Stephanie Paterson
Biographic Data
| ID | 331979 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephanie Paterson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephanie |
| FAMILY NAME | Paterson |
| SIGNATURE | PATERSON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0009-0007-5421-4329 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 105 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Spying in South Asia: Britain, United States, and India’s Secret Cold War
A critical examination of neoliberalism and women’s physically active leisure experiences during the transition to motherhood
In this paper, the authors investigate how neoliberalism and the transition to motherhood influence mothers’ engagement in physically active leisure. They use data from their longitudinal study on first-time mothers in two major cities in Canada to better understand women’s experiences of navigating the multiple demands of contemporary mothering. Interviews were conducted with 33 women who were experiencing the transition to motherhood at four in…
Maternal responsibilization in times of crisis: Transition to motherhood and collective anxiety in Canada
India and China at Odds in the Asian Century: A Diplomatic and Strategic History
Femocrats Online: Navigating Digital Feminism and GBA+ in the Canadian Public Service
Public servants' social media use has been subject to considerable debate, which often focuses on the potential conflict between duty of loyalty and free speech. Similarly, digital feminism has presented both opportunities and challenges for feminist activism, facilitating increased awareness and connections, while also inviting harassment, potentially silencing particular groups. In this article, we situate GBA+ at the nexus of these phenomena, …
Negotiating intensive mothering and the gendered politics of active leisure among first time mothers in Canada
In this paper, we investigate the meanings and experiences of active leisure among first time mothers. The connection of first time mothers’ experiences to broader concepts such as intensive mothering, social policy, and neoliberalism are also examined within the context of their well-being. Using narrative analysis, 27 interviews were conducted with nine first time mothers participating in three in-person interviews over three months. Five stori…
Understanding Gender Expertise in the Post-Truth Era: Media Representations of Gender-Based Analysis Plus in Canada
In this paper, we explore the post-truth era as a contextual factor in how gender expertise is constituted, challenged, and defended in policy discourse in Canadian context. Using post-structural policy analysis to explore the contours of media scrutiny and the resulting debate about gender-based analysis plus (GBA+), Canada’s approach to gender mainstreaming, we reveal that it was ultimately a debate about the role of gender/intersectional exper…
Fear of the other: Vulnerabilization, social empathy, and the Covid-19 pandemic in Canada
In this paper, we use the Empathic Policy Framework to explore the concept of vulnerability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that vulnerability is not a state of being, but rather an effect produced by emotional policy discourse. As a result, people are not inherently 'vulnerable', but rather 'vulnerabilized'. We make this claim by exploring the potential of the EPF to illuminate the process of vulnerabilization in the context of…
Emotional labour: Exploring emotional policy discourses of pregnancy and childbirth in Ontario, Canada
In 1991, Ontario became the first Canadian province to pass legislation establishing midwifery as a self-regulated healthcare profession and integrating it into the provincial healthcare insurance plan. Since its implementation, there has been a partial convergence of obstetric practice in the province, where, despite seemingly distinct professional philosophies of care, both midwives and physicians cohere around representations of pregnancy and …
Emotional problems: Policymaking and empathy through the lens of transnational motherhood
In this paper, we explore the role of social empathy in policymaking. Social empathy extends empathy from an interpersonal disposition to the social and political structures that inform policy processes and outcomes. Empathy requires an emotional understanding of phenomena, which we suggest can be cultivated through an emotional analysis of policy, and can result in more socially just outcomes. Building on social work and emotional policy analysi…
The gender logic and effects of instrument mixes: Implementing eldercare policy in Canada
Although policy instruments are often conceptualized as technical or neutral tools through which ideas and outcomes are connected, this article focuses on the discursive dimensions of policy instruments in Canada’s eldercare policy to explore their gendered and gendering logics and effects. Using frame analysis, we examine government acts, public reports and policy documents to uncover how different policy instruments at the federal and subnation…
I am more than a mom: Stories of parental leave during the transition to motherhood in Canada
The transition to motherhood is a time of tremendous change, during which maternal subjects experience important shifts in their relationships with family, friends, employers, and state. Parental leave policies have potential to mitigate some of these changes, contributing positively to health and economic outcomes. Indeed, such policies have been identified as essential for achieving gender equality, serving to address both recognition and redis…
Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers: Implications for Gender
