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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Women, Gender, and Politics



N21 - Gendered and Gendering Public Policy

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location:

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Leigh Spanner (Mount Saint Vincent University)

Feminist Peace from the Senate to the Home? Reproducing and Contesting National Reforms and Gender Regimes in Post-UNMIL Liberia: Maria Martin de Almagro Iniesta (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: Twenty years after the passing of UNSCR1325, empirical research has investigated the challenges of women’s participation in peace negotiations and security forces, the patterns and causes of conflict-related gender violence and the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda through National Action Plans (NAPs). However, there has been no research studying how the principles, values and policies contained in these NAPs have been transposed into national law and with what consequences. This paper seeks to address this gap and explores efforts to attain gender-just peace in Liberia by critically examining the processes of production and implementation of three laws that seek to transform the country after war: The Land Rights Act (2018), the Local Government Act (2018) and the Domestic Violence Law (2017). Drawing from focus groups and semi-structured interviews conducted with NGOs and IOs staff, and with grassroot women activists in Monrovia and two rural provinces in 2018 and 2019, this paper analyses these national reforms as sites of struggle between the aspirations for national transformation and the reproduction of existing sociopolitical cleavages, with a particular focus on (certain) women’s political, socio-economic and gender oppression. Despite implementation failures and lack of consultation, the paper contends that these new norms may also open new informal spaces for mobilization, justice and healing. I argue that attending to these everyday dynamics in which formal and informal institutions blend and the mechanisms through which women resist and mobilize is essential to recognize the peace work these women are doing, and to bring light to possibilities for transforming the gender regimes that prevent women’s representation and redistribution of power and resources.


Gendered Myth-Making as Feminist Policy-Making: Unpacking ‘Progress’ and the Liberal Constraints of the European Union: Akaysha Humniski (Carleton University)
Abstract: Throughout its history, the European Union (EU) has functioned as a normative power, founded on like-mindedness, the creation of a unique ‘European’ identity, and its diffusion through hard and soft law mechanisms. Adherence to the basic principles of this identity is necessary for membership, as sustaining the distinct ‘Europeanness’ of the Union is fundamental to its unity. The foundations of the EU are undergirded by discursive as well as historical components, such as myths and legacies, which inform the basis for ‘Europeanness’ and highlight the role of liberalism and later neoliberalism in the development of a supranational common social and economic area. This paper aims to convey the underlying strategic components of EU policy-making specifically as they pertain to conceptualization of a European gender regime and outline the potentially confined qualities of ‘gender progress’ within the Union. Drawing from work focusing on EU level myths, gender equality narratives, feminist advocacy, and the policy-making process, this paper will outline the gender and equality policy developments that have been made throughout the history of the EU, while tethering these advancements to the foundational myths of the Union. These myths are fundamental in the emergence of the EU as a social and economic body, which this paper will argue has set the stage for the entrenchment of liberal feminisms as the only feminisms compatible with the socialized economic model of the EU.


Artificial Intelligence, Bias, and Canadian Borders: Mishall Ahmed (York University)
Abstract: For Jasanoff “Science and technology operate, in short, as political agents” (Jasanoff. 2004). It is with this understanding of the convergence of politics, power, and technology that I approach the offloading of previously human based immigration services onto algorithms in Canada. Following Jasanoff’s notion of the co- constitution of knowledge and power, artificial intelligence (AI) is then itself a mechanism of power, which promises efficiency and innovation to meet the demands of immigration whilst also giving way to the entrenching of race and gender-based inequities (Jasanoff.2004). Algorithms function and reach decisions based off of previous decision patterns and training data that it is fed, this becomes problematic given that data relying on statistical over-representation is often highly racialized and gendered (i.e. incarceration and poverty rates) (Heitzeg .2015). Informed by Sheila Jasanoff’s “States of Knowledge: The Co – Production of Science and Social Order”, I seek to investigate the gendered and racialized implications of technologically automated decision making in the Canadian immigration system. My research seeks to examine the following: i) how the nature and operations of artificial intelligence (AI) shapes and is shaped by the quality of inequality (racialized, gendered, citizenship status)?; ii) what is the equity challenge posed by the proliferation and use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the public sector? ; and iii) what are the implications for women and racialized persons in asylum seeking projects in relation to the automation of immigration decision making in Canada?


