Women's national and gendered identity : The case of Canada

Abstract

In this text, the author explores the difficulties of integrating diversity into the pan-Canadian women's movement. She outlines how hard it was for Canadian feminists to understand the "differend" (unassimilable difference) between themselves and nationalist Quebecoises. Gradually English-Canadian feminists learned that their claim to represent Canadian women was illegitimate because feminist Quebecoises intended to represent themselves. She concludes that it has become normal for the Quebec and English-Canadian movements to disagree on issues, although this disagreement does not preclude ad hoc coalitions. Moreover, women's movements in Canada and Quebec are now jealous of their autonomy and are fragmented, precluding the emergence of a political perspective based on "unity-in-difference." Dans cet article, Micheline de Seve explore la difficulty d'integrer la diversity dans le mouvement des femmes pan-canadien. Elle souligne combien les feministes "Canadian" ont eu de mal A comprendre le "differend" (ecart infranchissable) les separant des Quebecoises nationalistes. Comprendre la situation, un processus graduel, impliquait que les feministes canadiennes-anglaises abandonnent la pretention de representer legitimement les femmes du Canada des lors que les feministes quebecoises entendaient se representer elles-memes. Elle conclut qu'il est devenu "normal" pour les feministes au Quebec et au Canada de diverger d'orientation, ce qui n'empeche nullement les coalitions ad hoc. Cependant, la fragmentation des groupes de femmes, maintenant jaloux de leur autonomie, au Canada comme au Quebec, interdit l'emergence d'une perspective politique basee sur "l'unite-dans-la-difference." Feminism and nationalism are clearly opposed if one thinks of them as forms of overvalorisation of ethnicity that justify appropriation of women's reproductive genetic abilities in the service of a specific community's physical survival or growth. Women's options as free individuals can be accommodated only if we forego an essentialist approach to a nation's identity and adopt a constructionist concept of a nation as a living, cultural entity, able to integrate new elements that come from outside. Given essentialist nationalism's history, this conversion to modernity is needed to emancipate women from conscription to motherhood. Feminism and nationalism therefore can become compatible if and only if a modern concept of nation-building is adopted. The nation must be open to immigration, thereby giving the physical components of a community fluidity. Such a national community would be grounded in allegiance to common values and shared cultural visions. Feminists are women who collectively and consciously organised to better their situation and to gain equality with men. As citizens, feminists may identify with a cultural and political space whose communication and cultural devices they master. Their specific cultural location enhances and multiplies their personal abilities. Drawing on collective, communitarian resources, they can express their will and act effectively to better their life and develop their society's welfare according to their sharing of the common style of imagining a civic space, the "deep, horizontal comradeship" that distinguishes communities one from the other (Anderson 6-7). History, language, legal ways and everyday customs serve to bond individuals together, easing their communication with each other and enabling them to intervene jointly as co-actors in the outer world: ... a sense of national identity provides a powerful means of defining and locating individual selves in the world through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture. It is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know "who we are" in the contemporary world. (Smith 17) Claiming their right to shape the public realm with their fellow countrymen, feminists enter the world of "nation-ness" (Anderson 3) as full political subjects. …