Solving poverty is a laudable public policy goal. While there are many approaches, one that has gained popularity is the conditional cash transfer that requires recipients to satisfy conditions imposed on them such as requiring regular medical checkups. Another approach, which is gaining interest is unconditional cash transfers that do not impose conditions. The question we ask in this paper is: what do these past and current attempts tell us abo…
Guiding Girls
Nova Scotia’s Guide for Girls and Manitoba’s 4 Girls Only! represent recent shifts in policy that aim to include and empower young women vis-a-vis public policy. In this article, we analyze these manuals, illuminating the ways in which young women are configured as subjects in late modern capitalist societies such as Canada. We show that, as neoliberal subjects, young women are increasingly expected to be autonomous and self-governing yet appear …
Stories from the Front Lines: Making Sense of Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Gender mainstreaming (GM) is a strategy used by governments to promote gender equality. It entails integrating gender and intersectional considerations into all aspects of policy work, including policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, its success in achieving gender equality and social transformation has been limited. Drawing on implementation research and narrative analysis, this article explores the micro-level dynamics and…
Gender Mainstreaming and the Discursive Politics of Public Service Values
In this article, we argue that the introduction of gender mainstreaming invites tension between key public service values, such as fairness, equity, and responsiveness, on one hand, and efficiency, accountability, and neutrality, on the other hand. Using a Canadian case study, we further argue that, to reconcile this conflict, public servants deploy a number of discursive strategies, which shape the meanings of both gender mainstreaming and value…
Bureaucratic Role Perceptions and Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Since the mid‐1990s, governments have adopted gender mainstreaming (GM) as a strategy for achieving gender equality and improving women's social, economic and political conditions. Yet, studies indicate that GM continues to be unevenly implemented, both within and across countries. To explain this outcome, this paper focuses on the local implementers of GM — the gender focal points — and how they understand GM and interpret it in their everyday w…
Gendering Public Policy or Rationalizing Gender? Strategic Interventions and GBA+ Practice in Canada
The debate surrounding the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming has revived concerns of co-optation of equality work and resistance first expressed by early feminist public administration scholars. In this article, we explore how gender analysts exercised their agency and carved out spaces within the bureaucracy to articulate and advance a gender focus in policy work. Employing discursive, institutional and relational strategies, gend…
Negotiating the Complexities and Risks of Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research
This article interrogates the experiences of an interdisciplinary research team that engaged in a qualitative research program for over 5 years, beginning with the grant writing process through to knowledge dissemination. We highlight the challenges of constructing shared understanding and developing research synergies, embracing vulnerability and discomfort to advance knowledge, and negotiating risks of legitimacy and transcending disciplinary b…
J ack (and J ill?) of All Trades – A C anadian Case Study of Equity in Apprenticeship Supports
In the past decade, C anadian federal and provincial governments have designed programmes to facilitate entry into trades in an attempt to stimulate economic growth. As part of these efforts, increasing attention is focusing on programmes to encourage women to enter skilled trades, while paying little attention to those trades traditionally dominated by females. In this article, we explore the gendered dimensions of apprenticeship programmes in C…
Technocracy or transformation? Mapping women's policy agencies and orienting gender (in)equality in the Canadian provinces
Canadian gender equality policy has taken a “technocratic turn” that favours bureaucratic expertise to monitor and measure (in)equality rather than participatory and consultative mechanisms. While the processes and impacts of this shift are well documented at the federal level, less is known at the provincial level. This article takes stock of provincial gender equality mechanisms, demonstrating variations in women's policy agencies (WPAs) across…
Fertile Ground: Exploring Reproduction in Canada
From quacks to professionals: The importance of changing social constructions in the policy-making process
The social construction of target populations (SCTP) approach assumes that policies are constructed to benefit (or punish) specific groups of citizens based on their relative power and social construction. This contribution tackles one of the most sustained critiques of the SCTP literature, namely, how a group can alter its social construction and power. Stated differently, how does a group move from being constructed as dependent or deviant to c…
Midwives, Women and the State: (De)Constructing Midwives and Pregnant Women in Ontario, Canada
Ontario'sMidwifery Actcame into effect on January 1, 1994, at a time of radical health care restructuring, marked by hospital closures and staffing cuts. In addition, feminist backlash was rampant in the popular media. Given these conditions, some have suggested that midwifery legislation was implemented because it aligned with the government's cost-cutting initiatives, while others have suggested that the government was responding to the dissati…
