paper commissioned by Women's Shelters Canada, from which we gratefully acknowledge funding that helped support this research. This discussion paper was submitted to the National Action Plan on Gender-based Violence Working Group on Social Infrastructure and Enabling Environments. We thank members of the working group for their helpful comments and suggestions. All inferences, opinions, and conclusions drawn in this paper are those of the authors, and do not reflect the opinions or policies of the Women's Shelters Canada. The authors declare they have no competing interests, either financial or community in nature.
This article traces the theoretical foundations, evolution, and limitations of Gender‐Based Analysis Plus (GBA+), which is the Government of Canada's primary framework for attending to diversity and inclusion in public policy. We argue that GBA+ is, in its current form, inadequate to guide ambitious and transformative policy in the post‐pandemic years given four interlocking issues: (1) a weak integration of intersectionality; (2) insufficient attention to the power structures and socio‐political context undergirding social relations and policymaking; (3) an instrumental understanding of policy; and (4) a misreading of identity. Drawing on feminist, intersectional and post‐structuralist methods, we adjust the GBA+ framework with the aim of addressing the conceptual shortcomings identified in our analysis. Ultimately, we demonstrate how a more explicit engagement with notions of intersectionality, power and policy's instrumental and productive aspects can enrich the ways we think about public policy as both a mechanism and a venue for transformative change.
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