Women on the Defensive: Living Through Conservative Times

Valerie J. Korinek is a professor of history at the University of
Saskatchewan.

For optimists, the central question inspiring this book is “Where did
all the second-wave feminists go?” Pessimists might prefer the more
blunt “Is feminism dead?” By way of an answer, political scientist
Sylvia Bashevkin offers a comparative analysis of the fate of feminism
in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada during the
respective conservative political regimes of Margaret Thatcher and John
Major, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and Brian Mulroney and his
political footnote Kim Campbell. Using a methodological approach, which
combines interviews with activists with the more traditional analysis of
legislative and judicial gains, Bashevkin gives readers a timely, cogent
analysis of the fate of modern feminism.

One of the most important contributions of this book is the revelation
that contrary to perceptions American feminists fared far worse under
neoconservatism then did their British or Canadian sisters. Bashevkin is
quick to point out that this was due primarily to international and
judicial advantages in the United Kingdom (the European Court of Justice
often championed workplace equality) and in Canada (the equality rights
entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

Using a simple but effective rating system, Bashevkin provides a report
card for each country on five core feminist priorities: equal rights,
reform of family laws, reproductive choice, violence against women, and
workplace equity policies. The record in all three countries was mixed
and often counterintuitive to conventional perceptions.

The most interesting sections of the book profile the activists
themselves and offer a deconstruction of the “politics of language.”
Citing many examples, Bashevkin demonstrates that politicians, their
spin-doctors, and media supporters shrewdly turned the language tables
on the feminists and made them appear “undeserving” in an era of
lean, mean economic determinants in which individualism triumphed over
the common good.

Thus, the answer to the central question is a qualified “No.” No,
feminists didn’t disappear but they did find themselves poorer,
worn-down, and on the defensive during the 1980s and 1990s.