N14 - Intersectionality and Representative Claims
Date: Jun 3 | Time: 03:45pm to 05:15pm | Location:
Chair/Président/Présidente : Francesca Scala (Concordia University)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Ethel Tungohan (York University)
The Evolution of the Abortion Debate in the Canadian House of Commons, 1901-2019: Jason VandenBeukel (University of Toronto), Christopher Cochrane (University of Toronto), Meghan Snider (University of Toronto)
Abstract: The Canadian abortion debate has remained a persistent issue since restrictions were struck down in R v Morgentaler (1988). Johnstone (2017) shows how much of the recent debate has shifted to questions of access. Saurette & Gordon (2016) argue that the anti-abortion movement has shifted its discourse by persuading citizens to oppose abortion through a discursive strategy which eschews religious language in favour of the language of human rights. Farney (2012), Malloy (2013), and Rayside et al. (2017) document how the Conservative Party’s leadership has attempted to balance the opposition which many of its members feel towards legalized abortion with a desire to avoid alienating moderate voters. This balancing act has resulted in a compromise on the part of the leadership wherein MPs are permitted to vote as they wish on abortion-related issues but the leadership refuses to introduce legislation on the issue and at times dissuades its members from doing so.
We test the following questions: (1) has the level of parliamentary debate over abortion declined since 1988? (2) Has the discourse of anti-abortion MPs changed in the manner outlined above? (3) Is parliamentary opposition to abortion increasingly limited to the backbenches of the Conservative Party? We answer these questions through a computational text analysis of the abortion debate in the House of Commons since 1901 using a model known as word2vec, which reviews the entire corpus of Hansard to test the changing frequency and sentiment of debate on the topic of abortion over time, drawn from the LiPaD database.
‘Democracy’ and the British Debate on Women’s Suffrage: Hugo Bonin (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Abstract: From 1904 and 1914, the women’s suffrage movement was at its height. Mobilizing tens of thousands of women, its actions and discourses polarized public opinion. But what was the place of ‘democracy’ in this debate? Indeed, as several scholars such as Joanna Innes and Pasi Ihalainen have shown, from an ominous word in British politics, the term was starting to become a mandatory referent in discussions concerning the right to vote. How did the proponents of women’s suffrage adopt the language of democracy? And how did their opponents respond?
Through a study of parliamentary debates, of suffragist newspapers and pamphlets, and the antisuffragist literature, a peculiar picture emerges. First, this period saw the British suffragists progressively employ ‘democracy’ as a rallying cry. This marks a break from the constitutional idiom characteristic of most 19th century reformist movements. Second, and more surprisingly, antisuffragists also mobilized the democratic vocabulary, but as a reason to disallow women the vote. Within a complex argument, they linked ‘democracy’ with the threat of physical force implicit in majoritarian decisions – thus denying women the vote on physical and democratic grounds.
These two tendencies illustrate the changing nature of British political discourse and the growing place of the language of democracy at the time. Increasingly claimed by a variety of political actors, the term could now be used to advocate one thing and its opposite. In a global context shaped by a crisis of democracy, retracing this intellectual history seems particularly valuable to understanding our own predicaments.
The ‘Magnitude of the Problem’?: An Analysis of #MeToo and Modern Feminism: Danielle McNabb (University of Guelph), Tamara Small (University of Guelph)
Abstract: Digital technologies appear to have expanded the arsenal of collective actions available to feminist activists, to bring to the forefront old and new feminist concerns (Dobrowolsky 2014). It is within this context that a mass feminist movement like #MeToo was made possible through the widespread emergence of digital technologies. For some commentators, changes in feminist protest culture caused by digital technologies is so fundamental that it constitutes a new, fourth wave of the feminist movement (Baer 2016; Dixon 2014; Munro 2013). Others are less convinced (Aune & Holyoak 2017; Evans 2015). This project is situated within this debate. As will be shown, there is limited empirical research on the #MeToo hashtag, and the relationship between the hashtag to the broader feminist movement. This paper asks: what is the nature of the #MeToo movement? The objective is to understand both the substance and the effect of the hashtag. To address this question, a systematic examination of the #MeToo hashtag campaign, and its evolution over a two-year period is conducted. Specifically, we conduct content analyses on two curated samples of 1200 tweets. By creating two separate samples, one which looks at the use of #MeToo during its initial thrust, and one that contains tweets after a lapse of time, allows for a nuanced analysis of the nature and evolution of the movement.
Representing Women in Parliamentary Debate: Representative Claims and Patterns of Issue Attention in the Canadian House of Commons: Erica Rayment (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Recent scholarship on the substantive representation of women has adopted a claims-making approach to understanding the content of women’s interests. Rather than defining the policy content of what constitutes women’s interests a priori, this approach conceives of substantive representation in terms of claims made by legislators about women (Celis 2006, Celis and Childs 2011, Erzeel 2012, Celis et al 2014). Contributing to the empirical literature that adopts this claims-making approach, this study asks three related questions about the representation of women in Canadian parliamentary debate: What distinguishes speeches about women from other parliamentary speeches and what issues are addressed when parliamentarians speak about women in debate? Do men and women MPs prioritize different topics when speaking about women in parliamentary debate? And are there partisan differences in patterns of issue attention in the representation of women? To answer these questions, the study examines nearly 50 years of digitized parliamentary debate transcripts. I use supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and qualitative content analysis to unpack the content of speeches about women and examine which groups of MPs focus on which issues. The study finds that even when adopting a more iterative, inductive approach, the issue content of the substantive representation of women is consistent the position held by feminist scholars, consisting of attention to policy issues identified as important for the promotion of women’s equality.
Norms, Interrupted: Comparing the Trajectories of Abortion and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) in the United Nations (UN): Erin Aylward (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Not all norms develop equally. In some cases, norms elicit resistance, which can impede a norm from cascading or can result in a subdued norm “trickle.” In other cases, norm resistance may hollow out the substance of the norm or may prevent a norm from emerging altogether. Such variations in the scope and strength of norms have not been adequately examined within the international relations (IR) literature; nor have the processes and conditions underpinning norm contestation been adequately theorized.
My research seeks to address these gaps by examining the norm trajectories of two contentious issues within the United Nations (UN): sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and abortion. In doing so, my research addresses the following questions:
1. How do contentious issues develop into normative claims within IR?
2. Why have these two issues acquired differing levels of support as normative claims?
In response to the first question, I propose an expanded version of the norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) that better accounts for norm contestation.
Next, drawing on archival research, elite interviews, and participant observation within UN negotiating forums, I identify two dynamics that help account for the disproportionate support that SOGI has received within the UN in comparison to abortion. First, SOGI and abortion vary in how effectively opponents have coopted salient frames (e.g. violence and discrimination) to justify their opposition to these issues. Second, states’ support/opposition to SOGI maps neatly onto pre-existing normative communities, which has facilitated SOGI’s emergence in the UN.