Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society Advance Access originally published online on October 19, 2006
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 2006 13(4):462-486; doi:10.1093/sp/jxl007
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Constructing Scale/Contesting Scale: Women’s Movement and Rescaling Politics in Québec
Dominique Masson is an associate Professor at the Institute of Women’s Studies and the Department of Sociology of the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Scalar shifts in public capacities and responsibilities are an important element of the way states have been restructuring in North America and in Europe. Women’s movements respond to these changes in various ways, including the rescaling of collective action. This article focuses on the rising importance of the (subprovincial) region in Québec women’s movement politics to understand how new scales of action are constituted or granted a renewed importance by women’s movements. Drawing on theoretical contributions from the human geography literature on scale, state rescaling, and scalar politics, I show how the region has been materially and discursively constructed by Québec women’s movement actors as a legitimate and relevant scale for feminist politics. This has involved an intricate and dynamic relationship with two different state projects of downward rescaling. Although it provided some real opportunities, it has also created difficulties and dilemmas for women’s movement actors, who have also contested the primacy of the region in Québec government’s new scalar arrangements.