Feminizing obstetrics or medicalizing midwifery? The discursive constitution of midwifery in Ontario, Canada
The politics of midwifery in Ontario, Canada, offers rich insights into feminist policy and policy analysis, illuminating both challenges and opportunities for social change. In this article, I employ the discourse coalitions framework to investigate the claims-making process during early debates of midwifery. I argue that early midwifery advocates framed the debate around the issue of patriarchal politics, connecting the ‘colonization of wombs’ …
What's the problem with gender‐based analysis? Gender mainstreaming policy and practice in Canada
Gender “mainstreaming” is an important concept in feminist politics because it integrates a gendered perspective into all policy‐ and decision‐making. However, while most scholars agree that gender mainstreaming has the potential to transform social relations, to date it has been limited and delivered only marginal benefits for a few women. In the Canadian context, scholars have pointed to several contextual and conceptual issues that limit the t…
Stories from the Front Lines: Making Sense of Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Gender mainstreaming (GM) is a strategy used by governments to promote gender equality. It entails integrating gender and intersectional considerations into all aspects of policy work, including policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, its success in achieving gender equality and social transformation has been limited. Drawing on implementation research and narrative analysis, this article explores the micro-level dynamics and…
Gendering Public Policy or Rationalizing Gender? Strategic Interventions and GBA+ Practice in Canada
The debate surrounding the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming has revived concerns of co-optation of equality work and resistance first expressed by early feminist public administration scholars. In this article, we explore how gender analysts exercised their agency and carved out spaces within the bureaucracy to articulate and advance a gender focus in policy work. Employing discursive, institutional and relational strategies, gend…
Bureaucratic Role Perceptions and Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Since the mid‐1990s, governments have adopted gender mainstreaming (GM) as a strategy for achieving gender equality and improving women's social, economic and political conditions. Yet, studies indicate that GM continues to be unevenly implemented, both within and across countries. To explain this outcome, this paper focuses on the local implementers of GM — the gender focal points — and how they understand GM and interpret it in their everyday w…
Negotiating the Complexities and Risks of Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research
This article interrogates the experiences of an interdisciplinary research team that engaged in a qualitative research program for over 5 years, beginning with the grant writing process through to knowledge dissemination. We highlight the challenges of constructing shared understanding and developing research synergies, embracing vulnerability and discomfort to advance knowledge, and negotiating risks of legitimacy and transcending disciplinary b…
Technocracy or transformation? Mapping women's policy agencies and orienting gender (in)equality in the Canadian provinces
Canadian gender equality policy has taken a “technocratic turn” that favours bureaucratic expertise to monitor and measure (in)equality rather than participatory and consultative mechanisms. While the processes and impacts of this shift are well documented at the federal level, less is known at the provincial level. This article takes stock of provincial gender equality mechanisms, demonstrating variations in women's policy agencies (WPAs) across…
Emotional problems: Policymaking and empathy through the lens of transnational motherhood
In this paper, we explore the role of social empathy in policymaking. Social empathy extends empathy from an interpersonal disposition to the social and political structures that inform policy processes and outcomes. Empathy requires an emotional understanding of phenomena, which we suggest can be cultivated through an emotional analysis of policy, and can result in more socially just outcomes. Building on social work and emotional policy analysi…
Gender Mainstreaming and the Discursive Politics of Public Service Values
In this article, we argue that the introduction of gender mainstreaming invites tension between key public service values, such as fairness, equity, and responsiveness, on one hand, and efficiency, accountability, and neutrality, on the other hand. Using a Canadian case study, we further argue that, to reconcile this conflict, public servants deploy a number of discursive strategies, which shape the meanings of both gender mainstreaming and value…
From quacks to professionals: The importance of changing social constructions in the policy-making process
The social construction of target populations (SCTP) approach assumes that policies are constructed to benefit (or punish) specific groups of citizens based on their relative power and social construction. This contribution tackles one of the most sustained critiques of the SCTP literature, namely, how a group can alter its social construction and power. Stated differently, how does a group move from being constructed as dependent or deviant to c…
