Challenging Times: The Women's Movement in Canada and the United States

Patricia Morley is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University, an associate fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, and author of Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Contributors to this volume of 21 essays were all participants at a
conference held at the University of Western Ontario in May 1989,
co-sponsored by that university’s Centre for American Studies and
Centre for Women’s Studies and Feminist Research. Canadian
participants were in the majority and were primarily concerned with the
study of women’s issues from a Canadian viewpoint.

The Canadians make cross-national comparisons, but the half-dozen
Americans reveal a disconcerting ignorance of Canadian matters. This
scholarly set of papers begins with a historical perspective but
concentrates on events of the last quarter-century. Jill Vickers
identifies three women’s movements in Canada: English, French, and
Native. Micheline Dumont sketches the differences that concern women in
Quebec, where independence remains a hot issue.

The most striking perception to be gleaned from these scholarly forays
is the disunity within the women’s movement, and the evidence of
hostility between groups such as women of color, Native women,
working-class women, and the oft-maligned white, middle-class feminists.
These divisions are obviously preventing women from advancing on many of
the issues that should unite us all.