary Fare (foronto: 'fotem Books). Reprinted by permission of the author. Ivan Kalmar, 2001. "I Didn't Know You Were Jewish... and Other Things not to Say When You Find Out," in Carl James and Adrienne Shodd (eds.), Talking About Identity (Toronto: Between the Lines). Reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Valerie Korinek, 2000, Roughing it in the Subhurbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties rind Sixties (foronto: University of Toronto Press). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Dennis Lee, 1987, "I Eat Kids: Yum Yum'" Garbage Delight (Toronto: Key Porter Books). Reprinted by pern1ission of the author. Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, (eds.), "Introduction," Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Krista Scott-Dixon, 2001, "The All-girl On-Line Revolution," Herizons 15, L Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Vandana Shiva, 1996, "Feminist Ecology is the Answer," Women~ flea/th Journal 2. Reprinted by permission of Women} Health Jountal and the Latin A1nerican and Caribbean Women's Health Network. An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 17

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Candis Steenbergen, "Talkin' 'Bout Whose Generation?'' in Allyson Mitchell, Lisa Bryn Rundle and Lara Karaian, Turbochicks (Toronto: Sumach Press). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Stephanie Strickland, 1993, "Quality;" in Stephanie Strick.land, The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press). Reprinted by permission of the author and the Uoiversity of Wisconsin Press. Carrie Smith, 2003, "I-lunger," in Azmina N. Ladha (ed.), Re-Righting Reality: Young Women on their Search for Se/f(Vancouver: FREDA). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Sunera Thobani, 2002, "War Frenzy," Atlantis: A \%mens Studies Journal 27, 1 (Fall). Reprinted by pemtission of the publisher. Aritha van Herk, 1991, Invisible Ink (crypto-fictions) (Edmonton: NeWest Press). Reprinted by pern1ission of the publisher. Pam Wakewich, 2000, "Contours of Everyday Life: Women's Reflections on E1nbodiment and Health Over Time," in Baukje Mieden1a, Janet M. Stoppard and Vivienne Anderson (eds.), lIT>mens Bodies, Womens Lives: Health, Well-Being and Body Image (Toronto: Sumach Press). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Anoja Wickramasinghe, r993, "Women and Indigenous Technology,'' (New York: International Won1en's Tribune Centre). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Images • • •

Duncan Campbell, "Coffee Boys." Reprinted by permission of Duncan Campbell. Shauna Dempsey, 1990, "We're Talking Vulva." Reprinted by permission of Shauna Dempsey. Ann Harbuz, 1978, "Ten Weddings," collection of Regina Public Library, PC 2001.4 Reprinted by permission of Joan Borsa. _ _, 1978, ':July25/i920," collection of Saskatchewan Arts Board. Reprinted byperroission of Joan Borsa. _ _, 1976, "llkrainian Orthodox Church Choir in Wintertime," collection of the Mendel Art Gallery. Reprinted by pennission ofJoan Borsa. • Kellogg's Canada, "You Accept 1-Iis Imperfections: Why Not Your Own?" Special K Advertisement. Reprinted by perroission of Kellogg's Canada. • Elizabeth !vfacKenzie, 1993, "Her/s." Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth MacKenzie . • Mary Pratt, 1995, "Bread Rising," in Barbra Amesbury (compiler), Survivors, in Search ofa ¼ice: The Art ofCourage. Reprinted by pernlission of the Woodlawn Arts Foundation. • Frances Robson, "Family Bed." Reprinted by permission of Frances Robson.

18 / Gendered Intersections

Gendered Intersections Introductory Comments

PamelaJ Downe and C. Lesley Biggs "The personal is political" is a feminist catch phrase with which most people interested in wornen's studies and gender issues ,vill be familiar. It reminds us that even the most routine aspects of our daily lives can reflect influential political relations in our societies. As with many expressions, however, overfamiliarity can relegate it as important only for a bygone era. "That was the way it was for my mom," we often hear in my women's and gender studies classes as we introduce the "personal is political" for discussion. "But, like, with me, you know, I think we're over all that political stuff" The problem with this response lies not in the young women expressing these sentiments, who are usually as self-a\vare of their positions in society and as committed to social advocacy as those who actively embraced this slogan some thirty years ago. Instead, perhaps, the problem lies in how we politicize the world around us and the ways in which we communicate it to others. Who has been marginalized or silenced when only some aspects of select personal lives have been politicized to the exclusion of others? What have we continued to take for granted, and why? To what extent have we incorporated our own behaviours into the critical readings of power relations that inform the intersecting categories of gender, race, culture, class, ability, sexuality, age and geographical location? One of 011r objectives in bringing together the diverse works that constitute this text is to offer a representation of how various scholars, artists and activists today are politicizing their lives and the lives of others. The contributors to this volume take up a wide array of topics in a variety styles to offer political renderings of everyday lives that incorporate both the groundbreaking ideas of the past and perspectives uniquely relevant to the first few years of the twenty-first century. As editors, our aim is to join those who are retreating from universalized images of women, girls, men and boys and instead provide analytical and creative insights into - to take one example experiences of youth who are marginalized by class, homelessness and immigration. Rather than limit discussions of mothering to the experiences of able-bodied and heterosexual women, we disrupt the taken-for-granted interpretations of"n1other" to consider experiences of mothers ,vith disabilities and lesbian 1nothers, the dilemmas of those requiring other-than-mother care and creative representations of what it means to care for the next generation. In considering sexuality, we include perspectives that not onJy politicize women's bodies but also require us to examine masculinity, commercialized sex and how those marginalized through homophobia cope with pregnancy loss. The topics covered here are not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive. Rather than compile a series of overview or review essays, our intent is to present short, discussion pieces that take up only one or two aspects of any given topic. In fact, we specifically asked contributors not to write summarizing synopses like those that can be found in other excellent readers in women's and gender studies. We requested contributors to lend critical commentary to what they feel are an1ong the

An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies I 19

one or two most interesting, important or noteworthy issues within a broader subject area. Our objective in designing this collection in this way is to provide readers with the opportunity to piece together theil· own "big picture," and we hope that they do so by attending to the intersections among the contributions as well as the emergent gaps and silences ..And there are definite gaps in this text: the voices of Francophone women, transgendered people and children are most notably absent. This is not by design but by circumstance; some invitations to contribute were declined, a few chapters were never con1pleted, and some scholars and artists working in these areas were and are unknovvn to us. We hope that these lamentable silences will be filled with the discussion and debate of readers and students. Within any institutionalized academic field of study, there is a huge emphasis on the written word and research-based insight. For those of us mired in scholastic environments, this is required and necessary. While we should not embrace researchbased knowledge as providing an exclusive truth, we should not shy from it either. Ca1·eful and considered research offers incredible insight into issues of great importance to women, men and children everywhere. Among those presented here are the gendered in1plications of Aboriginal self-government initiatives; dynamics of First Nations com1nunities; the challenges faced by those living in poverty; the struggles of waged workets, food producers, scientists and home-care workers; celebrations of spirituality and violations of bodies; fashion; globalization; pedagogical strategies for student-based learning initiatives; and various forms of con1munity activism. It is important to remember, however, that as undeniably valuable as empirical researchbased inquiry can be, it represents only one way of uncovering and communicating the complexities of everyday life and social process. There are other ways, and each offers us the opportunity to ask different questions, even ones not readily answered. As computers become increasingly central to more people's lives, we are developing new ways of con1municating, disseminating ideas and sharing humour. In this book, we include a sampl.e of the kind of gendered comm.e ntary that circulates electronically to be readwith levity and poignancy by diverse Internet users. What sex is your computer? I-lave you heard of"Menopause Barbie" or the story of the Princess and the Frog? What kind of cyber-rhyth1ns and social networks are created through these sorts of circulating narratives? How do these rhythms and networks create as many divisions as connections among us in our local and global communities? Poetic and artistic renderings of life reveal a great deal about the political circu1nstances in which social actors live, eat, communicate and embody pain and pleasure. We hope the pieces included here will inspire readers to become aware, if they are not already, of the poetic rhythms and visual aesthetics in their own lives. Like poetry and visual arts, life-writing - and particularly that which interweaves flights of fancy with a deeply personal but always shared reflection - offers us invaluable opportunities to question and explore how one narrator's social position articulates with our own and that of others. And then there is music, the "sound of the soul," as jazz great Ella Fitzgerald often called it. While there is certainly a lyricism, cadence and mellifluence in any writing classified as "good'1 (a political statement in and of itself), musical representations are very particular social texts that are both reflective and transformative. In drawing together such diverse conunentaries on the lives of women, 1nen and

20 I Gendered Intersections

children, we never lost sight of the fact that numbers can also function as a language. In a statistics-hungry and headline-oriented society; numeration offers a powerful way to tell a story and set a stage. The "facts" - v.,hich are usually generated fro1n creative processes no more ''objective" than Ann Harbuz's rendering of community life - are often used to defrne both the problems of injustice and inequities as well as the potential solutions. Statistical representations of human life are influential because they seem scientific, predictable and truthful. While the stories they tell are not as inunediately apparent or moving as recollections of childhood sexual abuse or the telling of a father's death, they are just as strategically constructed. There are silences, interrupt ions, overstatements and turns just as in any analytical, poetic, artistic, humorous or musical text. 1~he statistical stories that follow our brief introductions to each section in this book are aptly named "Hypatia Index." 1-Iypatia is known as one of the first influential women in mathematics and science. Historians estimate that she lived between the years 355 and 415 CE (Common Era). Known only through her letters, Hypatia travelled throughout the Mediterranean, garnering great respect as a philosopher and teacher of astronomy, geometry and algebra. She taught at a school in Alexandria, Egypt, and letters sent to her there would be addressed simply to "the philosopher," for everyone knew her as a learned woman. Hypatia's methodical and calculated approach to education and science was branded by the early Christians as a form of paganism, and yet, ironically, several very prominent men responsible for the rise of Christianity were among her admiring students (including Synesius of Cyrene, who later became the Bishop of Ptolemais). Ultimately, however, Hypatia's supposedly pagan beliefs in mathematics and the science of the stars so enraged her Christian neighbours that they dragged her from her classroom to a public square where she was stripped, raped and murdered (Molinaro 1990). As the mathematician who discovered the principles of the hyperbola, parabola and ellipses, H ypatia was preoccupied with the connection of shapes and forms. Conversely, she was also concerned with gaps, codifying not only what was known hut the unknown as well, what should be discovered what which needs to be discussed. It is in this spirit that the I-Iypatia Indices were compiled for this text. We hope that readers wiIJ interpret these stories as they would any other, with an eye to the gaps, the fractures as well as the connections, that create elliptical tales of how our past, present and future lives are marked by gender, race, culture, class, ability, sexuality, age and geographical location. We offer our sincerest thanks to all the contributors to this volume, who responded to an endless deluge of e-mail messages, phone calls and letters. It has been a privilege to work with all of you. We also thank Wayne An tony of Fernwood Publishing for his patience and ongoing support. Our collective efforts will be gratifying if this volume inspires further work, debate and reflection. As 1-Iypatia is quoted as saying, "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all" (in Dzielska 1995). REFERENCES Dzielska, Maria. 1995. Hypatia ofAlexandria. Cambridge: I Iarvard University Press. Molinaro, Ursule. 1990. A Full Moon of Women: 29 Portraits ofNotable Women frollt Different Times and Places. New York: Dutton.

An Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies/ 21

Section I

SETTING THE STAGE WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WOMAN? C. Lesley Biggs The true representation of power is not of a big man beating a smaller man or a woman. Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter. Carolyn Heilbrun (1998: 18) What does it mean to be a woman? This seemingly simple question has been the source of much contemplation and debate over many centuries. What distinguishes, however, industrial from pre-industrial societies is that women have sought to define for themselves what it means to be a woman. This is not to say that some women in the past had no power. One can easily point to composer and theologian Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1174), to Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (r646-r684), the first woman ever to receive a PhD, Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603), or even to Kim Campbell (1947 to the present), the first female prime minister of Canada. Noblewomen wielded considerable political influence by virtue of their class/family connections and even non-aristocratic won1en were able to exert some forms of power because their labour was central to economic production in the household. Nor can we can we say that all ,vomen passively accepted patriarchal control. Some women over the course of the centuries have resisted attempts by a father, husband, church or state to impose restrictions on their lives. The difference, ho~rever, between the pre-modern and modern period - in western societies, at least - is that the position of women is no longer seen as "biologically predetermined" or "preordained by God," but rather "the woman question'' as it was first known, has entered public discourse, transcending all spheres of social, economic, political and cultural life. The hard-won gains over the course of the past three hundred years would not have happened if there had not been fenunist movements to champion women's issues and women's rights. Feminism, as an organized political force, has its origins in the industrialization and urbanization experienced first in seventeenth-century England. In these experiences can be seen moments of awakening, where "the natural order" of things was disrupted. Women's needs, issues and desires became visible perhaps for the first time in history. Yet, feminists have not spoken with a single voice - not now, not historically.1 Steeped in the language ofwomen's rights, liberal feminists of the early twentieth century - the so-called first wave of fenunism - argued in favour of equal rights under the law including, inter alia, the right to vote, own property, have custody over children and enter into financial transactions. Recognizing that \VOmen do not necessarily compete with men on a level playing field, the discourse of women's rights was

22 / Gendered Intersections

extended later in the twentieth century to include equal opportunities for women, contingent upon the state enacting social and economic reforms . .Marxist feminism draws on the work of traditional Marxist theory, particularly the Origin ofthe Family, Private Property and the State by Fredrick Engels (1972), in which he posits that women's oppression is based on the sexual division of Jabour. Engels argued that capitalisn1 benefits from this division of labour because women perform tasks necessary to reproduce workers - n1ost of ,vhom were men - on a daily and generational basis, while men were "free" to enter the paid labour force where they exchanged their labour power for a living wage. But traditional Marxism could not explai_n why won1en do "women's work," nor could it explain various forms of male dominance expressed through violence and sexual assault. This "unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism" (Hartmann 1-981) spurred socialist feminists to combine the insights of Marxism with those of radical feminism, a theoretical approach that emerged in the r96os. Beginning with the insight that all women have been subordinated to men in every time and place, radical feminists argued that inequalities between won1en and men are grounded in the prevailing organization of p.rocreation. Because women bear children and are physically weaker than men, certain social relationships have emerged in order to ensure the survival of the biological family Unlike anti-feminist arguments that insist that these biological relationships provide a justification for male dominance, radical feminists argue either that women's ability to bear children is evidence of the superiority of .von1en's bodies (Firestone 1970; Griffin 1980; Rich 1976); or that the problem is with the inherently aggressive testosterone-driven male body (Daly 1978; Dworkin 1974). Other strands of radical feminism, which could be more accurately termed cultural fe1ninism, examine the institutional structures and familial arrangements that socialize girls and boys to become feminine and masculine (e.g., Gilligan 1982). In some cases, cultural feminists incorporated the insights of psychoanalytic theory while rejecting Freud's view that "anatomy is destiny' (e.g., Chodorow 1978); others drew on existentialism and extended Simone de Beauvoirs' adage, "one is not born, rather becomes a woman" (de Beauvoir (1952] 1974). The insights and strategies of second wave feminism - the liberal , Marxist/ socialist and radical feminists of the 1960s - produced significant improvements in the lives of many women in western societies. For example, women won the right to have equal pay for equal work, to work in an environment free from sexual harassment and to enter into the professions (such as law, medicine and engineering). More women entered the universities, and within universities, women's and gender studies, as well as gay studies, native studies and black studies, among others, gained a foothold. Women gained more control over their bodies by having access to birth control and abortion (admittedly under restricted circumstances), by having midwives attend births and by having drug-free births if they chose. Feminists also established rape eris.is centres, shelters for abused women, and einployment and mental health services aimed at the special needs of women. These accomplishtnents are impressive. But, as the effects of the last decade of fiscal and social conservatism demonstrate, these hard-won gains can be undermined or reversed. Feminism was arguably one of the most successful political movements of the twentieth century But not al1 women benefited equally fron1 the efforts of what we

Section I: Setting the Stage-What Does it Mean to Be a Woman? I 23

now kno"v to be the concerns of white, middle-class wo1nen. Many women - poor women, lesbians, women of colour, women with disabilities, native women - felt alienated from the mainstream feminist movement. By the mid-198os, many of the ideas of second wave feminism came under attack. At the centre of the debate was the assumption by the early feminist theorists that their experiences represented the universal experience of womanhood (i.e., "every woman is just like me," regardless of race or class or age or ability or sexuality). Women from marginalized groups began to explore their own experience, and these feminist theorists pointed to how race, class, able-bodiedness and sexuality produce different configurations of oppression, forms of resistance and strategies for change, as welJ as privilege, among women (Harding 1991; Hill Collins 1990; hooks 1989; Smith 1987). By theorizing "the personal is the political," a rallying crying of the women's liberation movement of the r96os, these "standpoint" theorists were able to see the ways in which women could be members of an oppressed and oppressing group - sometimes simultaneously. The period from the mid-198os to the present has been characterized as the third wave of feminism. Arguing against essentialism, postmodern feminists eschew the notion of Woman as an essential, ahistorical and authentic category (Butler 1990; lrigaray 1985; Kristeva 1982.) Rather than ask, "What is Woman?" which assumes that if we unpeel the layers of patriarchal practices, we will find the "true" and "authentic" Woman, postmodern feminists ask, "How did this category come to be constructed in the first place?" Using the tools of deconstruction, postmodern feminists seek to uncover the technologies of power that have been deployed to establish the "truth" about Woman. "The central project," as Judith Grant observes, "is to investigate the mechanisms of power that have forged the female identity in order to resist identity itself" (Grant 1993: 131). Postmodern feminism's focus on the n1eaning of Woman has necessarily led to examinations of the ways in which gender is constituted through language. For example, the modern, Enlightenment concept of male and female as "opposites" is repeated in numerous pairings such as nature/nurture, nature/art 1 culture/nature, sun/moon, rational/irrational, reason/emotion and head/heart (cited in Grant 1993). At a glance, we can see the ways in which gender is deeply encoded in the English language. The inequities of power between ideas associated with masculinity and those with femininity are reflected in and reproduced in the ordering of the words and theirvaluation. Concepts such as Woman and Man and masculine and feminine can be decoded to reveal that they are historical and social rather than "essential," "authentic" or "natural" categories. As a result of decoding language, postmodern feminists have shifted the focus of analysis away from women to the study of gender, examining the relationship between women and men, femaleness and maleness, femininity and mascu.l inity and intersections with other social relations. Thus, it is now common to speak of masculinities and femininities in the plural rather than in the singular. As well as deconstructing gender codes embedded in language, postmodern feminists also seek to uncover the silences in texts. This project was initially begun by modernist feminists who queried the absence of women from great bodies of work otherwise known as the canon. Much of the early work of second wave fen1inism was centred on uncovering and recovering women's contributions to literature, the arts,

24 / Gendered Intersections

religion and science. Later this analysis was extended to examine the very categories that have been used to evaluate women's (and men's) contributions to social, political and economic life. Not content with the great n1an/great woman and great inventions approach, modernist feminists began to exan1ine the extraordinary contributions of ordinary won1en to daily life. Postmodern feminism is not without its critics. "Where do the lives of 'reaP women, thinking, acting people who live in and construct the world of the everyday fit into the analysis of discourse?" ask modernist feminists (e.g., Harstock 1990). Wo1nen and men are living, embodied beings and not simply texts. What role does notions of agency and resistance play in the ephemeral, postmodern world of discourse? As well, since liberation is understood as freedom from discursive categories, what is the vision of a more just and equitable society for ,vomen? In response, many conten1porary feminists have adopted Donna Haraway's (1991) notion of "situated knowledges," a concept that attempts to link a notion of subjectivity (thinking, kno~ring actors) which refuses the transhistorical category of Woman while simultaneously insisting that feminist theories and practices engage with the "real" world that exists outside of us. Like standpoint theorists, Haraway argues that knowledge is partial, multi-vocal and historically contingent, but like the postmodernists, she acknowledges the importance of "semiotic technologies" for making meanings in our everyday lives. To return then to our original question, what does it mean to be a won1an? The ways in which feminists have thought about "the woman question" demonstrates the co1nplexity of this issue: a variety of approaches have been taken over the last three centuries, which reflect competing understandings of power, resistance and agency. There are no easy resolutions to the tensions between the ideas and practices of second and third wave feminisms but we invite you to join in the conversation. The contributions, tensions and contradictions of second ,vave feminism are explored through the music of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by C. Lesley Biggs. For contemporary students who have only textbook knowledge of second wave feminism, the music from that era gives a feel for the times, while capturing the energy and enthusiasm that served as catalysts for change. Biggs illustrates the ways in which feminist issues were articulated both in mainstream and alternative cultures and dra,vs attention to the complexity of these ideas, to the multiplicity of voices and the cross-cutting of hyphenated feminisms through race and class. Finally, Biggs demonstrates the study of music as an effective pedagogical tool and an important site of identity construction. In 1977, in a speech to the Douglass College Convocation, Adrienne Rich implored the female graduates to "claim their education" by "refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you" (Rich 1979: 233). Linda Briskin would not disagree with Rich's call for women to be "the rightful owners" of their education but, with over twenty years of feminist pedagogy behind her, Briskin reveals the complexity of classroom dynamics both between male and female groups and within same-sex groups. Briskin calls for pro-active interventionist practices which "bring to consciousness through nanling, and openly negotiate the power dynamics in the everyday life of the classroom." Issues of power are also explored by Ruth Roach Pierson, this time in relation to

Section I: Setting the Stage -

What Does it Mean to Be a Woman? / 25

the "epistemic violence," to quote Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, wrought by historical scholarship that has excluded women from the histories of nationalism, imperialism and colonialism. "To advocate a focus on women.. .is not merely additive," as Pierson declares, "but rather reconfiguring, is to recognize the great diversity of women and the instability of the category women and its perpetual constitution in and through other categories of difference.'' Pierson explores the legacy of European imperialism and the ways in which European elite white male domination was established over women generally, "the labouring masses" and conquered peoples through bloody violence and "scientific" theories that provided justification for the hierarchical ordering of European society both in "the homelancl" and "the colonies." Writing women's history is not just putting women into the pjcture; rather it is a confrontation with power - patriarchal, imperialist and colonialist discursive practices which have sought to subjugate the voices of the subaltern. However, Pierson poignantly reminds us that white western feminists are not exempt from imperialist and colonial relations, but rather have, in their own writing, reproduced these same discursive practices. One way of decolonizing the classroom is to include Aboriginal oral traditions in the curriculum. Maria Campbell, Metis writer, has lovingly translated stories that she has been given permission by her male elders to share with a wider audience. In the process of collecting these stories, Campbell has begun to undergo the decolonization process. Campbell writes, "I have paid for the stories by re-learning and re-thinking my language and by being a helper or servant to the teachers. I have also paid for the stories with gifts of blankets, tobacco and even a prize Arab stallion'' (Can1pbell 1995: 2). "Rou Garous," translated as werewolf: is about a woman who is a shape-changer and healer, who is stigmatized, ostracized and ultimately driven out by some men in a Metis community who have rejected the old ways. "Not only were the {men} foolish," as Campbell observes, "they allowed the Church to manipulate and brainwash them11 (Campbell, forthcoming). The woman's greatest sin was that she was a strong woman with the gift of the sight. The reader of"Rou Garous" will be struck by the presentation of this text which does not conform to standard English; it is an example of textualized orature - the transcription of oral culture. But read this story aloud and you will begin to appreciate the wit, humour, and playfulness of Metis culture as well as the memories and history of the Metis. "Listen up!" is the message of Candis Steenbergen to second wave feminists. The world has changed since the 1960s and "young feminists like [Steenbergen} have inherited a complex social environment, an increasingly complicated women's movement and an unfinished sexual revolution." Steenbergen loudly denounces postfeminist te:x:ts which simultaneously celebrate "the arrival of young, independent, confident, sexually free and aggressive women" and declare fenlinism to be dead! But Steenbergen's critique is not restricted to post-feminism chic; she also takes on prominent second wave feminists like Germaine Greer who has decried the "socalled" apathy of young, third wave feminists. Steenbergen argues that the third wave is active but its strategies of resisting are different from its predecessors in order to address the complexities of its media-dominated world. What is needed is a dialogue between second and third wave feminisms to bridge the generational gap. "The silence was deafening" is a com1non enough metaphor meant figuratively

26 / Gendered Intersections

not literally. But for the women and men who are hearing impaired being deaf is to live in silence - almost. In "The Signer," Margaret Atwood imagines the world of the signer, "[her} unknown twin" who is "a semaphore of the body/ for those who listen with their eyes." Just as textualized orature (Gingell 2004) is not merely translation, the dance of the signer e1nbodies language unknowabJe to Atwood and most of her audience. But in the act of communicating regardless of its form, 'together we are practicing/ for the place where all the languages/ will be finalized and/ one; and the hands also." If the hearing impaired live in a world of silence, the traffic of words, images and sound moving th rough the Internet at high speed can clog the arteries of the mind. But, on occasion, you receive an e-mail at which you laugh out loud. "I Want to Be a Woman" is one of those wickedly funny e-mails which pokes fun at patriarch al images of women. See, fe1ninists do have a sense of humour! t.

NOTE It is not possible in such a short space to examine the nuances of the debates both within and between categories of feminist thought. For con1prehensive analyses of the various strands of feminis1n, see Grant 1993; Jaggar r983; Tong 1989. Nor are the examples of feminist writers cited in this section meant to be exhaustive; they are/were illustrative but influential thinkers.

REFERENCES Butler,Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion ofIdentity. New York: Routledge. Campbell, Maria. (forthcoming). "One Small Medicine. Interview with Maria Campbell." Essays on Canadian Writing. Special Edition on Textualizing Orarure and Orality; edited by Susan Gingell. _ _ . 1995. Stories ofthe Road Allowance People. Penticton, BC: Theytus Books. Canada. Royal Commission on the Status of Women. 1970. Report. Ottawa: Information Canada. Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Women. Berkeley: University of California Press. Daly, Mary. 1978. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics ofRadical Fenzinism. Boston: Beacon Press. de Beauvoir, Simone. [1952] 1974. The Second Sex. Translated by I-J.M. Parshley. New York: Bantam. Dworkin, Andrea. 1973. Woman Hating: A Radical look at Sexuality. New York: E.P. Dutton. Engels, Frederick. 1972. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers. Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: Morrow. Gilligan, Carol. r982. In a Different ¼ice: Psychological Theory and Womens Development. Ca1nbridge: l-Iarvard University Press. Gingell, Susan. 2004. "Teaching the Talk that Walks on Paper." Department of English, University of Saskatchewan. Unpublished Manuscript. I am grateful to Dr. Gingell for sharing this paper with me. Grant, Judith. 1993. Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts ofFenzinist Theory. New York and London: Routledge. Griffin, Susan. 1980. --WOman and Nature: The Roaring Inside ofHer. New York: Harper Colophon. I-Iaraway, Donna. 1991. "Situated Knowledges." In Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention ofNature. New York: Routledge. I-larding, Sandra, 1991. Whose Science.? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women} Lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Section I: Setting the Stage -

What Does it Mean to Be a Woman?/ 27

1-Iarstock, Sandra. 1990. "Foucault on Power: A Theory of Women?" In Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hartmann, Heidi. 1981. "1' he Unhappy Marriage of Marxisn1 and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union.'' In Lydia Sargeant (ed.), \\',omen and Revolution. Boston: South End Press. Heilbrun, Carolyn. 1998. \f7riting a \l'toman~ Life. New York: Ballantine Books. Hill Collins, Patricia. 1990. Black Fe1ninist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and The Politics of Empowerment. New York and London: Routledge. hooks, bell 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist) Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. The Sex \Vhich Is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell University. Jagger, Alison. 1983. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Norton. _ _ . 1979. "Claiming an Education." In Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978. New Yo:rk and London: WW Norton. Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The Everyday W'orldasProblematic:A Feminist Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University. Tong, Rosemary. 1989. Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Boulder and San Francisco: Westview.

28 / Gendered Intersections

SETTING THE STAGE HYPATIA INDEX1 •

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• • •

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•

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The international ranking of Canada among r73 countries as assigned by the United Nations (UN) in 2002 based on a measure of gender empowern1ent: 7; of the United States: 112 The overall ranking of Canada, assigned by the UN in 2002, based on all measures of human development: 3; of the United States: 6 Percentage of Canada's population that is women in 1999: 50.43 Number of years a female infant born in Canada in 1997 can expect to live: 8r; a male infant: 76 Number of years an Aboriginal female infant born in Canada in 1995 can expect to live: 75.7; an Aboriginal male infant: 68 Percentage of the female population in Canada in low income situations in 1999: 19; of women over age 65= 24; of unattached women over age 65: 48 Per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of women in Canada in 1998: $17,980 (US); of men: $29,294 (US) 4 Amount by which the 1998 per capita GDP for men in the United States exceeds that for women: $14,284 (US) Percentage of women in Canada in 1994 identified as having limited reading skills: 20; of women over age 65: 535 Number of people, world"vide, who meet the criteria of illiteracy: 855 million6 Percentage of women in N iger who meet the criteria of illiteracy as set by the UN: 9r.6; of men: 767 Number of wo.men and children who are victims of war, natural disasters, and extreme poverty: 48 million Number of girls and women missing in India in the early 1990s: 23 million; in China: 30 million; in the rest of the world: 40 million8 Number of countries where birth sex ratio distortion is known to be the result of selected abortion of female foetuses: 4; where it is suspected to be the result of selected abortion of female foetuses: 12 Percentage of elected parliamentary seats held by wo.tnen worldwide in May 2003: 15-29 Percentage of elected parliamentary seats held by women in 2002 in Kuwait: 0 10 Percentage of elected parliamentary seats held by women in Canada in 1978: 4.2;1r in Canada in 2003: 24; in the United States in 2003: 14n. Percentage of women appointed to executive branch political posts in the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency in the United States: 37; in the first year of George W Bush's presidency in the United States: 26 13 Proportion of United States voters who claim that they do not need to know a political candidate's opinion on abortion: 54 percent 14 Proportion of United States residents who believe that a deeply religious politician should be willing to compromise when voting on abortion: 57 percent Rate of abortions (per 1,000 women) in the United States in 1995-96: 22.9; in Vietnam: 83.3 Percentage of Americans who believe that having a baby outside of marriage is Section I: Setting the Stage - What Does it Mea n to Be a Woman?/ 29

• • • • • •

1.

2. 3. 4. 5,

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

morally wrong: 46; that abortion is morally wrong: 5}1 5 Rate by which women's enrolment in university in the United States has increased between 1977 and 1997: 44 percent 16 Proportion of all university students in Canada who are women: 57 percent' 7 Proportion of the overall increase in Canadian university enrolment between 1997/98 and 2000/01 accounted for by women: 78 percent Proportion of interscholastic and intercollegiate athletes in the United States who are women: one-third18 Percentage by which female college athletes in the United States receive less of the sports operating budget than male athletes do: 26 Rate by which female participation in American high school and coUege sports increased in the first five years after Title IX (legislation barring sex discrimination in education) was adopted in 1975: 600 percent19 NOTES Compiled by Pamela J. Downe, with the assistance of Ellen Whiteman. Except when otherwise indicated in the main text, the sources cited in this Index apply to the line where first referenced and then to aJl those that follow until another endnote appears. All Web references were accessed between May and August 2003. United Nations, 2002, Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World (New York: Oxford University Press). Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Nlinistry of Industry). United Nations, 2000, fluman Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development (New York: Oxford University Press). Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-based Statistical Report- (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Women and International Development, 2000, "World Development Statistics," >> >>>12. Every time

I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows. -

Jennifer UnJimited >>> >>>13. Thirty-five is when you finally gee your head together and your body starts

falling apart. -Caryn Leschen >>> >>>I4.

I try to take one day at a time, but son1etimes several days attack me at once.

- :Jennifer Unlimited >>> >>>I5- If you can't be a good exan1ple, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. -

Catherine Aird >>> >>>16. Behind every successful woman... is a substantial amount of coffee. -Stephanie

Piro >>> >>>I8. Behind every successful woman ... is a basket of dirty laundry. -Sally Forth

64 / Gendered Intersections

Section 11

FORGING FEMININITIES AND MASCU LI NITIES THROUGH MEDIA AND MATERIAL CULTURES C. Lesley Biggs My father did not invent T in.kerbell or the bluebell fairy. Rather he used what were cultural fantasies to name something about his deep and complex feelings for his daughter. In return, I, his daughter, took those fantasies to my heart and my unconscious, making them own. CW-alkerdine 1997: 181) Open the newspaper, turn on the television, listen to t he radio, watch a film, drive to the supern1arket, surf the Internet; what do you find? A bedazzling array of images visual and sound - and messages that boggle the mind. From the peccadilloes of Playboy and Playgirl to the ho1nemakers' advice offered by Chatelaine magazine; from the thunderous symphonies of Beethoven to the gender-bending performances of k.d. lang; from the apple pie images of family in Leave It To Beaver to the antics of The Simpsons; from the racist images of Aunt Jemima to the flattened images of racial diversity in Calvin Klein ads; from tampons soaked in blue ink to the dazzling whiteness of Mr. Clean; and everything in between, we cannot escape this imagesaturated culture in which we l ive. Or can we? Some of us love all that the consumer culture has to offer. We rush out to buy the newest CD by our favourite artist; can't wait for the release of the next major blockbuster film; read the next bestselling book; or "gotta have" this year's fashions or the latest hairstyle. Others of us decry mass consumption. At best, we see that consumers are the victims of unrelenting advertising which exploits our fears and anxieties. At worst, we see consumers as cultural dupes who have been seduced by the glitter and glamour of celebrity capitalism. We lament the degradation of our land, water and air, and the tremendous waste of natural resources to produce and sell products. We point to extreme poverty amidst great wealth both within Canada and between Canada and Third World countries; and we organize protests against companies that exploit child labour or whose employees work for a pittance in sweatshops. Some of us have a love/hate relationship to the media and consruner culture. We find pleasure in the perfectly muscled body of an athlete but criticize the slim, youthful body as the measure for judging an individual's worth; we appreciate the aesthetics of good films, television and music but abhor the violence, sexism, classism and racism infused in much of media culture; and we value the range of choices that we have as conswners but "ve also diligently recycle our bottJes, cans and waste paper and buy products that haven't been tested on animals. And some of us - women, that is - as Valerie Korinek in this section points out, experience "guiJty pJeasures.,., Although so many of us are aware that ro1nance novels, women's magazines, popular music, soap operas and "chick flicks" are "politically incorrect," we "read, view and listen guiltily,

Section II: Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 65

or in very extreme cases, secretly, to this material." Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, women have often been identified ,vitb. mass consumption, which as Sue Thornham (2000) observes, is negatively positioned in the production/consumption binary. 1 More specifically; women have been associated with conspicuous consumption; the unrelenting demand for more and more consumer goods to satisfy the needs of the domestic sphere and personal adornment. The modern equivalent is the grasping, mindless "'shopaholic" who is coded female. If women are mindless consumers, then they represent the irrational as opposed to the rational, discerning (read male) consumer. While it may have been true that won1en in the not-too-distant past were the p rimary consumers, does this hold true for today? What of men's relationship to mass culture? To what extent are men now the targets of advertising? Of course, women are not only consumers of media and consumer culture, t hey are also commodified objects and objects of desire. "Sex sells," as the saying goes, and there is no shortage of material to prove this point. Perhaps the more interesting question is how women (and men) are represented to sell what kinds of products? Under what conditions are relations of difference (race, able-bodiedness, class, age, sexuality) inscribed into the media and consumer culture? How have these images changed over time? How do we decode the meanings of these images? Is there one "correct" read of an image or are t hey many? And if multiple interpretations are possible, what conditions structure those readings? Perhaps the most important question of all is, "what is the impact of these images on 'real' women and men?'' Early analyses of the sexist biases in "social texts" such as children's literature and television focused on their content (for example, the absence or presence of female characters and the ways in which these characters were portrayed). By identifying sexist stereotypes and presenting alternative visions of gender relations, the hope was that both male and female readers would develop a less distorted picture of reality and provide a broader range of images of women and men, and girls and boys. The assumption was that changing children's thinking about gender would lead to a change in behaviour. In itself, as Valerie Wal.kerdine (1990) observes, critiquing sexist images is a worthy goal, but she argues that it is limited and perhaps a tad naive. In Walkerdine's view, there are two difficulties with this approach. First, there is no guarantee t hat the desired change in thought and action will actually occur, and se.c ond, ''that unproblematic transformation will come about through the adoption of non-stereotyped activities. Such an approach assumes a passive learner or rather a rationalist one, who will change as a result of receiving the correct information about how things really are" (emphasis in t he original, Walkerdine 1990: 89). Instead, Wal.kerdine argues t hat cultural products do not exist outside of the "real" world but are sites where we construct n1eaning, where we seek to create identities for ourselves and define who we are. Readers (in the broadest sense of the word) are actively engaged in complex ways with t he media, consumer and popular cultures, accepting some elements while rejecting others. The point is to understand how we insert ourselves into the dominant discourses of femininity (and de facto , masculinity), that is, how do we learn to be feminine and masculine. "I-Iow can it be," asks Walkerdine, "that femininity is a fiction and yet lived as though it were real, felt deeply, as though it were a universal truth of the psyche?"

66 / Gendered Intersections

(Walkerdine 1990: xiii). In answer to her question, she suggests that fantasies are the vehicles through which we insert ourselves into cultural scripts about femininity (and masculinity). We are desiring subjects through which we seek to represent ourselves as actors in our own stories and as the fantasized objects of another's desire. What are some of these fantasies? Many of them centre on a romantic, heterosexual narrative of the "some day my prince will come" variety; to be as beautiful and as sexy as our favourite pop star or movie idol; to have the ideal body; to have the ideal home (a la Martha Stewart); to be the perfect mom; to achieve respectability. Our fantasies are structu.red by the familial and social worlds in which we live and operate in a dynamic relationship with a variety of cultural products that also reflect and reproduce practices of femininity and masculinity. Fantasies are sites of pleasure, which is a source of their power, motivating us to engage with cultural products. We buy that magazine or listen to that CD over and over again as a way of creating meaning. But fantasies are also sources of anxiety because most of us cannot realize our dreams and desires, and therein lies their power - striving to fulfil our elusive wishes regulates to varying degrees our actions and limits our imaginative possibilities. Walkerdine argues that as readers of these cultural products, we enter into these cultural practices as ways of resolving, however imperfectly, these psychic and social struggles. Not everyone, of course, and probably not even most of us at all times, accept willy-nilly the cultural scripts that are handed to us. Either as individuals or as part of subcultures, we resist the dominant definitions of femininity and masculinity (as well as other social relations which structure but do not determine our lives). This was the case for readers of Chatelaine magazine who opposed the "Mrs. Chatelaine Contest," an annual essay competition begun in 1961 which valorized homemaking and community service. Valerie Korinek, in her chapter, recounts the ways in which a group of women highjacked the contest by nominating themselves for the award of "Mrs. Slob," women who neither had the time, resources or inclination to be the "perfect homemaker" envisioned by the editors of Chatelaine. Korinek shows that the female readership of Chatelaine were a diverse lot who used "key concepts of second wave feminism (that they, in part gleaned from feminist articles published in Chatelaine) to critique the more traditional magazine content." Korinek urges us to '1critically explore women's cultural products because behind the stereotypical fa Percentage of women in the United States and Canada who express "extreme dissatisfaction" with their appearance and who report comparing themselves to models in 1nagazines: 43 6 Percentage of women who express "extreme satisfaction" with their appearance and who report comparing themselves to models in magazines: 17 Percentage of men who compare themselves to models in n1agazines: 12 Percentage of women who would sacrifice three years of life to achieve their desired weight: 24; of men: 17 Percentage of women who, in the last week, induced vomiting to control weight: 6; of men: r Estimated number of Canadian women aged thirteen to forty that have anorexia nervosa: 200,000 to 300,000 7 Percent by which hospitalizations for eating disorders have increased (19872000) among young Canadian women under the age of 15: 348 Percentage of all hospital admissions for eating orders that is accounted for by girls and "vomen: 94 Average length of stay in hospital due to eating disorders: 27.5 days Percentage of those with eating disorders who are treated in hospital: 1 Percentage of eleven-year-old girls who are on diets to lose weight: 449 Number of Barbie dolls that are sold worldwide every second: 2 10 Estimated height of Barbie: 6 feet; of average American woman: 5 feet, 4 inchesn Estimated weight of Barbie: 101 pounds; of average American woman: 145 pounds Price of embroidered women's tee-shirt designed by Dior (2003/04 line) as quoted by Neiman Marcus: $l,OJ5 (US) Per Capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria: $896 (US)12 Retail price of one pair of black suede leather boots (2003/04 line) designed by Prada as quoted by Prada: $950 (US) Percentage of United States residents living on less than $11 (US) per day: 13.6 Price of one bottle of designer facial cream by La Prairie as quoted by Neiman Marcus: $500 (US) Per capita GDP of Sierra Leone: $490 (US) Percentage of commercially available computer-based art work produced by women in 1997: 60 13 Percentage of girls shown playing "vith computers in a sample of major American toy catalogs: 0 14 Percentage of award-winning picture books for preschoolers, published in the

70 I Gendered Intersections

•

• • •

• • •

•

• •

• • •

•

1980s, that had no female characters: 12.5; t hat had females as central characters: 33 Percentage of gender-neutral characters in children's literature who are assigned .masculine identities by adult readers: 95 Number of hours each day a child in the United States spends using media (television, radio, CDs or computer): 5.515 Percentage of children in the United States in 1998 who have a television in their bedroom: 5or6 Percentage of parents in the United States who are extremely concerned that their children are being exposed to too much sexual content in TV programs: 66 Percentage of parents in the United States who are extremely concerned that their children are being exposed to too much violence in TV programs: 60 Percentage of parents who believe that ratings and parental advisories on TV programs and other media forms are a good idea: 90 Percentage of prime-time programs incorporating violence or hostile behaviours centrally into the content : 5]1 7 Ratio of 2002 prime-time television progran1s that were told from a male pointof-view to those told from a female point-of-view: 2 to 1 Percentage of actors in the 2002-2003 prime-time season who are women: 40 Average number of viewers of the Chinese Half the Sky television program that deals with women's and gender issues: 50 million18 Worldwide audience for the Superbo'"rl (2003): 800 million 19 Revenue generated by the National Football League in the early 1990s: $3.6 billion/ 0 by t he diet industry: $40 billion/1 by the cosmetic surgery industry: $10 billion The average salary of a player with the National Basketball Association in the 2001-2002 season: $4.5 million22 The average salary of a player in the Women's National Basketball Association in the 2000-2001 season: $27,0002 3

NOTES r. Compiled by Pamela J. Downe, with the assistance of Ellen Whiteman. Except when otherwise indicated in the 1nain text, the sources cited in this Index apply to the line where first referenced and then to all those that follow until another endnote appears. ALI Web references were accessed between Nlay and August 2003. 2. The Princeton Review, 2000, "Internship: Ms. 1\1agazine." . 3. Profile: Playboy Enterprises Inc., 2003, . 4. Masterhead Online, 2002, . 5. Dawn H . Currie, 1999, Girl Talk: Adolescent 1.Wagazines and Their Readers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). 6. David Garner, 1997, "The 1997 Body Image Survey Results,'' Psychology Today 30(1), 30-44+. 7. ANRED, 2002, . 8. Health Canada, 2002, A Report on 1.\1.ental Illness in Canada, . 9. SCARED, 2002, . 10. Ana Enriguez, 2003, "Sounding Barbie's Alarm: A Toy Factory Worker's Story," Maqui/a Network Update Qune), . 11. ANRED, 2002, . Section II : Forging Femininities and Mascu linities through ... / 71

12. United Nations, 2002, Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented Wodd (New York: Oxford University Press). 13- US National Endo,vment for the Arts, 1998, Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (Washington, DC: Research Division Report of the National Endowment for the Arts). r4. Claire Rcnzetti and Daniel]. Curran, 1995, Women, Men and Society (Third Edition) (Boston: Allyn & Bacon). 15. Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, 2002, Youth Pornography and the Internet (Washington: National Research Council). 16. Public Agenda On-Line, 2003, The Family: Major Proposals, . 17. National Organization for Women, 2002, Watch Out; Listen Up: 2002 Feminist Primetime Report . 18. Nlichael Kaufman, 2002, Report of the White Ribbon Campaign Visit to Beijing, . 19. The Official Site of Super Bowl XXXVII, 2002, . 20. Greg Malszecki and T. Cavar, 2001, "Men, Masculinities, War, and Sport," in Nancy Mandell (ed.), Feminist Issues: Race, Class and Sexuality (Toronto: Prentice Hall). 21. Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at the University of North Texas, 2002, ''Who Contributes to and/or Profits fron1 Women's Negative Body Image?)' . 22. USA Today, 2002, "Salaries." . 23. Greg Malszecki and T. Cavar, 2001, "Men, Masculinities, War, and Sport," in Nancy Mandell (ed.), Feminist Issues: Race, Class and Sexuality (foronto: Prentice Hall).