Feminizing obstetrics or medicalizing midwifery? The discursive constitution of midwifery in Ontario, Canada
The politics of midwifery in Ontario, Canada, offers rich insights into feminist policy and policy analysis, illuminating both challenges and opportunities for social change. In this article, I employ the discourse coalitions framework to investigate the claims-making process during early debates of midwifery. I argue that early midwifery advocates framed the debate around the issue of patriarchal politics, connecting the ‘colonization of wombs’ …
Midwives, Women and the State: (De)Constructing Midwives and Pregnant Women in Ontario, Canada
Ontario'sMidwifery Actcame into effect on January 1, 1994, at a time of radical health care restructuring, marked by hospital closures and staffing cuts. In addition, feminist backlash was rampant in the popular media. Given these conditions, some have suggested that midwifery legislation was implemented because it aligned with the government's cost-cutting initiatives, while others have suggested that the government was responding to the dissati…
(Re)Constructing women's resistance to woman abuse: Resources, strategy choice and implications of and for public policy in Canada
While there has been considerable attention paid to Canada's anti-woman abuse policy framework, much of this attention has neglected its implications for women's resistance to abuse. This paper attempts to address this gap by using the lens of women's resistance to analyse the anti-woman abuse policy in Canada. I begin by exploring the ways in which the policy framework constructs the `problem' and considering its implications for women's choice …
Understanding Gender Expertise in the Post-Truth Era: Media Representations of Gender-Based Analysis Plus in Canada
In this paper, we explore the post-truth era as a contextual factor in how gender expertise is constituted, challenged, and defended in policy discourse in Canadian context. Using post-structural policy analysis to explore the contours of media scrutiny and the resulting debate about gender-based analysis plus (GBA+), Canada’s approach to gender mainstreaming, we reveal that it was ultimately a debate about the role of gender/intersectional exper…
Fear of the other: Vulnerabilization, social empathy, and the Covid-19 pandemic in Canada
In this paper, we use the Empathic Policy Framework to explore the concept of vulnerability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that vulnerability is not a state of being, but rather an effect produced by emotional policy discourse. As a result, people are not inherently 'vulnerable', but rather 'vulnerabilized'. We make this claim by exploring the potential of the EPF to illuminate the process of vulnerabilization in the context of…
Emotional labour: Exploring emotional policy discourses of pregnancy and childbirth in Ontario, Canada
In 1991, Ontario became the first Canadian province to pass legislation establishing midwifery as a self-regulated healthcare profession and integrating it into the provincial healthcare insurance plan. Since its implementation, there has been a partial convergence of obstetric practice in the province, where, despite seemingly distinct professional philosophies of care, both midwives and physicians cohere around representations of pregnancy and …
The gender logic and effects of instrument mixes: Implementing eldercare policy in Canada
Although policy instruments are often conceptualized as technical or neutral tools through which ideas and outcomes are connected, this article focuses on the discursive dimensions of policy instruments in Canada’s eldercare policy to explore their gendered and gendering logics and effects. Using frame analysis, we examine government acts, public reports and policy documents to uncover how different policy instruments at the federal and subnation…
I am more than a mom: Stories of parental leave during the transition to motherhood in Canada
The transition to motherhood is a time of tremendous change, during which maternal subjects experience important shifts in their relationships with family, friends, employers, and state. Parental leave policies have potential to mitigate some of these changes, contributing positively to health and economic outcomes. Indeed, such policies have been identified as essential for achieving gender equality, serving to address both recognition and redis…
Guiding Girls
Nova Scotia’s Guide for Girls and Manitoba’s 4 Girls Only! represent recent shifts in policy that aim to include and empower young women vis-a-vis public policy. In this article, we analyze these manuals, illuminating the ways in which young women are configured as subjects in late modern capitalist societies such as Canada. We show that, as neoliberal subjects, young women are increasingly expected to be autonomous and self-governing yet appear …
Book Notes Résumés de livres
(Re)Constructing women's resistance to woman abuse: Resources, strategy choice and implications of and for public policy in Canada
While there has been considerable attention paid to Canada's anti-woman abuse policy framework, much of this attention has neglected its implications for women's resistance to abuse. This paper attempts to address this gap by using the lens of women's resistance to analyse the anti-woman abuse policy in Canada. I begin by exploring the ways in which the policy framework constructs the `problem' and considering its implications for women's choice …
Feminizing obstetrics or medicalizing midwifery? The discursive constitution of midwifery in Ontario, Canada
