Challenging the Public/Private Divide: Feminism, Law, and Public Policy

Rebecca Murdock is a lawyer with the Toronto firm Ryder Wright Blair &
Doyle.

The 13 essays included in this volume examine the public/private divide
in four areas: the state, family home and work, child custody and
childcare, and privatization and globalization. The unifying theme is
gender, as it relates to sexual identity, race, class, and disability.
All of the contributors are academics with backgrounds in law,
sociology, social history, geography, or public policy.

In her introduction, Susan Boyd observes that a considerable body of
literature already exists on the public/private divide, a western
ideological marker that “shifts in relation to the role of the state
at particular historical moments, in particular contexts, and in
relation to particular issues.” The best essays in this collection are
those that offer something new. For instance, in her essay “Sounds of
Silence,” Jennifer Koshan discusses the history of “state regulation
of intimate violence against women,” but she particularizes her
discussion to the experience of aboriginal women. First Nations women
“often say that what they want is a healing process to end the
violence, not an adversarial, punitive process to end their families,”
summarizes Koshan, noting that the Euro-Canadian criminal justice
process undermines this aim.

In another essay, Judith Mosoff outlines the discriminatory treatment
of mothers with mental health histories in child custody battles.
Sometimes the dispute is between mother and father, but often it is
between mother and child protection agencies that focus on a woman’s
disability rather than objectively assessing her parenting skills. As
Mosoff notes, courts perpetuate injustice by conflating and perpetuating
gender and disability stereotypes.

Boyd’s study of the much-publicized B.C. custody case Tyabji v.
Sandana demonstrates the double standards courts sometimes invoke when
assessing the benefits and demands of a mother’s high-profile
political career. In another piece, Jenni Millbank considers court
voyeurism and bias in the context of lesbian parenting. In their
respective essays, Claire Young and Marlee Kline canvas gender inequity
in the federal tax system and in the privatization of child welfare.

Though some of this terrain has been traveled before, the case studies
supply fresh points of engagement.