72 I Gendered Intersections

"Mrs. Slob's" Manifesto A Case Study in Critical Reading of Chatelaine Magazine 1

Valerie J Korinek Few students and scholars within the field of women's and gender studies are unfamiliar with the guilty pleasures of consuming women's cultural products. Whether your products of choice are romance novels, women's magazines, popular music, soap operas or the so-called "chick flicks" we are simultaneously aware of the elitist scorn of many feminist and anti-fe.minist critics alike who dismiss this material as brainless, escapist fare. So fans , particularly those university educated ones, read, view and listen guiltily, or in very extreme cases, secretly, to this material. Meanwhile, untroubled by these concerns, the entertainment conglomerates happily rake in the profits because of the immense popularity of these gendered genres. Within the past ten to twenty years this blanket condescension has been unsettled by a ntunber of feminist academics - working in fields as diverse as history, English, sociology, cultural studies and anthropology- who have begun to critically study the myths about these products. 2 While results of these studies vary, what the scholars have discovered is that the world of won1en's cultural products is significantly more complex and important than its critics acknowledge. What follows is a case study drawn from the pages of Canada's premier adult women's magazine - Chatelaine. This chapter demonstrates the important role that readers' creativity and agency played in •nterpreting the magazine's material. In this situation a contest chosen to award Canadian homemakers was hijacked by a lively group of women ,vho identified themselves as "slobs." Clearly, this was an unconventional ending for a traditional women's magazine contest- and yet the Mrs. Chatelaine Contest highlights a number of irr1portant factors. First, it demonstrates the ways in which a diverse readership interpreted the material. Second, it highlights the ways in which readers en1ployed key concepts of second wave feminist ideals (that they, in part, gleaned from feminist articles published in Chatelaine) to critique the more traditional magazine content. In the pages of Chatelaine magazine in the fifties and sixties, Canadian women were exposed to a wide-ranging amount of material on topics we now consider representative of second wave feminist concerns - pay equity, divorce legislation, working outside the home, child welfare, sexuality and reproduction. Additionally, Chatelaine was one of the key media voices that implored the federal government to investigate women's status. Later they gave significant coverage to both the study and the final Report ofthe Royal Co1nmission on the Status of Women. Third, it confirms the importance of close readings of so-called "traditional" material. The fate of the Mrs. Chatelaine Contest illustrates the need to critically explore women's cultural products, because behind the stereotypical facade, there may well lurk non-traditional and/or subversive content, consumers and producers. In 1961, Chatelaine created the Mrs. Chatelaine Contest, an annual essay competition open to all Canadian hon1emakers. The preferred entrant ,vas a married woman with children. Women who entered we1·e required to answer questions about their Section II; Forging Femininities and Masculinities through .. . / 73

families, thoughts about marriage and mothering, favourite recipes, descriptions of their home's interior design. According to E.H. Gittings, Assistant Advertising Sales Manager for Chatelaine, the contest's popularity had exceeded Maclean Hunter's expectations: "We received approximately 5,700 entries .from our English edition and 400 entries from our French edition. Some of the entries were very elaborate indeed. They included such things as samples of pies, cookies, tape recordings of their voices and, in practically all cases, it was obvious that these readers had spent literally days preparing their entries. Mrs. Saxton who won the contest last yeaF, confessed after she had been selected that she had spent over 150 hours preparing her entry."1 By all accounts, both in number of entries received and in the amount of tune contestants put into their entries, the contest was a success. Of course, the prizes were also very enticing. They included two first-class tickets to Paris, hotel accommodation, $1,000 cash and a new wardrobe. JL. Adams, Chatelaine Manager for Eastern Canada, described the first winner, Mrs.Joyce Saxton, of Plenty, Saskatchewan, as a "charming and delightful person."4 A farm wife and mother of three children, Saxton was a hyper-energetic housewife who was active in nine community groups in addition to her farm wife duties: "[she} preserved 140 quarts of fruit preserves last summer, 60 jars of jellies, 260 packs of frozen fruit and vegetables; sews most of her children's clothes and some of her own... "5 Not all readers were cut from the same cloth. For them, the Mrs. Chatelaine Contest highlighted actual or imagined inadequacies in their various roles as wives, mothers and often workers. One woman, Beatrice Maitland of Chatham, NB, took matters into her own hands and decided to write to the magazine and nominate herself for the "Mrs. Slob 1961'' contest (Maitland's invention). The following excerpt from her first letter to editor Doris Anderson provided her humourous critique of the standards required of"Mrs. Chatelaine" and is a wonderful example of readers creativity in fashioning "oppositional" readings of Chatelaine material: Yesterday was the closing date for your Mrs. Chatelaine contest, but I didn't enter.... I wish someone, sometime, would have a competition for "Mrs. Nothing!!" A person who isn't a perfect housekeeper, a faultless mother, a charming hostess, a loving wife, or a servant of the community. Besides being glamourous as a model, talented as a Broadway star and virtuous as a Saint. I have studied your questionnaire carefully but my replies are hopelessly inadequate.... To start with my appearance is absolutely fatal.... I am overweight, pear-shaped and bow legged. Consequently, not having much to work on I doh't bother and cover it up with comfortable, warm old slacks.... Now, housework. Failure there too as I am a lousy housekeeper.... Entertaining? Practically never.... A gaine of cards or just talk with a few beers. No fancy food, drinks or entertainn1ent .... M.eals? ... We prefer plain meat and potatovegetable meals with no frills. For birthdays our children choose the dinner. What's the menu? Usually hamburgers and chips. You can't win. Make a fancy meal from a magazine and they look like they are being poisoned .... The decor is middle English European junk shop, especiatly when the children start doing their homework. Comn1unity activities? I have always belonged

74 I Gendered Intersections

to and worked \Vith other organizations ... but I have become so sick of and bored with meetings I quit .... My philosophy as a home-maker - I guess that is, be happy; don't worry. You do what you can with what you've got when you feel like it. Consequently I'm never sick and I've got no nerves or fears. That is poor me .... So if you want to run a contest for "Mrs. Slob 1961" I would be happy to apply and would probably win hands down. Thank you for your enjoyable magazine and my apologies for taking up your time. 6 Mai tland's self-deprecatory style of humour and her parody of the conventions of the contest made for a witty letter. I-Iowever, there was a considerable edge to her "manifesto," since she challenged the preferred reading of the contest - that all Canadian women aspired to or could afford the easy affluence of suburbia. 1~he "Mrs. Chatelaine" mantel was awarded on the basis of family life, community v0lunteer work, philosophy of marriage and child rearing, interior design and fashion sense. Many readers were quick to condemn articles which they felt were geared to "higherincome" earners and not average Canadians. The tensions between the magazine's middle-class presumptions and the large number of working-class and rural readers was a constant source of friction. As an RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) wife with three kids, Maitland ,vas clearly not part of the "better-so.rt" of reader the magazine's advertisers and publisher sought. Anderson's response praised Maitland's "wit" and "good humour" and acknowledged that the "Mrs. Chatelaine contest sets up pretty formidable rules but, in our defense, the woman ,vho won it last year was a fairly average homemaker in western Canada who lived on a farm."i Neither Anderson nor .Maitland anticipated the response that would follow the publication of her letter in the February 1962 issue. According to Maitland's own description, having her letter published in Chatelaine was akin to having a "best-seller." "When I wrote that letter to you, back in the fall, I never dreamed that such a furore would ensue," Maitland wrote. "My stars! It's as good as having a best-seller! Strangers have shook my hand and said, 'Welcome to the Club.' And it's buzzing all over ourPl\fQ {Pennanent Married Quarters}. I have also had a lot of letters all very much in agreement. Who would have thought there were so many slobs in the country?"8 Who would have guessed so many slobs read Chatelaine? Despite the magazine's attempts to encourage household perfection and reward the ideal Canadian homen1aker, the Mrs. Slobs refused to re-create then1selves in that mold. With Maitland's treatise as their rallying cry; they wrote to her and to the magazine professing support and encouragement to all the other Canadian slobs. Anderson's reply acknowledged that Maitland's letter and the ensuing letters in her support provided a wake-up call for the magazine: "You certainly did stir up a furore. I for one found it extremely interesting to real-ize what a great load of guilt most of the housewives of this country carry around on their shoulders. It makes me a little guilty that women's magazines probably contribute as much as any medium to this feeling. Thank you for reminding us. "9 The letters professing solidarity with Maitland came from all regions of the country. This brief sampling captures the spirit of the letters (see Korinek 1996). Most continued Maitland's critique of the contest's middle-class bias and rather limiting role prescribed for Canadian wives and mothers. F. Miller of New Westminister, BC,

Section II: Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 75

wrote: ''I received my issue of Chatelaine about one half hour ago and turned immediately to 'The last word is yours.' I say Three Cheers for Mrs. Beatrice Maitland."ro C. Cserick of Ottawa deduced t hat the magazine was to blame for its unattainable style of homemaking and its focus upon the suburban family. "To be brutally frank I love Chatelaine," Cserick wrote. "But dear old Chatelaine, you write very little about us don't you - we don't have a home of our own - 2 bedrooms is all, but we do like to read, listen to good music, watch good TV shows, take in a really excellent movie, drink gallons of coffee at odd hours, love our husband and kids, Gare for them and do roo m.enial jobs a day."11 Finally, a letter from Mrs. Neil Ferguson of Dutch Brook, Nova Scotia, warrants attention for its explicit class analysis. "In the last two Mrs. Chatelaine contests it was quite well-to-do women that won. Do people from the middle-class incon1e bracket ever enter these contests?" Ferguson wondered. "There are a lot of women that would certainly enter if they could fill out the entry forms but how can they say how well they entertain when they are racking their brains as to what to cook up for their family for a hearty good meal when maybe there is very little pay coming in to provide the proper ingredients for a proper meal. .. .'112 Clearly, readers' class identifications were elastic. Nevertheless, regardless of their incomes, they believed that the magazine's material should be accessible to all readers. Anderson's responded that the winners had both been in the $5,000 income bracket, "average" for Canadian fanlilies at that time and thus not beyond the realm of the majority of readers. Throughout the decade, the debate over the "perfection" of Mrs. Chatelaine was re-visited yearly, after the publication of the winner and the regional runners-up. The oppositional and alternate readings, along with the large nun1bers of women who decoded the preferred meaning and honed their contest entries year after year, indicate the variety of ways Canadian women "read'' the periodical. Intended as a celebration of homemaking, it often became a celebration of slobs, the working-class and regional difference. The editorial and advertising directives (which hoped that this feature would support the departmental features, and thus the advertisers' products) often fell on blind eyes because many Canadian women could not identify with its presumption of a middle-class, homemaking role for all won1en. Hence, they offered oppositional readings, or alternate and critical commentary, about what they considered an "unrepresentative" and hence unfair contest. They didn't n1eekly follow the prescription to become homemakers and they didn't cancel their subscriptions. Instead, they demanded t hat the magazine change. And Chatelaine did. By 1969, the contest was not afforded as prominent coverage in the periodical, and that year's winner was a working wife and mother who bluntly told readers that she had no time for volunteer groups. In the seventies the contest was quietly abandoned. The concept was revamped into a new annual feature called Chatelaine's "Woman of the Year." The "Woman of the Year" was nominated by the editorial staff and once again, the emphasis was on celebration. Instead of home-making skills, this tin1e the 1nagazine applauded Canadian wo1nen's forte in the public realm, including, politics, the arts, academe, business or volunteering. In 1992, the 1nagazine gained attention and some notoriety for nominating the pride of Consort, Alberta, singer/songwriter k.d. lang. By the convention of the Woman of the Year format, lang did double duty as both the subject of a 76 I Gendered Intersections

lengthy profile article (which focused on her professional accomplishments) and as that issue's "cover girl." Although the singer believed that she and the magazine had an agreement regarding the re-touching of the cover photo, prior to publication lang's portrait was airbrushed to include makeup, and the resultant cover image received considerable commentary. At the time of the publication, lang's lesbianism had not been made official public knowledge. However as one of the 1nost poorly kept "secrets" within the field of Canadian popular music, her sexual orientation would not have been unknown to the editors. Their selection of "the maverick" (their words) lang, then, can be attributed to two overt goals - to recognize her achievements and to attract a more diverse crowd of "younger" readers. An1ongst themselves, it was also, no doubt, covertly, a bit of subversive fun for those readers who were in the know- a wink, wink, nudge, nudge towards the conventions of the women's magazine world. For the vast majority of unassuming readers, the article could be read "straight" as a tale of feisty; western-Canadian gal who'd 1nade good in the North American music industry. In return for their unconventional choice, the feature was immortalized in one of lang's best-selling songs, "Miss Chatelaine," which gently pokes fun at her cover-girl debut. What links the experiences of Mrs. Slob and "Miss Chatelaine," beyond their obvious value as co1npelling stories, is the way they demonstrate the magazine's variety and playfulness in addition to the reader's agency. Within the corporate entity that was Chatelaine magazine, editors and ,vriters were often broadly political, even feminist, and occasionally delighted in planting subversive articles, images or letters. Equally, readers were not passive dupes - theywere engaged in decoding the magazine based on their own interests and from their own regional, racial, class and gendered identities. Ultimately a close reading of Mrs. Slob's "manifesto" validates the importance of research on the so called "mundane" women's cultural product. We need 1nore work on these topics if we are to accurately understand why countless readers and consu1ners find these products co1npelling fare. 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

NOTES Adapted from Valerie Korinek, 2000, Roughing It in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Reprinted with permission of the publisher. This is a burgeoning field of academic study. For further exploration of gender, popular culture and consumption see: Adams (1997); Ballaster et. al. (1991); Currie (1999); Hermes (1995); Meyerowitz (1994); Radway (1991); and Schwichtenberg (1993). Public Archives of Ontario [PAO] Maclean Hunter Record Series (MHRS] F-4-a-b Box 431, E.H. Gittings, Assistant Advertising Sales Manager for Chatelaine to Mr. F.D. Adams, 22June 1961. PAO MI-IRS F-4-1-b Box 431, J.L. Adams, Manager for Eastern Canada (Chatelaine) to L.NL f:-Jodgkinson, 14 February r961. "Meet Mrs. Chatelaine," Chatelaine (April 196c), III. PAO MIIRS F-4-3-a Box 434, Nlrs. Beatrice Maitland, Chatham, NB, to Doris Anderson, 1 November 1961. PAO MI-IRS F-4-3-a Box 434, Doris Anderson to Mrs. Beatrice iViaidand, 10 November 1961. PAO Jvt l-1 RS F-4-3-a Box 434, Mrs. Beatrice Maitland to Doris Anderson, 2 February c962. PAO MHRS F-4-3-a Box 434, Doris Anderson to .Beatrice Maitland, 12 February 1962. PAO MHRS F-4-3-a Box 434, Mrs. F. Miller, New Westminister, .BC, to Doris Anderson,

Section II : Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 77

12January 1962. 11. PAO MIIRS F-4-3-a Box 434, Clara Cscrick, "Slob par excellence," Ottawa to Doris Anderson, 27 January 27 1962. 12. PAO MHRS F-4-3-a Box 435, Mrs. Neil Ferguson, Dutch Brook, NS, to Doris Anderson, 25 September 1962.

REFERENCES Adams, Mary Louise. 1997. The Trouble with Normal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 13allaster, Ros, et al. 1991. \%mens \%rids: Ideology, Feminism and the Womens Magazine. Toronto: MacMillan Educational. Currie, Dawn. 1999. Adolescent Magazines and their Readers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. l-Iermes,Joke. 1995. Reading Womens lvf.agazines: An Analysis ofEveryday Media. New York: Polity Press. Korinek, Valerie J. r996. "Mrs. Chatelaine versus the Slobs: Contestants, Correspondents and the Chatelaine Community in Action, r96r-c969." Journal ofthe Canadian Historical Association 7. Mcyero,vicz, Joanne (ed.). 1994. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America: 19451960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Radway,Janice. 1991. Reading the Romance: \%men, Patriarchy and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Schwichtenberg, Cathy (ed.). 1993. The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

78 / Gendered Intersections

The Work of Fashion in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Nicholas Packwood "Don't you have worker elves to do that?" My roommate sat on the _floor in the middle of her bedroom. Around her were rings of shoes. Black, pointy shoes. I was not surprised Marilyn had black, pointy sh oes. We lived on Queen Street West, an "arty" part of town known for night-clubs, coffee-shops and art galleries. The local alternative press even had a name for us: "People in Black." It was not Marilyn's shoes per se. It was the sheer number of shoes ... there must have been a hundred pairs. I was impressed. It turned out Marilyn had the collection out for cleaning and polishing. But where did they all go when they were not spread around the bedroom floor? Marilyn showed n1e hidden shoe-racks and a special device for hanging shoes from nooks and crannies behind doors or under the bed. The rack hanging from the door revealed a surprise: a single pair of blue pumps. Blue pumps? "With tassels," Marilyn explained. Marilyn's collection transformed before my eyes. Where there was once a vast shoe collection there was now an anomaly How to make sense of the single blue pair? As anthropological mysteries go this one ,vas solved easily: they had been purchased for bride's maid duties, worn once to the wedding and relegated to their pocket behind the door ever since. But by now Marilyn's curatorial expertise had been invoked - remember those art galleries I m entioned - and she proceeded to describe the logic behind her system of shoe selection, storage and maintenance. Shoes, according to Marilyn, should be organized according to formality This system allowed her to choose from amongst the many pairs depending on whether she was attending a social function, going to work or spending an evening out with friends. One rule of thumb: the pointier the toe the more formal the shoe. This produced a range from a pair of well-,~;rorn square-toed boots that had obviously seen a lot of pavement to a jet-black pair of stiletto sling-backs to be handled gently and with reverence. A second rule of thumb concerned the colour of the shoes. I protested, after all I thought they were all black (with the exception of those blue pumps)? "There are shades of black," Marilyn explained further. I laughed. I had heard the Rolling Stones song after all. But Marilyn's stern face brought me up short. I had inadvertently intruded on a serious matter. It was not only the shoe collection that was colour-coded according to black but the entirety of a largely black wardrobe. Marilyn demonstrated the seriousness of my faux pas by showing me her sock drawer. ~fhere were row upon row of black socks sorted according to black and, sure enough, the differences in shade were obvious. Clearly I had much to learn about black clothes. I have had a few years to reflect upon the lesson _Marilyn taught me about shoes and fashion that night. Writing about it now leaves me feeling embarrassed at how Section II: Forging Femininities and Masculinities through .. . / 79

something as critical to our self-representation as the way we dress ourselves could ever have appeared superficial or supercilious to me. I can say that I had enough sense at the time to know Marilyn had presented me with something I had never thought about before and with a subject I hoped to approach systematically and with some seriousness. l decided the subject of fashion and categorization would 1nake a good topic for a paper I needed to write for a graduate course I was taking about the "anthropology of the body." Bodily adornment is a venerable interest in the discipline: surely Marilyn's shoes presented an interesting case to think through these issues. J\.1y professor ,vas taken with the idea but the same could not be said of some of my classmates: "She must have very low self-esteem," was one suggestion. "She sounds like a superficial person/' was another. I had been surprised to discover Marilyn surrounded by her dozens of shoes, but I \Vas even more surprised by this. My friend was one of the most confident, creative and charismatic people I had ever met. She was personally and professionally accomplished. And on top of it all... she had great shoes! How could my peers believe they could analyze her personality and her character sight-unseen? The one point on which I believe my roommate and my class.mates would agree is that fashion is a serious business. Marilyn had invested considerable time and money in her wardrobe. It is this investment that seemed to bother some of my anthropological peers. Surely, so much time and effort spent on shoes was time and effort misspent? Marilyn's shoes symbolized "consumerism" and "materialism" to them. Shoes in this case were not merely footwear but a sign of a wider system of social and economic values that was profoundly misguided, a state of "false consciousness," to which Karl Marx attributed false priorities and values imposed upon people against their true "class consciousness." Marilyn was, in other words, a dupe of capitalist values. Another line of argutnent held that Marilyn had been tricked into spending too much time and effort expressing herself in terms reflecting sexist ideas about gender and beauty. Taken to an extreme, the attempt to imitate unrealistic ideals of how women shouJd appear could trigger poor self-esteem, depression or even dangerous eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia. Marilyn was, in other ,vords, a dupe of patriarchal values. I believe both lines of criticism are interesting and important. I think there is more to fashion than meets the eye and that some of what fashion implies is bound up in the inequalities of class and gender. Furthermore, I think fashion is one way in which social values about class and gender are learned and reinforced, often to the detriment of the very people expressing themselves through fashion. But is this the whole story? I think there was another factor at work in the classroom that day, a paradox in claiming that the question of fashion was serious business indeed-bound up in issues of oppression and exploitation - but it was expressed in such a way as to avoid or deny the seriousness of Marilyn's own self-expression. Yes, fashion was serious ... but people ,vho are interested in fashion could not be serious people. l\llarilyn used fashion for her own ends. But was she a victim of false-consciousness? Was she una,vare of how fashion and social class reflect and reinforce one another? Hardly. Marilyn grew up in a family which took in laundry for two cents a 80 I Gendered Intersections

shirt. She was well aware of the importance of class and power. Later, as a professional woman, Marilyn had to find a balance between the formalitv , of a men's business suit and being considered "too mannish" by her employers or colleagues. I believe the double-bind which insists women present themselves to fit a socially constructed idea of femininity in dress also presents itself by simultaneously denigrating feminine selfrepresentations. There is some irony in the way my classmates dismissed Marilyn's interest in fashion. Dismissing Marilyn's interest not only opposes sexism, it is sexis1n. Marilyn was being used not only as an example of someone tricked into believing in the superficiality of fashion, she was being accused of being a superficial person hersel£ I ran into the same double-bind when I was researching the fashion industry in London, England. I hoped to become an intern or freelance writer for a fashion magazine so that I could get first-hand experience working with people who produce and promote high fashion. I had managed to get an interview with a senior executive at a firm that publishes a well-known range of fashion and lifestyle magazines. The firm's offices occupy an impressive building in the corner of an exclusive square in London's trendy West End. The appearance of the place suggested luxury, wealth and refined taste for which my life as an anthropology graduate student did not leave me well-prepared. The executive's office echoed the impressive facade of the building. Sumptuous furniture, restrained art and a desk that was sleek despite its size reinforced the idea that fashion made up a whole way of life rather than being confined to a choice of clothes, or indeed of shoes. The executive reflected the sarne appearance of refinement and corporate power. I tried to impress her with my profound interest in studying fashion from an academic perspective. "What an earnest young man you are," she observed. This statement, thankfully in retrospect, stopped me from embarrassing myself further. "You have got it all wrong," she explained. "You are reading far too much into this. Fashion is not serious. Fashion is froth. It's fun. It's ... fashion! There is no rhyme or reason to it. It just happens. You should talk to the editor of--. She just makes it up. Every month she needs a new cover with a new idea and every month it is just as difficult to come up with a new and different idea. She will be walking along Old Bond Street and see a red window-display and she will say; 'That's it! Red!' and next month the cover is red. After that, everyone sees the cover of the magazine and suddenly it is red in every window display in the high street. Then she has to do it all over again. Haven't you seen Funny Face? The Audrey Hepburn movie? The editor in the film did the same thing. Think pink! That's all there is to it: think pink!" How could it be that my academic peers could be so opposed to fashion yet take the subject with resolute seriousness, while this executive could devote her career to fashion-related concerns and dismiss the seriousness of the whole subject? I-Jere was the fashion paradox at work once again. And I would like to suggest , respectfully and with no little earnestness on 1ny part, that they are all mistaken. While I did not secure an internship at the magazine firm, I did go on to study fashion in formal and informal contexts in London, New York and Paris. I attended trade fairs, interviewed marketing and public relations executives and was accredited as a foreign correspondent for a Canadian magazine to attend London Fashion Week.

Section II: Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 81

More important, I worked in offices and shopped in stores and danced in nightclubs. These gave me opportunities to observe the uses to which fashion is put in contemporary London. I learned that if I wore the "wrong" kind of raincoat with n1y suit, I would be taken aside and gently castigated by business associates who would ask if perhaps it was my Canadian taste which lead me to misrepresent myself so badly: Conversely, I discovered that if I wore a pin-stripe suit - the informal uniform of the City of London and thus generally restricted to bankers and other workers in finance - everyone I met at work or on the street assumed I was a banker or financier. It did not occur to my associates that anyone with the money and the inclination could simply buy a pin-stripe suit with no need for identity papers or secret hand-shake to signify a particular professional vocation. Fashion was not just about self-expression. It was a literal expression of the self Without the right suit or the right tie, I might as well not have been present at all. The work of fashion is the work of producing a social identity: Think pink.... Is there something to the fashion paradox that allows the work of fashion to succeed? Do we need to deny the importance of fashion to allow it work its magic? We live in a time when images from advertising bombard us constantly and changes in fashion in one part of the world can be telegraphed by television or the Internet over distances of culture and place which were recently insurmountable. The art critic Walter Benjamin first identified this process in the 1930s, when photography, newsprint and radio signaled the first hints of the globalization of fashion. He talked about the ,vork of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, which is to say the work that art does when the uniqueness of a painting such as the Mona Lisa or the specificity of a place like the Parthenon can be endlessly multiplied in posters and post-cards. What happens to the meaning of art or its social function ,vhen its unique aura is shattered into a thousand reflections? The trick to understanding the work of fashion lies at the heart of the fashion paradox. Fashion is a cultural construct imposed upon us by history and class and gender. Without the right expression of clothes - and shoes - in the right "code". of how we are supposed to appear in a given context, we can simply disappear. At the same time, our particular performance of fashion allows us to improvize within those coded relationships. A quick change allowed me to be an anthropologist or a financier from the City or a fellow in army pants. The work of fashion in the age of mechanical reproduction might superficially appear to be superficial. Our improvization with that seeming superficiality, however, allows us to represent ourselves in ways which contradict social constructs which would limit us to a particular class position, gender role or, indeed, figure of ridicule in a classroom. Marilyn's performance of herself exemplified this idea. Marilyn grew up in a conservative family with conservative Confucian ideas about the place of women in family and society. Every time Marilyn wore black ... every time she wore pants ... every time she distanced her wardrobe from those blue pumps, she expressed an idea about being a Canadian-born Chinese woman. She did not deny her culture or every idea about gender or class by which she was confronted. She improvized within, against and alongside those ideas while representing herself as a cultural activist and a professional. Communicating these ideas to herself, her family and the social relations in which she lived is an important piece of work for an aspect of social life that is

82 / Gendered Intersections

generally dismissed as superficial or self-indulgent. The work of fashion in the age of mechanical reproduction is not itself a reproduction of superficiality It can be a way in which we can negotiate ourselves when surrounded by the superficiality of images. It can be a means by which we can express ourselves in social relationships even when society would limit the stories we are al lowed to tell about ourselves. REFERENCES Benjamin, Walter. 1968. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In I-Iannah Arendt (ed.), translated by Harry Zohn, Illuminations. New York: Schocken.

Section II: Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 83

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Section II : Forging Femininities and Masculinities through ... / 91

Section 111

HIERARCHIES OF DIFFERENCE Pamela}. Downe Differences are points of divergence, characteristics and qualities that make one person or group of persons distinguishable from others. Differences are used to create categories of belonging and social location: "us" and "them." In cultures that value individualism, differences are frequently exalted and a great deal of effort is invested into appearing unique. However, differences of gender, race, cultural heritage, class, physical mobility, age and geographic location are also sources of great inequity. Women in Canada who are racially marginalized, for example, are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty than are women of the racial majority (Statistics Canada 2001). On a global scale, virtually all of the roughly two billion people who lack access to safe drinking water live in poor countries that are only becoming poorer as a result of globalizing trade agreements (United Nations 2000). And although no country has a government-mandated dress code for civilian men, four countries have required dress codes for civilian women, and public assaults against women charged with "immodest dress" have occurred in at least eight countries (Seager 1997). Understanding how categories of difference are constn1cted and how they lead to social and economic inequities are fundamental and itnportant tasks for students and scholars of women's and gender studies. The chapters in this section contribute to our understanding of difference and the impact that categories of difference have on people in Canada and the world. Perhaps one of the most important things to stress when analyzing hierarchies of difference is that categories of difference and belonging are always fluctuating. The boundaries defining those categories are always being redrawn, and each category intersects with others in very important ways. For example, if I write that "as women, we express emotional distress in specific ways," I am creating a category of belonging with women readers (who may or may not feel represented by my comment). By relying on gender differences to construct this category, and by employing the firs t person collective pronoun ("we"), I am not only indicating my own gender identity and assuming a relationship with other women, I am also excluding men. If I were to follow this initial statement regarding gender with a comment about class - "those of us with middle-class inco1nes have more resources on which to draw during times of distress than women with no regular income" - I am reconfiguring the category of belonging. This statement may be read in the context of the first to ,nean that I am referring to middle-class women. The collective "we" and "us" about whom I write, then, has become even more exclusive, referring to women with middle-class incomes. Categories of gender and class identities coalesce in these simple sentences to reveal not-so-simple life conditions and to bring only some readers closer to me to form a collective "we." The ways in which these categories of identity and corresponding categories of difference are constructed in everyday speech, through the allocation of 92 / Gendered Intersections

economic resources, in the experiences of immigrants and refugees, and in the lives of Aboriginal peoples in Canada are the topics taken up in the chapters that follow. The section begins with three chapters that deal specifically with the ways in which Aboriginal peoples, and specifically Aboriginal won1en, in Canada are socially positioned as "different." Plewes and Downe describe the circumstances under which Aboriginal women are disenfranchised fron1 the rights of racially dominant Canadian citizenship. While the challenges faced by Aboriginal women are not insurmountable (and profiles of courage, determination and success are also included in this section), the legacy of the Indian Act, a particularly discriminatory piece of legislation, continues today. Indeed, many scholars have argued that examining passages within this Act provides a good opportunity to learn about the hierarchical ways in which differences are defined and legislated. Excerpts from the Indian Act and Bill C-31 illustrate language that reveals a great deal about the cultural assumptions held by policymakers towards Aboriginal peoples, Aboriginal wo1nen and the power of the Euro-Canadian state. Of course, this language can best be analyzed by placing it in historical context. In the late 1800s, the Government of Canada passed the first Indian Act in an attempt to define who was an Indian and to control the mobility, economy and culture of Canada's diverse Aboriginal peoples. The objective was to promote an agenda of assimilation whereby culturally distinct Aboriginal com1nunities would be eliminated and integrated into the larger and emerging European-based society of colonial Canada. The impact of this legislation on Aboriginal women, men and children cannot be overstated. As Bonita Lawrence (2000: 76) argues, "The Indian Act ... is much more than a set of regulations that have controlled every aspect of Indian life for over a century. It provides a way of understanding Native identity." The colonial racisn1 that informs this legislation is clear. In a 1920 presentation to parliament, Duncan Campbell Scott, former Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, stated the intention of the Indian Act: "Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian Question'' (quoted in i\rnot 2000: 256). The 1876 Act stipulated under what conditions someone could be defined as "Indian" and under what conditions Aboriginal people could be "enfranchised" as Canadian citizens, thereby losing Indian status. The discriminatory policies set forth in this Act had far-reaching implications. If an Aboriginal man or woman decided to pursue state-recognized and professional education, the lndianAct stipulated thats/he would lose Indian status (the .racist logic being that the.re could be no formally recognized Indian educated in the same way as a Euro-Canadian citizen). Some traditional ceremonies were banned by the lndianAct, and a paternalistic system of supervision was established through the creation of a federal Department of Indian Affairs that regulated and oversaw activities of Aboriginal peoples. For First Nations ,vomen, the IndianAct was extremely problematic for it denied them the right to vote in band elections or to participate in decisions about reserve land surrenders. If her husband died without leaving a wilJ, a woman was required to be of "good moral character" (as judged by the Superintendent General of Indian affairs) in order to receive any of her husband's property. And if a woman n1arricd a man without Indian status, she lost her own official status as did her children. It was thought that a woman was to be subsumed in the identity of her husband, for when a

Section Ill: Hierarchies of Difference/ 93

non-Indian ,vom~ married an officially recognized Indian man, his starus was then conferred ro he!' aod all subsequent children (see Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RC.-\P !Qo6' The_-\..cti.yenr ::;irongh many revisions and permutations; each marked with specific gains ro,vards Firs.: ~anons self-detennioarion as -.~ell as certain drawbacks. The 1951 Act. for example i..-:creased the imposition of p:rovinciallaws and st andards on status Indians buc re also removed cul rural prohibitions banning certain ceremonies (Bartlett 1988). In 19S; che ~.-ershed Bill C-3r amendment repealed the policies that required Indian ,~omen and ;:heir children to lose starusi.v-hen those women married anon-status man. \\'b.ile th.ts '1-""a.S an unponant victory. it is equally imponant to note that the amendment rei.ns-t.L.'"1:C Indian starus only ro the women and their children; legal status 1s still not coniezec ro the grandchildren of these women. Therefore, rather than repealing the parri.ucnal assumptions that inform this policy. Bill C-31 only displaced them by two gene:ranons (RCAP 1996). H o,,·eyer, despite its limitations, Bill C-31 repeals all policies oi enir~c:Insement. guaranteeing status to those First Nations people who mav have once :eL-erl ch.ac it ~-ould be taken from them. In :\ pril 20:J:.. ±e .:\finister of Indian Affairs and Northern Developmenr introduce. National Organization for \.Vomenn 2002. Available at . Women's Action Coalition, 1993, The FactsAbout Women (New York: The New Press). Joni Seager, 1997, The State of Women in the Wor!dAtlas (New York: Penguin Reference). University of California Lesbian I-listory Project. Available- at . Family Safe Media, 2003, "Pornography Statistics." Available at . Women's Action Coalition, 1993, The Facts About Women (New York: The New Press). Media Awareness Network, 2002, "I-late Crimes." Available at .

132 / Gendered Intersections

Understanding Men Gender Sociology and the New International Research on Masculinities

R.WConnell Debates about Men and Boys In the last decade there has been an upsurge of concern with issues about men and boys. In the public realm there have been social moven1ents, such as the "mythopoetic" movement, the Million Man March and the Promise Keepers, focused on the reform or restoration of masculinity (Messner 1997). In education there has been much talk of boys' "failure" in school and the need for special programs for boys (Connell 1996, Gilbert and Gilbert 1998). In health there has been increasing debate about men's health and illness (Sabo and Gordon 1995), and a popular therapeutic movement addresses men's problems in relationships, sexuality and identity. In a way this is surprising, because men remain the principal holders of economic and political power. Men n1ake up a large majority of corporate executives, top professionals and holders of public office. Worldwide, men held 93 percent of cabinetlevel posts in 1996 and most top positions in international agencies (Gierycz 1999). Men continue to control most technology and most weaponry; with only limited exceptions, it is men who staff and control the agencies of force such as armies, police and judicial systems. This used to be thought "natural," either prescribed by God or a consequence of biology. Such essentialist views of gender are still popular and are constantly reinforced in the media. Ho,vever they are increasingly under challenge. The women's liberation movement and the many feminisms that have followed on from it have produced a massive disturbance in the gender system and in people's assumptions about gender. And what affects the social position of women and girls must also affect the social position of men and boys. Large numbers of men now acknowledge that their position is under challenge, that what they once took for granted must be rethought. They may or may not like it, but they cannot ignore it. The "Ethnographic Moment": Significant Conclusions We now have a growing library of ethnographic studies from around the world, across a number of the social sciences, in which researchers have traced the construction of masculinity in a particular milieu or moment. Though each study is different, there are many common themes. Some of the most important are: 1. Multiple Masculinities. Historians and anthropologists have shown that there is no one pattern of masculinity that is found everywhere . Different cultures and different periods of history construct masculinity differently. Equally itnportant, more than one kin': straight-backed, fit, of sound mind, strong heart, serene, presumably continent and definitely sexual. Is the message that without estrogen, her bones would crumble, the heart fail, her skin wither and her sexual organs atrophy. Is she reality, or a simulacrum; the cyborg lurking - as in all the best science fiction - below the shining surface? Looking through the various brochures put out by the pharmaceutical companies in the late 1990s, I found some curious images: transparent won1en, aging skeletons, partial bodies and body parts, and cyborgs. One depiction of estrogen showed it as an abstract, but powerful force, wrapped protectively around the heart. In another representation, the menopausal woman is the perfect cyborg - her shining metal body maintained in a state of stasis, free of aging, without disease and without deterioration. In a third image, the body is indicated by a simple line and a scattering of body parts, the heart, the hip, the brain and the ovaries. (The "failure" of the latter organs being responsible for menopause.) It is almost as interesting to look at what was left out as what was put in - the things invisible or only partly visible. The colon, which was becoming interesting to researchers based on a few studies that suggested estrogen was protective against colon cancer, may have been difficult to represent, but why should the breast be missing? It is as if the complexity of the menopausal body were reduced only to those parts that responded positively to estrogen. The menopausal cyborg has neither lungs, nor liver, muscles or nerves, and hardly any arteries Except that the colon, the endometrium and the breast are excluded, the choice of body parts reflects the concentration of research interest in the 1990s. Conferences were held to discuss hormones and the cardiovascular system; hormones and osteoporosis, hormones and Alzheimer's, hormones and ovarian failure. The WHl, the massive study of estrogen and menopause, was expected to provide an exact measure of the benefits of estrogen for each of these organs. Lung cancer, diabetes or the many autoimmune disorders that are part of won1en's experience as they age and became menopausal were largely ignored. The repeated message in the research and clinical literatures - presented in the form of tables, numbers, pie charts, hjstograms and graphs - is that once the supply of estrogen is cut off (as in the removal of a woman's ovaries) or gradually falls as in natural menopause - then these organs rapidly become pathological. The heart spasms; the spine compresses; the brain forgets words and goes into cognitive decline. The solution is to replace the lost estrogen, by creating a body that is part natural, part chemical - a cyborg. Meditation IV: Horse Woman or Flower Woman

Flower 'Woman Not all the images were cyborgs. At a conference of the North American Menopause Society in 1998, I found the same photographs of healthy sn1iling won1en but also an increasing number of flower, bird and plant images. The more pastoral approach flourished in the alternative health literatU1·e promoting "natural" products, but was also visible in the brochures of the pharn1aceutical companies. This was woman and Section V: Generations/ 185

nature, but also woman as nature, a flower woman. The most c_har~g flower woma~ appeared on th e cover Of a Pamphl et distributed by the Canadian Society of Obstetn. cians and Gynecologists, which showed a wo_~an g~owing out of the bush, dressed 1n pale yellow; slightly fey; her gentle ro1nant1c1sm 1n .t~arked: contrast to the brassy . cyborg. It is an image of magic realism rather than chn1ca~ tn~s. . . 1'he choice of cover goes along with a relatively extensive discussion of alternat1_ve medicines for menopause) although preference is given to estrogen and proges~m. The small body of feminist literature on menopause has long favoured alternat~ve therapies for menopause ranging from meditation and_acupuncr:ure t~rough ~o everung primrose oil and eating more soy products. Yet.there 1s som~thing slight~y d1sco~c~rting in the promotion of "natural" products by phar.maceut1cal co~pan1es. Fem~n1sts may well be wondering whether they have won, or whether their most cherished therapies are being co-opted, their belief in menopause as a spiritual and natural passage transformed into an image which blurs the boundaries between woman and flower.

1-forse Woman I was in New York when a group of animal rights activists picketed a conference on menopause and attracted the attention of the media by parading a woman in a blonde wig, wearing a body stocking and riding a white horse. T hey were protesting the use of pregnant mares to produce horse urine, the raw material of one the most widely marketed forms of estrogen. While not hidden, neither is this use of urine widely publicized; it falls within the category of facts that are well known but very little discussed. It was then that I registered the total absence of images of horses. There is the occasional dog or cat and lots of flowers and tress, but although I searched carefully, I never found any foals or nursing mares or pregnant ponies on the publicity literature for estrogen. Possibly the image of the galloping horse, a sign of freedom ingrained in the Anglo-American psyche, is not easily reconcilable with the vision of a pregnant mare hooked up to machines that siphon off her urine. There is rich material here for thinking about the boundaries between women and nature, or which animal products are culturally sanctioned for consumption and which not. Conclusion Over th~ past ~hirty years as women aged and passed their 01.enopause, they were told tha_t their b?d1es were a source of danger to themselves, but also to the body politic, \vhich was likely to collapse under the burden of their demands. Beneath the formal layers of the epidemiolo~ical risk and health promotion literature, the menopausal w?man was ~resen_ted with a subtext - a kaleidoscope of images from myths and fairy tales - 1n wluch the uncared-for female body aged and sickened, destroying its o~ beauty. But she was also shown a light side to becoming older, in which the carmg/cared for female body remains fit, lean, disease free, serene in mind. It is made clear that the choice between light and dark is her responsibility; if she does not take her hormones and allo,vs her body to deteriorate, then she becomes unworthy; undeserving of support.

