Hobbs, Margaret

This study demonstrates that the New Brunswick government rationalized the 2011 elimination of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women (NBACSW) by discursively framing it as a duplication of services and as a non-essential service. The study relies on interviews with women who had been involved with the NBACSW, as well as literature about the use of neoliberal and anti-feminist discourses at the national level. I argue that the two rationalizations offered by the New Brunswick government rely on similar neoliberal and anti-feminist discourses to those used at the national level to eliminate women's institutional machinery and thus diminish women's capacities for advocacy and political representation. I argue that this discursive move positioned the province's largest women's advocacy group as an impediment to the common good of the province and as a threat to "Ordinary New Brunswickers," signalling a negative step for women in the province.

Author Keywords: Anti-feminist backlash, Canadian Feminism, Canadian Women's Movements, Discourse Analysis, Neoliberalism, New Brunswick

This study examines the household foodwork of low-income mothers in Peterborough,

Ontario and considers how community food initiatives (CFIs) such as community gardens and

good food box programs can support these women in their efforts to feed their families

adequately. I draw on multiple data sources: interviews with representatives from

Peterborough CFIs; interviews with and illustrations by 21 local low-income mothers; debrief

sessions following participants' tours of CFIs; and my ongoing involvement with two local food

networks. The mothers' extensive foodwork considerations, strategies, and struggles reflect

an engagement with three main ideals that are placed further out of reach through poverty

and food insecurity. Women experienced pressure through these ideals: the "good mother,"

to take primary responsibility for their children's well-being through food; the "good

consumer," to participate in society as individual consumers; and the "good food program

participant," to avoid indications of over-reliance on food programs. Each ideal reflects the

neoliberal exaltation of self-sufficiency and its flipside, the vilification of dependence. The

research results highlight the need for CFIs to focus on the broader, systemic discursive and

material challenges that can hamper the foodwork of all low-income mothers, in addition to

addressing the immediate needs of their own participants. Towards this goal, Peterborough

CFIs employ principles of universality, social inclusion, democratic processes, and broadening

of social imaginaries. In their efforts, CFIs must navigate between cultivating collectivity and

interdependence on the one hand, and engaging with this familiar, individualizing neoliberal

ethos on the other hand. This study provides insights about the subjectivities of low-income

mothers that may be useful for CFI programming as well as more analytic examinations of the

role and impact of CFIs. It also reveals the common feminization, devaluation, and under

resourcing of the food-related work of both mothers and CFIs. In doing so, the study points to

the urgent need for broad dialogue and political action regarding poverty, dependence, caring

labour, and the roles of citizens and the state in ensuring that households can adequately

feed themselves.

Author Keywords: Community Food Initiatives, Community Food Programs, Domestic Labour, Food Insecurity, Gendering of Caring Labour, Household Food Work

This thesis builds on scholarship that highlights how expected gender roles serve to both normalize and obscure forms of violence and hostility in health care workplaces. An analysis of 25 labour arbitrations involving cases of bullying reveals how gender relations is a factor in these grievances and relevant policies in Ontario health care facilities. Reinforced by underlying expectations around women as nurturing and men as aggressive, responses to bullying are found to reflect and reproduce embedded gendered power inequalities in labour. While bullying in the workplace is often treated in policy discussions as an individual and identity-neutral phenomenon, this research provides evidence to the contrary. As a consequence, we must interrogate existing legislation and policies, asking how we can develop approaches that account for, respond to, and mitigate the causes of bullying rooted in unequal power relations, including gendered ones.

Author Keywords: gender, health care, labour arbitration, policy, workplace bullying, workplace harassment