Women, support for sovereignty, and feminism: the case of Quebec

ABSTRACT

Independence movements are a feature of multiple stateless territorially concentrated nations in established democracies including Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. Women’s and feminist movements in democracies are directly engaged in these nation-building processes. Multiple investigations have examined the factors that lead citizens to favor independence but none to date have focussed on the potential role of feminist identity in shaping these attitudes. In this paper, we investigate the link between feminism and support for independence via the example of the debate over sovereignty in the province of Quebec in Canada. Using an original 2010 survey of French-speaking women in the province, we find that even after controlling for the dominant explanatory factors in the literature, women who self-identify as feminist are more likely than other women to support sovereignty. Moreover, this association varies with the strength of women’s feminist identity and with the movement’s engagement with sovereignty across generations. We argue that research on the determinants of independence attitudes needs to expand the set of groups included in investigations beyond those traditionally examined.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist identity
• feminism
• independence
• Quebec
• sovereignty
• public opinion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term derives from the particular version of independence advanced in the 1980 referendum campaign, styled “sovereignty-association,” one that combined independence for the province of Quebec with a continuing political and economic association with the rest of Canada post-independence.

2 Although rarely explicitly endorsed after the 1960s, this vision for women in the independence project has nevertheless reappeared at various points in time. In the weeks leading up to the 1995 referendum, for example, the leader of the separatist “Yes” campaign, Lucien Bouchard, identified the low fertility rate among the white race in Quebec as a key issue in the struggle for independence (Trueheart 1995).

3 Reasonable accommodation stems from provincial legislation outlining the obligation of private and public institutions to accommodate cultural diversity in their staff and clientele, so long as the accommodation does not cause excessive disruption (Marois 2005).

4 Loi sur laïcité de l’État, Assemblée nationale du Québec, available online at assnat.qc.ca.

5 The response rate was 34%. The data are weighted to adjust for differences in the probability of selection based on household size, as well as the over- and under-sampling of regions in the province that was part of the sampling design. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [grant number 410-2009-0285].

6 The correlation between the two indicators is 0.11, indicating only a weak relationship between them and confirming that they are tapping into distinct attitudinal dimensions.

7 Table A1 in the Appendix provides the summary statistics for all variables included in the analysis.

8 They represent the predicted change in the outcome variable when there is a one-unit change in the independent variable.

9 Note, though, that strong assumptions would be required in order to give any effects a causal interpretation (Breen, Karlson, and Holm 2013).

10 The bill died when the Liberal government was defeated in the 2012 provincial election.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council [grant number 410-2009-0285].