<<< Previous Viewing Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6| 7 | 8 | 9 Next >>>

It is becoming an increasingly common strategy for Canadian NGOs (feminist or other) to make potential violations of these conventions by the Canadian state known to the committees. Aboriginal women have used the ICCPR to challenge the racism and sexism of the Indian Act.²⁰ In direct response to globalization, cuts made to social services have also been brought to the attention of various UN bodies. Low Income Families Together (LIFT) submitted a report to CESCR over cuts to social welfare and the introduction of workfare in Ontario. The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) appealed to the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women regarding cuts to housing for abused women, and (Bazilli 67-69). In recent years, women in British Columbia, facing a hostile provincial government, have also turned to the UN over the issue of cuts to women’s shelters and centres, as well as drastic cuts to welfare and other social services. The BC Coalition of Women’s Centres, along with a group of NGOs, has delivered a submission to the CESCR on these issues (BC Coalition 2000).

It is not clear, however, that this constitutes ‘global feminism.’ Embarrassing the Canadian state (or various provincial states) for its violation of international human rights obligations is a strategy that is expressly aimed at effecting public policy change at the national level. Rather than bypassing the national state, Prügl and Meyer show that the work of “internationally oriented feminist activism” is often aimed at facilitating the struggles at the local, grassroots, or national level through networking, information sharing and political and financial support (9). Further, the 2000 UNIFEM report states that “with globalization, non-state institutions now increasingly affect the ability of governments to promote or hinder women’s progress” (UNIFEM 108). Yet the Report acknowledges that [t]here is a vigorous debate about the extent to which modern nation-states have in fact been ‘hollowed out’ and lost their power, and the extent to which state power is simply being redeployed in new ways to facilitate the operation of international markets and investments (109).

Therefore, “governments remain a vital focus… as they are frequently the enforcers of policies derived from global governance structures” (109).²¹ With this in mind, it is difficult to disagree with Kagarlitsky when he submits that “‘global civil society,’ if it exists anywhere except in the imagination of theoreticians, is not representative of real society” (304). What is needed, then, is a strategy that combines an analysis of gender, globalization, and the state.

Gender, Globalization, and the State Democratic Administration

While Panitch certainly does not make gender central to his analyses, his ‘solutions’ nonetheless have relevance for the type of feminist project I will describe in this section. He advocates attempting to “reorient strategic discussions on the Left towards the transformation of the state rather than towards transcending the state or trying to fashion a progressive competitive state” (1994: 87). Accordingly, MacDonald’s criticism that Panitch downplays the importance of international mobilization (187) misses the point. The problem, for Panitch, is not international alliances, but rather what he sees as the complete rejection of the nation-state as a field of struggle. In his view, “international solidarity movements cannot be taken for alternatives, rather than as critical supplements, to the struggles that must take place on the terrain of each state” (1994: 91). In the same way, Kagarlitsky asserts:

It is clear that the left needs to have its own international economic strategy, and to act in a coordinated way on a regional scale, but the instrument and starting-point of this new cooperation can only be a national state (294).

This national strategy must focus on democratizing state institutions. Greg Albo also does not preclude international modes of regulation, but he stresses that “the political compromises at the international level necessary for long-term stability must be built around the principle of maximizing the capacity of ‘national collectivities’ to democratically choose alternate development paths” (163). In other words, the centrality of national forms of organization must be maintained.²²

This is what democratic administration seeks to do. Democratic (or later ‘femocratic’) administration is a set of academic ideas, drawn in large part from the demands and practices of popular democratic movements. It grew out of efforts by the Department of Political Science at York University (in Toronto) to approach the teaching and research of public administration in a way that places democratization and citizen empowerment at the forefront. These ideas were further developed at a conference held at York in 1991 where academics, state officials, and activists began to explore what democratic administration would look like.

Democratic administration entails a reconfiguration of the relationship between state and society. It emerged as a critique of traditional Weberian bureaucracy based on hierarchy, secrecy, expertise, and neutrality. It is also a reply to neoliberalism, positing that only more democratic and participatory governance can challenge the growing inequality and polarization in Canada. As Isabella Bakker notes, one of the main threats of neoliberalism and globalization is that “[s]uch a sweeping homogenization and privileging of market forces over democratically organized decision making obscures the historically specific form of the state in different countries” (1999: 50). So not only is democratic administration intended to challenge the forces of neoliberalism, it also seeks to do so in a way that is suited to national specificities.²³