The irony is that in the last two years, this story and these irnages have proved di d false. Sections of the WHI study were cancelled 1·n July 20 aft · · o2 er 1t was scovere 186 / Gendered Intersections

that women randomized to taking both an estrogen and a progestin were at higher risk for breast cancer, heart disease and stroke (Rossouw et al. 2 0 02). The following year, data from the same project showed that won1en taking the same therapy were at increased risk for dementia (Shumaker et al. 2003). The combined therapy also increases the risk of ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke (Wasserthell-Smoller et al. 2003). A second trial was cancelled by the British Medical Research Council in November 2002 (White 2002). Those images of fit and healthy women, with estrogen wrapped like a protective shield about the body were f> >>>9. Divorced Barbie. Sells for $199.99. Conies with Ken's house, Ken's >>>Car, and Ken's boat. >> >>>IO . Recovery Barbie. Too many parties have finally caught up with the >>>ultimate party girl. >>>Now she does Twelve Steps instead of dance steps. Clean and >>>sober, she's going to meetings religiously. Comes with a little copy of The >>>Big Book and a six-pack of Diet Coke. >> >>>JI. Post-Menopausal Barbie. This Barbie wets her pants when she >>>sneezes, forgets where she puts things, and cries a lot. She is sick and tired of Ken >>>sitting on the couch watching the tube, clicking through the channels. >>>Comes with Depends and Kleenex. As a bonus this year, the book "Getting >>>In Touch with Your Inner Self" is included. >> > >

Section VI : Waged Work/ 189

Section VI WAGED WORK C. Lesley Biggs "What do you for a living?" This is one of the 1nost frequently asked questions when we first meet someone. It is testament to the centrality of work in our lives, both as a source of economic security and as a .measure of self-worth. Implicit in this question, however, is a particular definition of ,vork- one that is inextricably linked to a moral framework in which paid labour is valued while unpaid labour is not only undervalued but invisible. Even though the majority of women regardless of marital status now participate in the paid labour force for a significant portion of their lives, gendered definitions of work continue to persist because women perform the bulk of unpaid labour - childcare, elder care, homemaking/housework, and formal and informal volunteer activities. One of the greatest achievements of first and second wave feminisms is that women's participation in the labour force and the relationship between paid and unpaid labour have become part of public debates. At the turn of the twentieth century, suffragists initially lobbied for women's right to vote but their campaign soon broadened to include educational, labour, health and welfare reforms. Eventually, the suffragists won the vote and made other significant gains in protecting women and children, but equality remained elusive. By the beginning of the G reat Depression, in 1929, much of the momentum of first wave feminists had been lost. With the advent of World War II , women's participation rates in the labour force skyrocketed - they were needed in the factories while the men were away at war. But when the veterans returned, married women at least were forced to return to the home. However, working for a living - even fo r a short time - becatne a fact of life for many young women. In the 1960s women's employment expanded in the service and public sectors, converging with unprecedented numbers of married women entering the labour force and the rise of second wave feminism. Once again, issues of women's work were back on the public agenda and given their fullest expression in the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Wo1nen (1970). Liberal feminists focused their attention on discrimination in wages, hiring and promotion policies, better childcare and improving won1en's educational opportunities. While not opposed to these efforts, socialist feminists pointed to the structural barriers to women's participation in the labour force - the industrial and occupational segregation of the labour force by gender. Overall, work in goods-producing industries' has declined, but in 2003, 12.8 percent of women were employed in this sector, compared to 25-3 percent of men. In contrast, 87.2 percent of women worked in service industries2 co1npared to 63.7 percent of men (Statistics Canada 2004a). Nor are women evenly distributed across all occupational categories. In 2003, 70 percent of all employed women were working in a "pink collar ghetto" - female-dominated occupations; which including teaching, nursing and related health occupations; cleri190 / Gendered Intersections

cal or adm~is~rative positions; and sales and services jobs. Only 3r.5 percent of men were workmg 1n th~se occupational categories (Statistics Canada 200 4 b: 2o). However, the conc~ntrat1~n of women in the clerical professions has declined slowly since the r98os ,vhile theu representation in 1nanagement, business and finance and in non-traditi~n3:1 healthcare occupations has increased significantly (Statistics'Canada 2004ai ~tat1st1cs Ca~ada 2004b). Men tend to be distributed more evenly across o~cupat1onal categones. But not all men - not even the majority of men -work in high-powered, high paying jobs; around half are found in sales and service (19.8 per_cent); tra~~s,_ transport and construction (25-o percent) and processing, manufacturing and utilittes (10.6 percent) (Statistics Canada 2004b). These employment patterns have significant effects on earnings.3 In 1967, women made, on average, 58.4 percent of what men 1nade; in 2000, women made 72 percent of what men made (Statistics Canada 2004c). Even though the wage gap has narrowed, it persists and at this rate of change, wage equality will not be achieved until 2058! But, as Cooke-Reynolds and Zukewich (Statistics Canada zoo4c) report, Canada had the lowest earnings ratio in their comparative study of Canada, United States, France, United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden - with women in Australia and France having the highest ratio, 82 percent of men's earnings. These averages obscure as much as they reveal. Women's income and hence quality of life very much depends upon their family status. In 2,002, lone-parent families headed by women have the lowest incomes ($30,800 compared to $42,100 for lone-parent families headed by men and $67,200 for two-parent families with children and two wage earners) (Statistics Canada 2004d). However, only 46.9 percent of female lone parents with the youngest child less than three were employed in 2003 compared to 64.9 percent of women with partners (Statistics Canada 2004b: 15). In 2002, almost half (41.5 percent) of unattached won1en over the age of sixtyfive could look forward to impoverished existence in their final years, compared to 31 percent of men (Statistics Canada 2004e). Overall, 14.8 percent of the total female population or 2.3 million women had low incomes,4 compared to 12.6 percent of n1en (Statistics Canada 2004e, 2004f). These data also obscure the diversity among ,vomen and men. As Susannah Wilson (2001: 226) observes, "Women are not equally disadvantaged in paid employment. Nor are 1nen equally privileged. Disadvantage is multidimensional and related to race, ethnicity, immigration status, ability and sexual orientation as well as gender." We do know, for example, that in 1996, unemployment rates for First Nations women (21.1 per cent) and men (26.6 per cent) were double those of all Canadians; that First Nations men are concentrated in manual jobs (56.4 per cent) while First Nations women are concentrated in clerical (23.4 per cent) or service (40.r per cent) work (Statistics Canada 2001); that in 1994, 69.3 percent of women with disabilities and 59.5 percent of men with disabilities experienced disruptions in their employment (compared to 42.3 percent and 37.5 percent of women and men without disabilities, respectively; cited in Wilson 2001: 226); that in 1996, First Nations women earn $13,300 and First Nations men earn $18,675 incon1es5well below the Canadian average; that immigrant women are under-represented in the professions and over-represented in sales and service and manual labour compared to non-i1nmigrants, while immigrant men are slightly under-represented in the professions and .in manual labour (Statistics Canada 2001). How would

Section VI : Waged Work / 191

you explajn these patterns of wage and employment _difference? . Beginning in the 1970s, socialist feminists examine~ ~ousework and c_h il~ca~e as activities necessary for the well-being of families and individuals, as well as 1ntnns1c to the functioning of capitalism. More recently, feminists have examined unpaid labour as "caring work," affirming women's activities rather than reinforcing the negative connotations associated with this labour. What actually constitutes caring work and why it remains '\vomen's work" is hotly debated within feminist circles (see Benoit 2000). Although more men, particularly younger men, are doing caring work (for example, in 1997 6 percent of stay-at-home parents were men), women continued to perfonn the bulk of these activities, averaging 4.4 hours per day on unpaid work compared to 2.8 hours for men (Statistics Canada 2001: 110). One of the vexing questions is how to encourage men to take on more of the responsibilities of caring work. As more and more women participate in the labour force (in 2003, for example, 63 percent of women v.rith children under the age of three worked full-time) , the stresses and strains of the "double day" are no longer private issues (Statistics Canada 2004: 7). Calls for a balance between the job and family, however, are coming at a t ime of significant economic restructuring. Since the late 1980s, with the shift to the "knowledge economy'' and the globalization of capital, new patterns of work are emerging: more women are engaged in non-standard work (41 percent in 1999 were engaged in part-time, self-employed, or tem.porary ,vork compared to 35 percent in 1989); for some, the closure of factories, the demise of the fisheries, layoffs in the public and private sectors and fluctuating commodity prices for agricultural products make economic instability a fact of life; and finallri the new information technologies have led to the polarization of the labour market into "good" jobs, which require a small group of highly skilled knowledge workers who are able to garner high wages, and "bad" jobs, which require a much larger group of less skilled workers who work for considerably lower rates of pay. The effects of restructuring have been and probably will continue to be uneven on women and men. Many of these changes have had tremendously negative consequences for women and their families. But it is not clear that all of the effects are negative. For example, does the shift toward non-standard work for women represent a way of balancing job and family responsibilities, giving them greater flexibility and less stress; or does it represent another way in which \vomen's work is being ghettoized in low-paying jobs with little or no security? So far, most governments and employers have been slow to respond to these job/ family conflicts. Unions have demanded more flexible work arrangements (e.g., flex time, job sharing and teJeconunuting), improved maternity and paternity leaves, onsite childcare and provisions for elder care. Some employers have begun to develop policies and practices to create family-friendly workplaces, but such a shift requires a significant change in the workplace culture and necessitates "buy-in" from both employers and employees. At the public policy level, feminists have lobbied -to1· a national childcare progra1n and improvements in maternity/parental benefits under Employment Insurance (EI). At the same, the tightening of eligibility requirements for EI has made it more difficult for unemployed individuals, particularly those engaged in non-standard forn1s of work, to meet these requirements. In addition, 192 / Gendered Intersections

feminists have used various legislative measures to enforce pay equity (equal pay for equal work) and to ~ork toward employment equity (equal pay for work of equal value) (for more detail, see Benoit 2000: 92-107). !;f?re generally; wh~~;, can be done to exp~nd_ women's job opportunities beyond the pink_ collar ghet~o-. Does the answer lie Ln changing the ways in which we educa~e girls or pr~v~d1ng mentorship programs that encourage young " 'Omen to enter into non-traditional professions? Or do we encourage employers to develop workplace cultures that are friendly to women? And what's wrong with caring work anyway? How do we promote a shift in attitudes that recognizes the value of women's contributions and compensates them accordingly? These are the kind of questions that underlie the chapters in this section. The shift to a service economy has resulted in the phenomenal growth i_n call centres. In his chapter, Bob Russell describes the work perfonned by women and men in five call centres located in Australia. The success of call centres relies heavily on emotional labour. Customer satisfaction is dependent upon call centre agents providing friendly, pleasant service by "putting a s1nile in your voice." Both 1nen and women reported that the work was routine, boring and emotionally exhausting. Nonetheless, they took pride in "providing quality of services (as) a high priority," but this goal conflicted with employers' demands for high volume of call traffic. Interestingly, 1nen had greater difficulty dealing with this tension than ,vomen. The garment industry has undergone a radical transfonnation over the last decade with the introduction of new technologies, improved distribution and transportation systems and international trade agreements. Roxanna Ng explores the processes that produce the gendered and racialized division of labour in garment work. How is it, Ng asks, that won1en, and more recently women from Asia, are at the bottom of the hierarchy? In answer to her question, Ng argues that immigrant wo1nen are a source of cheap labour through immigration policies; by their lack of fluency in English and not having "proper" educational credentials; by sewing being defined as unskilled women's work, while cutting is seen as skilled men's work; and by the piecerate system., which actually penalizes productivity. Reducing this exploitation of immigrant women, Ng argues, requires a social n1ovement of unions, labour rights groups and concerned citizens. "Unions are sites of both struggle and vehicles of resistance," says Linda Briskin in her chapter on unions and women workers. Although making up 50 percent of union members, women faced significant barriers to participation in union activities. But since the r970s, women unionists "began to organize to resist and reconfigure the gender order of unions." They have been successful in improving women's representation in leadership positions and addressing issues of concern to women both within the union itself and at the bargaining table. In part, the success of union women can be attributed to the strategies of separate organizing and constituency building, strategies which have been adopted by other marginalized groups within the union movement. Most caring work is unpaid labour but some of it is clone for pay by women in the "caring professions." Allison Williams, P. Susan Wagner and Monie Buettner examine the effects of work restructuring on home-care workers. They found that three groups - registered nui-ses, licensed practical nurses and home health aides - ''felt

Section VI: Waged Work/ 193

that restructuring had increased stress levels, circumscribed their aut onomy and represented a decline in the level of respect for their work, while making it difficult to maintain work-family balance." Yet, the effects were felt most acutely by home health aides - the lowest group in the home-care hierarchy. Although women have made significant strides in breaking down the barriers to "some venerable bastions of male turf, like medicine and law," the same cannot be said of engineering. In 2002, women were only 7 percent of professional engineers even though they were 24 percent of all professional engineers born after 1970. In her chapter, Gillian Ranson confronts the problem of retention rates in engineering. In her view, "motherhood is a critical watershed." Female engineers experience what Ranson calls "the dual-earner disadvantage": female engineers are trying to juggle fulltime careers and be a mother, while male engineers who are fathers are relatively freed from family responsibilities since the majority of their wives are stay-at-home mothers. Ranson raises the question: "Should women enter engineering on men's terms or should engineering accommodate the needs of women as mothers?" Finally, Mary Nyquist's poem, "Without the Law," explains the ways in which the Jaw upholds patriarchal values: "The law's not an ass if you're behind it." Oh too tnte! What difference would it make if the laws, regulations and public policy regarding paid and unpaid labour were made by women? 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

NOTES Goods-producing industries include agriculture; resource-based industries such as mining1 forestry and fishing; manufacturing and construction; and utilities. Service industries include finance, insurance and real estate; business, education, and health and social services; accommodation, food and beverage services; other services; public administration; transportation; and communications. Earnings refer to into me derived fro1n wages and salaries, which represents 72 percent and 81 percent of women's and 1nen's total incomes respectively. Other sources of income include government transfer programs, investments, private retirement programs, ali1nony and child support programs, superannuation and scholarships. Statistics Canada de.fines Low incomes as families or individuals who "spend, on average at least 20 percentage points more of their pre-tax income than the Canadian average on food, shelter, and clothing. Using 1992 as the base year, families and individuals with incomes below the Low Income Cutoffs usually spend more than 54.7 percent of their income on these items and are considered to be in straightened circumstances" (Statistics Canada 2001: 140). Note that there is considerable variability in income status among First Nations depending upon ,vhether they live on or off reserves. REFERENCES

Benoit, Cec~ia. 2000. Women, w:0rk and Social Rights: Canada in Historical and Comparative Perspectzve. Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women. 1970. Report. Ottawa: Information Canada. Statistics Canada. 2004a. "Table: Employ1nent by Industry and Se"lj:." Website: . Accessed 20/08/04. - -· 2004b. w:0m~n in Canada. Work Chapter Updates. Ottawa: Ministry of Industry. - - · 2004c. [Melissa Cooke-Reynolds and Nancy Zukewich]. "The Fen1 inization of Work" Socia/Trends. Spring. · _ _ . 2004d. "Table: Average Total Income by Economic Family Types." Website:

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. Accessed 20/08/04. _ _. 2004e. "Table: Persons in Low Income Before Tax, by Prevalence in Percent. Website: . Accessed 20/08/04. _ __ . 2004£. "Table: Persons in Low Income Before Tax, by Number." Website: . Accessed 20/08/04. _ _. 2001. ITT>men in Canada. A Gender-Based Statistical Report. Ottawa: Ministry of In.dustry. Wilson, Susannah. 2001. "Paid Work, Jobs, and the Illusion of Economic Sectuity." In Nancy Mandell (ed.), Feminist Issues: Race, Class, and Sexuality. Fourth edition. Toronto: Pearson Prentice-Hall.

Section VI: Waged Work/ 195

WAGED WORKERS HYPATIA INDEX1 • •

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2

Percentage of women in Canada who work for wages: 60.1 Average annual earnings of men in Canada in 2002: $38,900; of women: $25,3003 Amount women in Canada in 1999 earned yearly for every $1 that men earned: $0.72 (CDN); in Guatemala: $0.32 (US);4 in Yemen: 0.28 (US) Amount visible minority women in Canada in 1999 earned for every $1 earned by women of racial majority: $0.85 (CDN)5 Amount women with disabilities in Saskatchewan in 1996 earned for every $1 earned by women without disabilities: $0.81 (CDN)6 Amount men with disabilities in Saskatchewan earn for every $r earned by men without disabilities: $0.80 (CDN) Amount Aboriginal women in Canada earned for every $1 earned by non-Aboriginal women: $0.69 (CDN)7 Percentage of \vaged women in Canada in 2004 who worked in industry (manufacturing, construction, public utilities, etc.): 12.8; 8 of waged men: 25- 3 Percentage of waged women in Canada in 2004 who worked in services (retail, restaurants, communication, etc.): 87.2; of waged men: 63.7 Percentage of all doctors, dentists and other highly paid health professionals in Canada who are women: 47.1;9 of all natural scientists, engineers and mathematicians: 19.6; of all teaching professionals: 62.1; of all nursing professionals and health-related therapists: 86.5 Rate by which women in the United States are opening businesses faster than men: 50 percent 10 Percentage of executive women in multinational corporations who had been asked by senior management to direct the opening of a new factory or division: 0.5;11 of executive men: r5 Average number of sexual harassment cases that are brought each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States: 15,000 12 Rate by which cases filed by men are increasing: 3.2 times Percentage of fen1ale workers who have been harassed at work: 31; of male workers: 7 Percentage of those have been harassed who took no action: 62 Percentage of workplaces that have a written sexual harassment policy: 97 Percentage of all won1en in Canada who work without pay in an economic enterprise of a related person living in the same household: 69;13 of all men in Canada: 31 Percentage of all women in Canada with university degrees who are employed: 7714 Percentage of all women in Canada who did not go beyond grade eight who are employed: 15 Average number of hours per day women spend doing unpaid work: 4.4; men: 2.7 Percentage of unpaid work done by all women in Canada in 1998: 65 percent Percentage of unpaid work done by women, aged 75 to 79 years, in Canada in 1998: 5or5

196 / Gendered Intersections

•

I.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Amount that the United Nations estimates sex discrimination, unwaged and underpaid work costs ,ivomen worldwide: $11 trillion16 NOTES Compiled by Pamela J. Downe, \\'ith the assistance of Ellen Whiteman. Except when otherwise ii1dicated in the main text, the sources cited in this Index apply to the line where first referenced and then to all those that fo.llow until another endnote appears. All Web references were accessed between !vfay and August 2003United Nations, 2002, Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World (New York: Oxford University Press). Statistics Canada, 2001, "Table: Average Earnings by Sex and Work Pattern." Available at . Average annual earnings excludes government transfers and income from investments. United N ations, 2002, fluman Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World (New York: Oxford University Press). Statistics Canada, 2001, \WJmen in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Repo1t (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Saskatchewan Women's Secretariat, 1997, The Economic Status of Saskatchewan i%me11: Statistical Indicators (Regina, SK: Saskatchewan Women's Secretariat). Statistics Canada, 2oor, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Statistics Canada, 2004, ''Table: Employment by lndustry and Sex." Available at . Statistics Canada, 2001, Labour Force Survey (Ottawa: NUnisrry of Industry). Women's Action Coalition, 1993, The Facts About Women (New York: The New Press). E.D. Nelson and B.W Robinson, 1999, Gender in Canada (foronto: Prentice I-Iall Allyn and Bacon Canada). Sexual Harassment Workplace Statistics, 2002, Wotnen's Issues. Available at . United Nations, 2002, Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy i1t a Fragmented World (New York: Oxford University Press). Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). . . . . United Nations, 2000, The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (New York: U1uted Nations). Feminist Majority Foundation, 20 o 1, Fourth World Conference on Women: Reports from Beijing. Available at .

Section VI: Waged Work/ 197

Gender and Employment Relations in the Information Economy1 Call Centre Work

Bob Russell lntroduGtion The production, dissemination and control of information have become increasingly important components of contemporary economic life. Although these trends have been underway for some time, the advent of information oriented economies and info-service jobs presents a number of new and intriguing issues for the analysis of gender and employment relations. This chapter examines gender relations in call centres. As part of the service/information economy, the rate of employment growth in call centres has been nothing less than phenon1enal. Recent estimates (2002) of call centre employment include upwards of 250,000 jobs in Australia (ATA, personal communication), 250,000 in the UK (Richardson and Belt 2001), and 100, 000 in Germany (Michel 2ooi). Year-over-year growth rates in call centre employment currently range from 25 percent in developed economies to around 40 percent in emerging markets such as India. Call centre workforces, like other forms of service work, tend to be predominantly, but by no means exclusively, female (Belt et al. 2000, 2002; Korczynski 2002). In the five research sites included in this study of Australian call centres, 79.5 percent of the combined workforce that participated in a survey conducted by the author was female. This ranged from a low of 57.7 percent in one centre to a high of 87.6 percent in another. Part of this variability may have to do with the nature of the service that the centre is providing, as well as with its age and location. Organizations that previously provided "over the counter" or face-to-face service and that e1nployed a predominantly female workforce may have retained much of that workforce when the S\.Vitch was made to call centre service. These companies, also called "brownfield" sites, may be more gendered in their workforce composition. In comparison, centres that employ a high ratio of young workers or students may exhibit much greater gender parity, as was found in the centre that had 1:.3 women to each male agent. The nature of the call centre's business n1ay also affect the gender ratio. Technical help desks, for example, that provide service to users of computer software or other information oriented products may have a mainJy 1nasculine workforce,·reflecting the gender ratio of graduates from information technology programs. This situation was encountered in one off-shore call centre (no.t included in the survey), which provided Internet and cable television access and where 56 percent of the workforce was male. 2 Work may al~o be gendered along service and sales roles, with women assigned to the former functions and men specializing in sales pro1notions. Often, earning possibilities are higher in sales, with a sizeable com1nission element as part of the total ren1uneration package, and the ,vork may be less tightly scripted, with longer job

198 / Gendered Intersections

cycles_and greater employe~ autonomy. On the other hand, when sexuality is incorporated mto the labour of selling, won1en may be well represented in such roles (Belt et al. 2002). In s1:"11'. ~all ce~tre work may be organized according to ascribed gender traits (e.g.: soc1ab1lity, car_1ng and service orientation), but this is largely dependent upon the service the centre 1s charged with performing. Call centres arc first and foremost a way of org~izi_ng work, rather than an industry in their own right. As a result, gender segmentation 1s often more subtle and nuanced than in the industrial economy (Cockburn r985:; Parr 1990). Work in a Call Centre

Recognition of the importance of advances in telephonic switching devices that are integrated with personal computers to provide real time information capabilities is key for defining and understanding call centres. Automated switching devices deliver incoming calls to available agents who are logged into the system. Known in the industry as automated call distribution syste1n s, this technology is the information age equivalent to the assembly line in delivering work to the employee. Once in a voice-to-voice interaction, personal computers are used to find information, enter new data and complete transactions. Sophisticated systems offer seamless connections between the caller and the data bases that are required, with "pop-up" details pertaining to the caller (e.g., customer files) appearing on the agent's screen as soon as a call is connected. The vast majority of call centres are in-bound facilities. Customer service representatives (CSRs) receive incoming calls and proceed to process them by responding to the callers' requests. Other call centres may be dedicated to making outbound calls, where the call originates from the call centre and is often made in connection with a telemarketing function. The most up-to-date centres no,"I use predictive 0 1· automated dialing technologies. Computers rando1nly select phone numbers, dial them and simultaneously bring any customer details that may already exist up onto the CSR's monitor. Customer lists and details are turned into commodities, and this information is sold back and forth between firms to be "mined" for prospective sales. While in-bound and out-bound functions 1nay exist in separate call centres, it is increasingly common for centres to con1bine the two activities. Thus, within one centre there may be both in-bound customer service teams and out-bound telemarketing teams. Greater investments in technology even permit in-bound and out-bound work to be combined into one job. Here, the agents' principal responsibility is to field incoming calls, but when call volumes are down, a computer can automatically switch the worker over into telemarketing mode. Call centres may be part of a larger operation. For example, governments, banks, airlines, hotels, retail firms and many other organizations no,v o,vn and operate call centres as part of their core operations. The object is to provide "seamless" service, or so-called "one-stop shopping." But the same work may also be out-sourced to an independent company whose main/only activity is providing call centre service for other businesses. This chain of relations is sometimes referred to as business process outsourcing, and this constitutes an increasingly important aspect of caU centre work in the Jess developed world. Corporations headquartered in the US, UK., Canada, and

Section VI : Waged Work/ 199

Australia will outsource their customer service work to agency shops that have been set up especially for that purpose in areas such as south-east Asia. Time zone differences thereby allow Euro-American customers twenty-four-hour-a-day access to everything from banking to cable television service. . . TypicalJy, the work of a CSR is broken down into ~hree fac~ts: prepar~uon t1m_e, talk time and wrap tin1e. Prep time are the moments pnor to taking or making a call 111 ,vhich the agent is preparing for a specific interaction by, for example, reviewing a customer's file. Wrap time refers to any post-call work that might be required such as updating files or arranging to have material sent to a caller. The object generally is to maximize the an1ount of time CSRs are on the phone - talk time - by .minimizing the other two phases of the work. Most call cen.t res will have specific targets, such as a desired number of calls per day, desired average call length (e.g., 165 seconds), reco1nmended wrap time (e.g., 20 seconds) and number of hours logged into the system. Workers are measured against these targets each and every day, and this mass of data is available to supervisors as key performance indicators (KPls). In order to achieve such targets, the work is standardized as much as it possible, with stock and consistent information provided for each type of query: In addition to these requirements, agents are expected to invest emotional labour (I-Iockschild 1983; Leidner 1993; Wharton 1996) in each interaction, which is expressed through such idioms as "total customer care," "excitement quality" and providing "memorable customer experiences" (Callaghan and Thompson 2002). In this way, customers are retained, or won from other businesses, while callbacks from the public are reduced. But it is also this aspect of call centre work which is most likely to receive a gender connotation. Call monitoring is regularly used to ensure quality and best effort from CSRs. Use of appropriate phrases, clarity and accuracy of information presented, intonation and enthusiasm - "putting a smile in your voice" - and skill at managing the call are typical criteria used in assessing quality. Such monitoring may be overt, in which case the evaluator will sit beside the agent and "double-jack" into calls, or it may be covert, where the assessor remotely listens into calls without the knowledge of workers. The results of taped calls may be reviewed with employees for purposes of improvement ("coaching") or performance evaluation. The ways in which the monitoring is conducted and purposes to which it is put may both become flash points of contestation in these work environments. Work in info-service industry entails high degrees of routinization, measurement and control, but at the same time it has important elen1ents of discretion and autonomy, especially with respect to the supply of emotional labour. The delivery of work to individual agents is highly regimented and controlled. But once the worker is into a one-on-one interaction with a caller, it is the fo1·mer ,vho is in control. She may decide to volunteer information or provide extra service, carrying out her role as an "aniliassador" of the organization. Alternatively, helpful information may be withheJd, or a caller may be disconnected. How CSRs Perceive Their Work In the five call centres examined in this research, overwhelming majorities of wo1nen (76.5 percent) and men (82 percent) view their work as routine in nature and as allowing no autonon1y for self-pacing (73 percent of women and 67 percent of men). A 200 / Gendered Intersections

g~ea~er proportion of men than women in our sample planned on leaving the industry w1thm t~e _ne:xt couple ofyears (54.5 percent versus 40.8 percent), but the difference is not s~at1st1cal~y significant. For men and won1en, the routine/boring nature of the ,vork 1s t~e ~hief factor leading to exit; this factor was a more powerful reason for the men, while JOb stress ranked higher (but still not as high as routinization) for women in the sample. Refl~cting the routine nature of the work, onJy a fifth of the men (18.6 percent) and a third of the women (30.2 percent) believe that their current CSR positions are the most skilled jobs that they have ever held. Even fewer CSRs consider that their jobs are making full use of their education and experience, which can be a source of considerable frustration. When queried about the most important skill required for this type ofwork, 60 percent of the female agents and 55 percent of the male agents reported that social skills are the most important asset for doing their jobs. Social skills were ranked as much more important than either product knowledge or computer skills by both female and male CSRs in near equal proportions. Workers who participated in the survey report that providing quality of service was the highest priority, but this aspect of the job often conflicted with keeping up with the volun1e of call traffic. Intriguingly, a greater proportion of men report experiencing this conflict than women, and although tbe association between gender and conflicting work goals is not high, it is statistically significant. One explanation for this gender difference could be that women have more experience in juggling competing claims on their time than men. Both male and female agents report giving priority to quality service over the number of calls taken by trying to ignore the volume of calls waiting when dealing with a specific query. Most of the workers interviewed indicated a preference for doing customer service work as opposed to telemarketing. The greatest proportions of both women and men rated appreciation from customers as the most important feature in providing job satisfaction, ahead of ackno,vledgement from managers and relations with co-workers, which were ranked second and third respectively Doing emotional labour can be exhausting work. Almost equal proportions of female and male CSRs report feeling "tired and drained" at the end of a shift (55.4 percent of the women and 47.6 percent of the men), while less than 10 percent of either gender say that they are "not particularly tired" at the end of the working day. Most commonly fatigue assumes the form of mental exhaustion or emotional tiredness, again in almost equal proportions between women and men. We can speculate that much of this fatigue is related to dealing with the public in a continuous fashion, call after call. This seems to be a more important factor than practices such as silent monitoring or the collation of personal performance statistics, to which agents lend only some importance. Female CSRs are more likelv , than male CSRs to value the social environment of their work, which are expressed as fonns of collectivism. For example, when asked about the importance of their co-workers for accomplishing their own work, women attach greater importance to the supportive role~ assun1ed by co-worke~s than ~o men. Women are also more likely to attach greater importance to the orgaruzed social activities that are a significant aspect of call centre work cultures. As described elsewhere (Kinnie et aJ. 2000; Russell 2002a), call centre managers \.vork hard to

Section VI: Waged Work / 201

create a workplace aesthetic of "fun and games," where work and activities associated with leisure are deliberately blended. These activities help to soften the hard edge of KPis and call monitoring as well as creating morale around the team structures _that are part of call centre organization. T he women in this study were one and half tunes more likely to attach value to the organized social activities of the call centre than were the men. As in the value that is attached to the work of peers, this association appears consistently across the study. However, this finding should not be taken to suggest that women are more compliant to the dictates of management. Women in the study are also considerably more likely to be members of a trade union than are their male counterparts.3 More than twice as many women were union members (36.7 percent) than ,vere their male counterparts (17.1 percent). We cannot, however, immediately conclude that this finding is totally a "gender effect." For various reasons one workplace may be easier to organize than another and coincidently, it may have a higher proportion of female CSRs than average. For example, workplaces in the public sector have traditionally had higher union densities, and so-called "brownfield" sites may have had high rates of unionization that were brought over when conversion to call centre status was made (Russell 20026; Russell 2004). Nonetheless, it is still the case that in the four call centres in which there was a union presence, women were over-represented as trade union members in three of them. In these instances women made up a higher -proportion of trade union members than they did of the organization's workforce. Conclusion Call centres and the employment they offer have very quickly become an important component of life in information-oriented societies. In fo-service jobs both retain, or even exaggerate, characteristics from the industrial past, such as high levels of technological control and surveillance, but also have built into them new expectations and demands. These include extended levels of accountability to a variety of parties, as welJ as a mix of social, technical and knowledge specific skills that are required to accomplish the work. For the 1nost part, women and men perceive and respond to these conditions in similar ways. Nonetheless, call centre work is being gendered in both the expectations that are attached to the job and in the hiring decisions that managers make. An over-representation of women in call centre employment, combined with limited possibilities for career mobility in the call centre, may be responsible for greater levels of solidarity amongst female workers. The mix of job characteristics distinguish the role of the customer service agent £ro1n many of the industrial jobs of the past. In short call centres are very demanding, yet contradictory, places in which to hold down a job.

1.

:i.

3.

NOTES A previous version of this articl: appeared in the Proceedings of the Eighth National Co~fercnce of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour I-Iistory; 2 003. This call centre was located in Singapore. In Australia, where the_study was carried out, union membership is nov.r voluntary. Since 1996, the closed or uruon shop has been made illegal under the Workplace Relations Act (1996).

202 I Gendered Intersections

REFERENCES Belt, V., and R. Richardson. 2000. "Women's Work in the Information Economv: The Case of Telephone Call Centres." Information, Communication and Society 3, 3. , Belt, V., R. Richardson and J. Webster. 2002. "Women, Social Skill and Interactive Service Work in Telephone Call Centres." New Technology, Work and Employment r7, 1. Callaghan, G. and P. Thompson. 2002. '"We Recruit A.ttitude': The Selection and Shaping of Routine Call Centre Labo1u." Journal ofManagement Studies 39, 2. Cockburn, C. 1-985 Afachinery ofDotninance. London: Pluto. Hockschi1d, A. 1983. The .1vf.anaged Heart: Commercialization ofHuman Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kinnie, N., S. I-Iutchinson and). Purcell. 2000. "'Fun and Surveillance': The Paradox of High Commitment Management in Call Centres." InternationalJournal ofHuman Resource Manage1nent u, 5. Korczynski, M. 2002. Human Resource Management in Service Work. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Leid.net, R. 1993. Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization ofEveryday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Michel, L. 2001. "Call Centres in Germany: Employment, Market and Qualification Requirements." Economic and Industrial Democracy 22. Parr,]. 1990. The Gender ofBreadwinners. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Richardson, R ., and V. Belt. 2001. "Saved by the Bell? Call Centres and Economic D evelopment in Less Favoured Regions." Economic andlndustrialDemocracy 22. Russell, B. 2002a. "The Talk Shop and Shop Talk: Employment and Work in a Call Centre." Journal of Industrial Relations 44, 4. _ _ . 2002b. "Making, Re-Making, Managing and Controlling Customer Service Agents: Brownfield and Greenfield Call Centre Sites." Research and Practice in 1-Iuman Resource Management 10, I. _ _ . 2004. ''Are All Call Centres the Same'" Labour and Industry I 4, 3. Wharton, A. r996. "Service with a Smile: Understanding the Consequences of Emotional Labour." Jn C. Macdonald and C. Sirianni (eds.), Working in the Service Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Immigrant Garment Workers as the Embodiment of Gender, Race and Class Relations Roxana Ng Using the garment industry as a case study, this chapter explores the contemporary reality of working-class immigrant wo1nen in Canada. I show t~at ~hey embody gender, race and class relations that are being transformed by globalization and work restructuring. The garment industry in Canada is predominantly Canadian-owned. It is the eighth largest provider of manufacturing jobs and has occupied a secure position in Canadian manufacturing historically. But in the 1980s this sector went through dramatic and contradictory changes. According to Industry Canada (1996), between 1989 and 1993, the sector experienced a staggering loss of 800 plants and over 33,000 jobs, leading to the notion that it had become a "sunset" industry. But since the mid199os, the industry has been growing; both shipments and employment have been increasing (Gunning et al. 2000). Some segments of the industry (e.g., private label manufacturing) are booming, while others have undergone drastic downsizing.1 Control within the industry has shifted from manufacturers to large retail chains such as the Hudson's Bay Company (which owns Zellers and K-Mart) and increasingly to transnational chains, such as Wal-Mart (the largest retail chain in the world). To compete globally; retailers deliver the most fashionable clothes to the market quickly; a strategy made possible by at least three interlocking processes. First, technological innovations, such as electronic data interchange (EDI), have enabled retailers to gain control of the production process, allowing them to keep better records of their stock. Sales of gannents on the rack in retail stores can be communicated to production plants almost instantaneously anywhere in the world, enabling manufacturers and retailers to reduce mass production, storage and other overhead costs. Retailers ru:e able to de1nand quicker turn-around time for production and require suppliers (contractors and sub-contractors) to provide gartnents on consignment and/or at last year's price. Second, improved distribution an,d transportation systems allow garn1ents to be delivered more quickly; even from far-away places. Therefore many manufacturers can rely on off-shore production to keep labour costs low. Third, trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which reduced tariffs on clothing produced elsewhere in North America, enable retailers to order, and large manufacturers to produce, garments from Mexico with lower labour costs. The 1995 Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), negotiated through the World Trade Organization (WTO), instituted a progressive lifting of quotas on imported garments from the 1"'h ird World, including China. These agreemen ts undennine both manufacturers and workers in Canada (see Ng 2002) as retailers can choose not to use local labour and to use off-shore production as a bargaining chip when negotiating with Canadian manufacturers. 204 / Gendered Intersections

. Manufac~rers have responded to their slipping control in different ways. Some retired and withdrew altogether. Others became importers or contractors who subcontrac~ work to plants in low-waged countries through a vast and expanding global production network. This network has taken advantage of trade agreements between/ among governments and the establishment of free trade zones in Third World coun~ries (Yanz et al. 1999). Stilt others reorganized production locally by sub-contracting to s1naller shops and home-based workers in order to lower costs and increase productivity (Ng 1999). The effects of this restructuring include job loss and the reemergence of hon1e-based work and sweatshop operations in the Canada. Laura Johnson (1982: 19) has dated this shift in garment production to the early 1980s. She interviewed James Morris, a manufacturer who laid off all but one of his forty-five workers (a skilled cutter) and used home sewers as a cheaper alternative to factory workers. This cut down his overhead costs and enabled him to remain competitive. Thus, the increasing concentration of ownership of the garment industry has ironically led to a more fragmented production process, organized through layers of contracting and sub-contracting, with retailers and large manufacturers at the top of the pyramid. Gender, Race and Class Relations

What is not immediately visible in the above description is the gendered and racialized differentiation and hierarchywithin this industry. The ethnic and racial composition of garment workers has shifted over time. In the period immediately after World War II, many garment workers were immigrant men from Europe. As they acquired skills and seniority to move up the production hierarchy (e.g., by becoming cutters, who are valued more than se,ving machine operators), women and more recently women from Asja (primarily Hong Kong, China, India, and Vietnam) replaced them at the bottom of the garment production hierarchy. Currently, the garment industry is comprised of about 50 percent immigrants and 76 percent \.Vomen (Gunning l al. 2000). It is noteworthy; although not surprising, that the skills (such as sewing and mending) immigrant women use in the industrial context have been acquired in domestic settings; thus these workers are seen by employers as unskilled or semiskilled (vis-a-vis cutters, who are seen to be skilled). Sewing is seen to be a women's skill; it is paid less than the work done by the cutters. In the process of differentiating men's labour from women1s, the corresponding skills - which are social in origin are misinterpreted as reflecting the natural differences between n1en and women. This gendering process devalues women's acquired skills, creat ing and reinforcing women's social and economic marginalization. Put another way, n1ore value is attributed to skills deployed in commodity production, and less value is attributed to skills used for reproductive purposes. The restructured garn1ent industry produces important industrial hierarchies that reflect the intertwined relations of gender, race and class. The racial and ethnic composition of the garment industry is produced through various processes (for example, lack of fluency in English and not having the "proper" educational credentials, i.e., accredited by Canadian institutions) that exclude immigrant and racialized women and men fron1 better paying jobs. The only jobs that immigrant and racialized women and men can get then are in industries, such as the garment industry, since

Section VI : Waged Work/ 205

these jobs are deemed to be 'unskilled,' dull and mundane in part because they are defined as ''women's work." The p1·ocesses of racialization, the devaluation ofwomen's work and the stratified labour market are iterative; that is, they are dynamic and historically situated, both reinforcing and constituting the racial, ethnic and gendered identities of garment workers.

The Payment System I-Iistorically and presently, the garment industry has relied on low wages and the use of women and immigrants as a pool of inexpensive labour for its competitive advantage. In the past, homeworking and sweatshop operations were integral to this sector. With the formation of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), first in the US and then in Canada, garment workers became one of the few unionized female workforces that enjoyed decent wages and employee benefits. These workers have been protected by Jabour legislation and rights to collective bargaining since the 1930s. However, globalization and the restructuring of the garment industry has had a negative impact on garment workers. The downsizing of plants and the shift back to home-based work has disrupted and undermined the process of collective bargaining for better wages and working conditions. This trend is compounded by neoliberal discourse that has shaped state policies since the 1980s. The liberalization of provincial employment standards (including the extension of the work week to sixty hours and reduction in health and safety regulations in Ontario, for example) makes it even more difficult for workers and unions to negotiate with employers. The exploitation of gannent workers is especially evident in the payment system for sewers. Most garment sewing is paid according to a piece rate. Laura Johnson (1982) reported a piece rate of $2 per skirt in the early 1980s; today, workers still rnake $2 per skirt, $3 per shirt and $4- 5 per dress. These items are then retailed at up to $200. For section work (e.g., sewing on pocket~ or collars), workers make between 20 to 50 cents per piece. In my study on homeworkers and their working conditions, I estimated the average hourly rate for homeworkers in Toronto to be between $6 and $8 (Ng 1999). The highest hourly rate reported was $17 (for evening gowns), and the lowest was $2. Whereas we commonly assume that wages increase with skills and experience, garment workers are routinely "punished" for increased productivity and skill. Employers frequently lower the piece rate when workers begin to increase their average hourly earnings. For example, one won1an reported that depending on the complexity of the design, she ,vas once paid $3- $4 per skirt but is now paid $2.80-$3. Another woman explained: The lowest salary I earned was about $3 per hour, with the sa.ine employers I'm now working. {I asked why she didn't complain about the low rate.] I didn't say anything at the beginning. I dared not. But now I start to talk to the~ about this. rfhe kind of pocket-cover sewing I'm now doing also requtres me to cut certain fabric before I can start sewing. But the employers don't count the cutting time. I told the employers about this. But they said that almo~t every ho1neworker asks them for a raise. But they get no raise from their contractor who gives them the fabric. I don't know other ho1neworkers who also work for them. It wouJd be better if I know. Their

206 / Gendered Intersections

factory is very small. They only have two workers in their factory, plus some part-timers and the two owners. ' The highest salary I earned was around $8 per hour. T hat ,vas in the begi~ning when I first worked for these employers, when they let me know the piece rate before I sewed. But now they don't tell 1ne the piece rate before I sew. (Ng 1999: 111)

In addi~on to the low wages, 1nost garment workers - especially homeworkers - do not receive benefits, and workers have little recourse apart from discontinuing work with a particular employer. The nature of these payment systems and other working conditions demonstrate the real effect s of globalization and work restructuring on garment workers' livelihood as they are transformed from wage workers to homeworkers. 1rade agreements enable employers to move production sites around the world in search of cheap labour. Liberalizing labour standards enable employers to increase the exploitation of workers; cutbacks to the monitoring of these standards produce a similar effect. It has become easier for contractors and sub-contractors to violate labour standards without fear of discovery or sanction. Increasingly; garment workers in Canada share a fate similar to their less well-off counterparts in Third World countries: decreasing protection, lower wages and deepening exploitation. . . What can Be Done? What is Being Done? Given the tremendous odds faced by garment workers in Canada and globally, it is clear that drastic measures are needed to ameliorate increasing labour rights violations. In addition to the efforts of unions and labour right s groups, there are at least three areas in which concerned citizens can be involved: research, public education and activism. First, we need more and better research done on tracking the global production and organization of apparel and textiles. Due to the private nature of ownership and the secretive character of garment production, it is very difficult to trace the extensive network and chain of gannent production internationally. 11-acking the global inter-connections between/among garment plants requires researchers with varied knowledge and skills. For example, statisticaJ analyses of export and import figu res of garment manufacturing, coupled with interviews with garment workers, illuminate the multi-faceted and contradictory nature of garment production. Tracking investment patterns of manufacturers indicates the movement and places of garment production across nationaJ borders. It is only through collaboration and partnership among researchers in different locations (in the academy; in unions, in the community) that we will begin to unravel the complex nature and organization of garment production in Canada and elsewhere. Second, we need to bring to public awareness the complex system of exploitation of workers and the strategies used by retailers and large manufacturers to augment profit. Instead of de-regulation, governments need to implement better protective and monitoring legislation and regulation. Because govern1nents will only become more accountable with tax-payers' forceful insistence, research and public education need to be bolstered by activism on the part of citizens. For example, as a result of

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lobbying by students and other concerned citizens, the University of Toronto developed, in 1999, a Code of Conduct for 'Irademar~ Licensees to e~sure that ~e suppliers of the university's trade1narked merchandise (such as T-shirt, sweatshirts and souvenirs) n1ect minimum employment standards regarding such issues as wages and benefits, working hours and overtime compensation. When the University learned through media reports about the allegations of "southern i>weatshop'' working conditions directed at Gildan Actjvewear, the administration asked for a public explanation and accounting. This is the kind of pressure that keeps manufacturers and retailers accountable and responsible employers. Finally, we need to develop alliances and multi-pronged strategies, not only with workers in Canada but with workers and groups in the South. Given the intimate connection of garment production between northern and southern countries, gains by one group of workers will have a ripple effect. One organization that combines these three areas of action identified above is the Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN). 2 This Toronto-based non-profit network of over four hundred organizations is concerned with labour issues worldwide and has been at the forefront of research and advocacy in relation to garment production. MSN traces Canadian manufacturers' involvement in garment production in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean Basin and Asia. In addition to research, MSN also collaborates with women's and labour rights organizations in the economic South by advocating for the development and in1plen1entation of codes of conduct governing garment production. Working in coaJition with labour and other social action organizations, the network has initiated and organized campaigns in Canada to bring to light the situation of garment workers worldwide, stressing what Canadians can do to a1neliorate the plight of these workers. Their latest campaigns - disclosure and "no sweat" - are an innovative, multipronged strategy that integrates research and public- and worker- education. The disclosure campaign, mounted by the Ethical Trading Action Group, is trying to persuade the federal government to amend the Textile Labelling Act so that where the article is actuaJly made would have to appear on clothing labels. This would enable researchers and activists to trace the global network of garment production by Canadian n1anufacturers. This initiative is also a way of educating Canadians about the nature of garment production. We are all responsible for eliminating inequity. By working together in solidarity and cooperation, we can reduce and eliminate the detrimental effects of globalization and work toward a global system that would benefit the majority of the world population. NOTES I.

2.

lt should be noted that the effects of work restructuring are not uniform and do not affect d~fer~nt sub-se~tors and localities in the same way. For instance, the garment industry in W1nrupeg-wh1ch u~es workers ~ron1 Third World countries on work permits and wh..ich produces heavy clothing such as winter coats - as ·well as the men's suit sub-sector are less affected by restn1cturing because they require more standardjzation and machinery. The manufac~ring of '-VOmen's and children's wear, on the other hand, which can be sewn more easily by homeworkers, is susceptible to downsizing. For the work ?f the 1~SN, which is also the secretariat of the Ethical Trading Action Group, see thetr Webstte .

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REFERENCES Gunning,].,]. Eaton, S. Ferrier, M. Kerr, A. King and]. Maltby. 2000. Dealing with Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Ontario Clothing Industry. Report subn1itted to the Research Advisory Council of the Workplace Safety and Jnsiirance Board, UNITE, November 3. Industry Canada. 1996. Clothing Industry Statistical Data. Ottawa. Johnson, Laura. 1982. The SeamAllowance: Industrial Home Se1vingin Canada. Toronto: Women's Press. Marx, Karl. 1954. Capital, Volume I . .11osco,v: Progress Books. Ng, Roxana. 1999. "Homeworking: Dream Realized or Freedom Constrained? The Globalized Reality of Immigrant Garment Workers." Canadian 1\'loman Studies 19, 3- -· 2002. "Freedom for Whom? Globalization and Trade from the Standpoint of Garment Workers." Canadian ~1nan Studies 21122, 4 and 1. Yanz, Lynda, Bob Jeffcott, Deena Ladd and Joan Atlin. 1999. Policy Options to Improve Standards for Garment ~rkers in Canada in Internationally. Ottawa: Status of Women Canada.

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Sites of Struggle/ Vehicles of Resistance Unions and Wom en Workers1

Linda Briskin Unions and Women Workers

Unions get bad press. The media, when they bother to cover issues about :'or~i~ people and unions, refer invariably to union bosses and greedy workers. Certainly 1t 1s true that unionized workers, especially women, make more than the non-unionized. The union premium. for women workers in Canada in 1995 was 31 percent; and unionized part-time women workers make about 40 percent more than their nonunionized sisters (Jackson and Schellenberg 1999). Unions also play a major role in closing the wage gap betweenwomen and men. In 2002, union women made $19.52 an hour, 91.1 percent as much as union men. Their non-unionized sisters made only $14.08 an hour, 76.5 percent of the wages of non-union men (Jackson 2003). But a living wage can hardly be considered a sign of greed. Consider that, in 1996, the richest 10 percent of Canadian families earned 314 times more than the poorest ro percent (21 times higher than in 1973) (Toronto Star October 24, 1998). In dollars this meant that by 1999, the richest 10 percent had a net worth of $703,500 and the poorest 10 percent were in debt $2100 (Globe and Mail March 16, 2001). Unionized workers are also more likely to have full-time jobs, access to health and pension benefits, more control over their work and some degree of job security through their collective agreements. So despite the fact that the Iight of all workers to join unions has been recognized by a 1948 United Nations Declaration, it is not surprising that employers and the media are hostile to unions. In a time of increasingly precarious employment, unions are essential to protect the rights of workers, especially women, who face lower ,vages, occupational segregation and over-representation among the part-t ime. For young women ,vorkers who are clustered in the retail and fast food industries and suffer minimum wages, meagre benefits and unpredictable hours, unions are critical. Young Women Organizing

In 1994, Sarah Inglis was the first to try to organize a union at a McDonald's outlet. She had started working there when she was fourteen and when asked why a union, she said: "For respect, dignity and job security" (Inglis 1994: 22). Over the course of the campaign, mounted with the help of the SEIU (Service E1nployees International Union), she and other workers faced employer hostility and threats. Sarah reported: "People ... were scared of losing their jobs. People were very intimidated."(25). Although it is illegal to fire workers who lead an organizing effort, it is relatively easy to cut the hours of part-timers or to assign them the worst shifts and jobs. The intimidation was successful and the campaign to unionize failed. _However a f~w years later, in 1996, women workers at Suzy Shier organized two retail stores, despite threats from management. Like Sarah Inglis, Deborah De Angelis 210 / Gendered Intersections

said, "~1~ fight isn't about 111oney: it's about dignity" (1998: 26). Although it took a year ~o negotiate a first contract, De Angelis reports that having a voice is the biggest gain: Before, t~ey ;o~ld fire you, no problem. They had nobody to ans,ver to. Before, if the mana_ger d1dn t like what you were saying, she just wouldn't put you on the schedule. And 1f you wer~ n~t on the schedule for four weeks, you were automatically terminated. That policy 1s now gone, thanks to the collective agree1nent.... T hat is so 1nuch power" (29). In_ response to the pressure of young workers, many unions now have youth committees and youth representation on leadership bodies. For example, in 1996 the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, the umbrella organization of unions in that province, endorsed a resolution to set up such a committee. And the British Columbia Federation of Labour hosts a youth page on its Website. 2 Wayne Samuelson, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), argues that, "One of today's major challenges is... to help provide rights to the young workers" (Report of the OFL Conference on Organizing Young Workers 1999). . Workplace Restructuring Workplace restructuring and free trade are transforming work in Canada. Employers have increased their calls for labour flexibility; created more part-time, part-year service ,vork, often referred to as precarious or casual labour; and endorsed more contracting-out and homework. Employers are also moving their factories to countries with no minirnum.wages or unions, resulting in serious job loss in the heavily unionized, male-dominated manufacturing industries. Men are now competing for women's jobs in the less-unionized service industries and in the few professions where wo1nen have dominated, such as nursing and teaching. These changes have significantly reduced union membership and made unionization. more difficult. Yet, in the current context, workers, especially women, need unions more than ever. Union activity fosters personal empowerment, political awareness and collective solidarity. Unions provide a vehicle for struggling around fundamental issues affecting home and work, such as economic independence, the right to secure employment, childcare and harassment- and violence-free environments. Unions also lobby to influence goverrunent policy and legislation on equality issues. And unionization clearly offers women material benefits. Unions and Male Domination

Although unions are often pictured as male-dominated institutions run by tough, even ruthless, working-class men, about half of Canadian union members are women, and 1nost work in white-collar clerical jobs. However, despite almost reaching numerical equality; \\'Omen continue to face four major barriers to union participation (Braithwaite and Byrne 1995). First, women already face a double day, working for wages and doing the vast majority of unpaid household work. To be a union activist means a "triple day," often in1possible for women with chjldren. Second, women's segregation in low-paid work with often unrecognized skills and little flexibility means that the~ may not be encour~ged or chosen to be union leaders. Third, unions have been a vehicle for the construction and validation of particular forms of masculinity, which have reinforced son1e n1en's Section VI : Waged Work/ 211

resistance to the participation of women. Finally traditional gender stereotypes, for example, the view that women are overly emotional, when internalized by women, weakens their confidence in their capacity to organize and lead. When such stereotypes are externalized by men, they result in discrimination against women. Resisting the Gender Order of Unions

Like all social institutions, unions are organized by gender. Gender practices in unions have most often been about exclusion and power. However, in the r97os, women began to organize to resist and reconfigure the gender order of unions. They demanded improved representation, increased resources for equity issues and more inclusivity. And unions have responded. It is no exaggeration to say that unions are now the most democratic of all major institutions in Canadian society and that Canadian unions may be the most progressive in the world. Undoubtedly, women have had an enormous impact on re-inventing unions in the past three decades. This section outlines some of the initiatives taken by union women to challenge the traditional gender order of unions.

