The Canadian Political Science Association proudly announces the eighth competition for the Jill Vickers Prize. The prize was established in honour of Professor Jill Vickers, an activist and a leader in Canadian feminist scholarship, and the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of feminist political science, epistemology and interdisciplinary methodology, feminist theory and movements for change.

Rules

• The Jill Vickers Prizes will be awarded to the author or authors of the best paper presented, in English or French, at the 2010 conference of the Canadian Political Science Association on the topic of gender and politics.
  
  
• The annual jury will consist of the Women, Gender, and Politics section head for the conference in which the papers were presented and two other members appointed each fall by the CPSA Board of Directors.
  
  
• The deadline for submission of papers is 15 June 2010.
  
  
• The Prize winner(s) will be announced at the 2011 Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, to be held in Waterloo.
  
  
• The Prize winner(s) will receive a commemorative certificate. They will also receive/share an award of $750.
  
  
• To be considered for the prize, an electronic copy of the paper must be e-mailed directly to each member of the Prize Jury and the office of the CPSA at the addresses provided below and clearly marked JILL VICKERS PRIZE ENTRY.
  

2010
Maya Eichler (York University)
Russia’s Soldiers’ Mothers: Contesting or Reinforcing Militarized Gender Roles? (2009 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
Maya Eichler’s paper takes central concepts of feminist international relations theory and examines them for their utility in explaining the interplay between masculinization, militarization, and a maternalist ideology in two different Russian examples. In examining Mother’s groups in Chechnya and Moscow and St. Petersburg, she shows the various ways these groups have worked in discursive space. In some instances the masculinist-militarization link was weakened and in others not.

2009
Candace Johnson (University of Guelph)
The Political 'Nature' of Pregnancy and Childbirth (2008 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
This paper examines theoretical debates concerning “medicalization” as they are manifested in the increased demand for “natural”childbirth. Many feminist theorists argue that medical intervention in pregnancy and childbirth is unwarranted and disempowering, and devalues women’s abilities and experiences. Criticism of medical intervention is strongest among privileged women, and is expressed as preference for “natural,” “traditional,” or “normal” approaches and practices. Reverence for the natural, Johnson argues, is a political claim that asserts social position, identity, and resistance. She considers this political claim to be demonstrated in a physical and psychic duality, a “split subjectivity,” that is exacerbated by the sharpness of the public-private divide in women’s lives.

2008
Ethel Tungohan (University of Toronto)
Gender and Multiculturalism: Analyzing the Relationship between Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Women’s Rights (2007 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
This paper seeks to revisit questions surrounding the “paradox of multicultural vulnerability” by examining the tensions between liberalism and multiculturalism and between multiculturalism and feminism. It takes a critical look at attempts to reconcile these purported dichotomies, arguing that such attempts mostly either promote contradictory policies or are too removed from political realities to be fully realized. It comes to the conclusion that although compromise is feasible, individual rights should still remain sacrosanct, and it endorses a form of political liberalism that allows for a plurality in cultures and in beliefs, thereby allowing the individual to choose among a myriad of cultural choices.

2007
Paul Kershaw (University of British Columbia)
Changing the Subject: Violence, Care and (In)Active Male Citizenship (2006 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
In this paper, Dr. Kershaw develops a critique of the concept of active citizenship that underlies welfare-to-work programmes whereby women’s caregiving as a mode of active citizenship is discounted. Kershaw’s empirical research also attests to the fact that labour force attachment policies obscure the ways in which men’s behaviours (violence and/or unwillingness to participate in childcare) affect women’s economic status and employment decisions. Welfare policies premised on promoting women’s paid employment need to be expanded to include policies directed at fostering men’s active fatherhood. Kershaw distinguishes his approach from US discourse on fatherhood which, in seeking to reinforce the traditional nuclear family, does not challenge the inequalities of power and responsibility associated with it.

2006
Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary’s University) and Ruth Lister (Loughborough University)
Social Exclusion and Changes to Citizenship: Women and Children, Minorities and Migrants in Britain (2006 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
In this paper, Drs. Dobrowolsky and Lister analyze the current state of citizenship in Britain in light of the rise of political discourses and practices that seek to remedy social exclusion. Reviewing the welfare policies and their retrenchment under the leadership of Tony Blair, they unpack the implications of social exclusion in two highly contested areas: 1) recent welfare restructuring; and 2) immigration and asylum. They examine the centerpiece of new Labour’s social exclusion agenda and welfare reform strategy where the figure of ‘the child’ has emerged as a focal point in a changing citizenship regime – ‘the child’ as a citizen-in-becoming and the future citizen-worker. This has serious repercussions for women in general, racial and ethnic minority women as well as imm/migrant women in particular.

2005
Paul Kershaw (University of British Columbia)
Carefair (2004 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
In this paper, Dr. Kershaw brings together key themes from the literature on feminist citizenship theory, as well as the comparative literature on the welfare state and public policy. Starting from the premise that social institutions and policy need to induce more men to shoulder primary care work in addition to other citizenry obligations, he develops a policy reform he terms “carefair.” With specific reference to parental leave in Canada, he illustrates how this reform could be actualized.

2004
Isabelle Fortier (École nationale d'administration publique), Éric Montpetit (Université de Montréal) and Francesca Scala (Concordia University)
Democratic Practices vs. Expertise: the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and Canada’s Policy on Reproductive Technology (2003 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from the jury report:
The jury felt that the authors had done an excellent case study of the role of the National Action Committee (NAC) in relation to federal policy-making in the area of assisted reproductive technology (ART). Their analysis of this case study developed important insights about the challenges and contradictions of representation. Organizations, such as NAC, are confronted with the double challenge of representing their members in ways that are democratic, transparent and inclusive while at the same time representing the interests of their members in trying to influence state policy-making. Feminist principles of the importance of women’s experiential knowledge confront the priority given by the State to professional knowledge and expertise. The paper makes an important contribution to our understanding of the interrelations of gender and politics, of the dilemmas of feminist representation, of the strategic challenges to women’s organizations in their relations to their members and to the Canadian state. As the authors write, the case study “illustrates the difficulty of reconciling participatory practices with institutional structures of government that continue to be governed by technocratic principles of expertise, efficiency and control.” In analyzing the tensions, contradictions and dilemmas involved for feminist organizations in their double representation with their members and with the state, the paper by Fortier, Montpetit and Scala merits the Jill Vickers Prize 2004 for carrying on the tradition of insightful scholarship, strategic vision and social pertinence honoured by this Prize.