Gender Equality through a Neoliberal Lens: A Discourse Analysis of Justin Trudeau’s Official Speeches

Abstract

Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister of Canada, says he is a feminist. His government has formulated a feminist foreign policy and has presented official budgets alluding to intersectional feminism. Through discourse analysis, we examine how Trudeau’s self-description as a feminist manifests in his official speeches spanning from 2015 to 2018; we also situate his positioning in relation to contemporary literature on intersectional feminism. Our study illustrates what other scholars have identified as an increasingly difficult relationship between feminism and the dominant discourse of neoliberalism in political and policy circles. Our findings suggest that Prime Minister Trudeau’s understanding of feminism appears contained within and limited by a discourse of economic prosperity, which puts his positioning in line with a form of neoliberal feminism. We conclude that, in the analyzed speeches, the prime minister frames matters of gender equality primarily as a means to unleash women’s potential to contribute to economic prosperity, portraying them as an untapped resource.

Keywords:

• Discourse analysis
• feminist men
• intersectional feminism
• neoliberal feminism
• Justin Trudeau