“Something More Is Necessary”: The Mixed Achievements of Women's Policy Agencies in Canada

T He three job training policy debates analyzed in this chapter, identified in Table 11.1, include two that have taken place at the federal level in Canada and one in the province of British Columbia (BC). Unlike the debates discussed in many other chapters in this volume, two of these three debates were gendered from the beginning and the other, although couched entirely in gender-neutral terms at the outset, became significantly gendered as a result of the activities of women's organizations and policy agencies over the course of the debate. The Canadian debates also diverge from those that took place elsewhere in that the mainstream job training policy subsystem and women's policy agencies did not operate in isolation, but were instead interconnected in a variety of ways. A third notable feature of the debates we analyze is women's strong descriptive representation in them, that is, the fact that women participated extensively in a variety of roles. And yet, despite these seemingly positive aspects of the Canadian job training policy arena, the policy outcomes of these debates nevertheless departed significantly from the objectives of the women's movement. Table 11.1 Women's Policy Agency Activities (WPAA) and Women's Movement Impact/State Response (WMI/SR) in Canada<xref ref-type="fn" rid="ch11-fn1"> ^* </xref>

Debate	Decision Date	WPAA	WMI/SR
1. Canadian Jobs Strategy (federal)	1985	Insider	Dual
Strategy (federal)			Response/Cooptation
2. Social Security	1996	Insider/Nonfeminist	Cooptation
Review (federal)
3. BC Benefits (provincial)	1996	Marginal/Insider	Cooptation

*

The inclusion of more than one value for some of the dependent variables in this table will be discussed in the chapter's conclusion.