Engendering the War in Ukraine: Women, Gender and the Politics of Nationalism: Tanya Narozhna (University of Winnipeg)
Abstract: Women, gender and nationalism intersect in contemporary conflict in Ukraine in complex ways. Conflicts simultaneously loosen and reinforce socially accepted gender roles, producing both empowering and disempowering effects on women. As mothers, sisters and wives, women can influence the decision of their male relatives to join the armed struggle. They can provide valuable support to keep the war efforts alive. Some women can even join the army ranks themselves. At the same time, amidst deteriorating social, economic, and security conditions in Ukraine's conflict-ridden society, many women have experienced displacement, destitution, abandonment and violations of rights. The proposed paper seeks to identify multiple effects of the current nation-building project and the war in Donbas on Ukrainian women. It contends that women have been at the forefront of the war efforts in various capacities, including as frontline combatants. Their experiences have proven to be conflicting, ranging from active participation in the military struggle to victimization. Women's involvement entails at one and the same time exploitation, defiance and reinforcement of gender norms and stereotypes. This can be seen in the division of gender roles within Ukrainian Army, which conforms to broader gender norms in Ukrainian society, and the denial of the right of female military personnel to engage in combat. Current nationalist project in Ukraine privileges men and masculinity and underrates women's contributions to nation-building, effectively relegating women to subordinate position of paradigmatic victims, always in need of masculine protection.


Paths to Female Suffrage? Competition, Coalitions and Prohibition in the Northern Great Plains States to 1920: Gerard Boychuk (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: Focusing on this difference among states, the paper aims to contribute to rethinking the history of female suffrage across three northern plains states – Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. In all three states, similarity in outcomes was a clear possibility circa 1914 with a referendum on suffrage being held in each. However, the actual outcomes in each state would be different. In Montana, full female suffrage would be passed in 1914. In South Dakota, it would only be passed in 1918 following another failed referendum in 1916. Finally, in North Dakota, female suffrage for state-level offices and full suffrage would only come with its external imposition by the 19th amendment. What explains these different outcomes? The paper considers whether McConnaughy’s (2013) framework of strategic enfranchisement (in which parties hope to disproportionately capture the votes of newly enfranchised groups) versus programmatic enfranchisement (in which parties and politicians are responding to demands of existing male voter groups for widening the franchise) can help explain these divergent trajectories of development. In doing so, the paper argues that prohibition played a crucial role in both providing incentives for women to organize for suffrage as well as in shaping the potential for suffrage organizations to form coalitions with other groups of male voters.


Writing Gender Back In? An Evaluation of Gender and Equality in the Sport Policy Sector.: Gina S Comeau (Laurentian University)
Abstract: The social investment paradigm had a negative impact on the gender equality agenda in Canada. In 2009, Jenson argued that women and equality were written off the agenda by removing policy instruments geared towards improving equality and failing to mention women. A decade later, there is a subtle shift in language with the re-introduction of gender equality language with new programs and policies being developed. In the sport policy sector, examples include: discussions of gender equality at federal and provincial levels accompanied by budget increases at the federal level, a study by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Heritage in 2016, reiterations of commitment towards gender equality at the Federal-Provincial/Territorial Ministers for Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation Conferences, and the development of sport policy for women in Ontario and other provinces and revision of the 2009 federal policy: Actively Engaged: A Policy on Sport for Women and Girls. The language of gender equality is brought to the forefront in the above-mentioned examples and all acknowledge the necessity for gender equality at all levels of the sport system. This paper questions whether this re-insertion of gender and equality on the policy agenda is illustrative of a deeper change or simply a further entrenchment of the social investment paradigm couched in the language of equality? Is the end goal simply to improve capacity and create a healthy and productive citizenry, as has been the tendency in recent decades under the SIS, or are we truly beginning to write gender back in? By focusing on institutional arrangements and discourse in the sport policy sector, this study hopes to provide a clearer picture of the social investment paradigm in Canada.




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