Representation Improving women's representation has been a major focus in Canadian unions. Many unions and federations now have affirmative action policies that designate or add seats on leadership bodies for women in an attempt to address their under-representation in top elected positions. This process began in 1983 when the OFL broke new ground by amending its constitution to create five affirmative action positions on its executive board. The increased awareness of representational issues has led to employment equity for union staff and affirmative action seats on union executive boards for racialized minorities, lesbians and gays, and Aboriginal peoples.

Redefining Union Issues Canadian women unionists have successfully pressured unions to take up issues of childcare, reproductive rights, sexual harassment, pay equity and employment equity among others. A dramatic case in point is the increasing union involvement, with active support from top leadership, in the broad issues around violence against women. These campaigns go well beyond a focus on employer harassment or even co,vorker harassment, and many have successfully integrated issues around racial harass.1nent and violence. For example, in their campaign against domestic violence, the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) said: "Our society; based on unequal wealth, status, opportunity and po\'1er, is a breeding ground for abusive behaviour. Because of their lack of economic and political power, women are especiallyvulnerable to acts of violence. Doubly disadvantaged wo1nen - women with disabilities, lesbians, Aboriginal and visible minority women are doubly vulnerable to acts of violence" (quoted in Fonow 1998: u8). Although some union hierarchies have questioned the relevance of such issues to unions, shifts have now occurred in both union policy and the collective bargaining a?enda. Ha1f ofworkers covered by major collective agreements now have the protection of a formal sexual ~arassment clause (up from 20 percent in 1985); 60.5 percent of such agree1nents contain a non-discrimination clause; 27.6 percent have pay equity

212 / Gendered Intersections

(equal ~ay for_work ~f equal value) clauses (up frotn 5.4 percent in 1985), and 11.8 percent have affirmative action cla~ses (up from 5.9 percent) (Tackson and Schellenberg 19 99). _ In order to protect against the potential marginalization associated with women's iss~es, gendering u~on issues (sometimes called "gender mainstreaming") is now on union agendas. This means a move from an identification of a women's platforn1 of concerns to a recognition of the gender implications in all issues - such as restructuring, seniority, he~th and safety, and telework. Such a shift facilitates taking account of the gender-spec1hc concerns of male workers. Issues are also being scrutinized for their impact on diverse groups of women. For example, discussions of family benefits increasingly reject traditional definitions of "family," which exclude gay and lesbian couples. Such inclusivity helps build bridges among diverse groups of women unionists and alliances with marginalized male workers.

Separate Organizing and Constituency Building For almost three decades in Canada, union women's separate organizing has played a key role in politicizing women and producing them as a vocal constituency. Women have organized in response to male domination, patriarchal cultures and hierarchical organizational practices in unions. Through such organizing, women have forced unions to take up wo1ne.t1's concerns as union members and as workers, have promoted won,en's leadership and challenged traditional leaderships to be accountable, and encouraged unions to be more democratic and participatory. Separate organizing (sometimes called self-organizing) takes a variety of forms within the union movement: informal ,vomen's networks or caucusesj formal, sometimes elected women's committees; women-only educational conferences; women's locals of mixed unions; and women-only unions. Separate organizing is increasingly supported by union resources and facilitated by equal opportunity coordinators, newsletters and women's bureaus. In examining separate organizing, it is useful to distinguish between separatism as a goal - an end in itself - and as a strategy - a means to an end, in this case, the integration of,volnen as full citizens in unions. Separate organizing among women has often been associated ,vith the "separate from whom" (n1en) rather than the equally important "separate from what" (bureaucratic and hierarchical organizational practices). However, since men's power, privilege and leadership combine with traditional organizational fonns to exclude and disadvantage women, the practice of women's separate organizing has challenged both. Women's separate organizing has provided an important precedent. Increasingly women and men of colour, lesbians and gay men, and native peoples are organizing separately inside the union movernent, often through I-Iuman Rights and Rainbow Committees, Aboriginal Circles and Pink Triangle Commjttees. For example, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) established a Rainbo,v Committee in 1988 to address issues affecting racialized minorities and Aboriginal peoples and in 1991 a Pink Triangle Committee, which works toward eliminating homophobia and heterosexism and pron1oting the human rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual me1nbers. In fact, in the last decade, there has been a remarkable development of union poHey on racistn, homophobia, sexism and newly on ableism. __ _ __ The evidence (Brisk.in r999b, 1993) suggests that separate organizing 1s a cnt1cal

Section VI: Waged Work/ 213

vehicle to agitate for union transformation, to ensure a v?ice for ~1e dis~dvantaged, to resist the marginalization of equity issues -a nd to orgaruze const1tuenc1es of workers both to challenge and defend unions,

Coalition Building and Transnational Organizing }'or several decades, the women's movement in Canada has embraced alliances and coalitions in order to bring women together from unions, poutical parties and com1nunity-based groups to co-operate nationally, provincially and locally. The most successful formal expression of this, but by no means the only one, is the National Action Committee on the Status of Women/Comite Canadien d'action sur le statut de la femme (NAC), a bi-national (includes Quebec), bilingual umbrella organization of over seven hundred member groups, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1997, This co-operation has meant that trade union women work with communitybased feminist groups, both to build coalitions around key issues such as childcare and pay equity and to pressure the union movement to respond to feminist challenges, TI-ade union women, in turn, have had an important impact on the politics and practices of the Canadian women's movement, emphasizing a class perspective and weakening the tendency towards individualistic solutions. rfhe globalization of production, mobility of capital and con1petitive wage bargaining across national boundaries are putting transnational solidarity on the agenda of unions. Unions increasingly see the need to build alliances with workers in other countries. Many key initiatives have originated with women activists who have emphasized the significance to gender of the "new world order." For example, at the prompting of ,von1en activists in both unions and communities, the Canadian union movement ,vas actively involved in building the World March of Women, the goals of which were to elinunate poverty and violence in women's lives. Launched on March 8, 2000, it culminated on October 17, 2000, the International Day for the Elimination of Poverty. This worldwide activity, endorsed by over 200 countries and 2200 organizations, was initiated by the Federation des femmes du Quebec. Coalition strategies both respond to and highlight the significance of diversity; that is, they represent an organizational alternative to hon1ogeneous organizations that tend to silence marginal voices. In the struggle for a just and equitable society, unions are important allies of social rnovements such as the environmental m ovement, the women's movement, the anti-racist movement, the lesbian/gay/bisexual / transgender movement among others. Perhaps more than any other single strategri coalition building, nationally and transnationally; will be critical to mounting resistance to corporatization, workplace restructuring, cutbacks in social programs, decommodification and globalization, each of which affects women in gender-specific ways. Conclusion Unions _o~fer one of the fe,v arenas to counter the ideological onslaught promoting compet1t1on and the marketplace, the neoliberal invocation of patriarchal values for workplaces and households and the promotion of radical individualism, which undermines citizenship rights and rejects claims made on the basis of systemic discriminatio_n. _Constituency organizing by women and other marginalized groups, coalition building across gender and diversities, and alliances across national boundaries offer a 214 / Gendered Intersections

pro-active alternative to neoliberalism. In Canada, the unions 1nay be the decisive arena for organizing by equity-seeking groups. They are now a key player in the women's movement. However, this did not happen w~thout resistance; in~eed, the movement of union women has struggled for almost thirty years to make this a reality. NOTES This article draws freely on articles I have written. See Brisk.in 1999, 1999a, 2002 and 2004.

--;;:::-:----:--:--:---::--:----::---::-:------------:.:.:::...:...=:'... r.

2.

REFERENCES Braithwaite, Mary; and Cathe1·ine Byrne. 1995. Women in Decision-Making in Trade Unions. Brussels: European Trade Union Confederation. Brislan, Linda. 2004 "Unions: Resistance and Mobilization." In Philomena Essed, David Goldberg and Audrey Kobayashi (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Gender Studies. London: Blackwell Press. _ _ . 2002. "The Equity Project in Canadian Un.ions: Confronting the Challenge of Restructuring and Globalization." In Fiona Colgan and Sue Ledwith (eds.), Gender, Dive1·sity and Trade Unions: International Perspectives. London: Routledge. _ _ . 1999a. "Feminisms, Feminization and De1nocratization in Canadian Unions." In Karen Blackford, Marie-Luce Garceau and Sandra Kirby (eds.), Feminist Success Stories/Cilebrons nos reussites feministes. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. _ _ . 1999b. '½.utonomy, Diversity and Integration: Union Women's Separate Organizing in North America and Western Europe in the Context of Restructuring and Globalization." Women} Studies International Forum 22, 5. _ _ . 1993. "Union Women and Separate Organizing." In Patricia McDermott (ed.), Women Challenging Unions: Feminism, Democracy and Militancy. Toronto: University of Toronto. Canadian Labour Congress. 1994. Sexual Orientation Policy Paper. Ottawa. De Angelis, Deborah, as told to Jonathan Eaton. 1998. "Wake Up Little Suzy: Women Retail Workers Organize." Our Times 17. Fonow, Margaret. 1998. "Women of Steel: A Case of Feminist Organizing in the United Steelworkers of America." Canadian Woman Studieslles cahiers de la femme 18, 1. Inglis, Sarah. 1994. "McDonald's Union Drive-thru: Sarah Inglis Tells Her Story." Our Times 13. Jackson, Andrew. 2003. 'Tn Solidarity'~· The Ur1ionAdvantage: Research Report #27. Ottawa: Canadian Labour Congress, July. Jackson, Andrew; and Grant Schellenberg. r999. "Unions, Collective Bargaining and Labour Market Outcomes for Canadian Women: Past Gains and Future Challenges." In Richard Chaykowski and Lisa Powell (eds.), Women and Work. Kingston, Queen's University Press. Ontario Federation of Labour. 1999. Report: OFL Organizing Young Workers Conference. North York: OFL.

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Female Home Health Care Employees Lower Status, Higher Risk

Allison Williams, P Susan Wagner and Monie Buettner Caring for others is usually women's work. Women are often thought to have natural abilities to do this work, as well as a duty to care for others as part of their mothering or wifely roles. As a result of these assumptions, caring for others is often undervalued and perceived to be unskilled labour. Paid employment in home care labours under a similar set of assumptions and values. Since most of this work is caring work, performed by women in the home, it is widely perceived that home-care workers do not require expertise or education to perform the job duties nor the same pay as other women (or men) in other employed positions. The position of home-care workers has been compromised further by the reforms and restructuring within the healthcare sector taking place both in Canada (Armstrong and Armstrong 2002; Aronson and Neysmith 1997; Williams 2001) and the United States (Glazer r993). In order to control costs, governments have shifted away from hospital and residential long-term care services to increasing reliance on home healthcare. In addition, the home-care sector itself is being restructured to make care delivery more cost-efficient. As a result, home-care practitioners have experienced an intensification of work, defined as an increase in job responsibilities, while simultaneously managing a decrease in the time to carry them out. Overall, these changes have had a negative impact on home-care practitioners' work lives and their overall quality of Life and health. In particular, poor working conditions are the n1ajor cause of practitioner burnout, the exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation from prolonged stress or fn1stration. Poor working conditions are also related to high turnover rates, which then affects the quality and availability of this workforce (Canadian Council on Homemaker Services 1982; Canadian Nurses Association and Canadian l-Iospital Association 1990; Martin Matthews r991). In addition to the obvious impact on the home-care labour force, burnout and staff turnover also threaten continuity and quality of care for patients and families. In this chapter, we provide a summary of our research investigating the impact of restructuring .in a home-care organization that operates under the auspices of a regional health authority in Saskatchewan. This research was sponsored by the Prairie Women's 1-Iealth Centre of Excellence, ,vhich is financially suppo1·ted by the Centre of Excellence for Wo1nen's Health Program, Women's Health Bureau, Health Canada. Draw~ng on both quantitative and qualitative data, we found that restructuring negatively affects the health and well-being of all home-care p,ractitioners. The health of those lower on the home healthcare hierarchy (those who have the least control over their work) was at the highest risk.

216 / Gendered Intersections

The Home-Care Organization and its Re-structuring Changes The home-care organization is part of a regional health authority that provides home support services, nursing care, volunteer services and "meals on wheels." Hon1e sup~ort services include personal care (assistance with hygiene), meal preparation, respite or attendant care and home management (laundry, cleaning, errands). The home-care practitioner groups included fen1ale registered nurses (RNs) licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and home health aides (HT-IAs). Nurses, who have th~ most education, are at the top of the home health hierarchy, with LPNs just below. The HI-fAs are the greatest in number and are the lowest on the hierarchy, reflected in their education, salary and the power within their position at work. RNs assess client needs, plan and coordinate healthcare, deliver nursing services, evaluate care, and teach and counsel clients, family caregivers and other home-care staff. A trained Hl-lA's duties, on the other hand, include helping with personal care, applying bandages to assist circulation, administering oxygen, dispensing medication and helping with catheter and bowel care. At the time of the study, most LPNs duties were identical to HHAs duties, even though they had been trained to perform some nursing tasks such as changing dressings and dispensing medication for stable clients. Until restructuring, HHAs and LPNs practised under the supervision of a RN. Although the home-care organization had changed its structures and processes several titnes since its beginning in 1980, a particularly intense period of restructuring took place from April to September 1999, the period under study. The main elements of change were:

The integration of all practitioner categories into geographic teams: In order to bring services closer to the client, decrease travel time for practitioners and facilitate greater collaboration in case management, the home-care organization divided the health district into four quadrants. Practitioners could choose the quadrant in which they wanted to work but even those who stayed in the same area had new co-workers and supervisors. Work schedules also changed with the reorganization of service areas. Role changes for practitioners: RNs now operate as "resource people" to facilitate 2. problem solving with HHAs. RNs provide more clinical support, with the goal of assisting HHAs and LPNs to be more independent. To enhance peer support and communication, client binders are used in the home and practitioners carry personal pagers. Management-staff meetings are more frequent, with the RN/LPr group, the I-IRAs, and quarterly quadrant meetings including all practitioner groups. The goal of these meetings is to help build collaborative case management teams. 3. Expanded scope ofpractice: rfhe scope of practice ~as expanded for I-IRAs ~d ~,PN~, allowing them to give medication under a specific protocol. The medication 1s pre-packaged by pharmacists in consultation ,vith RN·s and "pre-loaded" in bubble packs so each dosage is set, to allow clients and/or family me1nbers greater autonomy. If the client is unable to take the medicine independently, trained nonRN hom.e-care staff may now visit to help them. RNs provide training and are available on-call to provide assistance. 4. Changes in office personnel: Instead of each practitioner group being supervised

I.

Section VI : Waged Work/ 217

independently; supervisors were now responsible for quadrant groups _made up of all three groups of practitioners together. This new arrangement was intended to leave more client-care decision-making to the practitioners in the field and encourage more communication among field staff operating as collaborative case management teams. The Effects of Restructuri ng

When asked in a questionnaire, all practitioners, regardless of their position, rated work satisfaction and overall health and well-being1 as poorer over the study period when compared to the previous six months. But, H.J-!As rated their overall health and well-being lower than the other practitioners, and HHAs also used comparatively more sick and stress leave days. All three groups felt the restructuring changes had increased their stress levels, circumscribed their autonomy and represented a decline in the level of respect for their work, while making it difficult to maintain work-family balance. But the three groups of practitioners were differentially affected by these changes. Since home-care practitioners often work in isolation (either in the home or driving to and from destinations), regular contact with peers was important both for communicating information as well as having a rapport with others. Both the RNs and the HI-IAs felt that the ability to interact with peers had been reduced as a result of the ne\v geographic quadrants. In addition to the isolation, the I-IRAs felt constrained by the time limits allotted by the schedulers (many of whom were new at the time), who did not know the clients, the HI-IAs or the geography of the city. They allotted only fifteen minutes for driving between each client. As a result, the HHAs felt sushed; many had been in car accidents or had received traffic tickets trying to get to their clients more quickly. In addition, the llHAs were very concerned about being late for clients \Vhose visits are time specific for meals (e.g., diabetics) and medication. Most also wished that they could spend more personal ti1ne with clients, as one HHA report ed, "I really think that they would benefit fron1 a five or ten minute visit once we are finished" [Leah]. At the same time, the three pi:actitioner groups were concerned about the lack of continuity of care provided for the clients due to inconsistent scheduling. This problem was expressed most often by the LPNs and I·UiAs, the practitioner groups who, compared to RNs, see clients most regula1·ly and for the most extended periods of time. Another HHA told us: I have heard too many con1plaints both from clients and from home health aides that they are going to different people all the tin1e. That makes them (clients] feel uncomfortable. I know it 1nakes me feel uncomfortable. (Shea] All three groups of practitioners ranked autonomy as the most important attribute of their jobs, as home-care work requires a lot of independence on the part of practitioners. Thus, the RNs regarded the introduction of the new medication management protocol as a threat to their scope of practice and a lack of respect for their expertise. In contrast, despite the education provided by management, the HI-iAs felt a Jot of pressure and stress with this added responsibility:

218 / Gendered Intersections

we don't know if we are giving them the right thing now. We don't know if anybody has tampered with those bubble packs, there's no way to check it... we used t? have a sheet that had a description of each pill and what pills should be 1n there at what time. Now we don't have that, all we have is a sheet saying give them the pills and sign your name. [Margery} The RNs were not the only group to feel underutilized. At the time of the study, the home-care managen1ent considered LPNs only slightly different, if not the same, as HI-IAs. Although LPNs could perform some nursing tasks, they were not practising within the full scope of practice; rather theywere cleaning floors and preparing meals, tasks that RNs would never be asked to perform. The LPNs attributed their stress and frustrations to the lack of respect they feel from management, who had not consulted them about the restructuring changes. The HHAs felt the least valued and respected by management: "I feel as if I am worth nothing" [Alice}. All three groups of practitioners share the same dissatisfaction with the degree of autonomy and independence in their work, but those lower on the home heath hierarchy felt less respected than those higher up. One of the consequences of the restructuring process was an increased "vorkload. The majority of nurses were frustrated by the constant changes, which they felt contributed more to their stress than the actual nursing work they were doing. The nurses indicated that they were spending at least one to two hours a day in the office doing paperwork. When they work short-staffed, a weekly certainty, the RNs also assumed responsibility for the caseload of a missing nurse. As a result of the restructuring changes, all of the home-care practitioners had greater difficulty in maintaining a work-family balance. Some women tried to maintain a balance between work and family by using coffee breaks as a way to go home earlier at the end of the day. Others, particularly part-time and casual employees, were frustrated by not being able to properly plan for family commitments as a result of inconsistent scheduling. HHAs and LPNs were frustrated with the new protocol of having to come into the office twice a week to pick up their schedules instead of the previous once-a-week pick-up. Paid work with home care during the day makes the unpaid work in the home difficult for some, and sometimes the e1notions felt at work are taken home: "Mentally, I take it home with me and I ,vorry about some of my clients because I ... I cannot accept death and some of my clients are dying" {Cortneyl The pressure to come in to work even when ill added stress to one HHA's life: I was feeling sick at work, but when I called in, they said just keep going as long as you can. And so I finished out the evening and I phoned them when I got home and I said I --.;,vant you to know I threw up in the car on the way home. I said I would be sick tomorrow, like you are supposed to phone the day before. They said oh, no, you need to go to bed and be at work to~1or~ow because we don't have anyone, two other gi rls have already phoned 111 sick. [Sally}

Section VI: Waged Work / 219

Conclusions With the assistance of mana.g ement and the staff Research Advisory Committee at the home-care organization, the research team suggested eighteen policy directions for changes that would address the concerns of the practitioners and improve the quality of worklife (Willian1s et al. 2000). Som.e of these included process changes to enhance the control HHAs feel over work, more time allowed for patient care visits and more oppornmities for practitioners to have input into planning changes for policies and procedures. A number of recommendations from the study have since been implemented, such as the expansion of the role of LPNs and guaranteed hours of work for part-time staff In many ways, the experiences of restructuring affects female healthcare workers in similar ways to male workers. The push for efficiency and productivity means that all home-care workers are under greater pressure to see more clients in Jess time; that they have less opportunities to interact and consult with peers leading to greater isolation; and that there is a lack of continuity of care for the clients. All of these facto rs affect the quality of care that clients receive and place greater stress on homecare workers. Since home-care workers are front-line workers, they are in the best position to understand their clients' needs, and therefore, they should be involved in the planning and implementation of changes to the health system. But aspects of the work performed by female home-care workers remain a uniquely women's issue. Since many female home-care workers shoulder the double day of doing paid work in the labour force and unpaid work in the home, employer practices that support the maintenance of a work - family balance may reduce stress felt by female workers. These practices will also support men who take up the challenge of assuming responsibility for family matters. Finally, women's caring work remains undervalued because it is deemed "women's work." Employers can enhance staff morale by recognizing the skills of female home-care workers and by acknowledging the importance of female workers to the health and well-being of home-care clients. Home care is not simply a matter of attending to the bodily needs of clients but it allows them to live in their homes and to retain their autonomy, dignity and respect. We should remind ourselves that at some point in our lives, 1nost of us will need such care.

1.

NOTE Respondents were asked the following two questions, which were then compared: (1) How would you rate your overall health and well-being over the last six months? and (2) I-low would you rate your overall health and well-being for the time previous to the last six month period? For both questions, a 5-point Likert scale was used, with 1 being "Excellent'' and 5 being "Very Poor."

REFERENCES Armstrong, .P., and H. Armstrong. 2002. "Thinking It Through: Women, Work and Caring in the New Millennium." Halifax: Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health and the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Aron~on, J., and S.~. Neysmith. 1997. ""The Retreat of the State and Long-tem1 Care Provision: lmphcattons for Frail Elderly People, Unpaid Family Carers and Paid Ho1nc Care Workers. 11 Studies in Political Economy 53. Canadian Council on Homemaker Services. 1982. Visiting Homemakers Services in Canada Survey. 220 / Gendered Intersections

Toronto. Canadian Nurses Association and Canadian Hospital Association. 1990 . Nurse Retention and %ality ofWorklife: A National Perspective. Ottawa: Canaclian Nurses Association. Glazer, N. 1993. Women'.r Paid and Unpaid Labour: The Work Transfer in 1-lealth Care and Retailing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Martin Matthews, A. 1991. "Women Who Care: Job Satisfaction among Providers of Visiting Homemaker Services to the Elderly." Paper presented in the Symposium Women and the Cost ofCaring,at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Gerontology, Toronto, October 1991. Willjams, A.M. 2001. "l-Iome Care Restructuring at Work: The Impact of Policy Transformation on Women's Labour." In I. Dyck, N. Lewis and S. McLafferty (eds.), Geographies of \¼men~ Health. London: Routledge. Williams, A., P.S. Wagner, M . Buettner and A. Coghill. 2000. Fina/Report: \¼mens Formal (Paid) Ho,ne Care Work in Transition: The Impact ofReform on Labour Process Change in Saskatoon, SK Saskatoon: Prairie Women's Health Centre of Excellence.

Section VI: Waged Work / 221

Gender among the "Guys" Reflections on Work, Family Life and Retention of Women in Engineering

Gillian Ranson On the face of it, occupational barriers to women seem to be coming down. While the range of occupations in which men work is still fa1· more extensive, women are entering male-dominated jobs and workplaces in increas-ing numbers. Indeed, some venerable bastions of male professional turf, like medicine and law, are now close to gender parity. Engineering, however, is a different story. In Canada, the numbers of women engineering undergraduates increased annually after 1972, but according to the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE), the past few years have seen a levelling off in the numbers. Currently, the CCPE estimates that some 20 per cent of all engineering undergraduates are women. But the proportion of women actually practising in the profession is much lower. The CCPE's 1997 National Survey of Professional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists noted that in Canada, women accounted for only 5.5 per cent of the total number of professional engineers. (A "professional engineer" is one who has completed a period of supervised work experience after graduation, as well as having passed the examjnations required for certification ~rith a provincial professional association.) A check of the CCPE Website at the end of 2002 revealed a slight increase in the proportion of women engineers - to 7 percent. It also turned up a very telling piece of information: of all professional engineers born after 1970, 24 percent are women. In other words, the "growth" is among young women, who as well as beginning to establish careers are also at the age where they're establishing relationships and considering having children. This lies at the heart of what I suspect will be major problems of retention of women in engineering. The Engineering Study As a sociologist whose research focus is on the interface of gender, families and paid en1ployment, I had these retention problems in mind when, in 1997, I started a program of research on engineers and engi11eering work. My research base was Calgary, Alberta, the centre of the powerful oil and gas industry in Canada, and a city reputed to have one of the highest per capita populations of engineers of any city in the world. The first phase of the study involved tracking women and men who had gradu~ted from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Calgary during the years from 1980 to 1990. The second phase, carried out during 1999 and 2000, involved a similar career-tracking study of engineers within a single company - a major oil company in Calgary. Altogether, in both phases, I gathered sru-veyand interview data on work and family issues from 390 individuals who had trained as, and/or were working as, engineers. Of these, 179 were women, and 2I1 were men. This rich base of information has told me a great deal about engineers' working

222 I Gendered Intersections

lives and the way their professional careers are affected by family responsibilities. I am now strongly persuaded that there are significant differences between the women and the men. Bu~ these difference~ don't show up right away, among young, single women and men 1n, say, entry-level JObs. The really telling gender differences start to emerge with the arrival of children, in the way gender mediates parenthood. For women in engineering, motherhood is a critical watershed, because it positions them differently from their male colleagues. If they intend to keep working, they're usually victims of what I call the "dual-earner disadvantage" when it comes to family responsibilities. And at work, largely as a result of this disadvantage, it's much harder for the1n as mothers also to be "one of the guys." The Dual-Earner Disadvantage The phenomenon I came to call the "dual-earner disadvantage" was, for me, the most compelling finding from the first phase of the study. In order to describe it, it's necessary to provide some context. Of the 164 women and 153 men who took part in the first phase, about 86 percent of the men and 77 percent of the women identified themselves as married. About 7r percent of the women and 69 percent of the men had at least one child. One major difference between the mothers and the fathers was their employment status: about 97 percent of the fathers were in full-time paid work, compared to 66 percent of the mothers. About ro percent of the 1nothers were working twenty to thirty hours a week, and 23 percent were working less than ten hours. But it's among the mothers and fathers in full-time work that another striking difference emerged. Some 92 percent of the mothers, but only 25 percent of the fathers, had spouses who also worked full-time. This difference n1eant that most of the mothers in full-time engineering jobs were juggling the demands of family life in dual-earner families. The n1ajority of the fathers, however, were in more traditional families where the man ,'Vas the main money-earner and the woman was mainly responsible for the family. I don't mean to suggest that there are no advantages to women in dual-earner families; for one thing, there is likely to be money for childcare and other domestic support. And women engineers in dual-earner families may be able to take career risks not possible for men whose income is the only one in the family. On the other hand, men with wives to care for the family can devote much more time and energy to their jobs -perhaps on the grounds that the job is the only one in the family. The outcome, then, among engineers who are parents, is men whose careers are privileged and who are generally freed from family responsibilities, working alongside women whose careers do not necessarily come first in their families and who take on much more responsibility for their families than their male colleagues do. This is what I mean by the "dual-earner disadvantage." Working as "One of the Guys"

The traditional family situations experienced by most of the fathers in my study may seem surprising for the late 1990s, which was when th~ interviews w~re done. ~ut it's not so su rprising for men in a resolutely male-dom1nated prof~ss1on, "'.o~k1ng (as many of the Calgary participants were) ~ the equally maJ,e-do1n1n~ted 011 mdus:ry: Until very recently, that really was a man s world. But heres a very important point.

Section VI: Waged Work / 223

without women around to provide a basis for comparison, it didn't appear as a man's ,vorld. It just appeared as the world. In workplaces full of men, gender doesn't seem to be an issue. That's why, as sociologist Joan Acker has pointed out, we continue to think of workplaces as gender-neutral spaces and "workers" as abstract, genderneutral beings whose lives outside of work are irrelevant. Acker contends that in the real world of actual workers, the only "worker" who comes close to this abstract image is "the male worker whose life centers on his full-time, life-long job, while his wife or another woman takes care of his personal needs and his children" (Acker 1990: 149). In professions like engineering, particularly as practised in Calgary, Acker's description was until recently a good fit for most engineers. The template of the engineering professional developed out of a history of engineering as a profession with origins in 1nilitary institutions (Hacker 1989) and strong links to the symbolically masculine attributes of scientific and technical rationality (Wajcman 1991). Recent initiatives to get women into engineering have usually been predicated on the assumption that "women should be modified to -fit into engineering rather than the other way around" (Faulkner 2000: 93). In other words, the women who do enter engineering are expected to do so on men's terms. Initiatives to "get women in" are usually based on the liberal feminist assumption that women are, for practical purposes, the same as men. Much research on women in engineering (e.g., Hacker 1989; Carter and Kirkup 1990; Eisenhart and Finkel 1998; Dryburgh 1999; K vande 1999; Faulkner 2000; Jorgenson 2000, 2002) indicates that many do jndeed see themselves as the same as men - or at any rate see a need to be seen in this way. In the workplace, they strive to be accepted as "one of the guys." Many who use this strategy "want to be 'like' their male colleagues and accent this similarity while distancing themselves from 'the majority of women"' (Kvande 1999: 311). It's -very important to recognize that this is as much as anything else a survival strategy. In male-do1ninated workplaces, where the "requirements of success" are presented in male terms because that's how they've always been understood, it's very hard for women to do anything but conform. All of which boils down to the following propositions: women who act as "one of the guys" will probably be fine. But women who act like women may be in trouble. What happens, for example, when "one of the guys" discovers she's pregnant? The experience of Claire, one of the women I interviewed in the first phase of my study, illustrates how this dilemma can play out. Claire worked for an energy company and had been "fast-tracked" to a position well beyond what was expected for her level of experience. She, like many of the women I interviewed, downplayed issues of gender in the workplace. As "one of the guys," she clearly distanced herself from any suggestion that it had affected her own experience, co1nmenting: I 1nean I've certainly never experienced any sort of, um, I don't know what to call it, but, you know, discrimination or anything like that. I've always been given, I mean, I think opportunities go to those people who are willing to work for them and who are willing to put their nose to the grindstone. But earlier in the interview, Claire had described how an unexpected pregnancy had played out at work: 224 I Gendered Intersections

My manager and I had ... son1.e issues, when I first told him that I was pregnant. We went back and forth quite a bit. The first thing he said to me was, when 1 told hi1n, was not "Congratulations," rt was, "Well, who's going to do the _ann~al plan?" ~ecause he started, he goes, ''Well, how long would you be t~mg [m maternity leave]? How much are you entitled to? Would you consider coming back early?" And we ,vent back and forth for four or five mon~hs. And I was just miserable.... We have a very good relationship, but it put, 1t put a lot of strain on it. It's probably taken us a good year, to get back to where we were before. "Where they were before" required Claire to become "one of the guys" again. This was possible at least in part because her partner was extremely unusual for my study in his \Villingness to allow her career to be privileged over his. So she was parenting rather like "one of the guys" as well, focusing on her career and delegating childcare to a nanny and her husband. Like several of the men I interviewed, she spoke wistfully about increasing her family involvement some time in the future. For other women, trained to see engineering careers and workplace requirements in male terms, being engineers and also being mothers represents what Jorgenson (2000) calls "mutually incongruous" identities. This doesn't necessarily mean that women with children give up engineering (though many do - proportionately far more than would be the case if they were working in female - rather than maledominated occupations). What it does mean, very often, is that they scale back their careers. They choose carefully where they work. Large organizations with firmly established family policies are popular. So is contract or consulting work. Some women postpone having children till their careers are firmly established and they have paid their dues as "guys." Sometimes, of course, they don't have children.

Levelling.the Playing Field Perhaps the most common response on the part of concerned empioyers to the difficulties women encounter in balancing work and fainily responsibilities is the establishment of "family-friendly' workplace policies and programs like flex-time and family days. Such programs are ostensibly intended to help both mothers and fathers, but in practice they are taken up mainly bywomen. This means that they do much less to "level the playing field" than might be expected. This is because they entrench perceptions that women need "help" (while men do not), and that family responsibilities belong to women exclusively. The playing field will never be levelled as long as women's success depends on their becoming "one of the guys." What's badly needed is a change in how "guys" balance work and family responsibilities. The experiences of the fathers I interviewed for the study indicate that there are certainly some n1en who want to be more jnvolved with their children than fathers of the past (and engineers of the old school) have been. There is now research to suggest that rigid workplace expectations may cause men to conceal the strength of their psychological commit1nent to their families (Pleck r993; Cohen 1991, 1993). 1t's tjme for workplaces to acknowledge that men, as well as women, have fanilly responsibilities, and for men, as well as won1.en, to make those responsibilities public.

Section VI : Waged Work / 225

REFERENCES Acker, Joan. 1990. "Hierarchies, Jobs, Boclies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations." Gender and Society 29, 2. Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. 1998. 1997 National Survey ofProfessional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists. Available at . Carter, A., and G. Kirkup. "Women in Engineering. Basi.ngscoke: Macmillan. Cohen, T. 1991. "Speaking with Men: Application of a Feminist Methodology to the Study of Men's Lives." Men's Studies Review 8, 4. _ _ . 1993. "What Do Fathers Provide? Reconsidering the Economic and Nurturant Dimensions of Men as Parents." In J. Hood (ed.), Men, Work and Family. Newbury Park: Sage. Dryburgh, [leather. 1999. "Work Hard, Play I-Tard: Won1en and Professionalization in Engineering - Adapting to the Culture." Gender and Society r3, 5. Eisenhart, M., and E. Finkel. 1998. Women's Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. FauJkner, Wendy. 2000. "The Power and the Pleasure? A Research Agenda for 'A.faking Gender Stick' to Engineers." Science, Te,-hnology and Human ¼lues ,z5, r. Hacker, Sally. 1989. Pleasure, Power and Technology. Boston: Unwin Hyman Jorgenson,Jane. 2000. "Interpreting the Intersections of Work and Family: Frame Conflicts in Women's Work." The Electronic Journal of Communication ro, 3 and 4. _ _ . 2002. "Engineering Selves: Negotiating Gender and Identity in Technical Work." Management Communication ~uatterly, 15, 3. Kvande, Elin. 1999. "'In the Belly of the Beast': Consttucting Femininities in Engineering Organizations." European Journal of Women} Studies 6. Pleck,J. 1993. '½.re 'Family-Supportive' Employer Policies Relevant to Men?" In}. Hood (ed.), Men, "Work and Family. Newbury Park: Sage. Wajcman, Judy. 199r. Feminism Confronts Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

226 / Gendered Intersections

Without the Law Mary Nyquist For Carole and Nanni

The law's not an ass if you're behind it. No camel struggling to ex.it a needle's eye, a well-heeled white man has been tailormade to slip right through, effortlessly.

In the wide eyes of the law grounds for suspicion settle at the bottom of the cup set aside in the face of solid house, nicely turned-out wife, frank, upstanding gaze. Yet even the priest had it tough compared to you, regarded so highly for skilful prosecution of justice that, unobserved, you overleapt the bar to which you'd been ca11ed. Whether above or, ergo, securely outside the law, with the same, practised dexterity you took both it and each one of your daughters into your own, assured hands. Long after they'd gro,vn and left home you would sit rubbing, counting every year that settled the violations beyond what the Statute of Limitations allowed, thereby making you a law unto yourself Propter hoc giving you a hearty slap on the back, the long arm of the law reached out, you assumed, to hold them down, stifle any protests, cradle them safely within.

Section VII: Working For The Next Generation/ 227

Section VII

WORKING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION C. Lesley Biggs '¼.11 human life on the planet is born of woman," wrote Adrienne Rich in her landmark book, Of Woman Born: A1.otherhood as hxperience and Institution. But in 1976, little was known about "nature and meaning of motherhood" because, as Rich points out, "women have not been the makers and sayers of patriarchal culture" (Rich {1976} 1995= 11). Since the publication of Rich's book, mothering has become a central focus of feminist analysis. Feminists have sought to understand the experience of mothering - its joys and frustrations, the passionate love and resentments, its pleasures and pain - because mothering is central to women's lives (either as mothers or daughters), the lives of their children, families and communities. But feminist excavations of mothering are not simply a matter of personal concern; rather examining motherhood is a political act designed to expose the ill-conceived patriarchal structures and values that have restricted women's capabilities and potentialities. Of central importance here is the issue of imagining mothering in a feminist or non-patriarchal world. Most feminist analysts either implicitly or explicitly begin with Rich's "distinction between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that potential - and all women - shall remain under male control" (Rich {1976}, 1995= 13, emphasis in the original). For Rich, women's powers of reproduction centre on "the biological capacity to bear children and her ability to nurture human life, and the magical power invested in women by men, whether in the fonn of Goddess-worship or the fear of being controlled and overwhelmed by women" (ibid.). In contrast, the institution of motherhood refers to the patriarchal structures that have "ghettoized and degraded female potentialities" (ibid.), and includes a plethora of advice books on how to n1other; the "scientific" pronouncements of a long line of mostly male psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and other experts; the proselytizing on the virtues of motherhood by clergy of all religious denominations; the staid reports of governments; and the saccharinesweet images of mothers portrayed in the media. The subject of myth and fantasy, fact and fiction, motherhood has simultaneously been venerated, for example, in the figure of the Christian Virgin Mary - the selfsacrificing and nurturing "good mother" - and feared, as represented in the myths of Medea and Clytemenstra - "bad mothers," who unleashed their fury and destroyed their children and the n1en around them. Although classical myths no longer hold the srune sway over western culture, the dichotomy of the good/bad mother persists in contemporary western conceptions of mothering. Sensitive-intensive mothering, as Andrea O'Reilly points out in her chapter, has become institutionalized as "the real, nonnaJ and natural way to mother over the past twenty years." For many women, this image provokes anxiety and is the source of tnuch guilt since they do not have the 228 / Gendered Intersections

time, t~e resources or even the inclination to devote "24/7'' to their children. At the same t1?1e, ~ost women who n1other want to provide a loving and safe environment for the1r chi_ldren to grow and thrive. What structures and supports, feminists ask, need to be m place so that children can "be the best that they can be " without mothers being consumed by "the mommy trap"? ' The good_mother is also a synecdoche for other norms which reproduce the ideal mo_ther as white, heterosexual and able-bodied and is inextricably tied to the preservation of the nuclear family as an ideal form. Mothers who do not fit these norms or ':ho ~ail to live up to the ideal i1nage of the good mother risk public vilification, ~he titter1ngs _of gossip and the loss of their children (or the threat thereof) through c~stody disputes or apprehension by social services or even in some cases, incarceration. Not every woman, however, is capable of caring for her child(ren); mental illness, problems with addictions or extreme poverty can stand in the way. How do we, as feminists, support women with pressing social and psychological problems while "protecting the interests of the child"? Is motherhood a right justified by the biological capacity to bear children, or is it a responsibility negotiated in relation to contemporary, and often conflicting, values around mothering, and to a lesser extent, fathering? In this section, we exainine the practices of motherhood. Adopting Rich's methodology, the authors begin with the experiences of mothering and its intersections with the dominant discourses of motherhood as a way of understanding "the nature and meaning of motherhood." But, it ,vill become quickly apparently, no singular definition of motherhood is offered here. Rather, what is revealed are rich, diverse and complex accounts of mothering. Rather than argue, as Rich does, that wo1nan's power - her ability to nurture all human life -wi11 be unleashed if released from the shackles of the patriarchal institution ofmotherhood, these authors demonstrate that practices of mothering emerge within particular social and historical contexts. Andrea O'Reilly begins by deconstructing the discourses of patriarchal motherhood associated with sensitive-intensive mothering. In its stead, O'Reilly proposes examples of inother-centred modes of mothering and new childrearing practices and relations. In her first example, she argues that African-American mothering offers "a counter-narrative of mothering,'' since in African-American culture much value is placed on mothers and mothering, as well as on othermothering (caring for a child not one's own) and community mothering (women who are past their childbearing years who take care of the community). These traditions are survival strategies that counter racist practices which "deem black children inferior, unworthy and unlovable." In her second example, O'Reilly argues against the psychoanalytic prescription that daughters and sons need to be separated (emotionally speaking) from their mothers in order for them to become adult women and men. Instead, O'Reilly contends that mothers can maintain a caring connection between daughters and sons while encouraging their autonomy. Fiona Nelson pursues the question of what it means to be a mother .in her study of lesbian women becoming mothers. Moving beyond a biological definition, Nelson contends that "'Mother' is conferred by individuals such as extended family, the created family, other mothers and institutions such as the state, religious/spiritual bodies, the health industry and society at large." Given "this matrix of sociocultural

Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 229

bodies," the journey into the culture of motherhood is relatively unproble~atic for married, heterosexual, white women but for lesbian women - both gestational and non-gestational mothers - it is fraught with difficulties. Nelson demonstrates that becoming a mother is a process and not simply a biological fact. . . . . Asked, "what would you want to do with your art if you were going to die 1n six months?" artist Frances Robson replied, "I wanted to make lots of photographs of my family and I together, showing me with them in a way that would remind them of our closest moments and that I loved them very much." The result was The Family Bed. The work expresses nurturing and closeness, but it is not without controversy For Robson, the family bed is an empowering experience for her and her family, but for others the close physical intimacy of the family bed raises questions about children's and adults' sexuality, and the relationship between the two. There are no simple cultural scripts for women with disabilities. In her moving account, Kuttai recalls the pain of growing up female in a society that defines women with disabilities as asexual. Not only did Kuttai insist that her sexuality be given expression, she defied convention by also becoming a mother. Working against the script of, "a mother is an adult, an adult is a sexually capable person, a sexually capable person is physically capable," Kuttai lovingly narrates the joy and pain of being a mother to her son, Patrick, in a society that judges self-worth by physical and sexual attributes. Through this journey, "despite the absence of scripts, [KuttaiJ, like other women with disabilities, [has] become a capable author by necessity" And, ,vhat about Mother's Day? For many of us, Mother's Day means sending a card or giving a small gift or phoning our mother on the second Sunday of May Many of us 1nay be surprised to learn that the Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 was a protest against the carnage of the American Civil War. The proclamation, circulated as an e-mail, is a good example of maternal (first wave) feminism subverting Victorian notions ofwomen's "proper sphere" and "the cult of domesticity" Feminists of the day were able to translate the values of women as nurturers into argu1nents for political and social rights for women. The association between women and peace has a long tradition. Examples are Las Madres de la Plaza, mothers who protested the disappearance of their children under Pinochet's reign in Chile, and the women's peace camps at Greenham Common that protested the US nuclear missile base in England. Can you think of others? Invoking the special status of mothers or women as nurturers raises interesting questions about the strengths and pitfalls of this political strategy. What are the political and social consequences of the implication that all ,vomen/mothers are inherently nurturing? When men participate in peace movements, do they invoke their status as fathers or do they appeal to other gendered narratives? If Mother's Day began as anti-war protest, how did it transform into a sentimental occasion devoid of political content? Another major issue for feminists is the relationship between a pregnant woman and her foetus: Are they separate individuals or are they one? These kinds of questions haunted Elizabeth .iviacKenzie while she was pregnant and continue to inforn1 her art as she negotiates being a mother and an artist. While most contemporary popular imagery of pregnancy presents mother and foetus as autonomous subjects, MacKenzie found that pregnancy was "a marginal state of existence that is fraught with ambiguity, since it calls into question the boundaries of self" In Herls, MacKenzie

230 / Gendered Intersections

asks where does a woman's body begin and end in relation to her foetus? Does the ~oman's body belong to her or is it overtaken/invaded by the alien foetus? While issues of personal experience, they are also deepJyconnected to the larger questions of ,vomen's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. What are the implications of the self/other distinction for the abortion debate or in utero surgery, or the incarceration of women who are addicted to substances? Who owns ,vornen's bodies? . While women continue to be the primary caregivers of children, the majority of children under the age of twelve are cared for by women other than their mothers: in licensed child-care centres, in unlicensed homes and by nannies. As a result of a hodge-podge of policies and practices, high quality and affordable childcare remains elusive for many families. What is needed, Susan Prentice contends, is a universal childcare system. Taking into account the needs of children and workers' rights, Prentice argues that such a system would provide excellent quality of care to children and good, rewarding jobs to adults. Why Canada has failed to develop a viable childcare program is complex but the experience of progressive European governments indicates that "where there is a political will there is a way." Despite Prentice's commitment to a universal child-care system, she admits that it poses vexing questions for feminists. She asks: Is the call for a universal childcare system a cop-out? Would a Canadian system of universal high quality affordable care be a sign that our country didn't respect "caring," and was retreating from valuing won1.en's traditional roles? Is it anti-feminist to want to redistribute the work of caring for children? The examples in this section reveal the range of n1.othering but are by no means exhaustive. What does mothering and motherhood mean to women who mother in blended families - otherwise known as stepmothers (and what's in that name?); or wish to mother but can't (the childless); or choose not to mother (the childfree) or an abortion; or conceive through the use of reproductive technologies; or to grandmothers? Perhaps the greatest lacunae is the nature and meaning of fatherhood. While writing and thinking about masculinities has been growing, there is little about fathering. David Carpenter reflects on his relationship with his father "the hero of {his and his brother's} boyhood, the naysayer of their manhood." Carpenter wrote "My Father's Dying" late one night, after having just disabled his father's car, "sever(ingl his last connection to freedom, shot his horse as it were." Wjth ,vit and humour, the poem explores the many sides of his father - the athlete, the storyteller, the control freak, the petty tyrant, the loving father, devoted husband, the gregarious dad and ~e repressive one, the hard taskmaster and his sons' greatest fan. For Carpenter, wnt1ng this poem was a way of healing old wounds, grieving his loss and expressing his love for his father; it also reveals that negotiating masculinity is fraught with joys and pitfalls for both father and son. REFERENCES

---------:'.'"'.:=:--::----:-;-;--;--;----;::--:---:---;;-:-::-::-:-:-~-:;:: Rich, Adrienne. {1 6]. r995. OJWoman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York 97

and London:

w:w. Norton.

Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 231

WORKING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION HYPATIA INDEX1 •

• • •

• • • • •

• • • • • • •

• • • • •

• • •

•

2

Percentage of adults in Canada who live in families: 84 Percentage of all families in Canada with children living at home: 65 Percentage of all families in Canada with children under 6 years of age that are lone-parent families: 36.7 Number of female-headed lone-parent families in Canada: 945,000 Percentage of all families in Canada with children under 6 years of age where parenting is done by a married couple: 19.5 Rate by which the proportion of two-parent families in Canada with stay-athome fathers increased between 1976 and 1997: 5 percent3 Percentage of all families in Canada with children under 6 years of age where parenting is done by a common-law couple: 26.44 Percentage of common-law couples in the United States that are raising children: 41' Number of votes by which the North Dakota Senate upheld the state's ban on cohabitation by unn1arried couples: 5 Rate by which the number of lone-father families increased in the United States between 1995 and 1998: 25 percent6 Percentage of women in the United States who believe that differences between boys and girls are caused by how children ate raised: 55; of men: 447 Average number of children born to a Canadian woman: 1.6;8 to an Aboriginal woman: 2.7; to a woman in Uganda: 7.19 Number of women ,vorldwide who want to limit the number of children they have but lack access to safe means to do so: 150 million Percentage of men in the United States who said they would prefer a boy if they had only one child: 86; of women: 59 10 Average age when women in Canada have their first child: 27n Percentage of all Canadian families in 1961 with 6 or more people: 16; in 1999: 3n. Percentage of child custody cases awarded to mothers: 61; to fathers: 111 3 Percentage of fathers in the United States who are responsible for child support but do not pay it: 26; of mothers: 3614 Total child support that went unpaid in one county of Nevada in 2002: $63.1 million'' Average cost (excluding post-secondary school expenses) of raising a child to the age of 17 for middle income earning dual-parent family: $170,460 (US); for singleparent family (earning over $39,100): $250,260 (US)l6 Decline in total governmental expenditures, between 1999 and 2001, on children in Canada: 16.1 million1 7 Decline in totaJ governmental expenditures, between 1999 and 2001, on Aboriginal children in Canada : 7.24 million Percentage of mothers, in Canada in 1967, who worked outside the home while raising pre-school children: 17/8 in the late 1990s: 701 9 Average percentage of total wages awarded under maternity/paternity leaves: 55 Percentage of children in Canada who have access to licensed care in Canada:

232 / Gendered Intersections

• •

20

in most European countries: 7521 Percentage of Canada's Gross Domestic Product that would be required to mount an adequate national childcare system: o.8 22 Perce~tage of family i~come (in dual-parent, two-income househofds) taken up by childcare costs: 25; 1n Quebec (where there is a universal childcare program):

12;

523

•

•

• • •

Pro~ortion_ of °:others working outside the home who report feeling guilty when leaving their children in care of others: 72 percent2 4 Proportion of employed mothers in the United States who think full- time mothers look down on them: 66 percent2 5 Proportion of full-time mothers in the United States who think employed mothers look down on them: 73 percent Number of Canadian children in 1992 living in foster care or other care settings because of the intervention of child protection services: 4 0,000 26 Percentage increase in the number of investigations, between 1983 and 1993, by O ntario Children's Aid Society into cases of suspected child abuse: 27

NOTES r. Compiled by Pamela J. Downe, with the assistance of Ellen W hiteman. Except when otherwise indicated in the main text, the sources cited in this Index apply to the line where first referenced and then to all those that follow until another endnote appears. All Web references were accessed between May and August 20032. Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 3. Statistics Canada, 2001, Canada Year Book 2oor (Otta,va: Ministry of Industry). 4. Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 5- Harper's Index, 2003, Harper's Magazine 307 (1838), July. 6. United Nations, 2000, The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations). 7. The rfransfonnation of Gender Relations. . 8. Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 9. United Nations, 2000, The World's Women 2000: Trendr and Statistics (New York: United Nations). ro. Joni Seager, 1997. The State ofWomen in the WorldAtlas (New York: Penguin Reference). 11. Statistics Canada, 2001, W&1nen in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 12. Statistics Canada, 2001, Canada Year Book 2001 (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 13. Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: M inistry of Industry). 14. 1-Iarper's Index, 2003, Harper's Magazine 306 (1836), May. 15- Harper's Index, 2003, }larpe,·'s Magazine 307 (1838),JoJy. . 6. CNBC, 200 3, The Cost ofRaising Children. Available at . . . . I-feaJth Canada, 2-001, The Early Childhood Development Agreement (Ottawa: Ministry of 17 Public Works and Government Services). 8. G. Cleveland and M. Krashinsky, 1998, The Benefits and Costs of Good Child Care: The 1 Economic Rationale for Public Investment in Young Cbildren:A Policy Study (Toronto: Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto). 19. Susan Prentice, Associate Professor, University of Manitoba. Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 233

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

2526.

Martha Friendly, Jane Beach and Michelle Turiano, 2002, Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2001 (Toronto: Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto). Helen Penn, 2001, "What Can Canada Learn from Other Countries?" in G. Cleveland and M. K.rashinsky (eds.), Our Children's Future: Childcare Policy in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). G. Cleveland and M. K.rashinsky; 1998, The Benefits and Costs of Good Child Care: The Economic Rationale for Public lnvest1ne11t in Young Children:A Policy Study (Toronto: Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto). Judy Rebick, 2004, "I-le Shoots, I-le Scores," Herizons Fall. Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Research Team, 2003, Working Mums -The Great Debate. Available at . Harper's Index, 2003, Harper's Magazine 306 (1836), May Health Canada, 1997, ChildAbuseandNeglectFactSheet (Ottawa: National Clearinghouse on Family Violence).

234 / Gendered Intersections

Feminist Perspectives on Mothering and Motherhood Power and Oppression

Andrea O'Reilly Over twenty-five years ago Adrienne Rich (1976: 11) wrote "we know more about the air ,ve breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of mother~ood.': Since_ ~ich's publication, the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central issue in ferruru.st scholarship. ''American feminism," as Lauri Unmansky (1996: 2) observ_es, "has subjected the institution of motherhood and the practice of1nothering to theu most complex, nuanced and multi-focused analysis." Umanksy (1996: 2-3) goes on to argue that there exists two competing feminist views on motherhood: the negative discourse that "focuse[s} on motherhood as a social mandate, an oppressive institution, a compromise of a woman's independence," and the positive discourse which argue[s} that "motherhood minus 'patriarchy' ... holds the truly spectacular potential to bond women to each other and to nature, to foster a liberating knowledge of self, to release the very creativity and generativity that the institution of motherhood denies to women." This distinction is drawn from the crucial distinction Adrienne Rich made "between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution - which aims at ensuring that that potential- and all women - shall remain under male control" (1976: 13). In other words, ,vhile motherhood, as an institution, is a male-defmed site of oppression, women's own experiences of mothering can nonetheless be a source of power. T he aim of this chapter is to introduce readers to this central debate - n1otherhood as oppressive/mothering as empowering - by exploring how feminist theory over the last ten to fifteen years has sought to dismantle patriarchal motherhood and develop feminist mothering. While fen1inist research on motherhood has focused on 1nany topics - work, family, sexuality, cultural differences, public policy, images of motherhood, to name but a few - these studies and reflections have been informed and shaped by larger questjons. How do we challenge patriarchal motherhood? How do we create feminist mothering? I-Io,v are the two aims interconnected?r This chapter will explore these central questions of recent fe minist thought on motherhood under three interrelated then1es. The first theme is concerned with uncovering and challenging oppressive normative scripts of 1notherhood, in particular the contemporary discourse of "natural" and "sensitive" motherhood. The second focuses upon the formulation and articulation of a counter discourse of n1othering as a female-defined enterprise, as with, for example, African-American practices of 111othering. This n e"" perspective gives rise to the third theme; mothers can affect social change through the socialization of children, particularlri in terms of challenging traditional patterns of gender acculturation.

Section VII: Working For The Next Generation/ 235

Dismantling Patriarchal Motherhood

Feminist writers on motherhood have become increasingly concerned with the deconstruction of patriarchal discourses of motherhood in order to enable the development and dissemination of feminist counter~nar~atives. Central to the normati:e discourse of mothering is the view that mothenng 1s natural to women and essential to their beings. In particular, these feminist writers are interested is how one discourse of motherhood, what Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey (1989) define as "sensitive mothering'' and Sharon I-Iayes (1996) calls "intensive" mothering, became culturally constructed and codified as the real, normal and natural way to mother over the last thirty years. Sensitive-intensive mothering begins with the presupposition that children have needs that are met by the mother. To mother, therefore, is to be sensitive to the needs of children. The first characteristic of the sensitive mother is that her domestic life is centred around her children and not around her housework (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989: 20). The boundaries bet\veen this work and children's play have to be blurred." The second feature is that "there should be no overt regulation {by mothers}: regulation should go underground." Walkerdine and Lucey argue that sensitive mothering oppresses mothers because it trivializes women's domestic labour, causes mothers' workday to be never-ending and requires that mothers abdicate their maternal authority and power. In swn, sensitive-intensive mothering is a dominant discourse which provides the official and only meaning of motherhood. Its effects are t hreefold: first, it polices all women's mothering since sensitive-intensive mothering is the standard which many women strive to achieve; second, it marginalizes and delegitimizes alternative practices of mothering;2 third, it pathologizes those women who do not or cannot practise sensitive-intensive mothering - that is, it defines these ,vomen as "bad mothers." In critiquing sensitive-intensive and natural discourses of motherhood, feminist theorists seek to destabilize their hold on. the meaning and practice of mothering. At the same time, disrupting the official narratives of "good mothering" clears a space for the articulation of alternative meanings and experiences of 1nothering, in particular feminist discourses. African-American Mothering A counter narrative of n1otherhood is concerned with imagining and implementing a view of mothering that is empowering to women This counter-narrative seeks to redefine mothering as an identity and role of power by challenging the two defining tenets of the normative discourse, namely that the biological mother is the only one who should raise the children and that sensitive-intensive 1nothering is the manner in ,l\fhich the children should be raised. Since 1990 two feminist narratives of motherhood have emerged: in writings on lesbian mothering, discussed in chapters 22 and 37 in this volume and, in its most developed form, in African-American thought on n1otherhood. Two interrelated themes distinguish the African-American tradition of n1otherhood and defin~ it as a counter narrative wherein mothering is a site of power for black _women. F1tst, mothers and motherhood are valued by and cent1·al to AfricanAmencan culture, and second, black culture recognizes that mothers and mothering are what make possible the well-being and empowennent of African-American people 236 / Gendered Intersections

and the larger African-American culture. The focus of black n1otherhood in both pr~ctice and thought, is how to preserve, protect and more generally empo~er black children so that they may resist racist practices that seek to harm them. To fulfil the task of empowering children, mothers must hold power in African-American culture and mothering likewise must be valued and supported. One tradition in African-A.tnerican cultures that challenges the dominant discourse of sensitive-mothering is othermothering, which Stanlie James (1999: 45) defines as "acceptance of responsibility for a child not one's own, in an arrangement that may or may not be fonnal." Similarly; community mothers, who are women typically past their childbearing years, "take care of the community" (Wane 2000: 112). Both are strategies of survival in that they ensure that all children, regardless of whether the biological mother is present or available, will receive the n1othering that delivers psychological and physical well-being and makes empowerment possible. "Biological mothers," as Patricia Hill Collins (1993: 47) notes, "are expected to care for their children. But African and African-American communities have also recognized that vesting one person with full responsibility for mothering a child may not be wise or possible." Black women's role of community n1others redefines 1notherhood as social activism and hence makes it a site of power: "Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their extended family networks have stimulated a nlore generalized ethic of care where Black women feel accountable to all the Black community's children'' (Collins 1993: 49). Black motherhood, as NinaJenkins (1998: 206) notes, "is a site where [black women) can develop a belief in their own empowerment. Black women see motherhood as providing a base for self-actualization, for acquiring status in the Black community and as a catalyst for social activism." African-American mothering differs from the dominant n1ode and defines motherhood as a site of power for black woman by understanding nurturance of children as an act of resistance. In African-American culture, the black family; or what bell hooks terms homeplace (hooks 1990: 42), is a site of resistance: I-Iistorically, African-American people believed that the construction of a homeplace, ho,vever fragile and tenuous (the slave hut, the wooden shack), had a radical political dimension. Despite the brutal reality of racial apartheid, of domination, one's homeplace was one site where one could freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist ... [and} restore to ourselves the dignity denied to us on the outside in the public world. In a racist culture that deems black children inferior, unworthy and unlovable, maternal love of black children is an act of resistance; in loving her children the mother instills in them a loved sense of self and high self-esteem, enabling them to defy and subvert racist discourses that naturalize racial inferiori_ty and comn1od_ify blacks as other and object. This perspective of nurturance as resistance, along with the traditions of othermothering and mothering as social activism, positions AfricanAmerican mothering as radically different from the patriarchal discourse of natural and sensitive motherhood. In this, African-American mothe1ing emerges as a feminist counter-narrative of mothering that is empowering to mothers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --;:Se:ction :: VII : Working For The Next Generation I 237

Modelling and Mentoring

Over the last fifteen years, as African-American theory defined mothering as a sit~ of power, feminist theory more generally has begun to define mothering as a soc_ta~ly engaged enterprise, particularly one seeking to effect cultural change through feirurust modes of gender socialization and interactions with daughters and sons. In the patriarchal narrative, the mother-daughter r~lationship, _parti_cularly in the daughter's adolescent years, is to be one of antagorusm and arumos1ty. The d~ugbt~r must differentiate herself from the mother if she is to assume an autonomous 1dent1ty as an adult. The mother represents for the daughter, the epitome of patriarchal oppression, which she seeks to transcend as she comes to womanhood. Feminist theorists, particularly since the mid-1980s, have challenged this received view and argue that mother-daughter connection and closeness are essential for female empowerment, particularly in the daughter's adolescent years. Writers as diverse as Paula Caplan (2000), Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson and ldelisse Ma.lave (1993), Miriam Johnson (1989) and Mary Pipher (1994) argue that a strong mother-daughter connection is what makes possible a strong female se1f Feminist writers calJ into question the ''sacred cow" of developmental theory that mandates separation from parents in adolescence to enable the emerging adult to achieve an autonomous sense of se1£ They argue that it constitutes a betrayal of both mothers and daughters. "Separation and autonomy are not equivalent," as deBold, Wilson and Malave (1993: 36) explain; rather daughters "need not separate from mothers emotionally to be autonomous." In opposition to developmental theory, feminist \Vritings celebrate the mother-daughter connection and explore how such is achieved and sustained.3 A si1nilar strategy may be found in current feminist thought on mother-son refations. Since the early 1990s feminist writers have emphasized mother-son connection and position it as central to the reconfiguration of traditional masculinity. 4 The hegemonic narrative of mother and son attachment - as scripted in parenting books, psychoanalytical theory and popular wisdom - assumes that sons must separate from their mothers in order to acquire a "normal" masculine identity. A close and caring relationship between a mother and her son is pathologized as aberrant. Olga Silverstein and Beth Rashbaum (1994: 11) write that "a male child must be removed from his mother's influence in order to escape the contamination of a close relationship with her. The love of a mother - both the son's for her, and hers for him - is believed to 'feminize' the boy, make him soft, weak, dependent, homebound ... only through renunciation of the loving mother does the boy become a man." Feminist theorists have questioned the patriarchally mandated process of mother-son separation as both natural - hence inevitable - and "good" for our sons, arguing that this process is a culturally scripted and orchestrated act. "By expecting our sons to cut off from us," Silverstein and Rashbaum (1994: 159) ,vrite, "we make sure that they do." Whether the son is fully cognizant of this sudden or subtle detachment, he nonetheless experiences it as a profound and inexplicable loss, which leaves him feeling vulnerable and alone. Feminist theorists argue that, to save our sons from becoming detached and wounded 1nen and to change the patriarchal world in which they and we live, a m.o ther must foreground her presence in the life of her son; as well she must establish and maintain a close and ca1·ing connection with her son throughout his life. By way of this new relationship, mothers will rnsmantle, destabilize and deconstruct normative patterns 238 / Gendered Intersections

0

male socializat~on and traditional definitions of masculinity. These theorists, as W:1th the ~ew feminist writers on daughters, seek cultural change through new feminist practices of mothering modelled on connection an> > >Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by > >irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking > >with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be > >taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach > >them of charity, mercy and patience. >> > >We women of one country will be too tender of those of another > >country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. Fro1n > >the bosom of t he devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. > >It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance > >of justice." >> > >Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. > >As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons > >of war, let women now leave aJI that n1ay be left of home for a > >great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet fust, as women, > >to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Section VII: Working For The Next Generation/ 259

>> > >Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the > >means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each > >hearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, > >but of'TRUTH. >> > >In the name of womanhood and of humanity, 1 earnestly ask that a > >general congress of women without limit of nationality may be > >appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at > >the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the > >alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement > >of international questions, the great and general interests of > >peace. >> > >Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

260 I Gendered Intersections

Her/s Elizabeth MacKenzie ,.

Her!s, 1993, translucent cibachrome, lightbox, gouache on existing wall. Light box: 31 in. x 51 in. Overall: 9 ft. x 11 ft. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth MacKenzie. My first child was born in 1988, and in the years that followed, during which I gave birth to two other children, it became increasingly important for me, both as an artist and as a mother, to find a way to interrogate popular media's representations of pregnancy and maternity. Pregnancy can be described as a marginal state of existence that is fraught with ambiguity, since it continually calls into question the boundaries of self. Most current representations endeavour to simplify and clarify the process of pregnancy and therefore subdue anxiety. These representations promote the notion that pregnancy involves two separate individuals, the foetus and the pregnant woman. "Her/s," which consists of a photo light box and text painted directly on the gallery wall, was first exhibited in 1993. It came out of my desire to address some of the ambiguities surrounding representations of pregnancy, maternity and the female body as a site of reproductive function. The word "Her/s" can be understood to mean possession or the (ungrammatical) plural of "her." Meanwhile the woman in the photograph shakes her head in a gesture of negation, which renders her identity anonymous, while the features of the startlingly visible and oversize embryo remain clear. "Her/s" represents the confusion of identity and personhood that occurs within pregnancy, making it difficult to make clear distinctions between oneself and another. This movement between identification and estrangement longing and aversion continues to represent my practice as a mother and an artist. Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 261

My Father's Dying David Carpenter Blocked arteries from a massive heart attack alzheimer's aphasia dementia three kinds of cancer Death is confused Death wants a second opinion Dad the father Dad the son Dad the family tyrant with a short fuse a ready laugh ready laugh and a short fuse a"vakens every morning with clenched fists like a man in a bra,vl around him don't let your guard do,vn above all never admit to a weakness Ifit hurts don't let it show they'll skin you alive they'll cut you in two they ,vere the government the rival team rival companies cars on a busy road your boss senior colleagues the banks all other loaning agencies society never let your guard down on the subject of various girls don't get involved politics don't get involved idealistic causes don't get involved learning to play an instrun1ent don't get involved learning to save money now yer talking

262 / Gendered Intersections

a big kid known as Shags used to swagger down into the ravine and beat the crap out of us I told him once if he tried that again my dad would come to his home and kick him in the nuts for son1e reason the kid never tried it again which n1ade me wonder about the n1agic of words and the omnipotence of my father he could have died World War II but they sent him packing tuberculosis they said blood in the urine thirty-five years old and a kid in the cradle they sent him back to Edmonton one in the cradle another on the ,vay the writer of these lines his scornful son the coronary came at sixty-three Mum phoned me from the hospital I spotted her standing outside the ward as soon as he saw me she shook her head no her gesture said he's not going to make it thirty-one years ago when your father is over ninety senile and dying however slowly you tend to seek advice doctors lawyers social workers counsellors health professionals they all say the same thing take his car away he should have died in World War II but they sent him packing lungs a-hacking the rest won't rhyme

Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 263

1ny father gets smaller and smaller by the year smaller by the month cancer in the ly1nphatic system cancer in the prostate cancers all over his head seep and bleed and fester anew Jjke a bombed-out town like World War II the rest won't rhyme I play on my harp from time to t ime the rest won't rhyme good to see you Dad how'dyou get out here took the plane ho,v are you feeling Tour mother's ready to go dancing good for her how'd you get out here I took the plane you take the car this tune he used to drive downtown and get lost try to go home to the old house with the new owners his license has been suspended his insurance invalid I took the bull by the horns oh yes I took the bull by the horns I put a hammerlock on the steering wheel and a forged note from the City of Victoria license suspended did it in the dead of night didn't sleep a wink I watched tv all night long wondering when my father would discover it my little conspiracy behold tny own son seeks my car all night long I watched the Olympics from Nagano I watched Elvis skate with a pulled groin muscle win a silver in a wrenching howl of pain n1y dad had gotten through to Elvis ifit hurts don't let it show all his life behind the wheel my dad had been free as a rustler I had just shot his horse you want to sleep at night guys don't shoot your father's horse

264 / Gendered Intersections

a few years ago he told me his secret after the heart attack I said I just want to make it to seventy I hit seventy and I said well seventy-five when I made it to seventy-five andyour 1nother and I rnoved out here all my arteries were shot but the little ones the capillaries yeah the capillaries they took up the job so I said wouldn't it be great if I 111ade it all the way to eighty and I rnade it to eighty well I'll never make it to ninety any fool knows I'll never make it to ninety so why not shootfor eighty-five eh my father will be ninety-four this surruner because the capillaries took up the job the century will expire before my father does this country will expire before my father does on the subject of death don't get involved

how did you get out here I drove how I said I drove in that car ofyours he wanders at night sometimes into the wrong apartment the people who run the building want to kick hi.in out send Mum and Dad to a nursing home lie around with a bunch ofold duffers no thanks he says no thanks my mother says they'll have to drag us out in a box he says can we change the subject my mother says how did you get out here

Section VII : Working For The Next Generation / 265

I flew out one time to say goodbye he had gone outside to check on his car gone out in the dark in his nightshirt lost his balance and grabbed for the rail the rail turned out to be a vine and he crashed into a pile of cinder blocks broke five ribs and collapsed a lung crawled inside gasping Mum phoned the ambulance (never let your guard down) I arrived at the ICU as soon as Mum saw me she shook her head the gesture meant no he's not going to make it the oxygen they pumped into him and gone astray instead of the usual scrawny carcass I beheld my father puffed up like the Pillsbury doughboy subcutaneous emphysema he recognized me had a dream makes me feel like a fool some guy was a_frer me in an alley couldn't see him very well looked like a thug he knew I was hurt couldn't move orfight back so I playedpossu1n pulled in my leg when he came up on me shoot me or something stab me I kicked out with my leg woke up I'd knocked over the beside table the bedpan felt like afool that was Death I said and he wheezed with laughter the next day he complained about cold soup the day after that he tyrannized the nurses the day after that he declared war on the ICU tore a strip off his loving wife tore another st1·ip off me n1y dad was on the mend the millennium will expire before my father dies cancer heart stroke dementia aphasia alzheimer's collapsed lungs Death stalking him down a dark alley never let your guard down Death or my dad will kick you in the nuts

266 / Gendered Intersections

this was 1neant to be a song the song of David for Saul really it should be a song Dave to Saul rhyrnes and all in the meantime he has his food brought to him regular transfusions of rye his disabled car his wife and sons their worried looks their wary love

In the last year of my father's life, I found myself traveling more and more to British Columbia to take care of my parents. As many people my age will understand, it was a tough time for my parents and a tough time for Honor (my wife) and me. Honor's mother died the same year my father did. We simply had to put our careers on hold and do what had to be done. I brought a lot of emotional baggage to the task of caring for my dad. We had always been more or less embattled from the time of my early teens. He had learned most of what he knew about life from growing to manhood in the shadow of the Great Depression. He was a vigorous man, an athlete, a good storyteller, very sociable but also quite shy. Although he loved us all, he was a control freak, a petty tyrant whose two sons were supposed to grow up as visible symbols of the things he stood for: respectability, stoicism in the face of difficulties, honest hard work, emotional and fiscal restraint, and love of the out-of-doors. He was a devout family man, always interested in the daily lives of his two sons, never unfaithful to his calling as husband and father, but he simmered with anger when his boys chose paths that seemed to stray from his limited outlook on life. Every April Fool's Day, we went all out to play pranks on him: parking the car around the corner so that he would think it had been stolen, or phoning him in disguised voices announcing various calamities at his office. The tyrant and the loving father. The gregarious dad and the repressive one. The hero of our boyhood, the naysayer of our manhood. Our hard taskmaster and our greatest fan. I wrote "My Father's Dying" one night in 1999 while staying in the guest room of his apartment building. I couldn't sleep. Acting on legal advice, I had just disabled Dad's car and forged a note from the City of Victoria reminding him that his licence had been suspended. All night long I lounged in front of a tv set in a state of darkest gloom. I had disabled my father's car, severed his last connection to freedom, shot his horse as it were. As the Nagano Olympics rolled on through the night, I wrote the poem. When at last I stopped writing, it was six a.m. Some poems you write because you want to: others you write because you have to. Of all the rituals I observed during my father's dying and after his death, writing this poem was the most healing. I've read it in quite a few cities, and on good nights, when ghosts are at rest, I suspect my dad is glad to hear the laughter of the crowds, secretly pleased to be my show and tell.

Section VII : Working For The Next Generation/ 267

Section VIII

FOOD WORK PRODUCTION AND POETICS Pamela J. Downe Undoubtedly; the desire and need for food has been, and still is, one of the main causes of great political events. (Bertrand Russell, 1872- 1970, quoted in Peter 1977: 201) When Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and peace advocate, wrote these words in the early 1900s, he was undoubtedly referring to political events that occur on a very public stage. The 1773 Boston Tea Party; for example, took place when European immigrants to what is now the United States donned the dress of Mohawk Natives and dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest British taxation policy, which was exacerbating the beleaguered settlers' poverty and hunger. A more contemporary event occurred on July 13, 1985, when Irish musician, Bob Geldoff, staged the first Live-Aid concert for famine relief in Africa. With images of starving mothers holding emaciated children in the background, this sweeping media event brought together renowned musicians who united over sixty countries in the charitable quest to "feed the world." And more recent still are the 2003 Zimbabwe food riots, when a group of male youths, aUegedly spurred on by civil war veterans accusing the government of political corruption and unscrupulous crop sales, attacked police officers who were trying to control crowds of hungry people lined up for food handouts in the city of Bulawayo (BBC News). However, what first comes to my mind upon reading Russell's quotation are not these kinds of large-scale gatherings of protest or celebration but rather the activities that occur in quieter and less visible places. No less significant, the taken-for-granted work and everyday rituals that occur in kitchens, restaurants, fields and supermarkets are fundamental to our lives and highly gendered. This section of the book explores this gendering as well as the connections among the formal political dimensions of food , the daily routines of its production and its prevailing cultural significance. As Deborah Barndt argues in her chapter, every food item has a story behind it, and in examining the material conditions of women's food work as well as the metaphorical connections between femininity and food, the contributors to this section tell son1e of these stories. Why are food stories important? Food is utterly essential to human survival; without it, we die. Like n1ost other essentials (such as water, fire, earth), humans work hard for food and have always tried to understand and explain its abundance and scarcity. Food figures prominently in n1ythological accounts of human origins and existence: The Christian tale of Eve eating the forbidden fruit, the centrality of maize in ancient Aztec legends about the power of the gods, and the Chippewa myth about the "Chief of Sky Spirits" bringing rain and corn to an Ojibv,a man who was weary of 268 / Gendered Intersections

hunt~g but in need of nourishment are but a few of such foundational stories. Associ~ted with godly power and culturally specific beliefs, then, food has enormous symb~lic as well as material significance in our lives. Sidney Mintz and Christine DuBois (2002) argue that virtually no other substance is imbued with as much social meaning and economic value. The nineteenth century French culinary critic and chef, Je~ Anthe~e B~illat-Savarin (quoted in de Garine 1994: 246) takes this further by stating that food 1s a fundamental means through which we establish and express our collective and individual identities: "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.,, Brett Williams's (1993) study of the preparation and consumption of tamales by Mexican immigrant wo1nen in Texas (Tejanos) offers an excellent example of BrillatSavarin's claim. Williams recounts a story of a young migrant who, like thousands of others, travels north to Illinois to work the harvest for six months. The employment is erratic, carries no benefits and offers poor pay Workers miss their hon1es in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, clinging to the festivals, food and family ties that offer some semblance of familiarity, but not for this man: With the full support of his wife's kin as well as his own, a young Mexican immigrant sues his wife for divorce in a small town Illinois court. I-Iis grounds are that she refuses to cook him tamales and dances with other men at fiestas. A disconcerted Illinois judge refuses to grant a divorce on such grounds and the migrant community is outraged: women argue with special vehemence that to nurture and b.ind her husband a proper wife should cook hint tamales. (Williams r99J: 159-60) One response to this story is to asser t that the gendered expectation of tamale preparation - a laborious task requiring women to work together in groups over days purchasing, stripping, cooking, seasoning and mashing the 1neat (usually pork), then wrapping it in a corn husk to be slowly baked - is evidence of a sexist tyranny to which itnmigrant women are subjected. After all, it is common to argue that the level of"immersion in household affairs is ... a measure of a woman's oppression" (Williams 1993: 1 59). A different interpretation of this young man's tamale plight, however, requites us to appreciate that food is one n1eans through which extended migrant families maintain their strength. When faced with the poverty and marginalization associated with inlilligrant labour, "Kin call on kin often for material aid, housing, and emotional support; they cooperate in field labor and domestic tasks and freely share food , money, time, and space .... Depending on kin eases hard times" (W'tlliams 1993: 16061). T he don1estic cooperation required among women for the preparation of tamales reaffirms these essential kin ties. Because women exert greater social influence when they are not isolated and when they work together sharing childcare and agricultural responsibilities, the women are outspokenly protective of the tamale-making duties that assure them of this influence. In their view, the preparation of tamales is not only what "good wives" do; it is what daughters, sisters, mothers, in-laws and, most importantly, Tejano women do. For these women, tamales are not a symbol of genderbased oppression but of women's central position in 1nigrant cultural life.

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics / 269

Naomi AdeJson's chapter on food and gender among the Cree ofWhapmagoostui echoes many of the themes emerging in Williams's study. Focusing on the hunting and meal preparation of geese, Adelson stresses the .impo~tance of the family ~ies that ensure the completion of various tasks. Like the Te1ano tamale preparation, the gender-based roles associated with this meal, including the consumption of the goose, should not be immediately dismissed as inequitable. In fact, although Adelson astutely points out that some younger women feel overburdened by their_ ~omestic tasks, she argues that gender equity must be contextualized by first determ1n1ng what constitutes and who defines equity. In the end, it is clear that, like tamales among the Tejanos, the preparation and consumption of bush foods among t he Cree of Whapmagoostui nourishes "people's sense of respect and commitment to community." Unfortunately, not all stories of gender and food consumption have respect as a central feature. Instead, the focus is often on perceived sex differences in strength and deservedness. In his cross-cultural study of domestic eating habits, anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984: 192) argues t hat uniformly "men eat and drink more and stronger things .... Men leave the tid-bits to the children and the women. Meat, the nourishing food par excellence, strong and strong-making, giving vigour, blood and health, is the dish for men... whereas crudites (raw vegetables) are more for the ,vomen, like salad." Most food taboos - cultural restrictions on the consu1nption of certain foods motivated by fears of negative or dangerous consequences - involve women and meat. According to Ojiambo's (1967) classic nutrition study, menstruating and pregnant women among the Abasamia people in Kenya are forbidden access to most protein sources (including eggs, milk and most meats) because it is believed that if ,vomen cat protein-rich foods during their periods of "reproductive power," they will become too strong, thereby displacing men from positions of power and throwing the community into disarray. Fear of women's roles, not respect for them, motivates these restrictions. Although this is one of the most common cases of food taboos discussed in the relevant literature, there are many North American exampJes of food restrictions as well. In her study of food habits among college students in the United States, Carol Counihan (1999: 124) found that although there are "vague notions that 'lighter' foods such as salads and chicken are female, and 'heavier' foods such as beef and potatoes are male,'1 the difference between male and female eating is mo.re consistently defined in tenns of how much rather than what is consumed. More so than men, ~'omen eat (or, more precisely, do not eat) in order to adhere to dominant expectations of femininity, which include modesty, daintiness and restraint. W hen interviewed, women indicated that they prefer "lighter portions" because they fear public ridicule and believe that consuming large an1ounts of food in one sitting would make them appear unattractive (Finkelstein 1989). At its worst, the restrictions placed on food consumption among women give rise to self-starvation and eating disorders. Too commonly misconstrued as frivolous distress over dress size, anorexia nervosa (self-imposed starvation) and bulimia nerv~sa ~compulsive purging) are, in fact, disorders related to control and body percept1on. fhere may be underlying fears of bodily processes (such as menstruation and sexual intimacy) stem1ning fron1 abusive situations such as childhood sexual abuse (Chcrnin 1981). Far more girls and women suffer fron1 disordered eating than do boys 270 / Gendered Intersections

and n~en (although the rates of bulin1ia are rising among males). This may be because f?od is the_ Subs~ance that most women already assocjate with restraint and restriction. Food is so tightly co?nected to femininity and won1en's roles that it provides the ready means through which self-manipulation can be achieved. As a young woman ~-ho has stru~led for years with anorexia, Carrie Smith offer a poetic rendering of disordered eatmg that captures the paradox of food-based control. On the one hand . ' , r:s~nctmg on~ s o~ acc~ss to food provides a sense of power and a way to cope with life _s stresse~, 1nclud1ng violence. On the other hand, that power is readily lost in what Smith describes as the down,vard spiral. As desperate as some cases of disordered eating become, there is hope. Shifting the first- to the second-person point view of in the last stanza, Smith draws the reader in and makes a connection by offering encouragement: "you can save yourself" Research into the gendering of food is not limited to a study of eating habits or patterns of self-starvation, it also involves examining the ways in which women the1nselves are metaphorically consumed. The food restrictions that function in North America to limit how much women eat may also be a way of enforcing a dominant pattern wherein men consume and ,vomen are consumed. A very superficial illustration of this is found in the terms of endearment used for girls - sweetie, cutiepie, peach, honey and cookie - and those for boys - tiger, buddy and little man. Unlike boys, girls are referred to with descriptions of edible items, implying that girls are to be eaten. Susan Ioannou's poem. about the "delicatessen of cheerleader flesh'' offers a more graphic description of this. On the sidelines of men's sporting events, female cheerleaders are, in Ioannou's words, "deliciously packed" for devouring. Susan Eisenberg's poem tells a different story of consumption. Rather than being metaphorically consumed in a sexualized way, Eisenberg writes of a breastfeeding mother who becomes the actual food source for her infant. Although breastfeeding is often an empowering experience of nurturance, this poem expresses the frustration and isolation that new mothers feel but rarely have the social space to express. Revered as being the best for the baby but ostracized as an unacceptable form of exhibitionism, breastfeeding in North America leads many mothers to feel conflicted and uneasy. Stories of food production exist alongside those of food consumption, and central to any tale of production is work. Aritha Van B erk's story about "that family," the site where farm work and domestic labour grew "into a monster of extortion," captures this well. The work done by the protagonist is tied not to her role as wife but to her role as daughter, emphasizing the fact that women's food work is not necessarily determined by relationships with men but by broader expectations of family and society. Nicole Power's chapter on women's experiences in the Newfoundland fisheries offers an important companion to Van I-Ierk's fiction. The moratoria on groundfish stocks have hit women particularly hard because they receive fewer benefits from adjustment packages and their family obligations limit their alternate employment opportunities. Although men's involvement in domestic work has marginally increased as fishing has declined, women continue to do the majority of this labour, carrying a double burden because - as Van 1-lerk renunds us - "there are always the dishes." Deborah Barndt's chapter brilliantly brings the international context of globlized food exchange into a consideration of local production by tracing the movement of produee from cultivation in Mexico to sale in Canada. The stories of

Section VIII : Food Work Production and Poetics/ 271

Tomasa, Marrisa and Barndt1s other research participants attest to the importance of gender in these ever-expanding cross-border foodways. Food, we are told, "constitutes a language accessible to all" (Counihan 1994: 19), but the stories it tells are indeed diverse. Taken together, the chapters in this section require us to think about how these food stories interconnect. How does the food we eat confirm or resist our gendered identity? What are the labour patterns that went into the production and distribution of this food? What food-related labour do we do on a daily basis? I-low is this labour related to the work done by others, both near and far? For Van Herk, the pressing question is, who does the dishes? The answers to these and other questions are important because they require us to think carefully about how food can symbolically create a sense of belonging or difference, establish economic wealth or hardship, and be a source of personal danger or empowerment. And empowerment is certainly what the young girl in D enis Lee's poem experiences as she stares down the child-eating monster, devours him and runs home to eat her brother's trains. Bon appetite! REFERENCES BBC Ne,vs. 2003. "Zimbabwe Food Riots Spread." Available at . Bourdieu, Pierre. 1,984. Distinction: A Social Critique oftheJudgment ofTaste. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press. Chernin, K.im. 1981. The Obsession: Reflectiom on the 'lyranny ofSlenderness. New York: Harper and R,ow. Counihan, Carole M. 1999. TheAnthropology ofFoodandBody: Gender, Meaning and Power. New York: Routledge. de Garine, Igor. 1994. "The Diet and Nutrition of Human Populations." fn Tim Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia ofAnthropology. London: Routledge. Finkelstein, Joanne. 1989. Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners. New York: New York University Press. Mintz, Sidney, and Christine DuBois. 2002. "The Anthropology of Food and Eating." Annual Review ofAnthropology 31. Ojiambo,].1-\. 1967- "A Background Study of the Food I-Iabits of theAbasamia ofBusia District, Western Province, Kenya." Nutrition 21, 4. Peter, Laurence]. 1977. ldeasfor Our Time. New York: Quill William J\1.orrow. Williams, Brett. 199?'. "~hy ~igrant Women Feed their I-1.usbands Tamales: Foodways as a Basis for a Rev1s1on1st View of Tejano Family Life." In William Haviland and Robert Gordon (eds.), Talking about People. London: Mayfield Publishing.

272 I Gendered Intersections

FOOD WORK: PRODUCTION AND POETICS HYPATIA INDEX1 • •

• • •

Propor~on of Canadians living on farn1s in 1931: 1 in 3; in 1996: 1 in 30 2 Proportt~n of total farm inco1ne that was a farmer's take-home pay in 1971: 28 percent; 1n 1999: 10 percent Proportion of farm operators in Canada who are women: 25 percent3 Percentage of Canadian female farm operators who define themselves as the primary farmers and declare their main occupation as agricultural: 494 Percentage of farms across Canada that are operated by a husband and wife team: 32

• • • •

•

• •

• •

• •

• •

• • •

• • • •

•

~roportion of female farm operators in Canada who have post-secondary education: 49 percent; of male farm operators: 37 percent5 Proportion of farm wo1nen who report having no time for leisure activities: 30 percent6 Percentage of people working on farms as family labourers or permanent paid employment in the European Union who are women: 377 Percentage of staple food production done by women in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean: 80 Percentage of agricultural labour force in Africa con1prised of women: 60 Percentage of all credit programs available for agriculture in Africa that goes to women: 0.92 Proportion of food in Asia produced by \vomen: 50~60 percent8 Propo.rtion of wo1nen farmers who own land in India, Nepal and Thailand: ro percent9 Average number of hours ,vomen in Uganda devote to agricultural food production per week: 50; men in Uganda: 2310 Average number of hours wo1nen in the Philippines devote to agricultural food production per week: 66; men in the Philippines: 41 Approximate number of female fish plant workers in Canada: 12,000 11 Minimum number of out-of-work fisherwomen in the Canadian n1aritimes: 3,000 Percentage by v,hich Atlantic catches of ground.fish (e.g., cod, halibut and sole) declined between 1987 and 1997: 83 12 Rate by which rural women living in poverty in North America increased between 1977 and 199r 50 percent13 Percentage by which food and drink sales in restaurants across North America jncreased between 1990 and 2003: 78 14 Estimated number of meals that were prepared and served in restaurants in the United States in 2002: 54 billion Profit fron1 restaurant sales in the United States: $426 billion (US) Percentage of restaurant employees in the United States and Canada who are women: 58 Percentage of supervisors in food-preparation and -service occupations in the United States who are women: 68; who are African-American: 16 Percentage of executive positions in the food retail _industry ~eld by ~omen: 915 Rate by which wages for unionized women workers 1n the retail food industry are Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 273

•

• • •

• •

• •

• •

•

_ higher than non-unionized workers: 33 percent Nwnber of people world-wide who live with hunger and uncert-run food supply: . 840 million 16 Percentage of the 12 million deaths among children (under 5 years) worldwide that are due to 1nalnourisbment: 55 Percentage of Canadian women who report that "maintaining or improving health" is the most important reason for selecting or avoiding certain foods: 80; of Canadian men: 6i7 Percentage of Canadians who feel as though they do not have enough time to prepare nutritious meals: 13 Rate by which obesity in Canadian boys increased between r981 and 1996: 16.6 . 1s: 14.6 percent18 percent; ·LO Canad.1an gir Percentage of Canadians who believe that limited financial resources prevent families from accessing adequate nutrition or opportunities for physical exercise: 14 Percentage of Canadians who believe that parents are most influential on children's eating habits: 45 19 Number of people in Canada who, because of temporary or extended poverty, rely on food banks for emergency food supplies each month: 800,00020 Percentage of food bank recipients who are children: 44 Proportion of mothers in the United States who breastfeed their newborns in the hospital: 67 percent; at 6 months: 31 percent21 Proportion of mothers employed full-time outside the home who breastfeed their babies at 6 months: 22.5 percent; mothers over the age of 34 years: 42.8 percent; mothers under the age of 20 years: 17.9 percent

NOTES Compiled by Pamela J. Downe, with the assistance of Ellen Whiteman. Except when otherwise indicated in the main text, the sources cited in this Index apply to the line where first referenced and then to all those that follow until another endnote appears. All Web references were accessed between May and August 2003. 2. Statistics Canada, 2oor, Canada Year Book 2001 (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). 3. Ontario Farm Women's Network, 2002, "OFWN in the News.'' Available at . 4. Elaine Froese, 2002, ''Wotnen in Agriculture: Multi-Skilled Careerists Assume Many Roles ." Available at . 5. Alberta Beef, 2003, "Behind Every Good Ranch is a Woman." Available at . 6. Elaine Froese, 2002, 'Women in Agriculture: Multi-Skilled Careerists Assu1ne Many Roles." Available at . 7- American Business Women's Network, 2002, "Won1en in food and Agriculture.'' Available at . 8. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2002, . 9. Th~ World _Food Prize, 2002, . 10. Uruted Nations, 1998, Report: Women as Food Producers (New York: United Nations). r1. Canadian Labour Congress, 1997, Womens Work:A Repo1·t (Ottawa: Canadian Labour Congress). r.

274 I Gendered Intersections

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

Statistics Canada, 2001, Canada Year Book 2oor (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Canadian Labour Congress, 1997, \\!&men~ Work:A Report (Ottawa: Canadian Labour Congress). National Restaurant Association, 2003, "Industry at a Glance." Available at . American Business Wo,nen's Network, 2002, "Women in Food and Agriculture." Available at . Women and International Developn1ent, 2000, "World Development Statistics, 19992000.'' Available at . Health Canada, 2002, What Do Canadians Do About Nutrition? (Ottav,a: 1-lealth Canada). Health Canada, 2002, "Canada's Physical Activity Guides for Children and Youth: Statistics and Public Opinion." Available at . 1-Iealth Canada, 2002, "Canada's Physical Activity Guides for Children and Youth: Statistics and Public Opinion." Available at . Canadian Association of Food Banks, 2003, "Facts About Food Banks in Canada." Available at . Breastfeeding Basics, 2002, "Breastfeeding Benefits and Barriers.'' Available at .

