Feminism, Political Economy and the State: Contested Terrain

Margaret Conrad is a professor of history at Acadia University. She is
the author of Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova
Scotia, 1759–1800, and Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in
Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 and the co

The 13 articles in this volume bring a finely tuned political economy
perspective to bear on issues of education, health care, and welfare.
Historically relegated to the nonprofit sector, these reproductive
activities have employed a significant number of women in voluntary
and—especially since the Second World War—paid labor. State reforms
associated with recent globalization processes, the editors argue, serve
as a direct attack on the claims that women have made against both the
state and private-sector employers in the postwar period. Acknowledging
the seeming contradiction of feminists lamenting the demise of state
processes that they once criticized, the contributors to this anthology
have made the contradictions the focus of their analyses.

Although most of the articles deal with Canadian topics, three authors
range further afield to address the European Community’s equality
legislation (Wendy McKeen), the failed socialist revolution in Nicaragua
(Phil Ryan), and the new reproductive technologies in developing
countries (Navsharan Singh). They offer a context for the various
Canadian case studies focusing on such matters as the current nursing
crisis (Jerry White), home care (Jane Aronson and Sheila M. Neysmith),
family values (Lois Harder), social assistance (Katherine Scott), the
status of Native women (Jo-Anne Fiske), and the Royal Commission on New
Reproductive Technologies (Lorna Weir and Jasmine Habib). Three articles
provide a timely reminder that, while public policies in the 1990s have
their own special context, the practices they reflect have deep
historical roots. Marianne Valverde traces Canada’s tradition of a
mixed “social economy” built around the public and private spheres;
Terry Wotherspoon explores the reproductive labor of teachers in British
Columbia in the early 20th century; and Margaret Little analyzes the
evolution of welfare for single mothers in Ontario.

Rich in insights, these articles highlight, among other things, the
distinction between productive and reproductive work (the latter less
amenable to being moved outside the country to take advantage of cheaper
labor); the conflict between individual and collective rights (most
glaringly revealed in the case of aboriginal women), and the assumptions
behind recent state reforms that are more about disciplining workers and
opening the state sector to private profit than about technology and the
national debt. A challenge to the current neo-liberal orthodoxy, this
anthology makes fascinating reading and serves as a call for action, the
purpose for which it was published.