The politics of midwifery in Ontario, Canada, offers rich insights into feminist policy and policy analysis, illuminating both challenges and opportunities for social change. In this article, I employ the discourse coalitions framework to investigate the claims-making process during early debates of midwifery. I argue that early midwifery advocates framed the debate around the issue of patriarchal politics, connecting the ‘colonization of wombs’ …
What's the problem with gender‐based analysis? Gender mainstreaming policy and practice in Canada
Gender “mainstreaming” is an important concept in feminist politics because it integrates a gendered perspective into all policy‐ and decision‐making. However, while most scholars agree that gender mainstreaming has the potential to transform social relations, to date it has been limited and delivered only marginal benefits for a few women. In the Canadian context, scholars have pointed to several contextual and conceptual issues that limit the t…
Midwives, Women and the State: (De)Constructing Midwives and Pregnant Women in Ontario, Canada
Ontario'sMidwifery Actcame into effect on January 1, 1994, at a time of radical health care restructuring, marked by hospital closures and staffing cuts. In addition, feminist backlash was rampant in the popular media. Given these conditions, some have suggested that midwifery legislation was implemented because it aligned with the government's cost-cutting initiatives, while others have suggested that the government was responding to the dissati…
Fertile Ground: Exploring Reproduction in Canada
From quacks to professionals: The importance of changing social constructions in the policy-making process
The social construction of target populations (SCTP) approach assumes that policies are constructed to benefit (or punish) specific groups of citizens based on their relative power and social construction. This contribution tackles one of the most sustained critiques of the SCTP literature, namely, how a group can alter its social construction and power. Stated differently, how does a group move from being constructed as dependent or deviant to c…
J ack (and J ill?) of All Trades – A C anadian Case Study of Equity in Apprenticeship Supports
In the past decade, C anadian federal and provincial governments have designed programmes to facilitate entry into trades in an attempt to stimulate economic growth. As part of these efforts, increasing attention is focusing on programmes to encourage women to enter skilled trades, while paying little attention to those trades traditionally dominated by females. In this article, we explore the gendered dimensions of apprenticeship programmes in C…
Technocracy or transformation? Mapping women's policy agencies and orienting gender (in)equality in the Canadian provinces
Canadian gender equality policy has taken a “technocratic turn” that favours bureaucratic expertise to monitor and measure (in)equality rather than participatory and consultative mechanisms. While the processes and impacts of this shift are well documented at the federal level, less is known at the provincial level. This article takes stock of provincial gender equality mechanisms, demonstrating variations in women's policy agencies (WPAs) across…
Gender Mainstreaming and the Discursive Politics of Public Service Values
In this article, we argue that the introduction of gender mainstreaming invites tension between key public service values, such as fairness, equity, and responsiveness, on one hand, and efficiency, accountability, and neutrality, on the other hand. Using a Canadian case study, we further argue that, to reconcile this conflict, public servants deploy a number of discursive strategies, which shape the meanings of both gender mainstreaming and value…
Bureaucratic Role Perceptions and Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Since the mid‐1990s, governments have adopted gender mainstreaming (GM) as a strategy for achieving gender equality and improving women's social, economic and political conditions. Yet, studies indicate that GM continues to be unevenly implemented, both within and across countries. To explain this outcome, this paper focuses on the local implementers of GM — the gender focal points — and how they understand GM and interpret it in their everyday w…
Gendering Public Policy or Rationalizing Gender? Strategic Interventions and GBA+ Practice in Canada
The debate surrounding the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming has revived concerns of co-optation of equality work and resistance first expressed by early feminist public administration scholars. In this article, we explore how gender analysts exercised their agency and carved out spaces within the bureaucracy to articulate and advance a gender focus in policy work. Employing discursive, institutional and relational strategies, gend…
Negotiating the Complexities and Risks of Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research
This article interrogates the experiences of an interdisciplinary research team that engaged in a qualitative research program for over 5 years, beginning with the grant writing process through to knowledge dissemination. We highlight the challenges of constructing shared understanding and developing research synergies, embracing vulnerability and discomfort to advance knowledge, and negotiating risks of legitimacy and transcending disciplinary b…
Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers: Implications for Gender
Solving poverty is a laudable public policy goal. While there are many approaches, one that has gained popularity is the conditional cash transfer that requires recipients to satisfy conditions imposed on them such as requiring regular medical checkups. Another approach, which is gaining interest is unconditional cash transfers that do not impose conditions. The question we ask in this paper is: what do these past and current attempts tell us abo…