While none of the democratic (and femocratic) administration recommendations are entirely revolutionary on their own, they will help to create the conditions needed in Canada to pave the way for a socially just alternative to global capitalism. Just as Panitch and Gindin refer to ‘concrete utopias’ (2), Judy Rebick emphasizes the necessity of having clear alternatives on the Left (Rebick 3, 8; Rebick & Roach 31), and democratic administration begins to provide some. This means, among other things, that public sector workers have closer contact with citizens and social movement organizations (Findlay 1995: 111); that positions are elected whenever possible (Panitch 1993: 10) and represent the full diversity of Canadian citizens in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality and ability;²⁴ that the use of referenda on major policy decisions (such as free trade) is encouraged (Rebick & Roach 29; Rebick 91); that our electoral system more effectively reflects the democratic will of citizens (Rebick 111, 213);²⁵ and that a decentralization of power and a leveling of hierarchies is pursued (Albo 28-29; Ferguson 85). Of course, as Panitch has pointed out, democratic administration “still leaves a private sector in which the corporations that control our economy and culture are not democratically structured at all” (1993: 5); hence, democratization of the state must be combined with, and will eventually contribute to, democratization of the market.²⁶

Despite the widespread aversion to ‘protectionism’ today, many still understand the dissonance between free trade and democracy. For Grinspun and Kreklewich, the “[k]ey to a progressive vision of economic development is active, genuine democratization,” and an abrogation or re-negotiation of CUFTA (54, 55). Panitch asks for “a shift towards a more inwardly oriented economy rather than one driven by external trade considerations” (1994: 89). Albo clarifies further that an “inward-oriented strategy does not imply closing the economy from trade, but rather a planned expansion of domestic services and production to expand employment and increased control over the international economy to reinforce stable and divergent national macroeconomic conditions” (1994: 164).²⁷ Jackson argues that “a progressive economic agenda will certainly have to challenge the constraints of NAFTA but it will involve much more than undoing (or re-doing) free trade” (159), and thus, several other areas must be highlighted.

An end to free trade alone will not change the labour conditions for workers, and so, as Albo states, “[t]here is no intellectually honest response from the left to the economic crisis … that does not involve political restraint on the power of capital and a substantial redistribution of work and resources” (1994: 163). A more democratic workplace is needed. Albo proposes a “redistribution of work” that includes a shorter work-week, increased vacation time, restrictions on overtime, jobsharing, ongoing education and training time, and more unpaid leave (165). This is in contrast with what he describes as defensive flexibility [which] includes: reducing trade union power; minimizing the welfare disincentives to work; improving information flows and labour mobility; leaving investment in training to individual decisions on their ‘human capital’ needs; and eliminating market restraints, such as minimum wages and unemployment insurance, which limit downward flexibility (147).

Workplace democracy aims to increase flexibility for the worker rather than the employer. It also advances femocratization, as will be shown later.

Femocratic Administration

Various feminist contributions have also called for a sustained (or renewed) focus on the national state.²⁸ As noted earlier, Brodie is aware of the strategic dilemma for feminists, but she does not advocate the embracing of globalization. Instead, she asks...

do we not risk too much when we choose to ignore or dismiss, in theory or in practice, the relevance of the state, especially during a period of fundamental restructuring? Although many feminist theories of the state appear fatally flawed, the fact remains that most feminist concerns—whether they relate to health, equity, or security—are necessarily state-centred. Can we really give up on the important project of coming to a better understanding of the relationship between public policy and feminist goals of equality? When we stand on the outside looking in, don’t we simply confirm the identities that the state imposes on us, including invisibility, rather than challenge them? (1996: 11)

Arscott and Trimble add that “[i]n contemporary society, it is essential that women’s many voices be heard in the policy-making process because restructuring, deficit reduction, cutbacks, privatization, and deregulation threaten women’s gains in the public sphere” (5). And Cohen concurs that “[t]he power of nation states, although constrained, is still strong, and the government is the primary avenue people within a nation have for addressing their interests at the international level” (45). This power, she argues, must be democratically responsive.

Obviously, as already stated, democratization of both the state and the market are necessary. It must be pointed out, though, that writers who urge efforts at developing democratic administration and a democratic workplace consistently fail to consider specific issues of gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, ability and age.²⁹ A feminist³⁰ democratization, or a ‘femocratization’ of the state and the market must be the focus of political struggles at the national level. Feminist scholars have been building a body of literature that seeks to ‘feminize’ this movement, which I am calling here ‘femocratic’ administration.

Femocratic administration³¹ expands on democratic administration, making explicit the ways in which the state, and democracy, are gendered and racialized. It is also heavily influenced by the Australian femocrat experiment, where the state, and more specifically, the bureaucracy, through a complex web of women’s policy machinery, has been a main strategic focus of feminist politics. Femocratic administration, while concerned with women’s relationship to bureau- cracy (a largely neglected area of research), also explores how an integrative feminist project of democratization would link the state (the bureaucracy, electoral and constitutional politics) to non-state forms (the women’s movement and other social movements, communities). Femocratic administration is an incomplete but growing project. Much of this work is scattered, with individual feminists concentrating on specific aspects of democratization of the state. While there is not room here to provide a comprehensive review of this research, there are several main areas that are beginning to form what can be referred to as ‘femocratic administration.’