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 275

In Appreciation of the Goose The Relationship among Food, Gender and Respect among the liyiyu'ch of Great Whale, Quebec

Naomi Adelson How; you might ask, is hunting for and eating bush food connected to either gender or, for that matter, respect? Ever since my first years working and living with the Iiyiyu'ch of Great Whale, Quebec, I have been struck by the highly gendered division between work duties and consumption practices in relation to bush (or hunted) 1neat. Animals such as caribou, bear and beaver and fowl such as Canada goose are particularly important to the liyiyu'ch and are symbolically linked to the cultural, social, political and physical well-being of the people (Adelson 2000). More specjfically, the bush animals, fowl and fish of the northern region are intimately connected to the Iiyiyu'ch in a way that depends who1ly on peoples' fundamental respect for the natural world. This respect translated, quite simply, into sunrival for the ancestors of the Iiyiyu'ch of today. The Iiyiyu'ch retain much of their sense of that special relationship to the land and the animals and, in particular, understand that all animals are imbued with a caring and watchful spirit. So, for example, an animal will only give itself to those hunting families that observe the proper respect for the animals of the bush. T hus, a hunter must be respectful by, for example, not hunting in excess of his fan1ily needs. Women similarly show respect by maintaining a clean and well-prepared camp and by properly cleaning and cooking the game. Similarly; the carcass of the game must be properly handled in order to show the overall degree of respect. Bones are never thrown carelessly about but are disposed of in a proper manner. Respectful behaviour permeates life at camp; even the winds that gently blow open one's tent door flap must be shown deference and greeted with a "come in, come in," as this is a sign that there is food on the horizon. Let me briefly introduce you to the community; its location and the people who live there. Great Whale, or Whapmagoostui as it is referred to locally, is home to just over seven hundred Iiyiyu'ch, most of them younger than 25 years. W hapmagoostui First Nation is one of the nine communities that make up the James Bay Cree First Nation, which is located through the mid to northeastern regions of the province of Quebec. Great Whale is the furthest north of the nine communities and is located on a small spit of land right on the Hudson Bay coast at the mouth of the Great Whale River. The permanent village that now exists at this site is but a few decades old and only a fraction of the land that is considered home to the northern liyiyu'ch. Indeed, the ancestors of the Whapn1agoostui Iiyiyu'ch lived and travelled in the vast northeastern region of present day Quebec for long over a thousand years. Nonetheless, the village today is where people live most of the year, with more houses being built annually as the young population continues to grow. While this is the main residence for most of the Iiyiyu population, it is not the only one, as the entire community spen~s at least a portio~ of the year on the land and engaged in either hunting practices or the preparation and cooking of bush foods. 276 / Gendered Intersections

As a medical anthropolog1·st · · generally around issues · . , researc h questions revoIv1ng of health .have brought me bac · year after year. I bnng · each new . · k .t o th e community research idea t~ the ~and council, and they decide the merits of the project for the people. ~or this pro1ect, I specifically asked to speak to a few members of the co1?m':1-°1ty abo~t the goose. Goose hunting, after all, is now a bi-annual practice, which involves v1~tually every n1ember of the community. Entire families pack up and h~ad ~ut to the1r respective bush camps at the height of the north and south nugrat1ons of the Canada geese. Everyone eagerly anticipates the first taste of goose ~ach s~ason. Often staying out from one to two weeks at a time, extended family units 1ncludrng grandparents, adult siblings and their children, live, work and play together on the land during the time known as "goose break." Near the end of my trip to Great Whale in late July 2002, I was invited to supper at the house of good fri ends of mine. My friends' house is situated at a small distance from the main village and thus is able to accommodate a large tipi beside it. Their tipi is quite a bit larger than usual and easily holds a small crowd. On this day it housed a couch, benches, and a large central fire pit, over which was cooking a dinner of fireroasted goose, accompanied by potatoes and salad. Once we had eaten a generous amount, with the once-hot cooking fire now smouldering, everyone was sitting or lying back, full and ready for a discussion. While I felt a certain degree of cheek for asking questions of them so soon after they had fed me so generously, my friends and the extended family that joined us for supper that evening nonetheless obliged and indulged my request. So, I began: What are the differences, I wanted to know, between men's and women's roles when a goose is hunted, prepared, cooked and served. Geese a.re, by and large, hunted by men and cleaned and cooked by women. T he.re are, of course, some women who hunt but, on balance, there are more men who clean and cook the bush food than the.re a.re women who hunt. Men may also remove the wing feathers while still at the blind since they are easier to remove when the bird is still warm. If there is a .relatively long delay in getting the birds back to camp, the men may begin to eviscerate the birds rather than let them spoil. More often than not, a group of related men from a single extended fan1ily camp (for example, brothe1·s, brothers-in-law and sons) will hunt together at the same blind or at blinds in relatively close proximity to each other. When the geese are brought back to camp and placed in a common locale (often the preparation tipi), a camp elder, at some point either before or after the geese are plucked and cleaned, may then distribute the geese amongst the related families that comprise the camp in an equitable manner. That elder can be either a man or a women; it is the age and degree of seniority in the family that determines who is the elder at each (extended) family camp. Men rarely express the excitement that one might expect fro m a successfuJ hunt as abundance is ten1pered by the hunters' recognition of the balance of1·espect that allowed so many geese . . to give themselves to this family. In a dwelling, often a tipi, that is separate from the hv1ng quarters, the women prepare for the evening of work allead. Someone star~s a fire, son1eone else will ?ut a kettle of tea on to boil, and the tipi is cleaned and readied for the task at hand. If 1t has been a rewarding hunt, the women will work hard for many hours. The women will often share the workload, much as they will share stories, conversation and laughter

Section VIII : Food Work Production and Poetics I 277

that will take then1 right through the evening and into night. The women must first pluck all the feathers from the goose. This is a detailed task that requires patience and skill as the feathers must be plucked one at a time but quickly in order to get through the evening's work. Those who are collecting the valued down feathers pluck and store them separately, and this requires considerable patience and extra tin1e. In all instances, the geese must be plucked in a protected place so that the feathers do not fly away. To allow feathers to fly carelessly into the wind is a sign of d isrespect and, just as they will blow away, the geese will fly too high to be shot. Once plucked, the bird is then cleaned, the pinfeathers singed and the innards removed, washed and cooked as everything except the gall bladder - even the head and feet - is eaten. l Then, depending on whether the bird will be stored for the deep freezer back home or eaten at the camp, it will either be wrapped or prepared for cooking. At some point, someone will heat a pot of water so that at least one goose will be boiled and ready to eat later that evening. Cooking, by and large, is the domain of women. At camp, geese are m_ost often either simply boiled or spit-roasted over the fire (which requires some trussing of the bird). Back home, the geese are boiled, baked in the oven or cooked over an open fire in a tipi erected at the back of one's house. Once the food is cooked and ready to be eaten, an elder - or at the very least someone who is skilled in dividing the bush food - is responsible for portioning out the cooked food. The goose is carved in a way that assures not only that all of the 1neat is available to be eaten but also that there are gender-specific cuts ready to be distributed. (Certain parts of the goose are designated as men's 0eg and breast meat, head) and others as women's (shoulder, carcass, wings, feet, gizzards). 2 The distribution of the goose meat is, like all bush food, bound by long-established conventions of both gender and respect. In the past, the task of apportioning bush food was predominantly left to the men. I was told that some women today may attend to that task but always, of course, with proper attention to ,vho is getting what part of the bird and in what order it is all being served. (And, in some cases, while a m.ale elder may determine how the meat is to be portioned out, the task of actually serving it is left to the woman.) In all instances, the order for serving bush food remains: elders first, then guests, men, women, and finally, children (who sometimes simply eat from their mother's plate). So, while potatoes or bannock may be distributed by anyone, the goose must be distributed in a manner that is fair and respectful to all members of the family. If there is one plate of meat prepared for each family; then there must be an adequate amount of women's food, men's food and food, too, for the children. Men may share their meat with their older sons, and v.romen will share with their daughters and toddlers. The task of distribution is not easy, my friends recounted to me, and some family members (either men or women) are valued for their ability to distribute the meat both amply and appropriately. The fire by now had dwindled to 1nere embers, and my young daughter was calling me away; telling me it was ti1ne to head back home for the night. One final thought did come to mind however, and I asked one more question: Was there any concern about the apparent gender imbalance between say, the amount ofwork that men and women d?? As one of the 111en had said earlier in the evening, "the only thing that men do is kill the geese; they hunt and kill the geese. Won1en usually do the rest." On the one hand, this statement considerably; and likely deliberately; makes light of the real work 278 / Gendered lnterse:: ct:-:'io.::n:::s- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

invoJved in actu~lly ~ing a goose. The skill of an expert hunter com.es onJy after years of appre,nt1:esh1p, learning_everything from how to shoot a rifle to reading the Canada gooses flight patterns, winds and weather, how to patiently survive the hours upon hours at a blind awaiting the geese, and how to call them down (using decoys and calls) once they finally begin to arrive. The perception re1nains, though, that the women do more work than the men and receive what couJd rightly be seen as the less meaty parts of the bird. Those with whom I spoke said that while they did not know ho,v these gender-divided practices began, they were accepted as the status quo: this is what has always been done and what, quite sitnply, should continue to be done. The prim.a ry issue for both the men and the women was the degree of respect shown to the bush animals and to the members of one's family and community. Thus, gender equity must first and foremost be contextualized (who, in other words, is determining ,vhat constitutes equity, me or them?) and must always be balanced with, or at the very least seen within, the larger realm of respect. This said, though, the interviews that I conducted recently with young adult women in the community as part of a different project suggest that many of them feel overburdened by the degree to which they must uphold some of the more gendered divisions of household work. Young women today will talk about the enormous amount of work that is required of them on a daily basis (including but not limited to raising a family, maintaitring a full-time job, taring for elderly family members and extended family, furthering their education). Yet, at the same time, none has suggested that the place to start changing the degree of imbalance is in tradition-based practices of the bush (Adelson 2002). Bush foods nourish not only the body, in other words, but each morsel nourishes, too, peoples' sense of respect and commitment to community. This example of a relationship between gender, food and respect is intimately linked to a rich and vital past, is alive today but is, at the same time, layered in amongst a surfeit of other tasks and duties for the women (and men) of the community. NOTES I.

2.

If the goose is boiled, even the cooking broth is saved to be eaten, so1netimes then cooked with oats, as a nourishing soup. If the goose is spit-roasted, the fat drippings are also saved for use later (to eat with the meat or to be made into pemmican or a medicament to ._ . soothe itchy skin). There are, of course, always exceptions to the general rules. For example, 1t the wings and heads of many geese are boiled together, then there is no distinction in who eats them.

REFERENCES Adelson, Naomi. 200 0. Being Alive Well· flea/th ttnd the Politics of Cree ,Vell-Being. Toronto: ~ . University of Toronto Press. _ _. 2002 • ''On Being In-benveen, Everywhere and Nowhere: Stress and the Strain of Culture amongst First Nations Women in ~orthe~n Quebec." Presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Windsor, May.

Section VII I: Food Work Production and Poetics / 279

First the Chores and Then the Dishes1 Aritha fan Herk The family offers itself as a double discourse, especially in any gendered reading. What you can speculate is a halved reading of the family's doubled discourse, its duplicitous side, the side you'd rather not admit, the side you think has vanished with the onset of dishwashers and microwaves and other electrical conveniences, but a reading that still lurks under the auspices offamily as something you are supposed to admire, applaud, never doubt. • ••

In that family; work was an open secret; working constant, an on-going presence. It could not be finished, was never over, grew itself into a monster of extortion. Asking for attention. Gave them all the works. They had their work cut out for them just trying to keep up. There was never any question of beingfinished. The tyranny of the present participle: plowing, seeding, spraying, gardening, weeding, haying, baling, loading, stacking, unloading, swathing, combining, trucking, summer-fallowing, rounding up, milking, cleaning, chasing, separating, shovelling manure, shovelling manure , shovelling manure, spreading clean straw, trudgery, drudgery. Nothing ever done, over, finished. The litany of the western Canadian fann family. All hands on deck, either in field or barn, working. And then there were always the dishes. ••• Work is a word that she tries now to skew, to alter. It resists play, rather like a tin cup, merciless and utilitarian. Backwards is krow, and that is its only gambit, its one endearance. It refuses to flirt or even to bungle. It is an onhandig (Dutch for clumsy) word, bitter and direct, with t he hard k of destination. Work. Aloud, it upstages authority, it reifies result. A process toward product, inexorable, unrelenting. Without the 'o' it is still wrk, a Siberian stalwart. And yet, she uses it herself, with a kind of perverse pleasure. She is in love ,vith the word's tool, with its potential for deflection. "I have work to do." (Go away, don't bother me, come back later.) "l have to go home and do some work tonight." (The evening has an edge of boredo1n, the company not quite as intense as it might be. T he reference to work operates as a subtle rebuke.) "I have to work tomorrow." (I'm tired and I want to go to bed.) "I'm working." (Ring my bell, dial 1nynumber at your own risk. I an1 likely to bite you1· head off for interrupting, that is if I bother to answer at all. I'n1 working, I'm working, I am working.) And then there are always the dishes. •• •

280 / Gendered Intersections

Work .is the effort . required to pr od uce ones' own 1·IVe1ihood, an act1v1ty · · we have . canoruzed through its lustorical development. Gerstel and Engel offer an overview: "the Greeks regarded such effort as drudger! ~t 0 n_ly for slaves; the Old Testament tradition believed it was punishment for onginal sin; Protestantism elevated ,vork to a religious duty; and Marx argued that humans created themselves and became distinctively human through freely performed labour." In that family, work fell directly into the Protestant category: duty, with a slight ~dg~ of left~ve~ O~d Testament punishment. And, survival. The opposite end of livelihoo?, with its tinge of choice. Nothing so elegant or suggestive, so free. Certainly no vocation, or chosen profession. Necessary ·work, the necessities of work, the work ?f n~cessity. ~eeding to be done, a requirement. Work as a pathway to success, the ururugrant drive for achievement. Work baptizing the family Canadian. They were Calvinists, that family, Dutch Reformed Calvinists. Combine that with surviving occupied (for five long years) I-Iolland, and postwar immigration to Canada. How n1uch duty and punishment does any family need? Take it out on work, the final arbiter for all possible choices. Work as escape and justification, work as substitute for language, as its own choreography and destination. Work as an act of immigration itself, an emigrant vice, pleasure in its purity, its particular denomination. It might be called religion. And then, there are always the dishes . ••• She tries to remember the first time in her life that she consciously undertook to work, was assigned a job. Assignation. To make illicit. That becomes her talent, the illicitation of duty. Bringing home the cows from the pasture. Is this work? The leg-stretching hike out to the back quarter, the delicious running sorties after Jessie who wants to stand forever in the slough, the path carved through the bush of poplar and spruce, which becomes without fail the forest of Enceladus, he and all the hundred-armed giants under the green shade, the open stretch behind the bush, its kingdomed roll to the barbed wire fence that marks the edge of property (il1icit, this hour for fantasy and dreaming, the open sky, the open prairie grass, the secret darkness of the woods.) And yet, the safety of that cow-worn path threaded through the trees as she follows their gently swaying backs home through duty's dereliction, and the rising knowledge that the work that offers solitude and privacy is precious. It is a job she offers to do, bringing home the cows. Because it is unclassified, a space for acts of imagination. Illicit acts. That move from fairy tales to conquerings, from delicious fears to sexual delights. Bringing home the cows teaches her to shout and sing, she has the time to test her runnjng, she learns to taste nakedness because yes, one day it becomes necessary to take off her shirt, to let her skin into the air, the orgasm of wind. She is alone out there, she is free to learn how to love herself This is not what bringing ho1ne the cows is supposed to teach her: the feel of a fairy's loaf (a round, smooth stone) against her breast, the bark of a tree under a hand that recovers every texture as sexual. She gets the docile holsteins latched into the stalls through a transparent afterwash of pleasure. Is this work? Or is the work peripheral to what really happens

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 281

when her feet fly over the gopher holes and hummocks, past the tangle of chokecherry bushes and the edge of the marshy slough? In that difference she runs out of herself, out of her skin. In to freedom. And then there are the dishes. • •• That family is more practical than hierarchical. There is so much work that it is passed along, divided up, shared around. There is always some left over, it refuses to decease itself. And the nature of that family? It has never occurred to them to lament their own erasure, they precede the crumbling of the institution's n1onolith, its nuclear effacement. They example familial disjunction, emigration as an act of distancing, as a breakage or rift. The successful evasion of cousins and n1aiden aunts, of dictatorial fathers. For every po)jtical and economic reason irnnligrants offer for their own displacement, there exists an equal number of bastard patriarchs. How do they escape the inexorable hand of the punitive father? Emigrate. Immigrate. Free to become bastard patriarchs themselves, to establish their own dynasty. Family as authoritative structure. Shared blood, a shared household (possession there, in the realm of hold), enforced conjunction. T he hegemony of the heterosexual couple and their offspring. An economic unit. An accident. A container. A prison. A place wjthin which to conceal crime. Misprison. Misconception, misunderstanding. Universally different; monolithically fragmented. Questions of legjtimacy, illegal and surreptitious acts of love. Breadwinning, housekeeping, natural, biological, functional, common residence, economic co-operation, reproduction. Owned or adopted. That family has become its own questioned legitimacy, its own metanarrative. Relational, nurturant. And demanding. Emotional blackmail, the blood's mafia. Enforcement. A prescribed intimacy. Never permitted to escape the silent accusations of toothbrushes, the laboured rectangularityof dinner tables, the battlelines of sibling-shared bedrooms. Conjugular. Chemical: two or more radicals acting as one. Mathematical: reciprocally related or interchangeable. Kindred in origin and 1neaning. Where does that family derive from? Then, there are always the dishes. • ••

She tries to sort it out, her place within them, the strangely morbid internalization of dutiful daughter/sister. She did not choose them, would never have chosen their particular incestuousness of purpose; and she is certain they did not choose her, convinced she was an accident, and accepted only out of necessity, perhaps practicality; another pair of hands to do another set of chores, some of the work that grew and grew. There can be no doubt that she is legitimate, genetically inscribed. She knows the tracing paper of feature and gesture, posture and manual extension: her hands link her self to t heir deliberations. She thinks of her as daughter. Visible difference. Daw: a jackdaw, a simpleton. A daughter's befittment, when she wants to be as sleek and uncatchable as the otter its plait of movement through a still-breathing pond, but somewhere in there is an ou~ht, 282 / Gendered Intersections

a neces~ity, the a~liary followed by the infinitive. There is a moral duty in ought, an o~ligation, propriety, expectation. The silent but waiting mouth of a dot, naught, its circular ambivalence. Open or closed? And the daughter too, open or closed. Perhaps clos~r ~o deter, ~e_nd_ off, ward away, discourage. The daughter: dis/couraged. Courage the ms1stent sp1nt , 1ntrep~d timidity. Properly daughterly, a harbinger of spring. Too 1nuch to b~ar sue~ ardent mvestment in a part she plays so badly. S~e thinks of herse~f as s~ster. Her own sister drawing a heavy, invisible line down the middle of the bed. Don t you dare put one finger over this line." But her sister smells of lemon and honey; and if she squints at a particular angle, she can read from the page of her sister's open book, read the forbidden story, that combination of sinister and stir, their secret siblinghood, although there is not affection between them, or not much, once she begins to talk, to talk back, talk about. Both bent to the left, underhanded unpropitious. And neither one dexterous. She thinks of herself as sister. Her brothers resist, de/sister her with their easy contempt, their permissive discrepancies thought and voiced. "You're just a dumb girl." (Don't worry about having an inferiority co1nplex: you are inferior.) The arm twisted behind the back, the snowball out of nowhere, the locked insistence of one's word against the other's. Her brothers teacher her otherness, they pound it into her. They pron1ise her the future: "I'll learn you... " they say. ls this work sistering, daughtering? It feels like work, hard work. The virulence, the tyranny of blood. And then, there are always dishes.

• •• That family as its own site of development and bereavement. Family= belonging. And there is not a damn thing she can do about it, no choice about where she landed up, no choice about who she got and where, the dice of genes, and the bingo of conception. To be familied, the concept and the structure verbed, verbalized, as dose as the constituents can find themselves to being damned, as close as being saved. Kept. Wrapped ~ithin. Leona Gorn: "Home is where when you go there they have to take you in" family that is, no abnegation of the blood, a dis/own/ment. A repudiation. A name, a blood type, a tilt of cheekbones: physical facts cannot be denied. Family builds dams, dykes, walls around itself: the nuclear item privatized into its own meltdown and reaction and subsequent explosion. Family wars, fallouts, and pacifications. While she goes to friends for advice, for affection, for attention, for an isolated moment, separate from guilt and obligation. 1~he family of friends, the ones who take her as she is, without all those troublesome genes, who don't even care about the closet skeletons, the griefs and guilts she bears for too much or too little love. The extended family, its stretched tentacles of aunts and cousins, of the mysterious and inexplicable grandmother who has her name, had it first, who look~ so 1nuch like ~er, and who started that family, before the First World War. What affectionate leavetaking of a soldier got that grandmother: a family stretched all over ~he ;"orld, ~rru:idchildren as alien and unrequited as that one gasp, one moment of asptrat100 for 1nt1macy. And afterwards, there are always the dishes. •••

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She knows her family has given her muscles, an inheritance profoundly useful now, ,vhen muscles help her through the rough spots. She can't rely on being ladylike anymore, it won't open doors or get her tire changed, or even give her any answers to the questions that lurk around the back door of history. This is a new binary: muscle and tongue; tongue and muscle. In the old days, there was only muscle, and that was someone else's, a man's. Muscles were off-limits, off-duty for women. And yet she grows them, easily, bending over a shovel or a pitchfork, wielding a hoe and a rake, serious, required work, not the easy jobs of rounding up cows and collecting eggs, running errands, messages from one part of the farm to the other. Chores. Clean the cow barn, clean the pig pens, shovel the chop from the truck into the bin. Her arms and legs ache, her back clenches itself under her shoulders. Separate the milk. Lifting the full pails shoulder high, so heavy; so full, h aving to be careful not to spill the rich thick milk full of cream. And yet, muscles or not, she does, spills enough to catch hell and has to clean it all up, then trudges up the hill to the house and starts on supper because her n1other is ironing, peels potatoes and fries sausages, and boils carrots, and sets the table and then the men come in and sit down and say they're hungry, they've been working so hard, and she serves the food .and can hardly lift her fork to her mouth at her corner of the family table, and they eat and eat, and shove back their chairs and stretch out their legs while she steps over them to clear the dir ty dishes. Lucky for her, dishes never need much muscle. They hone tongue, and it is there, standing at the piled sink belo,v the window that looks out on the road, that she begins to think of tongue, its wonderful freedom within the mouth, and ho·w it cannot ache the way muscles do. And she begins to use it, her tongue, her dutiful double, her immigrant prairie tongue. Her older brother carries the heavy pails of chop fro1n granary to barn, and walking behind him, she hears the wonderfully strange and innovative ribbon of words that accompany his exertion. "Those are swears," she says to him. "R'1ght," he says. "I'm swearing. · " "Why?" "Cause it's hard work and I hate doing it." Muscle and tongue, stretching themselves into new strength, and maybe her muscles aren't as good as his, but her tongue is better, she knows that. Tongue the most flexible muscle. Replacing the dishes. • •• Does this go beyond that family, to the west, to prairie and sky and the infinite weath~r? The ,vest as a sprawl of desire, as a gesture of abnegation, a demand for suffermg/sufferance? She can't get anywhere out here unless she suffers, and t he west comes between the members of a fan1ily; filters through their conjunction like the fine dust of a sumn1er storm, the grainy snow of blizzards. 1'he farm family articulated to the agricultural economy? Petit-bourgeous struc~re? I-Iot'.s_ehold and enterprise under the unrelenting eye of the prairie sky? The mseparab1hty of property from s11bsistence, ofweather from pleasure? Of family from

284 / Gendered Intersections

place'. She is sure the~re are no families in eastern Canada, not like the ones she knows, choking, an_d r~gress1ve. They are a different sort, polite and well-bred, with plenty of spa~e for circling, f?r ~tretching the rope attached to ankles. They call each other darling,-~ word he~ fatru!y w~uld choke on. "You," her parents say; or "1-ley" ,or 1s that family an 1mn11grant delineation? All western families immigrant: if you don t come from the east you come from farther away, a boat load and a train ride acr?ss the _country away. The western family as transplanted organism, a regressive trait. Con111~g ou~ of the closet. The place to dare family is in the west, a specially arranged urut, sm~able to weather and space. The family that prays together stays together; the family that sleeps together snores together; the family that works togetherAnd then, there are still the dishes . ••• To develop her tongue muscle she takes to books. If she cannot talk back, if she has to finish her chores before she can rude in the bush, she comes to rely on books. There is a lot of spade work to be done - this is the period when she digs in the garden and the orchard, in the raspberry canes and the windbreak, plants all those ghastly trees and hoes thetn and waters them and stamps them into the ground. But she develops a method of carrying a pail of water while she holds a book in the other hand, the crook of her arm enabling her to read while she stumbles through her chores. T his earns disapproval. Reading is a leisure activity, something she is supposed to do only for fun; although studying is important, reading is heathenish, slightly unsavoury, unhealthy She wields them both at the same time, alternatively, separately, the spade, the book, the tongue, and the muscle, interchangeable, a slow wearing away of the investment of chores in her life. Her chores are supposed to help the family, contribute to their welfare, teach her discipline, independence, responsibility They teach her weariness, they teach her repetition, they teach her boredom. 'The spade stays in her hands without an answer, it falls if she lets it go. She knows that you only need to dig a ditch for an hour to know what it's like for the rest of your Iife. The book stays in her head, it does not faJ1, but invites another, more words; it is son1ehow entangled with the tongue, while the spade relies on muscles, and although she can do both at the same time, muscle and think, she begins to prefer the book as adjunct to chores. For the first time, she wants more dishes; she can tead while she washes dishes, but she cannot read while she milks cows or shovels chop. Reading, she makes herself invisible. And there are always more dishes. • ••

That family has its own sense of decorum, its own regulations and religion. It runs itself on schedule, on immigrant time, early to bed and early to rise, history has proven that, work first and then relaxation, no stopping until the chores are done, and everybody does his/her share, outside and in, insid~ and out, tractors ~d cows ru:"d gardens and ·water, even the dogs must be useful, ~d 1f the cars catch no ID1Ce th~y die. That family eats at particular ti1ues, the clanty of schedule, they do not dnnk _or dance and they go to the village for n1ail once every two days, to the town for groceries

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics / 285

once a week. That family inhabits the clear destiny of structure, of achievement within environment, the linear narrative at work. An ethic, a myth, a belief beyond religion. Moral philosophy. . . . . . . . That family wades its pilgrim way through the Bible, this 1s the JUst1ficat1on for its relentless schedule, for its indoctrination of the easy-going prairie. From Genesis to Revelation and then all over again. A repeated story, like chores. If she does it often enough, she will never forget how, it will be ingrained on her hands and her back, a tattoo. A rampant and indelible memory, work as evangelism. Which goes only so far. 1'hat family lives next door to - what can't even be called a family - those Stangs. '"fheir story winkled out of them over time. Renters, a bad business. Ownership essential to the marrow. Strangely indolent and happy, they are, on summer days swimming in the slough, in winter sledding. You never saw him, he was working a,vay. And she lay in bed until ten o'clock, that was discovered by the neighbourly intervention of dropping over a dozen eggs. And their suspicious hybridity; which Jeanne (a middle Stang) recited one day in that family's kitchen with a glibness and ease that destroyed all notions of family as nation, even preconceptions of IrishCatholic excess. "Susy is my little sister, but Jackie isn't my sister, she's my dad's, and Tim is my half-brother, and my dad is my step-dad but my mother is my mother, not Jackie's. And Don is Jackie's sister, and so is Clara; not mine, but Matt and Sally are." That family squirn1ed in next-door anguish. The step-family, the second family, the blended family, the melded family, did not yet exist or existed unspoken in the late fifties. And it was worse that they were happy, an outrage such happiness, such cavalier cohabitation. And their kitchen was the worst, being invited in for coffee, and the kitchen table scattered with dishes, crusted and dry, used teabags lumped on the plates like dead ffilCe.

Mrs. Stang -was she Mrs?- flipping her hand, "The girls are supposed to do the dishes. But they never do." There are always more dishes to be done . ••• She wonders if her version is an embittered one, if she has intervened with her own purpose. Purpose and delight. Which subjected her, narrowed her vision, even while she knew the usefulness of spade and muscle, even while they could not contravene both tongue and book. What is the real story? The subjection of girls? Domestic deprivation, economic exploitation? No. Nothing within a family is exploitive if everyone works hard. Raised as a boy; able to tackle anything, drive a tractor, lift heavy pails. But delineated as girl - inside the house is only women's work, arrangements of domesticity. No matter what you do "outside," inside is always women's work, invisible it seem.s to the patriarchy's great lie: within the family women do not work. That dangerous source of revolution will be the moment when work recognizes itself and refuses to be differentiated, when delight and purpose collide, and escape rides the imagination. There are always dishes to be done.

286 / Gendered Intersections

••• . That family - her~, still hers - believed/believe in work, product, professionalism. Too much spare tune and she'd start making up stories, too much imagination affects real work. Creative work is hobby stuff, save it for Sunday afternoons. First the chores, and then the dishes, and then maybe, maybe, she can steal time to read. A ranking of work: physical work, women's work, head work, dream work. Work prevents dangerous thinking, it asks its o,vn questions. And once she's done the choi-es she can start in on the ironing, the beds, the dishes. The hierarchies of work still haunt her. She wanted a pen and she drove a tractor. A cloven life: interior/exterior. Refusing to be a woman who enters smaller and smaller rooms ·until she is crouched on the floor in a corner cupboard. She did the chores, her body stilJ reflects the muscles she made as a child. She came inside and stepped over th e long legs of her brothers who had finished their work outside. She did the dishes, gazing out the window at the open road ""ith her hands in soapsuds. She dreamed a story, the story of what ,vomen want: to escape the family, to invent themselves past its boundaries and its work. To refuse the seduction of the great patriarchy, its actual and figurative incest. She made herself a construction site, and used spade and muscle and purpose to build tongue and book and delight. T he family is a prism/prison. It refracts all selves into fragn1ents. Promising safety, warmth, comfort, it insists on its own dutiful schedule. It lives women down to the numbed level of the work it creates. It families women into that old position of blood and bone and muscle. Does it dare to acknowledge the blended family and the n1erged family and the second family and the homosexual family and the family of friends? So far, no. Its misprision is in its refusal to be subject, to lose hold of its pretended objectivity. If it can do that, subject, it might escape the begat clauses of the Old Testament and live again, renewed and positive. When she was twelve her mother hung a mirror in her room. This may seem a slight occurrence, but in that family, where vanity was frowned upon and there was no money for extra furnishings, the mirror finding its way onto her wall was unusual. Was it because she ,vas a girl, a means to reinforce her "nature''? Was it because her mother hoped the mirror would conduct sex education on her behalf and she wouldn't have to offer any explanations? Was it because the mother wanted her to see the muscles she had made doing chores? There, in that silvery reflection, she I.earned to dance with her double. She forgave herself her gender and the family that she had landed in. She fo rgave her family. She forgave the west. She even forgave the dishes and those endless . hours she spent washing them. Book and spade, tongue and muscle, delight and purpose, can come together if the body and the body's double escape the fa.mily And in the absence of escape, its disappearing act, the fa1nily can re-fashion itself- fluid and proteus_will encompass the new genders and the new blood relatives of contemporary dreaming. •••

There will ahvays be dishes but they need not cloud the mirror of gende~. T hey can dream us past our own devourment: the eating and the eaten western family

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 287

1.

NOTE This piece was first published in Aritha van l-Ierk, 199r, Invisible Ink (crypto-Jictions) (Edmonton: Ne West Press).

REFERENCE Gerstel, Naomi, and Harriet Engel Gross. 1987. "Introduction and Overview" In Families and Work. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

288 / Gendered Intersections

Stories from Field to Table Women in the Global Food System

Deborah Barndt Food History and My Story

As a .child, I crea.ted hideaways with my friends in barns and pastures of the small farming cornn1uruty where l gre,v up. While I played, my mother tended our large garden and canned vegetables for the winter. Each fall, she joined other women around a big caldron in a park, stirring up an enormous communal batch of apple butter over an open fire. Fresh milk came from my friends' cows, and their chickens and pigs often found their way to our table. Today as I visit my old hometown, I find the farms abandoned, the general store boarded up and most townspeople travelling up the road to the cluster of fast food restaurants around the exit of the superhighway that now runs through the fields we once roamed. T he food they eat con1es from unknown origins, though you would probably recognize it as the standard fare that is fast becoming a global homogenized diet. Women still prepare it, the ingredients usually frozen and precut, which they fry or whip up in record speed, responding to our expectation of quick and convenient service. Meanwhile, immense refrigerated trucks whiz by on the adjacent highway, carrying fresh and processed produce frotn southern fields or northern factories to big food retailers and consumers around North America. These foodstuffs also have stories behind them, of women who are central to the planting, picking and packing of fruits and vegetables, to the cutting, cooking and canning in food processing plwts, to the scanning, selling, and serving of food products in supermarkets and restaurants. But these women are usually invisible to us, their stories rarely told. My lifetime, which began as World War II ended, has paralleled the development of the postwar global food system, through the industrialization of agriculture, the dependence on monocultural and chenucalized production and the proliferation of "value-added" highly processed food that increases profits while endangering health. T he increasingly corporatized system is characterized by a "distancing" (Kneen 1993) of production from consumption, the "uniformity" (Shiva 1993) and commercialization of food as market "commodities" (W'mson 1993), an emphasis on efficiency and labour ".flexibility" (Lara 1998) and increasing threats to "ecological and human health" (Griffin 1995). Women are still central to this process but as part of a corporate flexible labour force, who primarily work seasonally and part-time producing and preparing our food in order to feed their families. Food Workers' Stories and the Tomato's Journey

My story is only one, unfolding in a small corner of this increas~gly int~rconnected globe. As the market has moved into the home and women have 1n~reasnigly mov~d out of the ho1ne into the workforce (Reiter 1996), women are playmg other roles 1n Section VI II: Food Work Production and Poetics / 289

NORTH

SOUTH

moving our food from field to table. Let's consider, for example, women workers in two ends of the continental food system, in particular the tomato food chain: a Mexican agribusiness where women plant, prune, harvest, sort and pack tomatoes; and a Canadian supermarket, where wo1nen part-time cashiers punch the tomato's code into the computer and pack it in your bag. In the late 1990s, I followed the journey of a corporate tomato from Mexican field to Canadian table, gathering the stories of the women whose hands move it along the way (Barndt 2002). Their experiences are shaped not only by gender, but by interlocking factors such as class, race/ethnicity, rural/urban contexts and family intergenerational roles.

Santa Rosa Agribuslness: Picking and Packing for the North Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented in 1994, the Mexican economy has become increasingly dependent on exporting agricultural products, given its comparative advantage of easy access to land, sun and cheap labour. In fact, En1paque Santa Rosa, the second largest domestic tomato producer in Mexico, now produces 85 percent for export. It depends on a primarily female labour force, in the fields and greenhouses and particularly in the sorting and packing of tomatoes. Juana1 is one of the more privileged workers, part of a "moving maquila" of skilled workers moved by the company to work in the packing plants: I'm thirty-seven years old now. I've been following the harvests for twentythree years. We are brought from Sinaloa with all expenses paid; the company covers the costs of transport, food and once here, we get a house with a stove, beds and mattresses. Santa Rosa prefers women as packers because, according to the Vice President of Production: "Women can 'see' better than men ... and they treat the product more gently. They can put up with more than men in all aspects: the routine, the monotony. Men are more restless and won't put up with it." This gender ideology does not recognize that women learn to handle food from an early age and will more readily make sacrifices to support their families. Since NAFTA and a subsequent peso crisis, in fact, poor Mexican families require at least five family members '-Vor.king in order to cover basic survival needs (Kopinak 1997). Tomasa, a sixty-eight-year-old fie ld worker, works with her husband Pablo at Santa Rosa. But, like rnost Mexican families, they depend on the migration of their kids al norte: "Two of my sons have gone to work in the US and send money back." Like many n1ral Mexican women, Tomasa works a triple day: as a salaried worker for agribusiness, as the cook and caretaker of her family, and as a subsistence farmer on the family milpa, or cornfield. During a typical workday, she's up before dawn preparing tortillas for lunch and is picked up at 6 a.m. by a truck that delivers her to the

290 / Gendered Intersections

tomato fields by. 7 am · o f grueu·mg work· under a hot sun, rushsng · to ·. · After seven h ours fill h er forty-pat! daily quota, Tomasa returns to her vi1lage and to the fami]y plot to tend t~ the corn, squash _and beans that are the staples in her family's cliet. l-Ier low wa~e (Just over $5 _a day) 1s based on an assumption that she will gro,v her own food , while the plantation tomatoes she picks are rushed to the border for northern consumers.

:U

Reyna, Incligenous farmworker, does not even have the luxury of growing her own food: In Guerrero, we grew our own vegetables at home. But not here." Reflecting an historical racism, Indigenous workers are brought by the company from the p~orer southern states and housed in horrific camps, with makeshift huts and without electricity or water or sewage. While they work in the tomato fields, they must buy their own food, often from company-run stores. Families like Reyna's have often been forced to migrate because their land has become wasted by intensive agrochemical use and/or because they have become indebted by the high costs of fertilizers promoted by industrial agriculture. W hile paid the same, they barely eke out a living as they 1nove from harvest to harvest. Women carry their babies on their backs as they work (both exposed to pesticides) and bear the brunt of the housework and ill health engendered by poor living conditions. While Juana, Tomasa and Reyna reflect some of the diversity among women agricultural workers, they play a common role as the flexible labour of global food producers, as they struggle to feed their families through work that ultin1ately feeds ours.

Loblaws Supermarket: Fast and Friendly Cashiers At the consumption end of the tomato chain, women cashiers are "on the front line," so to speak, as their jobs have been transformed by similar corporate labour strategies and new technologies. While the flexibility of Mexican field workers is dependent on agricultural cycles, the flexibility of Canadian service workers is determined by consumer demand and the corporate drive for profit in the name of efficiency. At my neighbourhood Loblaws, for example, there are now only two full-time cashiers, with about fifty part-timers - all wo1nen. In the rnid-r99os, Loblaws' negotiations with United Food and Commercial Workc1·s led to a two-tiered wage structure, buyouts and an elimination of full -time jobs. While the union negotiated wage freezes for current employees, they agreed to lower ceilings for new hires (for part-timers from $15/hour to $12.50). The proliferation of part-time ~rork is a trend in the service sector, exempting managers from paying certain benefits and allowing them to respond to "just-in-time production," by rationalizing schedules accorcling to demand. Companies like Loblaws justify these cutbacks by arguing that the large nonunionized cliscount stores (No Frills, Costco) have created crippling competition (with $9/hour wages). Cashiers usually fall into one of two categories: older women like Marissa, who started a part-time job twenty-five years ago and kept the job to have more time for her children, and students like Carol/ who sees retail work as te111porary job to pay her way through law school. Both, however, are P,:essure~, to be "f~st ~d friendly" a~d to deal politely with customers (assumed to be a natural womens skill) as the pubhc

Section VIII : Food Work Production and Poetics I 291

face of the business, while also scanning and bagging items accurately and efficiently. T'he same computer technology that controls inventory also monitors cashiers' productivity, a kind of "all-seeing eye," ensuring that they meet their scanning quota of five hundred items per hour. And if agrochemicals endanger Mexican fieldworkers' health, these new technologies affect Canadian cashiers, generating both physical and emotional stress (Nlenzies 1996). With seniority, Marissa sets her own schedule, while more recently hired Carol may be called in at the unpopular times, such as evenings or weekends. Marissa chooses to work when her former husband can take her daughters: "I work three weekends out of four, which Loblaws loves because they've got a senior girl for their busiest period and it works out for me because I'm not paying for daycare." But this "choice" is based on the fact that neither employers nor the state provide adequate childcare for working parents. And worn.en's wages and working conditions still often assume a working husband who can also help out at home. Despite efforts by the women's movement to address housework, pay inequity and childcare issues, working women averaged 28.7 hours domestic labour per \veek in 1998, 12 hours a week more than men (Statistics Canada 2002). Cashiers like Marissa are on a singlemom express, juggling a part-time job with unpaid domestic labour as well as work in the informal economy. Against tremendous odds, however, women are organizing.

Food Activism: Women Creating Alternatives The stories above have been framed by two primary axes -production/consumption and biodiversity/cultural diversity - and by two secondary axes - work/technology and health/environment. The relationship between production and consumption is reflected in the two contexts, with Mexicans Tomasa and Reyna representing the increasing role of southern countries in producing food for export, while Marissa, the Canadian supermarket cashier, symbolizes the consumption end of the chain in the north. This global food system threatens at the same time the biodiversity of the planet and the cultural diversity of peoples' growing and eating practices. Women's work within this system has been transformed by technology, and their personal health as "vell as environmental health have been endangered. While women workers in the global food system, represented by two ends of the continental tomato chain, are impacted by all of these dynamics, they are also engaged in resistance, both personal CulturoI and collective, organizational Diversity and international. In response to t he distancing between production and conTechnology sumption, diverse strategies are addressing this separation Production we all experience from the 292 I Gendered Intersections

sources of the food we eat. Women are key leaders in local alternatives such as Metro Toronto's FoodSh~re, ~or example, promoting urban agriculture and exchanges of s~eds among new un:nugrants, neighbourhood food box distribution and community kitchens (Barndt 1999), reconnecting production to consun1ption . . Thr~atened by the loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity resulting from the un1~ornuty of gl~bal food production, Indigenous populations have been defending their o~n genetic reso~rces and more sustainable growing practices. A Mapuche woman 1n southern Chile, part of the He1nispheric Indigenous Women's Network, learned about the threats to biodiversity of monoculturaJ production from Nettie Wieb, Canadian farmer/activist and a founde r of Via Campesina (an international network of peasant and Indigenous organizations). She was encouraged to keep preserving the rich variety of potato plants and has organized fairs to promote biodiversity, as well as to exchange seeds and recipes. Relating to the shifts in work and technology, corporate flexible labour strategies have come under attack for creating job insecurity among women part-time food workers and for wreaking havoc on family eating practices. In the Toronto area, the newly formed Organization of Contingent Workers, led by women, is addressing this issue. Finally, the impact of the global food system on environment and health has been a major concern of women, who are key leaders in the environmental movement and in projects promoting ecological and holistic health. The Popular Health Group along with Friends of t he Earth in Sayula, Mexico, have worked primarily with Indigenous women to improve the living conditions of t he migrant labour camps of the tomato workers and to address poverty as a key determinant in health. In the North, ecofeminists suggest an important relationship between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of the environment, implying that perhaps women workers and tomatoes are connected after all - as commodities in a corporate food system which is being contested locally, regionally and globally. These stories of resistance are often even less visible than the stories of women's experiences as food workers. Perhaps this suggests another research process: seek out signs of hope among your family and community members, through local organizations and international networks. Or better yet, join or start such an initiative. NOTES r. 2.

The quotations in this section are from interviews carried out in Sayu1a, Mexico, in December 1996. The quotations in chis section are from interviews carried out in Toronto, May 1997.

REFERENCES Barndt, Deborah. 2002. Tangled Routes: Women, W0rk, and Globaliz(ltion on the Tomato Trail. Aurora ON: Garamond Press. Barndt, Deborah (ed). 1999. Women \florking the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food, and Glob11liz11tion. Toronto: Sumach Press. . Griffin, Susan. 1995. The Eros ofEveryday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender, and Society. Nev; York: Doubleday. . . r. .. m [and to Mouth· Understanding the Food System, Second Helping To· K necn, B· rews t er. 1993 . n ,0 _, ronto: NC Press. . Kopinak, Kathy. 1997. Desert Capitczlism: \Vhat a,·e the Maquiladoras.? MontreaJ: Black Rose.

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 293

Lara, Sara. 1998. Nuevas Experiencias Productivas y Nuevas Formas de Organizacion Flexible de! Trabajo en laAgricultura Mexicana. Mexico City: Pablos. Menzies, Heather. 1996. Wbose Brave New \Vor/d? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between the Lines. Reiter, Ester. 1996. Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer. Kingston: McGillQueen's University Press. Shiva, Vandana. 1993. Monocultures of the Mind· Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. London: Zed Books. Statistics Canada. 2002. "People and Families." Available at . Winson, Anthony 1993. The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development ofthe Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada. Toronto: Garamond.

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Breastfeeding at Night1 Susan Eisenberg I wouldn't mind so much being your all-night cafe, if after lingering over your drink you went politely off to bed. It's those nights when you nurse one drink, then order another looking so offended your lips in tragic pout when I suggest you've had enough that make me consider shutting the bar down altogether. NOTE r.

Reprint fro1n Susan Thames and Marin Gazzaniga (eds.), 1995, The Breast: An Anthology (n.p.: Global City Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.

section VIII : Food Work Production and Poetics/ 295

The Newfoundland Fishery "No Place for a Woman?"

