Gendering the Vertical Mosaic, Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society

Abstract

I write this review of a book clearly designed for the university market, be it women's studies, sociology, or political science courses, while I compose at the same time a talk to CEOs of large corporations here in Calgary. An interesting experience, this moving back and forth in my mind between audiences. I think about what people hear, about their expectations, about contexts, about my own motivations in talking in public arenas. Am I right in thinking that my talk to the CEOs shouldn't be laden with fine theoretical distinctions? Am I right to believe that, there, stories of experience in the world of universities and institutions including feminist organizations will make a more forceful presentation of feminist issues? In the meanwhile, I think about how useful we will find this book in women's studies courses and other settings in which we want to expose the complexity of feminist positions on many subjects. Feminists and the Canadian state, and feminists challenging the state; resistance and power; power and powerlessness; feminism, women, and work; representation and subjectivity -- all these receive a history, a Canadian context, and a glimpse through the prisms of different theoretical positions. These latter are no surprise, including the usual liberal feminism, socialist, Marxist, radical, and anti-racist feminism, as well as some discussion of discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. Nothing wrong with that (although I wonder here whether the CEOs would understand the distinctions; indeed whether they are as great as they have been claimed to be by their proponents), especially when each of them is offered both respectfully and at its best in each case, Hamilton always remembering that different understandings from varied theoretical perspectives all provide ways of thinking about how to create social and political change. Hamilton cites Bronwen Wallace in the preface, calling on us to be mindful of our wholeness, and thus mindful of the politics of the particular. As the book examines Canadian society from feminist perspectives, it abides by its commitment to the particular, interrogating both concepts, Canadian society and feminist perspectives. True in the end to her teacher, sociologist John Porter (author of The Vertical Mosaic), Hamilton agrees that dismantling the vertical mosaic requires equality of opportunity, especially provided through education, with its precondition a reasonable standard of living. Since meanness prevails now everywhere in the country, feminists have resistance to offer, resistance to misogynistic and racist arguments that buttress privilege and power, in turn buttressed by androcentric knowledge. The tools for that resistance lie in education fortified by the particular. …