Contributors to this volume explore women's organizing and public policy in two northern welfare states - Canada and Sweden. They analyse the gender implications of some key areas of public policy and compare strategic interventions organized by women to challenge and reconstruct these policies. These articles seek to understand the constraints and possibilities provided by the institutional, political, and discursive contexts in both Sweden and Canada, while making women's agency visible.
Women's Organizing and Public Policy in Canada and Sweden highlights the impact of women's organizing on the framing and implementing of public policy, the reconstituting of discourse, and the practices of unions, political parties, and the state. It examines the strategies women have used to organize themselves as a vocal and politicized constituency. In so doing, it stretches definitions of organizing and of political practice, politicizes the social and the private, and expands conceptions of agency. Comparing Sweden and Canada allows the mechanisms at work in each society to emerge more clearly, challenging what is often taken for granted.
Contributors include Christina Bergqvist (Uppsala, Sweden), Linda Briskin, Barbara Cameron (York, Canada), Marianne Carlsson (Uppsala, Sweden), Rebecca Priegert Coulter (University of Western Ontario, Canada), Mona Eliasson, Georgina Feldberg (York, Canada), Sue Findlay (private scholar, Canada), Lena Gonäs (National Institute for Working Life, Sweden), Wuokko Knocke (National Institute for Working Life, Sweden), Catharina Landström (Linkoping, Sweden), Colleen Lundy (Carleton, Canada), Rianne Mahon (Carleton, Canada), Chantal Maillé (Concordia, Canada), Roxana Ng (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada), Becki Ross (University of British Columbia, Canada), Lena Wängnerud (Göteborg, Sweden), and Inga Wernersson (Göteborg, Sweden).