Nicole Gerarda Power' Since the arrival of white European settlers, the Newfoundland fishery has been based on a gendered division of labour that relegates women to processing and reproductive ,vork and assigns men to harvesting work (Porter 1993: 43- 48, 51). Moreover, the state's development and modernization initiatives have actively reinforced this labour pattern through the use of a conceptual framework that presumes separate spheres. After Newfoundland joi ned the Canadian confederation, women were encouraged, partly through the extension of the welfare state, to retreat from shore-based processing of salted, sun dried cod and to focus on being "good" mothers, wives and consumers, as defined by dominant ideology (Neis 1993: 195, 201; Wright 199s: 140-41). Certain fisheries-related jobs remained available to young, unmarried women, but these jobs were deemed temporary at best (Wright 1995: 141). Nevertheless, as men's opportunities for employment located further from home and with a history of poverty, women crossed these arbitrary divides and women's paid work was hardly temporary (McGrath et al. 1995: 22; Neis 1993: 197; Wright 1995: 140). Consequently, in addition to their indirect, often unpaid fisheries work, such as bookkeeping for fisher husbands, bearing and rearing of children, and other maintenance work within fishing households, women have held direct, paid jobs in harvesting and processing. In fact, by the early 1990s women filled approximately 60 percent of the jobs in the processing sector (llowe 1991: 18). During the 1990s the state was forced to deal with resource degradation and associated economic ramifications. It did so by imposing moratoria on over-fished stocks, leaving approximately 28,000 people out of work (Neis et al. 2001: 19), and by focusing on reducing debt and social spending and expanding export production. Adjustment initiatives, including financial aid, offered to encourage further withdrawal from the fishery, and increased regulation of access and entry reflect the dominant view that the fishery needs downsizing and that years of social spending had inflated the number of people dependent on the fishery (Neis and Williams J997: 48). However, in the context of fiscal restraint, strict eligibility requirements to financial adjustment packages disqualified many of those affected, while changes to Employment Insurance reduced access to benefits and training (ibid.: 51- 54). The gendered and hierarchical divisions of Jabour within households and the fishery have mediated the effects of the collapsing ecological and structural bases of Newfoundland's modernized fishery on the lives of fisheries-dependent peoples (Neis et al. 2001: 17- 19). Women's experiences of development, restructuring and environmental crisis reflect gender-based struggles related to meaning and n1aterial distribution (Connelly, Li, MacDonald and Parpart 2000). In this chapter I examine the impact of development processes and economic restructuring on fe1nale processing workers in Newfoundland fishing villages. l draw on interviews conducted between

296 I Gendered Intersections

1 995

and 1 998 with fifty-eight men and thirty-nine women from the Bonavista-11-inity Bay region in Northeast Newfoundland.2

Women's Work in a Developing Fishery ~ithin processing, wo~en have been over-represented in jobs located on the produc~1on flo_o~, such as packing, as well as in office-based clerical work. Women's processing pos1t1ons have tended to be lo~rer paying, less secure, more heavily supervised and more monotonous than those occupied by men (Rowe 1991: 15, r8). These jobs have also been associated with a host of work-related injuries (Neis and Williams 1993: 43?o). In co~trast, men are more likely to fill varied, indirect jobs in processing (such as 1n marketing and transportation), which entail skills that are transferable to other industries. When men fill direct processing jobs, they tend to be fish cutters, a high status and highly paid position (Rowe 1991: 6-7, 18). In fact, in this case study the men and women interviewed distinguished men's plant work from women's in terms of perceived required skill, strength or other so-called masculine attributes. Despite these conditions, women processors reported a sense of work satisfaction, in part because the social aspects offered a temporary escape from their mundane and unpaid domestic and caring responsibilities. Women in this study interpreted the availability of shift work at the plant as a flexible option, which made possible the successful execution of both paid and unpaid work. Even seasonal factory jobs, another "flexible" option, when co1nbined with Employment Insurance earnings, provided good .incomes for women relative to other jobs considered gender appropriate. The results, however, were not so flexible, namely a double day, interrupted careers, lower seniority status and reduced incomes. Without doubt, women's sense of work satisfaction was also linked to pride and status attached to earning wages. At the san1e time, the ideological and material relegation of responsibility for domestic and caring work to women allowed both men and women to interpret women's entry into paid labour as secondary, temporary or an extension of domestic responsibilities, despite the fact that women had lengthy work histories and their wages were essential for household survival. Women's Work in a Time of Adjustment

Given women's positions in fishery-dependent economies and households, they have been profoundly affected by the state's neoliberal approach to restructuring and adjustment. Like men, women lost jobs and valuable incomes as a result of stateimposed moratoria. Women have been particularly vulnerable as there have been greater reductions in processing than harvesting (Neis et al. 2oor: 40). Yet, displaced women workers have reaped fev,er benefits from adjustment packages, qualifying for lower incomes for shorter periods than men (W"illiams 1996: 21-30) and, many of the gains made by women in the years before the moratoria have been n~1llified. Wom~n were less likely than men to keep or acquire the few fishery-related Jobs available 1n communities, in part because seniority lists ignore women's later entrance into processing work and their increased likehl1ood of disruptions in work histories due to household and childcare responsibilities. In so1ne cases, male plant workers have displaced women with less seniority by taking up traditionall~ female positio~s, such as .in crab processing. Assumptions about the gender appropnateness of certain work

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 297

have also advantaged men by precluding wo1nen from jobs in renovation and re_pair ~t local plants. Although a failure to earn money has implications for the gender 1?ent1ties of both men and women, the already skewed positions of men and women m our societv, and with.in the fishery mean that the impact on status and life-chances must be greater for women. Displaced women fishery workers are also less likely than men to find alternative work (Neis et al. 2001: 84-86; Robinson 1995: 170- 71). The official assumption that women are unskilled, secondary earners has supported the primary focus on men. The content and design of adjustment and retraining programs also failed to account for women's unpaid domestic and childcare responsibilities. Such constraints on women's time and energy, combined with reduced household incomes, make programs unfeasible if ch.ildcare must be purchased. In addition, beliefs about mothering limited women's options. Fathers were free to leave their families and communities to take part in retraining programs or find alternative work. Conversely, the same behaviour by women often elicited accusations of bad mothering. Not only have women's domestic and caring responsibilities impacted their ability to take advantage of or qualify for state initiatives, gendered by design, but these initiatives have placed new and exaggerated pressures on women. Shrinking household budgets due to moratoria, unemployment and underemployment and reduced incomes have increased anxiety levels among and heightened burdens for women who have had to reorganize household budgets and cope with less. Women have had to spend more time and effort on repair and upkeep work, including mending clothing, and on developing strategies to stretch household funds and food over longer periods. The revival of growing and gathering food and raising animals for subsistence is another way that fishery people have been coping. No matter how adept at subsistence living families 1nay be, the realities of a cash economy have meant that any and all wages brought into the household take on greater importance. In some circumstances, women became sole breadwinners. However, the wage gap substantially reduces women's potential incomes compared with men's. At the same time, the increased relative importance of women's wages in the context of an overall decrease in cash earnings for the household weakened male breadwinning roles. Men reportedly increased their participation in domestic and caring work, which in some cases lightened the workloads of women. However, this participation tended to increase only slightly and was explained away by men and women as a response to boredom and as a short-term arrangement. Alternatively, changes in men's work gave women another job to do, namely managing their husband's time, which heightened their workloads (also see Davis 1993). Increased "help" frequently required supervision as women had high standards and judged men's performance unfavourably. In response, women assigned simple household tasks to men or encouraged them to participate in activities outside the home, even if this meant diverting money fron1 an already strained household budget. Perpetuation of Traditional Gender Divisions

Despite the dominant gender ideology premised on separate spheres, it is clear in the fishery case that women and men have crossed established gender boundaries. Women worked for pay in fish plants and men helped with domestic and caring work as they

298 / Gendered Intersections

~pent more time. at home. However, these behaviours have not undermined this ~deology or mearun?~ related to work. In fact, local interpretations of these behaviours and the real-hfe opportunities for women and men have reinforced dominant gender ideology and relations. D~spite the fact th~t the majority of workers in the processing sector in the years pre~eding the m_o raton~ _were women and that they worked in a sex-segregated environment, filling positions deemed effeminate for men, local discourse assessed the plant as masculine, dirty, smelly and "no place for a woman. "3 In fact, female bodies lose all culturally constructed traces of femininity under hair-nets, overcoats and rubber boots. Furtherm.ore, a history of patriarchal customs and state policies has reinforced the assun1ption that the fishery, including the processing sector, is male (Neis 1993). Younger women reported having aspirations and sometimes the necessary qualifications for other, cleaner positions, such as clerical work. I-Iowever, non-fishery job opportunities were rare and economic imperatives forced ,vomen into the processing sector. To compensate for this subversion of dominant gender ideology, local women, like women working in other masculine environments (see Munk-Madsen 2000), actively found ways to demonstrate femininity outside the work environment. Aware of their real-life material constraints to gain power and the relative lack of opportunities to acquire a sense of feminine identity in fishery work, women have actively reconfirmed the domestic realm as a feininine space, which in turn has conferred to them limited control, as well as femininity. Of course, 1nanaging the household in a conte:x:t of poverty is likely experienced as a source of stress rather than control. The intersection of ideology and materialism has fashioned women's responsibilities for and psychological investment in domestic and caring work in spite of working outside the home for pay. In a context of displacement, this entrenched pattern n1ediated their responses to men's increased presence at home, further impeding any real move towards a truly equal distribution of housework. Women's efforts to maintain the status quo may reflect a concern for the masculine identities of men folk, threatened by job loss, and can thus be understood as an extension of their gender-appropriate eating role. In other words, women under-communicated their dependence on the fishery and over-com1nunicated their connections to the household to prove their feminin ity, divert accusations of insolence and protect their linlited control over their sphere. As such, they have been able to maintain a quasi-sense of continuity in their lives in a context of turmoil. Conclusion

A history of male-centred develop1nent of Newfoundland's fishery and, more recently, the iniposition of gendered adjustment policies have increased \vome~s i?en~illcatio_n with the household by devaluing their paid and unpaid work, eltn11nat1ng their options and intensifying workloads. During the p~riod }n _whic~ the fis~ery_ \vas undergoing modernization, women were stre~ed 1nto ~uttable pr?cess1ng Jobs, based 00 dominant beliefs about gender-appropnate behavtour. These Jobs tended to be less prestigious and accrued fewer rewards than me~'s fishery~related work. At ~he same time women remained responsible for domestic and childcare work, which constrained their work opportunities and contributed to the double day. Since the

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 299

imposition of moratoria in the early 1990s, women's lower s~a~us in th~ fishery and dominant gender ideology have translated into reduced retra1n1ng and 1ncome-ea~ning options and increased workloads at home, as they must manage households with less money as well as the time and emotions of men folk. In essence, women are compelled to return to the home through inadequate adjustment measures, cuts in social spending on healthcare and exclusionary changes in En1ployment Insurance. Connelly (1998: 147) argues that the neoliberal agenda transfers the "costs and workload from the paid workforce to the unpaid household economy and onto the shoulders of women where it can not be seen" and relies on a gendered division of Jabour that forces women to "underwrite current policies with their low paid and unpaid labour." This situation is not unique to Newfoundland. The same formula for development and restructuring is espoused by powerful transnational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and imposed on national economies in the South and North. Around the world, in developing and overdeveloped regions, women have been excluded from economic policy- and decision-making processes. There is increasingly a global imposition of both a gender ideology, which makes women prin1arily responsible for unpaid, low-paying and reproductive work, and an economic ideology that ignores or devalues this work yet relies heavily on the gendered division of labour in which it is performed. The precise consequences of neoliberal policies on women and men are mediated by national and regional contexts of development. One thing is clear. Sustainable communities and fair economic organization cannot be built from approaches that rely on or reproduce gender inequality in terms of ideas or practices, meanings or resources. 1.

2.

3.

NOTES I would like to thank C. Lesley Biggs, Pamela J. Downe and Robin Whitaker for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. A revised version of this chapter is published by the Institute of Social and Economic Research of Memorial University of Newfoundland. These intervie,vs were administered for the Eco-Research Project at Memorial University and the author's MA and PhD degrees, ,vhlch were ftnancially supported by the EcoResearch Project and the Rothermere Fellowship respectively. Thjs is a quote from an interview I conducted with a retired fisher.

REFERENCES Connelly, M.P 1998. "Gender Matters: Restructuring and Adjustment, South and North." In D.Ii. Currie, N. Gayle and P. Gurstein (eds.), Learning to Write: Women~ Studies in Development. Vancouver: Collective Press. Connelly; M.P, T.M. Li, M. MacDonald and J.L. Parpart. 2000. "Feminism and Development: Theoretical Perspectives." InJ.L. Parpart, M.P ConueUy and V.E. Barriteau (eds.), Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. Davis, D.L. 1993. "When Men Become 'Women': Gender Antagonism and the Changing Sexual Geography of Work in Newfoundland." Sex Roles 29, 7/8. McGrath, C., B. Neis and M . Porter. 1995. "Women, the Migratory Fishery and Settlement." In C. McGrath, B. Neis and M. Porter (eds.), Their Lives and Times: Women in Newfoundlandand Labrador,A Collage. St. John's: Killick Press. Munk-Madse~, ~- 2000. "W;fe ~he J?eckh~nd; Husband the Skipper: Authority and Dignity . among F1sh1ng Couples. Womens Sturltes International 23, 3. Neis, B. 1 993· "From 'Shipped Girls' to 'Brides of the State': The Transition from Familial to 300 I Gendered Intersections

So~ial Patriarchy in the NewfoundJa.nd Fishing Industry." Canadian Journal of Regional Science 16, 2. Neis, B., B. Grzetic and M. Pidgeon. 2001. From Fishplant to Nickel Smelter: Health Determinants and the Health of Newfoundland's Women Fish and Shellfish Processors in an Environment of Restructuring. Research Report. St. John's: Me1norial University of NewfoundJa.nd. Available at . Neis, B., and S. Williams. r997. "The New Right, Gender and the Fisheries Crisis: Local and Global Dimensions." Atlantis 21, 2. _ _. 1993. Occupational Stress and Repetitive Strain Injuries: Research Review and Pilot Stud_y. St. John's: Institute of Social and Econo1nic Research of Metnorial University of Newfoundland. Porter, 1v1. 1993. Place and Persistence in the Lives ofNewfoundland Women. Aldershot: Ave bury. Robinson,]. 1995. "Women and Fish Plant Closure: A Case ofTrepassey, Newfoundland." Io C. McGrath, B. Neis and M. Porter (eds.), Their Lives and Times: Women in Newfoundland and Labrador, A Collage. St. John's: Killick Press. Rowe, A. 1991. Effect ofthe Crisis in the Newfoundland Fishery on Women Who Work in the Industry. St. John's: Women's Policy Office, Government of NewfoundJand and Labrador. Williams, S. 1996. Our Lives are at Stake: Women and the Fishery Crisis in Newfoundland and Labrador. St.John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Wright, M. 1995. "Women, Men and the Modern Fishery: Images of Gender in Government Plans for the Canadian Atlantic Fisheries." In C. McGrath, B. Neis and M. Porter (eds.), Their Lives and Times: Wo1nen in Newfoundland and Labrador, A Collage. St. John's: Killick Press.

section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 301

Cheerleader Practice1 Susan Ioannou Girls so deliciously packed deserve a Cordon Bleu ribbon ankles like T-bones, calves that would rate Grade A, hams fully cured, short ribs prime, plump chicken breasts - what delicatessens of flesh!

A hundred male eyes gorge every Monday, one hour's feast ,vorth a week going hungry.

1.

NOTE Reprint from Margaret Atwood (ed.), 19871 The CanLit Foodbook: From Pen to Palate: A Collection of Tasty Literary Fare (Toronto: Totem Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

302 / Gendered Intersections

Hunger1 Carrie Smith My heart swallows hunger every day. Recklessly convincing myself that it's not hunger, . you 're JUSt nervous. My heart tells me I'll die if I don't get better, my mind tells me I can hold on a while longer. More pounds lost, more thoughts surface. Do I need to Lose those fe"v pounds, or am I just stuffing hurtful emotions as my nourishment? I'm spiraling downwards. Becoming someone who is out of reach to save, or even help. I long for a magic cure. reality speaks, only you can save yourself1 you're the cure. NOTE 1.

Reprint from Azmjna N. Ladha, 2003, Re-Righting Rertlity: Young Women 011 their Sea,·ch for Se!f 0fancouver: FREDA). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Section VIII: Food Work Production and Poetics/ 303

I Eat Kids: Yum Yum !1 Dennis Lee A child went out one day. She only went to play. A mighty monster came along And sang its might monster song: I EAT KIDS YUM YUM! I STUFF THEM DOWN MY TUM. I ONLY LEAVE THE TEETH AND CLOTHES. (I ESPECIALLY LIKE THE TOES.) The child was not amused. She stood there and refused. Then with a skip and a little twirl She sang the song of a hungry girl: "I EAT MONSTERS BURP! THEY MAKE ME SQUEAL AND SLURP IT'S TIME TO CHOMP AND TAKE A CHEW AND WHAT I'LL CHEW IS YOU!'' The monster ran like that! It didn't stop to chat. (The child went skipping home again And ate her brother's model train.) r.

NOTE Dennis Lee, 1987, "I Eat Kids: Yum Yum!" Garbage Delight (Toronto: Key Porter Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

304 / Gendered Intersections

Section lX

SPIRITUALITY AND PHYSICALITY Pamela J. Downe When I fi rst ~egan t~aching in women's and gender studies I would ask students why they enrolled 1n the tntroductory course and what they hoped to learn from it. One student, who I vividly recall being enthusiastic and intelligent, replied, "I am in this course because I hope it will appeal to my heart as well as my head." She went on co explain that while other courses ~,ere intellectually stimulating, she was hoping co find material that would be "spiritually satisfying" as well. On one level .I could certainly understand her point; it is one thing to be interested in a topic but quite another to feel passionately about it. At a deeper level, though, she was describing a separation of emotion and intellect that I find quite perplexing, even troubling. Although distinctions are commonly made between the head and heart, as well as mind and body, I have not personally experienced these aspects of humanity as d ichotomous or oppositional. Nor have I been convinced by the academic literature chat the separations an1ong mind (that with which we conceptualize the world around us), body (our biological being) and emotion (the irreducible qualities of our personalities, often equated with "spirit" or "soul,'' that mediate between body and mind) are complete. In this section of the book, we bring together chapters that tell us something about t he spirit, mind and body and the connections among them. There are many origins of the idea that humans possess a spirit or soul as well as a mind and that these are somehow separate and distinct from the biological body. Hippocrates, known as the philosopher father of ''modern medicine'' and for whom the Hippocratic Oath of Care is named, wrote definitively in 400 BCE that spiritual beliefs in magic or gods should not be applied to the study and treatment of the human body. Only "charlatans" and '(magi" (religious leaders) engage in this sort of irrational thinking, I-Iippocrates argued, and he called on his students to challenge such irrationality by medically treating only that which is observable to the trained practitioner. Although this set the groundwork for the mind/body divide that characterizes our present-day studies of religion and health, Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-1-Iughes (1996: 47) argue that it was the sixteenth-century writings of mathematician-philosopher Rene Descartes that most clearly formulated the ideas that are the immediate precursors of contemporary beliefs about mind and body According to Descartes, a devout Catholic, the human mind is derived fro1n but elevated above the human body, as decreed by God. By viewing the mind as separate from the body - a view known as the Cartesian dualism - a rigorous and objective examination of nature, including the human body, is therefore possible. Many religious and medical theories today are still very much caught by t~is idea ?ut they are increasingly ~et with strong opposition. Gender figures prorrunently tn arguments for and against maintaining a mind/body dichotomy. Morny Joy's chapter, "It All Began with Eve," describes how some readings of Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 305

Christian doctrine portray women's bodies to be contaminat_ing to sp~i~al puri~ sources of evil, weakness and, certainly in Eve's case, temptation. In reltgtons dorrunated by beliefs in male gods for whom masculinized wars are fou~ht, f~minine bodies are deemed to be "different" and disruptive. Although celebrations tn honour of a girl's first menstruation are common in some religious and cultural ~ommunities, they are rejected within most Christian traditions be~ause of the belief that 1nen~~al blood represents a divine "curse" and must be hidden. Of course, some Chnst1an women rise above their bodily limitations and a few ascend to sainthood, but the spiritual payoffs are harder for those in the polluted bodies to attain. Louise Halfe's poem offers a story of an Aboriginal woman asking the Pope for forgiveness because she believes she has sinned by inciting her husband to violence, begrudging the disparities between her life and that of the moniyas (white man), and desiring love and affection. I first encountered this poem ,vhen Louise did a reading of it, and I was taken by the way that she donned a Cree accent to punctuate each stanza with a tone best described as sad defiance. The words express reverence to the chastizing priest after she is beaten by her husband - ''da priest said I must of done someding wrong and I deserve it cuz woman is 'uppose to listen to man'' - but there is an underlying sense of disbelief as well. This may not he a disbelief in the tenets of Christianity but in the hierarchical way in which the speaker, as an Aboriginal woman, is set apart as the sinner. Ivan Kalmar also questions the way he, as a Jewish man, is set apart and defined as different in a predominantly Christian country. BeingJewish, he argues, involves more than Judaism; it is "a culture, an ethnic identity, a shared history." Christianity is also a way of life that extends beyond worship, but because it is the dominant way of life we are often blinded to its impact, taking it as the unquestioned norm. Have you heard any jokes lately about "Christian Canadian princesses" or '½.nglican mothers"? Probably not. Yet1 as Kalmar points out, stereotyping and mocking ''Jewish American princesses" and ''Jewish mothers" is quite common because they are seen as different and abnormal. Except for these nvo examples of misogyny, Kalmar's description of religious othering is gender-neutral and it would be interesting to consider the ways in which women's religious otherness is targeted more than men's. These three opening chapters illustrate how religious beliefs collide with the material realities of life, and the distinction benveen the spiritual and physical aspects of life does not stay consistently clear. The gender-based othering that occurs in some religious thought and liturgy does not characterize all spiritually based practice. Morny Joy's chapter discusses Goddess traditions, in which the divine :is not viewed as transcendent or authoritarian but participatory, thus allowing women to position themselves equally with each other despite their bodily states. Supporting the work of feminist theologians like Charlotte Caron (1993) and Johanna Stuckey (2005),Joy also argues that the spirit/body divide is challenged by son1e Christian Liberation theologies that view Christ as a figure who brought the idea of moral justice, including gender-based justice, to the world. Within these burgeoning theological traditions, injustice done to the body is sin1ultaneously and equally an injustice to the soul, as if they are one and the same. And across cultures and throughout time, women's bodies have been more vulnerable to injustice. Tereigh Ewert-Bauer's n1emories of childhood sexual assault describe this vulner306 I Gendered Intersections

ability . .: 11 expenence · . very well. Over half of all C anadi an women Wu at least one act of physical ~r sexual assault in their lifetime and young won1en appear to face the greatest risks (S~mnybrook and Women's CoUege Health Sciences Centre 2003). As Ewert-Bauer ~01~nantly demonstrates, stories of violence are complex because they rarely ~fold m linear ways. There is a belief that violence starts suddenly, escalates progressively and ends abruptly (Alexander, LaRosa and Bader 2001). I-Iowever, childhood sexual abuse, l~ke ~dult partne~ abuse, is usually not experienced this way. There are often ~agu~ b~g1nrnngs, unpredictable assaults and mental escapes, which in the hands of d1sbeliev1ng therapists, police officers or lawyers beco1ne evidence of falsification. Ewert-Bauer demonstrates how children subjected to repeated abuse struggle to make sense of what is happening to them, drawing impersonal clinical explanations into the fanciful and fictional stories that engage young minds. But as Lock and Scheper-Hughes (1996: 44) note, at some point, "flights of fancy come crashing down in the face of... anguish and pain." When such a crash occurs, those affected by violence may find themselves in a medical system concerned only with the physical effects of injury, not the ensuing psychological or emotional effects of trauma. In addition to being ill-equipped to deal with the unobservable pains of injury and illness, many healthcare systems do not adequately appreciate how gender affects illness and injury in children or adults. When gender is taken into serious consideration (as it increasingly is in Canada), a "one-size fits all" approach is adopted, and differences in ability, race, cultural background, sexuality and class are frequently overlooked even though they have been shown to have in1portant effects on wellbeing (Health Canada 2002). Women are therefore likely to experience having their particular concerns ignored, misdiagnosed or dismissed. Cardiovascular disease provides a very good example. Although 20 percent of women between the ages of fortyfive and sixty-five have some form of heart disease and have a greater chance 6f dying of it than any other ailn1ent, including breast cancer, cardiovascular disease is still seen primarily as a "n1an's disease" (Riley-Giomariso 2001: 229). The symptoms of one of the most dangerous forms of heart disease, coronary artery disease, actually differ between men and women. Men are more likely to experience crushing chest pain and shortness of breath while women are more likely to have a burning sensation in the central chest area (son1etimes mjsdiagnosed as indigestion), shoulder and ar1n pain as well as a dull ache in the breast bone or jaw. Despite these important differences, men's sympto1ns are routinely profiled more prominently in medical texts and public education campaigns, while women's gender-specific symptoms are downplayed or ignored altogether. Marian Condon (2001) argues that this is indicative of the androcentrism in the healthcare syste1n, where 1nen's experiences are taken as the definitive norm against which all other expressions of ill-health are judged. In the case of cardiovascular disease, this has dire consequences. Because their symptoms are not as well known and incorrect self-diagnoses are often made, women tend to delay seeking medical attention and are therefore more likely than men to suffer long-term . and preventable complications from heart di_sease (M?sca et al. 2000). The one area in health research and medical practice where women have rece1Ved inordinate attention is reproduction. In fact, as Gina Feldb~rg notes ~ her c~;pter, the field of "women's health" has historically been charactenzed by a focus on naval to knees." Women's biology is seen primarily in relation to reproduction while nonSection IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 307

reproductive aspects of their physiology are 1nistakenly described as _being no. dif~erent from 1,11en's. Women, therefore, become reduced to reproduct1ve functioning. Even in the nineteenth century; when women were described by European and American scientists and medical practitioners as being innately sickly and weak, the focus was on the reproductive organs and functions: "Puberty was seen as a 'crisis' .... Menstruation - or the lack of it - was regarded as pathological throughout a woman's life.... A pregnant woman was indisposed and doctors campaigned against the practice of midwifery on the grounds that pregnancy was a disease .... Menopause was the final, incurable ill, the death of the woman in the woman" (Ehrenreich and English 1973: 20-21). Women's experiences of tuberculosis, cancer, influenza and pneumonia were all related directly to their reproductive capacities, because women were primarily seen as "walking ,von1bs" (Angier 1999). l-Iowever, Gina Feldberg astutely argues here that despite the rich history of attention to women's reproductive rights and functions, "there is little or no attention to the ways in which women's different reproductive abilities shape and create marginality." Feldberg not only questions the ways in which women are reduced to reproductive capabilities in androcentric medical systems, but she challenges feminist scholars who adopt an ableist approach, wherein assumptions about women's reproductive capabilities are made W'ithout adequate attention to differences an1ong women. Pam Wakewich's chapter echoes Feldberg's challenge by calling for more biologies, stories that bring into view how bodies are differently experienced. Wakewich argues that throughout their lives, women hold changing ideas about their bodies and health. Focusing her discussion on the experiences of women in a northern community, Wakewich also suggests that location is a critically important influence, not only on the degree to which women engage with dominant notions of beauty but also on women's health and experiences \Vith disease. Supporting this claim is the recent study conducted by the Canadian Centres of Excellence for Women's Health (2004), which found that women living in rural areas face higher risks of violence, economic insecurity and occupational hazards, and they have a higher risk of dying from motor vehicle accidents, poisoning, suicide, diabetes and cancer than women in urban areas. Just as Wakewich's chapter requires us to think about the age- and place-based biases in women's health research, Vera Chouinard's contribution to this section, like Feldberg's, challenges assurnptions of ableness and physical ability. Chouinard does not argue that issues of gender and disability should be added to the ever-expanding compendium. of "special interests" in health research and intervention. Instead, she sees the lives of women with disabilities as being "inextricably linked" with those of able-bodied women and argues that these interactions like the continuum of ableness ' ' must be the focus of critical study. This section on spirituality and physicality would not be complete without Mary Pratt's artistic rendering of breast cancer. Lnaged as bread rising, Pratt creates a connection benveen one of women's greatest health challenges and their role as food providers and nurtu1·ers. In the acco1npanying statement, Pratt makes it clear that she feels as overwhelmed by the out-of-control yeast as by the cancerous breast. The ominous tone of this image is contrasted well by Lorna Crozier's poetic portrait of fat. Crozier's ~nitial depiction of grotesque incapacitation and patriarchal control gives way to an image of anger and ultimately to joy and freedom as the "fat lady'' wills her

308 / Gendered Intersections

body to move, to dance and to leave the place of her bodily distress. As readers, we are ~eft h~ping that this woman reaches a point where her body and soul may exist with 1ntegnty and freedom from injustice, what Morny Joy calls a "bodyright." REFERENCES New Dimensions in Womens Health.

Alexander, Linda, Judith LaRosa and Helaine Bader. 20 0 1. Boston: Jones and Bartlett. A..ngier, Natalie. 1999. Woman:An Intimate Geography. Boston: H oughton Mifflin Company. Caron, Charlotte. 1993. 7b Make and Make Again: Feminist Ritual Theology . New York: Crossroad Press. Centres of Excellence for Women's Health. 2004. "Canada's T-lea1th System Failing Women in Rural and Remote Regions." The Canadian W011zens Health Network 7, 2 / 3. Condon, Marian. 2001. "Women, Societ)~ Health and I-Iealth Care: Historical Rots and Contetnporary Perspectives." In Marian Condon (ed.), Womens }Iealth:An lntegratedApproacb to Wellness and Illness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice I lall. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. 1973- Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. New York: The Feminist Press. Health Canada. 2002. "Women's Health Strategy." Available at . Lock, Margaret, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 1996. '½. Critical-Interpretive Approach in Medical Anthropology: Rituals and Routines of Discipline and D issent.1' In Carolyn Sargent and Thomas Johnson (eds.), Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Nfethod. London: Praeger. Mosca, L., J.E. Manson, S.E. Sutherland, R.D. Langdon, T 1v1anolio and E. Barrett-Connor. 2000. "Awareness, Perception, and Knowledge of Heart Disease Risk and Prevention among Women in the United States." Archives ofFamily Medicine 9. Riley-Giomariso, Oma. 2001. "Cardiovascular Wellness and I llness." In Marian Condon (ed.), U7omens Health: An IntegratedApproach to Wellness and Illness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice H all. Stuckey, Johanna H. 2005- "Women and Religion: Female Spirituality, Feminist Theology, a_nd Feminist God Worship." In Nancy Mandell (ed.), Feminist Issues: Race, Class and Sex11.a!tty. Toronto: Pearson Prentice-1-lall. Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre. 2003. "Canadian ~omen Less Healthy than Men ." Women'.r Flea/th 1\fatter News. Available at .

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 309

SPIRITUALITY AND PHYSICALITY: POSITIONING OF PAIN AND EMPOWERMENT HYPATIA INDEX 1 •

• •

• •

•

Percentage of world's population that adheres to Christianity: 33; to Islam: 22; no • • • • • reported religious affiliation: 142 Percentage of Canadians who had no connections to organized rehg1on in 1981: 7; in 1991: 153 . . Percentage of women over the age of 15 in Canada who report a religious affiliation: 874 Number of fe1nale ministers in the United Church of Canada in 1990: 1,288; in Anglican ministries: 344; in the Roman Catholic Church: o 5 Number of Catholic priests in the United States who, by the end of 2002, had resigned or been stripped of their ministry because of accusations of sexual assault and abuse: 3256 Number of Aboriginal people alive today who attended Native residential schools: 90,0007

•

• • •

•

•

• •

• • • • • •

Number of former students of Native residential schools who, as of April 2003, have filed lawsuits against the Government of Canada and various Churches alleging physical and/or sexual abuse as well as cultural genocide: 5,200 Number of legal settlements that have been reached with former residential school students: 725 Potential cost of lawsuits to the United Church of Canada: $5 million; to the Government of Canada: $1 billion8 Estimated an1ount that Aborigina1 people would contribute to Canada's economy (goods and services) if discriminatory disparities in income and well-being did not exist: $5.6 billion 9 Percentage of Aboriginal women in Ontario who have experienced physical violence in their homes: 87; sexual violence in their homes: 5710 Percentage of Aboriginal children in select northern Canadian communities who have been physically abused by a family member: 40 Proportion of all female victin1s of violent crime who were victimized by someone they know: 77 percent; 11 of all male victims of violent crime: 54 percent12 Proportion of all '\\1omen in Canada who have experienced violence at the hands of a present or former intimate partner: 29 percent13 Proportion of all women attacked by their partner who are assaulted more than 10 tin1es: 32 percent Number of wives killed by their husbands in Canada between 1977 and 1996: 1,525; of husbands killed by their wives: 513 Factor by which the average prison sentence in the United States for killing a husband is greater than that for killing a wife: 2 14 Percentage of violent domestic occurrences witnessed by children: 4015 Percentage of domestic violence against women that occurs chu·ing a first pregnancy: 40 16 Proportion of all Canadian women "vho have been victims of at least one act of physical or sexual assault since the age of 16: 51 percent1 7

310 / Gendered Intersections

• •

• • •

• •

•

•

• • • • • • •

•

•

Percentage of women with disabilities who are sexually assaulted: 8f8 Per~entage of sexual assaults that occur on dates: 57 Estimated proportion of all date rapes that are reported to police: r percent Percentage of ~ollege-aged 1nen in Canada who admitted that theywould commit sexual assault tf they ,vere certain they would not get caughc: 60 Rate by which women in Canada are more likely to report a fear of violence (while in public after dark) than are men: 35 percent1 9 Number of women killed December 6, r989, in the Montreal M assacre: 14 Number of services and programs listed that address the needs of abused ,vomen in the Government of Canada transition houses and shelters: 466 Number of children benveen 1989 and 1999 who were killed in armed conflicts around the ,vorlcl 2.2 million20 Percentage of women in Afghanistan who have no access to prenatal medical care during pregnancy: 92; in Europe and North America: 321 A woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes in sub-Saharan Africa: 1 in 16; in Europe: I in 1,400 Percentage of the world's 14.8 million people currently living with I-UV/AIDS who are women: 46 Rate by which women's risk of being infected with llIV during unprotected heterosexual intercourse is greater than that for men: 4 times Percentage o f all HIV/AIDS diagnoses in Canada accounted for by women: 6.2522 P ercentage by which the number of diagnosed HIV infections increased among women in Canada between r990 and 1995: 94 Proportion of I-ITV/AIDS cases among infected Aboriginal women attributed to injection drug use: 56 percent; non-Aboriginal women: 18 percent Rate of women hospitalized in Canada in 1999 for mental illness: 389 per 100,000; of men: 273 p er 100,000 23 Percentage of all deaths due to suicide that occur among women aged 15 to 24 years: 17; among men: 26 Percentage of Aboriginal women, aged 30 to 54 years, in Canada who rated their health as only fair or poor: 51; of all women in Canada: 10; of all men in Canada: 9•4 NOTES

I.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

Compiled by Pamela J. Do"vne, ·with the assistance_ of Ellen _Whiteman. Except w~en otherwise indicated in the rnain text, the sow·ces cited 1n this Index apply to the bne where first referenced and then to all those that follow until another endnote appears. All Web references ·were accessed between May and August 2003. Major Religions of the World Ranked by Nun1ber of Adherents, 2-002. Available at . . . Statistics Canada, 2oor, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industr y). . . Statistics Canada, zoOl, Canada Year Book 2oor (Ottawa: Muu~try of Industry). United Church of Canada, 2002. Availahle at . Thomas Farragher, 2002, "Patterns of Abuse Found NatronWJde, The Boston Globe, December 14. Indian Residential Schools Resolutjon Canada, www.irsr-rgpi.gc.ca/english/statistics.htmb.

2003,

" . . · " A. ail bl h // Stattsttcs. v a e at < ttp:

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 311

8. 9. 10. 1r.

12. r3. 14.

15r6. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools in 1999, 2000. Available at . Anglican Church of Canada) 2000, ''This Painful Reality," Anglican Journal. Available at . I-fealth Canada, 1997, Famil)' Violence in Aboriginal Communities: An Aboriginal Perspective (Ottawa: Health Canada). Status of Women Canada, 2002, "National Day ofReme1nbrance and Action on Violence Against Women/Fact Sheet: Statistics on Violence Against Women in Canada." Available at . Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Cc1n11da 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Statistics Canada, 2002, "Statistics on Violence Against Women." Available at . Women's Action Coalition, 1993, The Facts About \WJmen (New York: The New Press). Statistics Canada, 2002, "Statistics on Violence Against Women." Available at . Salem Alaton, 1993, "The Violence Index," The Kingston Whig Standard, December 5. Status of Women Canada, 2002, "National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women/Fact Sheet: Statistics on Violence Against Women in Canada." Available at . Statistics Canada, 2002, "Statistics on Violence Against Women." Available at . Status of Women Canada, 2002, "National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women/Fact Sheet: Statistics on Violence Against Women in Canada." Available at . Women and International Development, 2000, "World Development Statistics, 19992000." Available at . United Nations, 2000, The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations). Statistics Canada, 2001, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry). Health Canada (Population and Public Health Branch), 2002, A Report on Mental Illness in Canada. Available at . Statistics Canada, 2001, W0men in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistic,il Report (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry).

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It All Began with Eve Morny]oy It all bega_n with Eve - a familiar but superficial phrase. For Eve, after all, is only a ch~racte~ m a stof)'i a story that has been interpreted in many ways over the centuries. This basic story has come to link not only Eve but all wo1nen with evil with weakness of will (because she was the one first tempted), as well as with irration:ii emotionality. Such a development seems odd, considering that the original sin was one of disobedience to God, who commanded that an apple in the garden of Eden not be eaten. Various later interpretations have also regarded Eve's body (after the banishment from Eden) as itself seductive and shameful and sexual relations as a necessary evil (for reproduction only). Women's sexuality (often associated with Satan) is regarded as defiling. Wl1ile many women today, especially in the time of Madonna, "the material girl," feel that they have escaped these derogatory sexual stereotypes, such attitudes are still pervasive in western cultural traditions. Thus there remain many taboos connected with the way in which women experience and talk about their bodies. At the same time, crimes of hate and sexual violence against worn.e n continue. Part of my research has been to try and understand the reasons for this misogyny and for women's internalized hatred of their own bodies (manifested today in extreme symptoms such as anorexia and self-mutilation). There can be no simplistic answers to the complex interconnection of causes - be they of a social, historical, psychological or religious nature - that have contributed to this situation. Perhaps a description of my own journey cou]d help a new generation of women scholars to understand the vast changes in knowledge on this topic that have taken place in the past thirty years in religious scholarship. I am now in my fifties, and I grew up in a conservative Catholic milieu in Australia, where the sinfulness of sex and shame of the body prevailed. Female talk about sexuality and menstruation were not discussed - even between friends and sisters. rfhis was an extremely protected and repressed society. The first major challenge to these values came when I read Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970). Here, among other (then) an1azing revelations, Greer discussed her "thrill of shock" when a friend described tasting her own menstrual blood (Greer 1970: 259). 1 I can remember initially being repulsed but then I began to investigate why this offended me. It was the start of a long journey which led me to the study of the origins of western philosophy and theology. . . During the seventies and early eighties, while I was studying 10 Montreal for a PhD there were a number of other events that jolted me into awareness. One was a tele;ision showwbere, to my astonishment, in broad daylight, in front of the caineras, women were being taught to use a speculum, s? they could get to kno': and !ove ~~ir vaginas. Then, at the Montreal Musewn of Fine Arts_, 1 saw Judy_ Chicago s_ exhi~1t, The Dinner Party. This consisted of a triangular table, with place sittmgs for thirty-rune

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 313

"'omen (Chicago 1977). At each place, there was a vibrantly coloured plate, honouring outstanding women of myth and history, such as Sophia, Queen_ Elizabeth I , Pocah?ntas and Georgia O'Keefe. On closer inspection, it became obvious that all the dmner plates were spectacular depictions of each woman's genitalia. While I didn't ~are for some of the designs, I felt, after my original squeamishness, a surge of pride. My inhibitions began to fade that day. Perhaps today it is the ¼gina Monologues (Ensler 1998) that arouses similar emotions and reactions in women - as again, what had previously been a taboo topic is brought to a graphic awareness.2 It was my explorations on the academic front that helped me achieve greater awareness of the history of hatred towards the body, and women's bodies in particular. The only problem was that at that time there were not many books available to help me in my search. Today, I still own the original copies of certain books that provided my initial insights. One is Beyond God the Father (1973), by Mary Daly, who demonstrates that because God was identified with men, women were not considered to be in God's image. In another work, Rosemary Ruether surveys the writings of the early Church fathers fro1n the second to fifth centuries and demonstrates how St. Augustine (CE 354430), influenced by Plato, posited the mind/spirit [associated with men} as superior to the body {associated with women]. "[The} definition of femaleness as body decrees a natural subordination of female to male, asflesh must be subject to spirit in the right ordering ofnature. It also makes her peculiarly the symbol of the Fall and sin" (Ruether 1974: 157). In the same volume, Eleanor Commo McLaughlin discusses the work of Thomas Aquinas (CE 1224- 74) and ilJustrates how Aquinas had been influenced by the flawed biology of Aristotle (BCE 384-322) who, lacking the contemporary knowledge of the X and Y chromosomes, regarded woman as a defective or "misbegotten" male. McLaughlin is especially concerned by Aquinas's attitude to sexuality: ''(P]hysical sex was always suspect and could never be the vehicle of love" (McLaughlin 1974: 229). She continues by observing that this attitude contributed to common beliefs that "[N]o Christian should receive the Eucharist the morning after he or she had sexual relations, or that a menstruating woman should not receive communion, or even enter a church. Menstrual blood was thought to be attractive to devils and unclean spirits" (229). To combat these attitudes, which remained dominant in conservative Christian theology, especially Catholicism, since the Middle Ages, McLaughlin believes that the first task is "to n1ake explicit the assumptions received from this tradition about male/ female difference and hierarchy, and to expose with the help of historical understanding the now patently invalid intellectual foundations of these typologies" (257). During my years as a university teacher I have observed an immense amount of further research by women scholars that undertakes McLaughlin's recommendations. For example, cross-cultural research has revealed that many cultures, such as those of the indigenous peoples of North America and Australia, have women-centred celebrations for first menstruation (Gross 2001). But prejudices remain, such as the one I witnessed on television recently when a woman writer commented that there should be first menstruation celebrations in our society. The interviewer recoiled with distaste, if not horror. Menstrual taboos in particular die hard (O'Grady 2003). Another developn1ent has been the reinterpretation of the Eve story. Kim Chernin's imaginative retelling (1987) presents Eve as a curious woman, seeking new knowledge, rather than the first sexual sinner.

314 / Gendered Intersections

. Many contem~o~ary women scholars in religious studies, both theologians and phdosophers of relig1on, believe that the traditional ideas of God have been bad for women. Fo~ some, the solut~on is to stop depicting God as a monolithic male figure. Others behe~e _that the spli~ between the (good) spirit or soul and the (bad) body should be eliminated. Certain women have decided to abandon the male image of G~d completely and replace him with the Goddess figure, who appears in a number of gu1_ses: as a Great Mother, worshipped since primordial times in both European and Asia_n_ cultures;_ as a r_emnant of a pagan or pre-Christian religion, surviving in the tradition of wzcca (witchcraft); or as a symbolic representation of a psychological n1ovement of self-empowerment (Christ 1979). According to Carol Christ: 1:'he symbol of Goddess has much to offer women who are struggling to be 1·1d of the... devaluation of female power, {and]denigration of the female body. ... As struggle to create a new culture... it seems natural that the Goddess would reemerge as a symbol of the newfound beauty, strength, and power of women. (1979: 286) In this approach, God is no longer viev.red as a transcendent, authoritarian male, but as a female or feminine presence that partakes in the natural world. While such a position n1ay be very self-affirming for many women, there are critics who are concerned that such goddess projections, while imaginative, can become restrictive. They claim that women can become preoccupied with personal issues and reaffirm, rather than change, the cultural conventions that support the existing male and female divisions. In Pure Lust, Mary Daly worried that "fixation upon the 'Great Mother"' could prevent women from exploring other alternative modes of representing the divine (1984: 405). Daly herself, as she recounts in Beyond God the Father, is supportive of exploring non-anthropomorphic ways of appreciating God, for she views all gods/goddesses as potential idols. Instead of understanding "God" as a noun, Daly proposes seeing the word as a verb - so as to avoid any sexual stereotypes. In her iconoclastic approach, Daly then understands God as a source of energy- as a "formdestroying, form creating, transforming power that makes all things new'' (1973: 43).3 Women, identifying with this power, can free themselves from patriarchal impositions and transform the world. While Daly imagines a psychological and physical liberation, Rosemary Ruether is influenced by a contemporary form of liberation theology that is more concerned with the living Christ than with a transcendent God. In liberation theology, Christ is recognized as a figure who came to bring justice to this ,vorld. Thus, Ruether supports social and structural change that addresses not just the injustice suffered by won1en, but that of all minorities. For Ruether, any human images of God are simply human projections and must be recognized as such. Ruether's own sol~tion _is to introd~ce the term "Godless," which she understands as a gender-neutraJ , inclusive term, which should never be used to endorse "the existing hierarchical social order" (1974: 69). Instead, Images of Godless must include female roles and experien~e. Images of God/ ess must be drawn from the activities of peasants and working people, people

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 315

at the bottom of society. ... Godless-language cannot validate roles of men or women in stereotypic ways that justify male dominance and female subordination. (Ruether 1974: 69) For Ruether, aJongwith other feminist religious thinkers, such as Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza (1993) 1 women should never just work towards their own liberation but in solidarity with all hwnan beings who suffer forms of oppression. . . Another reintetpretation of God that moves away from an other-worldly ideal 1s pantheism. It appreciates the divine as the dynamic force inherent in the continuous process of a positive creation that rejects all forms of hierarchy. Grace Jantzen proposes that pantheism helps to challenge existing religious structures by illuminating the mutually reinforcing ways that oppression functions in a society. In describing her anti-hierarchal position, Jantzen notes the work of Patricia Col1ins, an AfricanAmerican scholar (who is not herself a pantheist). Jantzen finds that: Her [Collins's} approach is fruitful for encouraging thought about how forms of oppression dominate and reinforce one another: how, for example, heterosexism is embedded in the sexual control of all women, how concepts of race and class modify one another, and how religion has been used to legitimate and perpetuate an interlocking symbolic of domination. (Jantzen 1999: 124-25)

Advocating a total revision of traditional ideas of God and sexual ethics1 Jantzen sees pantheism as encouraging different understandings of the divine, including the idea that the body itself, as part of creation, is divine. In this view, women's bodies and sexuality can no longer be vilified or treated with disrespect. "If we took for granted that divinity - that which is most to be respected and valued - means mutuality, bodiliness, diversity - the implications for our thought and lives would be incalculable" (Jantzen 1999: 269). Although most peoples in western societies today accept the idea of personal autonomy and the right to control one's body, many abuses continue to take place, as documented by Christine Gudorf (1994). Gudorf claims that acts of violence against women can be described as sexual sins. She combines the need for justice, which is central to Ruether, with the idea of God as embodied in creation, pro1noted by Jantzen, and introduces the term "bodyright." This right refers to a Vl'omen's right to be free from all forms of physical coercion. Gudorf does not confine her indictment to individual acts but refers to institutions, such as the Christians churches, which have even, at times, protected the perpetrators. "Until we enlarge our treatment of sexual sin fro1n individual overt acts to include a critique of social models and institutions which give rise to them, our understanding of sexual sin wiU remain deficient" (1994: 18). From the above examples, it seems that feminist writers in religion have broken through many of the barriers that allowed women's bodies to be degraded. I wish that such knowledge had been available to me in my youth. It is difficult to describe the deep pride and admiration I feel whenever I receive a new work of scholarship that stretches the boundaries of knowing by insisting on the interaction of both mind and

316 / Gendered Intersections

b?dy. The mind or spirit is no longer regarded as the sole source of knowledge and ~sconnected from the body. Yet the continuing saga of rapes, abductions and frunily violence break~ my heart._ ~ron1 my own perspective as an activist scholar, my hope is that my teaching and wnt1ng will inspire students to continue to work toward the establis1:ment of t~e notion of bodyright. This would help to construct a society where violence against women - until recently something that was ignored, if not ~ondo~ed, by both c~urch and state -will be understood as a violation not just of the mtegnty of a womans body but of her basic human rights. 1.

2.

3.

