Women's organizing and public policy in Canada and Sweden. (Book reviews/comptes rendus).

Smith, Miriam

Linda Briskin and Mona Eliasson, eds.

Mantreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999; 408 pp.

This important collection -- the fruit of a long collaboration between Swedish and Canadian researchers -- should be read by everyone who is interested in the comparative study of public policy and social movements. Along with such recent works as Sylvia Bashevkin's women on the Defensive and O'Connor, Orloff and Shaver's States, Markets, Families, the articles in this collection demonstrate how to gender our approach to public policy. The collection explores public issues such as immigration, education, childcare, violence against women, and health policy but also examines the comparative politics of organizing across diversity in two different 'national' contexts.

Briskin and Eliasson's introduction and Briskin's essay, "Thematic Considerations" lay out the goals of the collection: to map the multiple forms and sites of women's organizing in the Swedish and Canadian contexts. How do different political opportunity structures shape women's organizing and how does women's organizing shape public policies? Women's organizing and representation is broadly defined as including not simply the formal organizations of the feminist women's movement such as NAG or the FFQ (1) (with which we are most familiar in Canada) but also women's organizing and representation within other civil society organization, such as political parties and unions. By casting a wide net, Briskin and Eliasson and their contributors are able to provide an analysis of differences between integration and autonomy in movement orientations as well as the relationships between various types of women's organizing.

One of the main differences to emerge between Canada and Sweden is that women in Canada tend to organize through autonomous women's organizations while women in Sweden tend to organize through political parties and unions. So, for example, while Cameron and Gonas found that there was a gender gap in response to the move towards economic integration in both countries (the Free Trade Agreement in the case of Canada and entry into the EU in the Swedish case), they also discovered that women organized differently in response to these challenges. In examining the ways in which women are represented in the policy process, Bergqvist and Findlay emphasize that Swedish women have tended to organize as "insiders" while Canadian women have organized as "outsiders." Similarly, Briskin's analysis of unions and women's organizing also found that Canadian women are more willing to organize separately within their unions as a strategy for change. Feldberg and Carlsson, writing of women's organizing for health, also raise qu estions about the comparative politics of women's organizing. Beyond the "insider"/"outsider" dichotomy, they point out there are profound differences between the two countries in the way that "organizing" is defined.

Another interesting theme in this collection is the apparent paradox that the Swedish commitment to equality and social democracy has created a situation in which challenges to patriarchy have often been turned into issues of labor markets and class politics. Consensus rather than diversity is the key to the Swedish universe of discourse and while this has proven beneficial for certain aspects of welfare state development, as Mahon's article on childcare policy shows, it has also made the forging of distinctive women's s voices problematic. Eliasson and Lundy, writing on the issue of violence against women, show how the emphasis on consensus in Swedish politics made it difficult for women to articulate the issue of violence. Similarly, as Ross and Lanstrom show, while the Swedish state's "normalization" of lesbian relationships might be the envy of some equality-seeking lesbians in Canada, "progress" and "normalization" have been achieved to some extent at the expense of separateness, grassroots organizing, and distinctive identity-formation that have been the hallmarks of lesbian organizing in Canada. As Ross and Lanstrom rightly point out, Canadian lesbians have moved toward common organizing strategies with gay men in recent years; however, this does not vitiate a long and culturally rich history of separate organizing, which is quite different from the Swedish experience.

In some of the comparisons, similarities outweighed differences in interesting and thought-provoking ways. For example, in the case of immigration, Knocke and Ng found that, despite the differences between Swedish and Canadian state policies and despite the greater emphasis on social democracy and social equality in Sweden, immigrant women have organized in similar ways, suggesting that the experience of disadvantage and marginality creates common strategies in very different contexts. In other cases, the differences outweighed similarities. Coulter and Wernersson show how educational equity claims have been most successful when they have worked hand in hand with labour market objectives, despite the substantial differences in labour market practices and priorities between Canada and Sweden. With respect to women's representation in political parties, Maille and Wangnerud argue that a party-list proportional representation system combined with strong left parties has yielded positive effects for women's repr esentation in the political system in Sweden compared to Canada. Analyses like this highlight the need for a feminist analysis of Canada's political institutions and, in particular, of our electoral system.

The main defect of the volume was its lack of a clear comparative focus. While the editors discuss some of the reasons we might want to compare Sweden and Canada, most of the issues raised in the introductory chapters were not carried through in the rest of the volume. It is not enough to say that the two countries are "different" or "similar." There should be theoretical or methodical reasons for such a comparison. For example, in an otherwise fascinating discussion of women's responses to economic integration, the authors ask "to what extent do the new supranational regimes felicitate or hinder the integration and political participation of women?" If this is the question, then the authors should explain why comparing Sweden and Canada rather than the US and Germany (or any other set of paired cases) will help us to an answer. The authors begin their discussion with an examination of welfare state regimes; however, it is not clear why this literature is relevant to economic integration. Why not start with the different positions of the two countries in the intentional political economy? Or any one of a number of other starting points?

And, it's not as if there aren't good theoretical reasons to compare Sweden and Canada. Briskin and Eliasson provide a number of good reasons in their introductory chapter. In addition, I would highlight the federal structure of Canadian political instructions, which emerged across the volume as a key factor in explaining policy differences in areas such as education and health. Similarly, the question of Canadian multinationality -- the role of Quebec and Aboriginal nationalisms -- was not explored as it affects women's organizing. Much of the volume did not deal with the issues as they might impinge on Aboriginal women's organizing and, with a few exceptions, the material on Quebec did not come to grips with the implications of our "two solitudes" system of women's organizing between Quebec and English-speaking Canada. The issues of multinationality, regionalism and federalism constitute key differences between Canada and Sweden and might have yielded interesting comparative questions.

Note

(1.) The National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the Federation des femmes du Quebec.