Gender-Based Violence Research in Canadian Political Science: A Call to Action

Abstract

Gender-based violence is a prevalent and persistent societal problem in Canada that permeates all spaces, including politics. Yet sexual harassment, sexual assault and/or gender-based violence research is rarely found in mainstream political science in Canada or elsewhere. This article argues that this absence is highly problematic for a discipline that purports to centre itself on understanding power—who has it and who doesn't, and how to access it. It further argues for a normative intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, highlighting promising avenues of research in feminist institutionalism and Indigenous feminism to help achieve elusive solutions to gender-based violence in the future.

Unhoused women in Niagara: Lived expertise of homelessness in community‐engaged research

“…Violence against Indigenous women is not only attributed to hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy, but its reach extends to colonialism and the Indian Act (Collier, 2022: 779). The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ report, Reclaiming Power and Place (MMIWG, 2019) provided testament that the gender‐based violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls is “ongoing, race‐based genocide” (Collier, 2022: 779).…”

“…Violence against Indigenous women is not only attributed to hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy, but its reach extends to colonialism and the Indian Act (Collier, 2022: 779). The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ report, Reclaiming Power and Place (MMIWG, 2019) provided testament that the gender‐based violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls is “ongoing, race‐based genocide” (Collier, 2022: 779). The fact that housing is mentioned over 300 times in the report (MMIWG, 2019) attests to the disproportionate dangers facing Indigenous women and girls in their daily lives and the immediacy of their need for safer housing.…”

“…Women are regularly required to prove or verify their abuse to obtain support, which can make it difficult if they do not have the proof required such as reporting the abuse to police (Woman Abuse Council of Toronto, 2018: 20). For Collier (2022: 771), IPV is also intersectional:

violence impacts people in distinct ways based on their multiple and interlocking identities. Racialized, dis/abled, poor, religious minorities and Indigenous gender minorities are by far the most frequent targets of some of the debilitating forms of violence in almost every setting.

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“…For Raney and Collier (2021: 383), these reforms are layered on pre‐existing informal rules that not only limit their ability to substantively change power imbalances, but they also “are particularly sticky and hard to usurp.” One institutional norm in many societies is patriarchy or hegemonic masculinity, a combination of cultural dominance and institutional power. In this sense, masculinity is not solely the experience of power, it is the “experience of the entitlement to power” (Collier, 2022: 778; author's emphasis). Collier observes that political scientists have yet to apply the feminist institutional lens to informal societal institutions (Collier, 2022: 778).…”

“…One institutional norm in many societies is patriarchy or hegemonic masculinity, a combination of cultural dominance and institutional power. In this sense, masculinity is not solely the experience of power, it is the "experience of the entitlement to power" (Collier, 2022: 778; author's emphasis). Collier observes that political scientists have yet to apply the feminist institutional lens to informal societal institutions (Collier, 2022: 778).…”