NOTES Greer's statement was even more of a shock, as the blood that the woman tasted was on her lover's penis. In 1998, Ensler created V-day, an organization focused on combating violence against women. On St. Valentine's Day (V-Day) in 2002, over a thousand performances of the Vagi.na Monologues ,vere performed throughout the world. Daly enlarges on this: ''As marginal beings w ho have no stake in a sexist world, women ifwe have th.e courage to keep our eyes open - have access to the knowledge that neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Mother is God, the Verb who transcends anthropomorphic symbolization" (1973: 97). REFERENCES

Chernin, Kim. 1987. Reinventing Eve. New York: Harper and Row. Chicago,Judy. 1977. Through the Flower: My Struggle as a \'ComanArtist. New York: Doubleday. Christ, Carol. 1979. "Why Women Need the Goddess.'' In Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: f-Ia.rper and Row. Daly, Mary. 1973. Beyond God the Father. Boston: Beacon Press .. Ensler, Eve. 1998. Vagina 1\1.onologues. New York: Villard Books. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. 1993. Discipleship ofEquals. New York: Crossroad. Greer, Germaine. 1970. The Female Eunuch. London: Paladin. Gross, Rita. 2001. "Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians.'' In Nancy Auer Falk and RitaM. Gross (eds.), Unspoken Worlds: W0men'.r Religious Lives. Belmont, CA: Wac.lsworth Press. Gudorf, Christine.1994. Body, Sex and Pleasure: Reconst,·ucting Sexual Bthfrs. Cleveland: The Pilgtim Press. Jantzen, Grace. 1999. Becoming Divine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Joy, Morny. 1998. "Feminist Scholarship: The Challenge to Ethics." ln Dawne McCa.nce, (ed.), Life Ethics in World Religions. Atlanta: Scholars Press. . ,, , _ _ __ 1996. "No Longer Docile Daughters or Handmaidens of the Lord. lV&mens Studies Internationrtl Forum 19, 6. McLaughlin, Eleanor Com1no. 1974. "Equality of Soul_s,_ lnequality_of Sexes: Wome~ in Medieval Theology." In Rose1nary Ruether (ed.), Re!tgion and Sexism. New York: Simon and Schuster. O'Grady; Kathleen. 2003 _"The Semantics of 'Taboo': ~ enstrual Prohibitions in the !febrew Bible." In Kristin De Troyer,Judith A. IIerbett,Jud1thA.Johnson and Anne Mane Korte (eds.), Blood, Purity and Impurity: A. Feminist Critique. Be~n'. Swjtzerlan~: Peter Lang. Ruether, Rosemary. r983. Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a FemtnrstTbeolo!fY. llOston: Beacon. _ _ . 1974_ "Misogynism and Virginal Fathers of the Chu,ch.'' In Rosemary Ruether (ed.), Religion and Sexis1n. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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In Da Name of Da Fadder1 Louise Halfe In da name of da fadder, poop on my knees I pray to geezuz cuz I got n1ad at my husband for humpin' and makjn too many babies I 'pologize cuz I mad and cried I didn't have no bannock and lard to feed dem cuz my husband drank all da soniyas for wine.

In da name of da fadder, poop my husband slap, fist and kick me I hit rum back. I 'pologize poop da priest said I must of done someding wrong and I deserve it cuz woman is 'uppose to listen to man. I not a good wife cuz my hands somedimes want to kill him. In da name of da fadder, poop I lookit other man he is so handsome my eyes hurt, he kind, gentle, soft laugh and my body wants to feel his hot face. I no geezuz would be mad he said I must not be durty in my doughts but poop I want smile and warm arms. In da name of da fadder, poop Inside the sweatlodge I shame cuz Indian iskwew don't know anydin' In church priest said all us pagans will go to hell. I don't know what da means, all I no is I big sinner and maybe I \von't see geezuz when I die.

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In da name of da fadder, poop I dought da geezuz kind but I is no good. I canit read hen write. I don't understand how co1ne moniyas has clean howse and lottsa feed and he don't share it with me and my children. I don't understand why geezuz say I be poor, stay on welfare cuz moniyas say I good for nuddin' cuz I don't have wisdom. Forgive me poop I is big sinner.

1.

NOTE Reprint from Louise 1-Ialfe, 1994. Bea,. Bones and Feathers (Regina, SK: Coteau Books). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality / 319

"I Didn't Know You Were Jewish" .. .1 And Other Things Not to Say When You Find Out

Ivan Kalmar Imagine that you and I have been acquainted with each other for some tin1e. And now you learn that I have written this article. You are surprised and you say: "I didn't know you were Jewish!" Really? I-low touching. What would you have done if you had known? More important still, what are you going to do now that you do know? Perhaps you mean to compliment me. I am not loud and aggressive. I am not interested in "jewing" people I have financial dealings with. If you are politically conservative, you might mean that I am not a subversive pinko radical. If you are on the Left, you might mean that I am not a Zionist Imperialist. In either case you mean, ultimately, that I am ':Jewish but nice." But I don't need your compliment. To me, ':Jewish" and "nice" are not opposites. Notice: you did not simply ask me, '¼re you Jewish?" I could take that; it is an ordinary question of personal information. You said, "I didn't know that... " and you said it because you don't speak to Jews the same way you speak to non-Jews. Let us go through some other things you might have said instead.

l dort't care if a person is Jewish; to me all people are the same Maybe you think if you had said this, I would have been happier. Sorry. Yes, there are many Jews who would enthusiastically accept being "just human beings" rather than ''Jews." In my book, The Trotskys, Freuds and Woody Allens: Portrait ofa Culture, l call such people EJI (pronounce it "edgy," an acronym for Embarrassed Jewish Individuals). I am not an EJI. No, I don't want you to treat me as aJew rather than a human being, because that implies that a Jew is not fully human. But I also don't want you to treat me as if I were not a Jew. I want to be treated as a Jew and a human being. I would like you to understand that beingJewish is a normal thing for a normal human being to be. It is, unfortunately, true that some of us Jews do not understand the point either, but it does not excuse you from trying to be more sensitive to the legitimacy of human differences.

What's the JAP's idea of an ideal hon1e? "Six thousand square feet with no kitchen or bedroom." Very funny: So you find out I am Jewish and you tell a "Jewish" joke. Why not, you think, the Jews are so funny: You want to please aJe"v, you think, with a Jewish joke. And you choose aJAP joke. AJAP is, of coruse, a ':Jewish American Princess." There is not a more vicious anti-female stereotype around. It is no compli1nent to Jewish men to have invented these vicious insults to Jewish women, who are portrayed as lazy, frigid, spoiled and stupid. Indeed, a JAP is everything a ,voman means to a frustrated macho misogynist. I suspect the Jewish men who make up JAP jokes are unconsciously using a subtle and rather effective argument: "Look, our women are just as despicable as your women and in the same way; and we put then1 down just as 1nuch as you; therefore you, goyish macho

320 I Gendered Intersections

chauvinists, and us Jewish macho chauvinists have much in common." _When you, a non-Jew tell it, aJAP joke becomes both anti-female and clearly antiJewish. For you are not laughing about your own women (which would certainly be bad enough) but about ours. You laugh not only at women, but also at Jews. My mom's such a Jewish mother

For_ decades Ameri~an Jewish conlic performers have won great faine putting down theU: moth~rs. Telling their inanities in the first person, they have convinced the public, J ewish and Gentile, to think that Jewish mothers are nagging, guilt-inducing n1onsters. I cann_ot really blame you for picking up a stereotype that is aggressively marketed by Jewish entertainers. By telling me that your mother is a Jewish mother, you wanted to say that we have much in common. But I hate the ''Jewish mother" stereotype, another misogynous insult dressed inJewish garb. That mothering can be smothering is well known from all cultures. Just like the JAP concentrates the hostility of all misogynists against wives, girlfriends, and daughters, so the ':Jewish mother" is the anchor for all anti-mother resentment, felt just as much by Jews as by Gentiles. Indeed, ''Jewish mother" has become a normal English expression for a passive-aggressive, guilt-inducing female progenitor. But please. Some Jewish mothers are ':Jewish mothers," just as some non-Jewish mothers are. I don't know if the percentage of ''Jewish mothers" is higher among the Jews, but I doubt it. My mother is not a 'Jewish mother," and I'd like you to leave her out of this.

What about the Palestinians? Now I feel you are not even trying to be nice. Your expectation is that your question might irritate me. It does, but not for the reason you think: not because I hate Arabs or oppose the Palestinians' legitimate rights. Of course, I have views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And, of course, as a Jew I am ultimately on the side of Israel, the Jewish state. I am emotionally bound to Israel, a realization of a dreain that n1y ancestors held for centuries. Moreover, Israel seems proof to 1ne, like to most Jews, that another IIolocaust would not be possible. This time we know how to use arms. If, God forbid, we have to go again, we will not go without a fight and we will not go without taking our enemy with us. I also happen to believe in the rights of the Palestinian people: rights to selfdetermination, including a right to a state of their own, as long as the aim is not to take our state away from us. I deeply regret and am ashamed of the human rights abuses committed by the Israelis. But I do not want to talk about this with you because your question, coining on the heels of my revelation that I am a Jew, makes 1ne fear that to you ':Jew" recalls "abusive Israeli occupier" (that is, Zionist Imperialist). If so, chances are you know little of the complexities of the Middle East; little of the la_rge and widesprea~ opposition, not only among world Jewry but also among Is~a~li Jews, ~o the Israeli army's practices; and Jittle of the abuse committed by Palest1ruan terrorists, not only . . . against Jews but also against fellow-Palestinians. . When you know me better, I ·will be ready to discuss this issue with you. But not unless you accept the following disclaimer: hereby d~cla_re that any resemblance between me and the prin1e minister of Israel 1s purely co10c1dental.

!

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We all believe in one God

Okay. This time you truly mean well. You want to show me that you and I are both God's children. True, those of us who are religious, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, believe in one God. Yet I don't think it is true that we believe in the same God. Our God does not have three persons like the Christian God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. He did not beco1ne incarnate in Jesus. He has no human form at all; indeed, nowadays it bothers many of us that we 1·efer to I-Iim with the masculine pronoun, as if He were a man. We associate God with the history of our people. We thank God for taking us out of slavery in Egypt and have trouble not blaming Him for allowing the Holocaust to happen. I-Ie speaks to us immediately, without the mediation of a Jesus and his family, or of saints (though some North African Jews do worship the memory of some sages as if they had been saints). Our Gods are similar, but not the same. I respect your religion and I expect you to respect mine. But to equate all religions is not to respect them. A religion for all people would have to be a new religion that replaces all previous ones, and it is implied that this new religion would be more perfect than the old, "particularist" ones. Of necessity; religious universalises believe that their view of religion is better than that of the "particularists" and therefore create their own brand of religious one-upmanship. The universalists feel superior to the "particularists" just like the Christian missionaries felt superior to the pagans. (Iglesia catolica, after all, means "universal church.") What, however, distinguishes our Jewish religion and has distinguished it since the Middle Ages is that we are proudly particularist. We do not think that our religion is better for everybody, just that it is better for us. We are more tolerant of other ways of thinking about religion than the "universalists." We ¥-'l.Sh to keep our religion and let everyone else keep theirs. Do you eat ham? When you invite me for dinner and ask me if I eat ham, you n1ean to show your understanding of the fact that traditional Jews do not eat pork. You want to 1nake something I will eat; I understand and appreciate your concern. You mean to be considerate. But remember this. If it is true that those of us who are religious have a concept of God that is not the same as that held by non-Jews (although there is great variation among us in terms of religious belief, just as there is among you), it is also true that many, perhaps most of us, have no concept of God at all. Those who are observant of the ancient behavioural code known as the halakha are a rather small minority. Even many of those who are affiliated with Orthodox synagogues don't really keep it. The ~o.nservative, Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, which comprise the n1aJOnty of synagogue members in North America, have all modified or at least reinterpreted the halakha. "Eating kosher" is a practice prescribed by the halakha. It 1neans 1uuch more than just not eating pork. For example, meat must not be mixed with milk. Also, nothing must ~e se~ed ~n plates that were ever touched by non-kosher food, unless a special cleansing ritual ts observed. This n1eans, of course, that even if you don't serve ham1 your kitchen is auto1natically disqualified. To put it sitnply, no strictly OrthodoxJe,v 322 / Gendered Intersections

can eat with you unless you serve only vegetables (which are always kosher) and you serve them on plates and with utensils that have never been used before. In practice, the problem can be solved by using paper plates and plastic utensils. However, .the great majority of us are not Orthodox. Jewishness is a n1atter of much ~ore t~an reli~ion: a culture, an ethnic identity; a shared history, family memories. It 1s perceived by us as a sort of magical identity, which we do not understan~ ou~selves.Jewish _identity consists of much more than Judaism. For many of us, Judaism 1s not even an tmportant part of it. You can quite reliably tell an Orthodox male by the skull cap on his head, although even some people with skull caps make compromises like eating kosher at ho~e but. not outside (a fairly popular practice, though not officially approved by theu rabb'.s'. among Con~ervativeJews). Women are harder to pinpoint, although the most traditional ,vear wigs. If you don't see these outward markers of Orthodoxy, chances are you are dealing with someone ,vho is not strictly traditional. You are probably dealing with a Jew who is quite comfortable eating what you serve him or her. I certainly would be. What do you think of Jesus? And while we're dealing with religion, what about Jesus? I-Jere and there I meet a religious Christian who longs to find out how it is possible for me, a member ofJesus' people, to "reject Him." So I am asked what I think about Him. The simple answer is that I don't think about Jesus. I happen to be a devoted lover of Christian art and music. And I often find images of Christ deeply moving, a genuine symbolic depiction of the divine spirit. I am similarly touched when I see some images of the Buddha or of f-Iindu gods. But Jesus is no more an issue for me than Shiva is for you. I am not for or against Jesus and I have not rejected him. I have read the New Testament, and I find some of it quite interesting, and other parts quite stirring. But I run a Jew and happy to be one. I am not asking you to be a Jew; please do not ask me to be a Christian. The problem is that if you are a Christian then Judaism is an issue for you. After all, Christianity started as a Jewish sect that opposed mainstream.Judaism. (The early Christians' opposition centred mainly around Jesus: the Christians believed he was the Messiah, and the rest of us did not.) But Judais1n did not start in opposition to Christianity. We have no beef with Christianity at all. Medieval myths libeled us as desecrating the Host, for the primitive Christian's image of the Jew is that of a Christ-killer, whose religion is devoted to opposing the concept ofJesus as the Messiah. This attitude reads into Judaism much more preoccupation ,vith Jesus than there has ever been. We respect Christianity; bke we respect all other religions. But Jesu~ is to us sin1ply a foreign religious personage. Next time you want to ask me what I think about Jesus, ask yourself what you think of Krishna. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah

Now here is one that ,nost other Jews not only appreciate, they are positively thrilled by it. When you say Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, you ar~ recognizing th~t not everyone is Christian, you are noticing me as a Jew, and you wish me to share 1n

Section IX: Spiri tuality and Physicality/ 323

the cheers of the holiday season. So why should I object? I do not consider your greeting offensive, but I would like you to spend some time thinking about what it really means. Let us start with the issue of Christmas. In public, many Jews love to praise Christmas to the hilt, to make absolutely sure that they do not appear "different." Only in private, among other Jews, do some of them admit that their enthusiasm 1nay have been a bit of a show. Talking about Christmas is one of the truly favourite devices by which Jewish speakers wish to bridge the gap between themselves and the Gentile audience. Being nice about the Christmas spirit has a triple objective. First, it may steer attention from the fact that the speaker is not a Christian. Second, if it does not do so, the speaker will at least have made an appeal to the Christmas spirit of tolerance. And third, the speaker will have den1onstrated a positive attitude to the one holiday that makes all Christians and Jews acutely aware of following different ceren1onial traditions in the most intimate cjrcle of their family. But I hate Christmas. I hate Christmas because during the Christmas season I am put upon, time after time again, by well-meaning non-Jews to declare my difference from them. When I ain wished a Merry Christmas, what am I to do? If I return the greeting, my Jewish conscience accuses me of not having the chutzpah to say "I do not celebrate it." If I do say this, however, I get into an unwanted discussion, often with someone I do not really wish to chat with; or I might spoil the holiday mood for someone I do care for. I am also not a little upset by the arrogance of people who think it a matter of course that everyone celebrates Christmas. To hear them talk about it, Christmas is as naturally part of December as snow in Minnesota. I certainly do not hate Christ1nas for what it means to Christians. I like togetherness, I like peace on earth, and I like presents (so do the Jewish merchants in the shopping malls). I just wish it wasn't rubbed in my face when I am not part of it. So what do we do? We come up with a Jewish version of Christmas: Hanukkah. Hanukkah is probably traditionally the least significant ofJewish festivals. Unlike major holidays, for example, on Hanukkah it is permitted to ,vork. Yet the majority of non-observant Jews, the EJI, who do not even kno,v the dates of such major festivals as Sukkoth or Shavuoth, do not fail to observe Hanukkah. This is profoundly ironic. The events that Hanukkah celebrates are not even in the I--Iebrew Bible, but in the Greek-language Book of the Macabees. The "zealots" of Israel, armed Pharisee fundamentalists, rose against the Graeco-Syrian n1lers of the land, who were amply assisted by "assimilated Jews." One of the things that most shocked the zealots were Jews who ran and exercised naked in Hellenic stadiums in the Holy Land. Hanukkah or Rededication commemorates the zealots' victory. This resulted in their recapture of the Temple, where they relit the "eternal flame." (The little consecrated oil they had for the purpose miraculously lasted eight days - hence the eight days of the festival.) Ho\\' much I-Ianukkal1 has become a Jewish Christmas is demonstrated by office workers who put up "IIappy Hanukkah" signs next to "Merry Christmas." Once I was at my office when a non-Jewish employee was posting a "Happy Hanukkal1" sign as part of the "festive season" decorations. I politely reminded her that Hanukkah was already over. Since the holiday is observed according to the lunar Hebrew calendar, it does not always coincide with Christmas, and sometimes, as was the case then, comes much earlier. So what sense did it make to celebrate Hanukkah after Hanukkah has 324 / Gendered Intersections

~nded? My nuld protest was not at all well received. It was hushed up almost as an tndecent remark, not only by the Gentiles but by the Jews as well. The farce of Hanukkah as a Christmas substitute was revealed a few years ago when an ultra-Orthodox group erected a twenty-eight-foot-high H anukkah menorah in a strip of parkland near the municipal centre of Beverly Hills - and no Christmas tree. Four Jewish residents of the posh and very Jewish Southern California township protes ted. With the official support of the American Jewish Congress, they went to court to have the menorah removed. What the neighbourhood EJI \Vere up in arms about was, in the last analysis, not the menorah, but the lack of a Christmas tree next to it. The ultra-Orthodox had the guts to try to recapture H anukkah as a Jewish holiday, rather than as a symbol of non-difference between Jew and non-Je,v. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah; we are just like you. You celebrate, we celebrate. When you say "Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah," you do help me avoid the tensions of Christmas; you made sure that I did not have to identify myself as "different" from you. But I would rather be uncomfortable than phony. As far as I am concerned, "Merry Christmas" posters will do just fine at the office without H appy Hanukkah. It would be nice, though, if next fall, when we really celebrate a major holiday, someone put up a sign saying I-lappy Rosh Hashanah. By now you might feel overwhelmed. "Is there nothing I can say to a Jew with out being considered insensitive?" you might ask. Relax. If you take what I have just said into consideration, chances are you will not say things that offend me. But if you slip up, don't worry. I know you mean well. Re1nember, I am not only a Jew. I am also a human being, like you. NOTE I.

For an extended version of this chapter, see Ivan Kalmar. 2001. "I Didn't Know You Were J ewish ... And other Things Not to Say ~Then You Find Out," _In Carl Ja1:1es and Adrie~e Shadda (eds.), T.11.king About Identity (Toronto: Between the Lines). Repn.ntcd by penrussion of the author and the publisher.

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 325

Once Upon My Mind Tereigh Ewert-Bauer As the toxic by-product of matital rape1 I began my tiny life on rather unsteady ground. Ironically, my personality and spirit have been greatly n1oulded by my own experiences of brutality and violation. My initial experiences with rape began at an enigmatic age and were committed by a body, face and hands that elude the tentacles of my memory. The only indicators of these first events are the perverse dreams that dominated my nights as a four year old. In these dreams, I was always singled out from a line-up of young children; a gun was pointed at my genitals and I was forced to perform and witness acts that frighten me even in the daylight hours of my adult life. Enter the elves, dwarves, flying carpet, fire-breathing dragon, a virginal princess and Prince Charming. They millabout in the bedroom ofa younggir~ uncertain how to play out their storiesfor they are confronted with the experiences ofa grown woman in the body ofa child. The elvesfind her dad's stash ofpot and ask the dragon for a light. Meanwhile, the princess rummages about, trying to locate the phqne number ofthe last stepfather, a realparty animal. Gradually, the thick, green haze relaxes the guests and they begin to discuss how to help the tiny child. Decisively, they agree to grant the child the ability to read. "But she} only five," argues the dragon. "She isn't scheduledfor reading/or at least another year." "Well she wasn't scheduled for sex for another fifteen years/' retorts the flying carpet viciously. "If we don't grab her now, she's going to miss her childhood." Enter the Knight-in-Shining-Armour, Lester Literature... When l first started reading, 1 wasn't exceptionally young. By the age of seven, however, I had completed all of the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series and was desperately searching for more books. I was the only child in grade one who was permitted to withdraw books from the high school shelves in the school library. The following summer, I pored over The Tales ofNarnia, Tolkien's trilogy and Watership Down. I was borrowing eight novels a week from the town library and, consequently; was accused by my parents of being abnormal and lazy Toward the end of grade two, I began to cultivate an appreciation for Kurt Vonnegut; his perverse wit and satire resonated in my ears as I received my daily spankings, listened to the screaming of my parents and packed my toys as we left to live with yet another man. My teacher called my parents after my class had completed its annual standardized intelligence test. '½.re you aware that your daughter is reading beyond a grade twelve level?" she demanded breathlesslr "We are awru·e that she reads too much," was the reply, I am certain. "You are such a little bitch!" "Once upon a time, there was a beautifulprincess... " the dwarves dreamily recite. "If you ever tell anyone about this, I'll tell them what a bad girl you've been "vho do you think they'll believe? Me or you?"

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" ...w J.'JO uve /• d in . a 1nagical fiar awa'I/ l

k· d , :., and. ,.,.,'h 1 , e tng an queen ,oved her very 1nuch and the . . ·. , tl~dr:e oft~Zem often spent their ~ays together, flying kites beside the lake, rolling in buttercups, and rt tng ga,, ant horses across their vast kingdo,n." "But they beat her, right.2" the girl asks suspiciously. ::Never!" exclai:'1ed t?e d-z::arves. "Now listen to the story." "'But my mum ts callzng... the childfrets. "If I don't answer he,: .. " _ Where the hell are you? I am so sick and tired of your bullshit, you little brat! I wish you had never been born!" "Well, maybe I can stay just a little longer," she ventures. "What colour was the princess's horse?" Reading became an escape from what was occurring around n1e - and what I knew was still to come. Curling up on the floor of our frosty-pink teacherage, the sun would flush over me through the south-facing picture window: Within seconds, I was worlds'_aw~y from my _home and my life. I couldn't hear the screaining o.r the insults and I did~ t ~ave to think about what a loathsome burden I was to my parents. I still felt the st1nglllg slaps and my sleep was dominated by nightmares, but in the hours between dawn and dusk, I finally had some control over my life. My second experience with rape began at the antiquated age of nine. My parents (Mun1 had decided to move back in with Dad, stepfather number two) made friends with a couple from the Netherlands, Peter and Ann, who bad come to ranch in Alberta. Dad, also from the Netherlands, delighted in finding people with whom he could speak Dutch, and so ,ve spent every weekend on their cattle and horse ranch. Every weekend, Dad regained more of his native tongue, while Peter meticulously and secretly instructed me on the complexities and necessities of "becoming a woman." Initially, I felt only fear toward Peter. While in the company of other adults, he would play "wrestling games" with his three children and me. During the course of these games, he would grab me by the arms, stare into my wide eyes and then squeeze until I yelped in pain. Then he would shove me aside, telling the other children that they shouldn't play with me because I would just cry like a baby: Leaving the room, my cheeks flushed with embarrass,m ent and injury, I would hear my mother's voice telling Peter that I needed to be ''toughened up.'' For a year and a half, our relationship re1nained one between the feared and the fearful. Repeatedly, he would tear open my chjldish body and repeatedly, J would bind it back together with words from a page. It was when Peter began to defile my love for literature that I finally learned to feel rage and hatred. Afraid to close my eyes while in their home' I heard the hall boards creaking in the 1niddle of the night. staving , Frantically, I slammed my eyelids shut and attempted to make .my breathing seem slo,v and deliberate, as though I were sleeping. First, he gently whispered my name, but I kept my eyes tightly shut. Then his voice became angry and he hissed, "You were reading by the hall-light, weren't you?" Frozen, I swore, "No! I was sleeping!" Knowing then that I was awake, he slipped his hands beneath the covers and asked, "Why bother with all those books? That's all I ever see you do, is read. That's not normal, you know- you're just a girl. You need to develop other interests.'' As I curled my arms and legs about my body and all of my muscles tensed agai~st his prob~ng hand, he became angry. ''Don't lie to me! I know that you were reading. You thin~ you are smarter than me, don't you? We'll see who's smarter. What are your books going to do Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 327

for you now?" Then, throwing my books from the nightstand, he climbed into the bed. '1ust shut up and relax. Just relax... relax... " The dragon weeps. . "Please tell me a story!" the girl shrieks. "Hurry! Tell me! Tell tne the one about the princess and the pea, about Rapunzel-anything!!"Looking madly about, she sees the heads ofherfriends silently bowed. "1-Jej right," whispers a dwarf, "what good can we do you now, against him?" ''I needyou!" she cries wildly, but the books lie lifeless on the floor. Turning away to the window, the Knight in Shining Armour meekly assures, "We'll be here when he leaves." Despite Peter's condemnations of a girl who read, I continued to pack books in my bag every weekend. I had nothing else. I could not talk to my parents and I could not escape the visits. In the summer, I would wander away from the ranch house to spend my afternoons reading in the fie lds. In the winters, I snuck off to the barn or a quiet room in the basement. Eventually, Peter always found me, but before and after each contact, I drowned myself in the words of other places, times and people. This dulled the pain, the shame and the fear. The books I chose to read while being raped were quite different from those I read throughout the week. Often, I would seek out tales of people whose lives were far worse than mine: tales of prostitution, murder, starvation or homelessness. Always believing that the abuse wou]d end, I thought chat I would survive if I could convince myself that the situation was not as tragic as it appeared. The abuse didn't end, however (not until we moved to another province), and I began studying Dad's university texts. "Whatj she reading now?" the princess whines. "What about one ofour stories?'' ''It's psy-cho-lo-gy," the girl pronounces slowly. "One in four girls under the age of eighteen has been sexually abused," she reads aloud. "Often, the perpetrator is well-known to the child, thereby causingfeelings ofdistrust and betrayal The victim may also experience feelings ofrage, fea1; shame and exhibit symptoms such rts withdrawal, nightmares and inappropriate sexual behaviour." "Why are you doing this to yourself?"pleads Prince Charming. "I need to understand whats happening to me... maybe I willfind out what I need to do to make it stop." The text provided no strategy to make the abuse come to a halt, but it did help me to understand the emotions and behaviours that were transforming my personality. I came to understand that the abuse from my parents and Peter caused me to feel isolated from those around me. Reading my books became my lifeline to society, my umbilical cord to the world outside my tattered body. I first wrote this story- part lifewriting, part -fiction - for a university class in 1997. When I was asked to submit it for this collection, I reread it with a fiercely critical eye; stylistically, I have matured since I wrote "Once Upon My Mind," but I strongly resisted the urge to dismantle and recreate each sentence. The ending, however, I deleted entirely. Five years ago, I could not imagine how the story should or would end, and so I created a scene in which the speaker eventually reaches a point of healing and bids farewell to her fairy-tale friends. The ending was trite and the

328 / Gendered Intersections

character was unfaithful to those who had brought her through the very toughest times of her life. More accurately, she (and I) have always kept books close to our hearts, and now I find myself completing a graduate degree in English literature and assistant teaching undergraduate courses. Like a bum victim, I grafted the pages of countless books to the raw flesh of n1y damaged psyche, and those pages covered me, grew into my tissue, healed me and became a part of my being. To quit reading would be to tear open long since healed, but still aching, scars; to cast away literature would be to bury so.me of my dearest friends. No, rather than rewrite the ending, I hope l never find one.

Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality/ 329

Historical Perspectives on Women's Health Gina Feldberg In 1993, after I lost n1y second pregnancy, I faced a fundamental feminist dilemma. I wanted a child very much, and in order to carry a child to term, I probably needed n1edical, or more specifically technological, assistance. However, as a feminist scholar of women's health, I was deeply committed to critiques of our increased reliance on medical technologies that violated and controlled women's bodies. My miscarriages occurred as Canada's Royal Commission on Reproductive Technology probed the status of reproductive health services. Barely two years earlier, when I first taught an undergraduate seminar in women's health, I had used the Royal Commission as a fulcrun1 around which to pivot what I believed were the central questions in women's health. By simulating the inquiries of the commission, I hoped that my students would learn about the rise of medical dominance and the ways in ,vhich it controlled women's reproduction, about the growth of technology and the ways in which it rendered women subservient; about health activism and its empowern1ent of women; and about the state's role in preserving and protecting women's health. A newly emerging literature guided me (Overall 1989). The lessons I taught my students came back to haunt me as I became a participant in, rather than just a scholar of, infertility treatments, and I grew less confident of the history of women's health that I had learned. As friends and colleagues offered their opinions about the perils of reproductive technology and, hoping to help steer my decision-making, cited the findings of the Royal Commission and central critiques of reproductive technology. The theory that I had taught, and which my colleagues and friends invoked, failed to speak to my personal experience. Their questions Could I trust technology? Did I really understand the risks? Did I really need a child? - reflected the history of women's heahh activism but did not help my personal decision-making. I became part of a community of women who used reproductive technology and who, for varying reasons, found ,vomen's health scholarship limited. Ten years, six miscarriages and one child later, I find that my personal experience tempered and 1·eshaped my o,vn health research and lent new perspectives on the history and future directions of our inquiries. Feminist health researchers have attached particular significance and importance to personal experience. Anger at truly horrible encounters ,vith physical and mental health systems inspired women to tell powerful stories, write plays and paint pictures (Bialosky et al. 1998; Kaysen 1993). I'm a scholar, not a poet or painter, so until I grappled with my own repeated pregnancy losses, I recognized but did not feel the difference between arguments that worked in theory but not practice. When feminists tell us that the personal is political, they exhort us not to be duped by positivist appeals to objectivity. They encourage us to be subjective in our research, admit our personal biases and let our most heartfelt concerns guide our scholarship and our

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activism. Hard perso~al experience taught me that, despite our desire to validate and the realities of women's · acknowledge di · . · lives ' women's' health scholarsh·1p can sometimes sregard, e:en disrespect, the range of women's experiences and needs. Hard peropened .my eyes to the ways in which a kin d of repro d uctive · "sonal bl · experience ,, ~ eism - or~ assumption about the natural fertility ofwomen - shaped and even distorted womens health scholarship and activism. My o~ experiences inter_sected with those of 0th.e r women and with the hjstory of won1ens health scholarship. Reproduction has defined and dominated North American interest in women's health for almost a century. A review of articles on women's health, published in women's health journals, demonstrates that, even at the turn of the t'\venty-first century, most women's health research continues to focus "na~el to knees" - or put otherwise, on our reproductive systems (Clark et al 2002). This focus reflects a hundred-year tradition. Until the r9oos, childbirth was a leading cause of women's deaths. High rates of maternal mortality inspired suffragists and reformers to lobby for improved obstetrical care, birth control, child allowances and maternity benefits. During the early decades of the twentieth century, women and the state mobilized jointly around issues of maternal and child welfare (Comn1achio 1993; Leavitt 1986). As the study of women's health history grew popular, through the 1970s, reproduction and reproductive concerns dominated our inquiries (Feldberg et al. 2003). Activists and academics explored the origins and history of can1paigns to ensure ,vomen a safe and wanted maternity. We underscored the importance of wo1nen's experience of birth and explicated the con1plex social, cultural, economic and political factors that had allowed male physicians to usurp female midwifery and steal a unique and universalizing female experience. ~fhe publication of Witches, Midwives and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English in 1973 set the stage for scholarship and activism that would reclaim woman's healing role and re-capture the contributions large numbers of non-professional and untrained women made to birthing. In historical, sociological and popular writings, we chronicled the ways in which women had lost control of the birthing process (Ehrenreich and English 1973, 1978; Biggs 1983). We explored the ways in which physicians' gyneacologic and obstetrical interventions exploited, even abused, women patients (Mitchinson 1979, 1982, 1984, 1999). We critiqued the introduction of physician dominated hospital birth, the development of birth control measures and the medical interventions that en1bodied a male technological impulse to control female sexuality and suppress female rituals of healing (Corea 1985; Oakley 1976; Rothman 1982). We constructed a history of women's health in which pregnancy was a/tways a natural condition, care provided by women was always better and technological interventions were male-inspired assaults on women's physical and emotional well-being. . . . This history of ,vomen's health became a scholarly and pohttcal force tn our struggle to reclaim pregnancy and birthing. As Canadian women's health collectives, like the Montreal Women's Health Press and Healthshanng, concentrated energy and attention on reclaiming reproduction, academics and activists invoke? his~ory to underscore traditional female methods of healing and expose the ,vays 1n whtch the changing power and prestige of science displaced and ?~legit~ated women's practices (Biggs 8 ). The focus on reproduction was politically unportant, C. Lesley 19 3 Section IX: Spirituality and Physicality / 331

Biggs (2003) later suggested because all women have r~productive syste~s a_nd, despite the differences among us, our wombs and ovanes creat;d the b1ol~g~caJ vulnerability that left us dependent on men. Second wave womens health act1v1sts believed that the struggle to control our bodies would unite us. If history united women and insp1red and prompted us to demand better and more sensitive healthcare, the call to reproductive arms also obscured differences among groups of women. Recent women's health scholarship has come to appreciate difference and forced us to contend with the ways in which race, class, gender, sexual orientation and other particularities of experience intersect. Though efforts to write more inclusive history have drawn our attention to women who are marginal in terms of economic and political power, and by virtue of gender, ethnicity, ability and race, there is little or no attention to the ways in which women's different reproductive abilities shape and create marginality within the health system and within the women's health movement. We are ignorant of, and often insensitive to, the needs of women who are childless by chance or by choice. Our history and scholarship are constrained by what I call reproductive ableism. Reproductive ableisro is the assumption that women will "naturally" conceive, bear and deliver children with ease. It can be found, for example, in editions of The Boston Women's Healthbook Collective's classic, Our Bodies Ourselves, which presume that all women are fertile and concerned about conception. These editions minimize the reproductive concerns of minority women, and disabled women, who were soinetimes sterilized against their ,vill; they ignore infertility entirely. Reproductive ableism shapes our research into healthcare delivery, our understanding of the social determinants of wo1nen's health and our activism. It shapes our sense of women's bodies and of the interconnections between physical and social well-being. It produces, often inadvertently, insensitivity to women's diverse reproductive needs and the influences of reproduction on women's lives. It guides our critiques of technology. For exan1ple, after years of activism, we have successfully educated physicians to respect women's desire to control fertility. But physicians' eagerness to accommodate a woman's desire for reproductive control can translate into a universalism of experience that disregards the needs of some communities of women. Lesbian women continually battle a healthcare system that assumes all young women need advice about birth control. Lesbians recount, with humour and frustration, encounters with physicians who have become trapped in their assumptions about what women want and/or need.: "Are you sexually active?" "Yes." Are you using birth control?" "No." "You are sexually active but not using birth control? Are you trying to become pregnant?" Conversely, lesbian women battle the presumption that they neither want to nor will become pregnant. Significant numbers of lesbians view reproductive technology as a tool they can safely use to build their families. However conservative prejudices against "non-traditional families" (Luce 2002) limit their access to assisting reproductive technologies (ART). So does more critical women's health research , which seeks to limit and constrain the use of ART, which it assumes to be the domain of n1iddJe-class women who have delayed childbearing. Reproductive ableism shapes and constrains our critiques of technology. As we fought to demedicalize childbirth, we also demanded access to safe abortions (Gordon 1976; Reagan 1997; McLaren 1986). But in our zeal to decriminalize the technologies 332 I Gendered Intersections

and i:°'terventions that ens~ed women the right to safely terminate unwanted pregnancies, we overlooked the forced abortion and sterilization of women of colour or of women deemed mentally ill or "feeble minded." We created one standard for the n:iedical technologies and pharmaceuticals that allowed women to limit their pregnancies and anot~er for those that women used to promote pregnancies. In the n1ost re~ent Can_ad1an de_bates about regulation of reproductive technology, we almost rrussed the intersections between these technologies and allowed ourselves to fall into troubling policy debates. Our eagerness to regulate almost blinded us to the ways the Standing Committee's affirmations that "the reproductive materials and embryos containing the potential to mature into full personhood" and "that there must be a measure of respect and protection for the embryo that is based on its potential for personhood" (Standing Committee on I-Iealth 2001: 3) fundamentally violated the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that the foetus has no legal status. Similarly, years of women's health activism have ensured Canadjan women rights to paid maternity leave and inspired workplace policies that safeguard women's reproductive health. We fran1e these as victories in our ability to recognize women's productive and reproductive work. Yet, our policies do not extend to women who are childless. As a mother, it is easy for me to leave a meeting because I need to get home to my child or because the daycare is closing. But aspiring mothers -women who are undergoing fertility interventions - cannot easily say that they need to leave a meeting because they have to go home to take their shots. Survey after survey asks women about the physical and psychological stresses of balancing work and fanlily. Few questionnaires probe the stresses ,vomen encounter while trying to balance ,vork and their silent or invisible struggles to have a child. As I write this piece, Canadians are again debating the regulation and control of assisted reproduction. Though ten yea1·s have passed since the Royal Commission issued its report, we still have no regulations, safeguards and controls. There are many reasons for this, but as feminist scholars of healthcare, I think that we need to consider the role that our research, and the history of women's health research, have played in creating a stalemate. Despite our increasing sensitivity to ability generally, we remain socially and politically resistant to differences in reproductive ability. Broadening our understanding of the experiences of Canadian wo~en and debu1:1 recogruze as. serious issues, so senous that they have been built into the Biodiversi ty Convention and are referred to as Bio-Safety Issues. ~e are part of the biodiversi~ in the world. And the manipulation of genetic materials also means that human bemgs are being manipulated. It is directly affectin ,vomen. g For example, scientists have no,v taken patents on relaxin, which is a hormone in our womb that allows ~ontractions to happen during labour. Having a patent means you have made son1ethmg; you have discovered it, created and made it, and that no one else can make it. This patent doesn't actually leave women out but it commodifies and controls their bodies. Th_en, of cour~e, a group of new reproductive technologies have been planned. Ecolog1cally; there 1s reason to be anxious for treating ourselves as raw materials or as machines. But there is a deeper philosophical issue involved. My sense is that the inferiority about motherhood is a patriarchal construction. And therefore wo1nen's liberation is based on an escape from the body and an escape from reproduction, not the necessity of reproduction. But the potential, the ability to have your baby, just with your body, rather than with all those hormones, machinery; the contracts and the suing and surrogate motherhood is surely liberating as well.

Who Owns Human Reprocfucti0n? One way to value work done by women - work that has been treated as invisible, as not existing, as not being work - is to give it market value. The issue of surrogate motherhood shows this very clearly; giving value to birth by bringing it into the marketplace. All of the inequalities of society across classes are revealed in the topic of surrogate motherhood. There is a very famous case of Mary Beth Whitehead, who rented her womb for $10,000 to a very prosperous doctor who was too busy to interrupt her life for nine months of pregnancy. She didn't contract with Mary Beth because she couldn't have a baby; but because she could save money by paying a poor woman rather than sacrificing her income. The case came to the public's eye because, at eight months, Mary Beth said, "I'm now starting to get attached to this baby I've carried for eight months, and I'm sorry I can't hand it over to you, it's mine, and I want to keep it; you can keep your ten thousand dollars." And the doctor and her husband sued her. Value does not mean reduction to a market price. You can give very high value to things without it ever being reduced to a market transaction. To give value without relying on market price, gives value to society's obligations to protect the space where such things are produced. In the case of childcare and childbirth: it would -~ean that women can't be fired or forced from their job when they have children, as 1f 1t was an aberration. Society has an obligation to ensure that if you are working you have the two years necessary to bring up the child and can continue with the work you have chosen to do. Recognizing that there are some very deep bonds betwe~n pai:ents and children and giving value to parenting means creating space for relat1onsh1ps to be exercised in fullness, not just by the mother but also by the father. Section X: Science and Cyberspace / 369

The Intersection of Ecology, Biology and Gender

One of the dirty words used against ecofeminism is that it is essentialist. Normally what is meant by essentialism in the critique of ecofeminism is that it is about biological determinism. Ecofeminism has never said that women are biologically closer to nature. What ecofeminism does recognize is that we cannot separate ourselves from the ecosystem and that ecological essentialism is as true for children and men as women. It is ecological blindness to assume that humans can so insulate themselves from the natural world and that we can continue to assault nature and live privileged situations for ourselves. Unfortunately, not all environmentalists are feminists. There are many strands of the environmental movement that have no consideration for gender at all. I think one of the n1ost significant gaps that you find in environmentalism that is not informed by the gender perspective is that it does not, ever, address the issue of certain constructions of power over nature and power over women.

SpirituQlity and Biodiversity In India, we have many religions. Hinduism is literally a different religion for every individual who practises it. But what can be found across these religions is the recognition that the divine, which is normally considered the creative force of the cosmos, is not a man with a beard sitting up in heaven but is pervasive throughout the cosmos and creates itself That basically translates into certain aspects of human behavior. If rivers are living and they're sacred, then you don't abuse them. And all India's rivers are sacred. It's interesting that all our movements against big dams have been fought on the basis of the sacred river, against the dam that violates it. As the Dalai Lama says, "every being, including the smallest of insects, has a right to be happy, and we have a duty to ensure that happiness." '"fhat kind of spirituality has very high political implications because it means you cannot have unlimited aggression against the world around you, that you have to put limits on your actions. Spirituality is basically a way of organizing life so that there is respect for all life. This requires that there be respect for diversity and reverence for biodiversity in particular. Let me give you a small example. If your agriculture is based on diversity, then that agriculture is producing the very conditions of its reproduction. You don't have to input things from outside to maintain fertility, to control pests, maintain water. In mono-agricultural systems, all kinds of dependency networks are created to maintain uniformity. You need lots of chemicals, poisons, dams, gas pipelines. In a biodiversity-oriented model, the very production of diversity is providing the internal input, and so the system needs nothin.g from outside itself Simply stated, when each plant in your fi eld is growing and depending on others around it, and providing to others the conditions for their growth, then the freedom of each life form depends on insuring the freedom of others. r.

NOTE For an extended version of this paper, see Vandana Shiva, 1997, "Feminist Ecology is the Answer," Womens Jfealth Journal 2. Reprinted by permission of Women'.r Health Journal and the Latin American and Caribbean Women's I-Iealth Network.

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Women and Indigenous Technology1 Anoja Wickramasinghe Technologies h-a:7e been either intentionally developed through experiments or built upon the expenence o~ people over generations. Indigenous technologies, passed >>Computer, M:ale or Female? >>> >>>A language instructor was explaining to her class that French nouns, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. >>> >>>Things like "chalk" or "pencil," she described, would have a gender association although in English these words were neutral. >>> >>>Puzzled, one student raised his hand and asked, "What gender is a computer?" The teacher wasn't certain which it was, and so she divided the class into two groups and asked them to decjde if a computer should be masculine or feminine. >>> >>>One group was composed of the women in the class, and the other, of n1en. Both groups were asked to give four reasons for their recommendation. >>> >>>"Women's Decision" >>> >>>The group ofwomen concluded that computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because: >>>I.In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. > >>2. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless. > >>3. They are supposed to help you solve your problems, but half the time they ARE the problem. > >>4- As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better 1nodel. > >> Section X: Science and Cyberspace/ 375

> >>"Men's Decision" > >> > >>The men, on the other hand, decided that computers should definitely be referred to in the feminine gender because: > >>I. No one but their creator understands their internal logic. > >>2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. > >>3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval. > >>4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

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The Al 1-Gi rl Online Revolution 1 Krista Scott-Dixon 1:1e I n terne~ intrigues m~. For ~y 1nast~r's research I looked at what young women ,'I. ere prod_uc1ng_ and putting on line. I discovered that many girls and won1 en don't tend to th ink ot themselves as ~c?mputer users." I also discovered that young women are savvy consu~ers an~ participants whose relationship with popular cuJture _ though fraught with aruaety and difficulty - is nonetheless a dynrunic one. We are no~ talking ab~u_t passive ingesters of popular culture but people who actively respond to 1t'. both pos1_t1ve~y and negativelr I discovered a thriving cuJcure of young women's media production 1n the form of ezines (ee-ZEENS). Ezines trace their lineage to print zines, self-produced publications that many female creators used as a forum to respond to, critique and envision alternatives to the often sexist and misogynist mainstream media. This is part of the phenomenon known as DIY (do-it-yourself) feminism. When the Web first emerged in the mid-1990s, ezine creators immediately recognized the potential of the medium. Initiall½ because of the constraints of early HT.M L, their efforts were limit ed to posting basic text zines online, such as the first issues of Dead Jackie Susann ~arter!y . As online publication developed with the expansion of the Web, ezine creators began to explore new ways of presenting their ideas, incorporating elements like hypertext, images and animations. Ezines like Fabula and Wench represent the ongoing exploration of both design and communication possibilities. Ezines produced by women are more different than they are alike, but in general they are produced by won1en who have a desire to make their presence felt online t hey may or may not have a feminist viewpoint but manifest an awareness that they are providing an important resource and point of connection for women. For example, Amelia Wilson of the now defunct NrrdGrrl! And Grrowl! writes, "There really isn't anything out there in the mass media that is making women feel good about themselves - nothing to make them happy to be smart and independent and free to speak and fee l in peace instead of being squelched by fear of not being popular." Audra Estrones, creator of Marigold , one of the only Canadian feminist ezines, says, "My end goal is to build this totally amazing, totally supportive feminist/girl con1munity that stretches across the who.le damn country." Many ezine creators provide an opening for debate on feminist issues in a unique way. If a reader disagrees with the creator, she can e-n1aiJ her ~irectly and eng~~e in discussion and often ezine creators use forums such as real-time chat to facilitate online dis~ourse. Rachel Mariko Pillitteri of Girlrights stated: ''A while back I tried to host weekly meetings at Girlrights .... I found a site called Fr~e2Talk; their se~e: supported chat rooms and I created one for the meetings and linked my page to rt.

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The ezine Bitch