Guiding Girls
Nova Scotia’s Guide for Girls and Manitoba’s 4 Girls Only! represent recent shifts in policy that aim to include and empower young women vis-a-vis public policy. In this article, we analyze these manuals, illuminating the ways in which young women are configured as subjects in late modern capitalist societies such as Canada. We show that, as neoliberal subjects, young women are increasingly expected to be autonomous and self-governing yet appear …
Stories from the Front Lines: Making Sense of Gender Mainstreaming in Canada
Gender mainstreaming (GM) is a strategy used by governments to promote gender equality. It entails integrating gender and intersectional considerations into all aspects of policy work, including policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, its success in achieving gender equality and social transformation has been limited. Drawing on implementation research and narrative analysis, this article explores the micro-level dynamics and…
The gender logic and effects of instrument mixes: Implementing eldercare policy in Canada
Although policy instruments are often conceptualized as technical or neutral tools through which ideas and outcomes are connected, this article focuses on the discursive dimensions of policy instruments in Canada’s eldercare policy to explore their gendered and gendering logics and effects. Using frame analysis, we examine government acts, public reports and policy documents to uncover how different policy instruments at the federal and subnation…
I am more than a mom: Stories of parental leave during the transition to motherhood in Canada
The transition to motherhood is a time of tremendous change, during which maternal subjects experience important shifts in their relationships with family, friends, employers, and state. Parental leave policies have potential to mitigate some of these changes, contributing positively to health and economic outcomes. Indeed, such policies have been identified as essential for achieving gender equality, serving to address both recognition and redis…
Emotional problems: Policymaking and empathy through the lens of transnational motherhood
In this paper, we explore the role of social empathy in policymaking. Social empathy extends empathy from an interpersonal disposition to the social and political structures that inform policy processes and outcomes. Empathy requires an emotional understanding of phenomena, which we suggest can be cultivated through an emotional analysis of policy, and can result in more socially just outcomes. Building on social work and emotional policy analysi…
Understanding Gender Expertise in the Post-Truth Era: Media Representations of Gender-Based Analysis Plus in Canada
In this paper, we explore the post-truth era as a contextual factor in how gender expertise is constituted, challenged, and defended in policy discourse in Canadian context. Using post-structural policy analysis to explore the contours of media scrutiny and the resulting debate about gender-based analysis plus (GBA+), Canada’s approach to gender mainstreaming, we reveal that it was ultimately a debate about the role of gender/intersectional exper…
Fear of the other: Vulnerabilization, social empathy, and the Covid-19 pandemic in Canada
In this paper, we use the Empathic Policy Framework to explore the concept of vulnerability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that vulnerability is not a state of being, but rather an effect produced by emotional policy discourse. As a result, people are not inherently 'vulnerable', but rather 'vulnerabilized'. We make this claim by exploring the potential of the EPF to illuminate the process of vulnerabilization in the context of…
Emotional labour: Exploring emotional policy discourses of pregnancy and childbirth in Ontario, Canada
In 1991, Ontario became the first Canadian province to pass legislation establishing midwifery as a self-regulated healthcare profession and integrating it into the provincial healthcare insurance plan. Since its implementation, there has been a partial convergence of obstetric practice in the province, where, despite seemingly distinct professional philosophies of care, both midwives and physicians cohere around representations of pregnancy and …
Negotiating intensive mothering and the gendered politics of active leisure among first time mothers in Canada
In this paper, we investigate the meanings and experiences of active leisure among first time mothers. The connection of first time mothers’ experiences to broader concepts such as intensive mothering, social policy, and neoliberalism are also examined within the context of their well-being. Using narrative analysis, 27 interviews were conducted with nine first time mothers participating in three in-person interviews over three months. Five stori…
A critical examination of neoliberalism and women’s physically active leisure experiences during the transition to motherhood
In this paper, the authors investigate how neoliberalism and the transition to motherhood influence mothers’ engagement in physically active leisure. They use data from their longitudinal study on first-time mothers in two major cities in Canada to better understand women’s experiences of navigating the multiple demands of contemporary mothering. Interviews were conducted with 33 women who were experiencing the transition to motherhood at four in…
Maternal responsibilization in times of crisis: Transition to motherhood and collective anxiety in Canada
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Public Administration (8 works)