ABSTRACT
Canada has become known internationally for having genderresponsive correctional policies for women in federal prisons (Moloney and Moller 2009). However, since the development of the 1990 policy document, Creating Choices (Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women 1990), which recommended federal prisons become more sensitive to the ways in which women prisoners are different from male prisoners, it has become quite clear that gender-responsive policy rhetoric does not necessarily lead to substantial changes in how incarcerated women are treated. In fact, many have illustrated that the language of gender sensitivity when deployed by institutions designed to punish and control is simply a new discursive strategy for governing women (Pollack 2000; Pollack and Kendall 2005; McCorkel 2003; McKim 2008; Shaylor 2009; Hannah Moffat 2004).
