Ever since Justin Trudeau was elected, it seems that his plate of brownie points has been stacking up.
“Because it’s 2015” was his reasoning for his “gender-balanced cabinet.” This one-liner has reached all corners of the world as Canadians proudly shared and retweeted on social media as if there couldn’t be anything more revolutionary. As a woman, and as a feminist, I was happy, but I wasn’t celebrating.
First, a 50-50 cabinet implies there are only two genders. It ignores gender fluidity, and symbolically enforces the mainstream binary feminist discourse at the federal level. Because gender is not binary, the cabinet is not actually gender diverse.
Gender ‘equality’ between men and women at the cabinet level is not a solution to decolonize the bodies of women of colour. We need our government to decolonize first. This means no extra praise for doing a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women because it is already the government’s responsibility to atone for decades of violent colonial policies.
But when time came for Trudeau to gain support, he used women strategically. “Trudeau is a feminist!” people yelled.
It seems we have forgotten that just two months before, Trudeau fell under scrutiny when black activists called him out for subtly racist remarks in an interview for Up for Debate, a federal debate on women’s issues.
Trudeau referenced misogynistic music and communities where fathers are absent. Bringing up anti-black stereotypes is not an appropriate way to address violence against women. Concepts like patriarchy, intersectionality, and anti-oppression are always missed by cis white male leaders when discussing gender justice. But they receive all the credit when they make symbolic decisions like a gender-balanced cabinet.
Trudeau’s subtle racism was forgotten after his victory, but notice there was not a single black person appointed as a cabinet minister. Black women continuously face systematic barriers, including at the political level. Hence, a discourse of “equality” is not intersectional, as it ignores the struggles of many while mainstreaming the victories of a few.
My objective as a woman is not to be on par with men. The community of intersectional feminists aim for the liberation of all women. This doesn’t mean achieving symbolic equality with men, it means freeing ourselves from the constraints of patriarchy and how factors like race, gender, and sexuality intersect.
This is not to take away from the achievement of our female cabinet ministers. It is high time that qualified women be acknowledged and given leadership positions. Although cabinet ministers play a significant role in making decisions that affect Canadians, the ultimate power lies in the hands of the Finance and Treasury Board—both led by conservative white men.
This form of power imbalance is seen everywhere, including Hollywood, when women and women of colour are casted to show “diversity” and “equality” but end up playing roles that enforce stereotypes. It shows who really is in power and who is benefiting—and it’s not women.
Canada is no different. We use terms like equality and diversity to cover for our issues by appointing diverse representatives and an equal number of men and women to the cabinet. This acts as a facade for issues that women are actually facing, such as aggregated rates of violence, economic segregation, disadvantages that first generation immigrant women and refugee families face, issues facing women in LGBTQ communities, violence against Indigenous women, rising Islamophobic attacks against visible Muslim women, and the list goes on. None of this is mentioned because Canada wants to maintain its image of diversity and promote equality by pointing at the diverse, gender-balanced cabinet as another excuse for being apathetic.
It’s time to shift away from mainstreaming the liberal white feminist rhetoric from equality and diversity to the intersectional liberation of women. There’s no need to celebrate Trudeau for appointing qualified women.
It shouldn’t be necessary to praise someone for not being sexist simply because it’s 2015. But I guess that is how our nation chose to recover from our former prime minister. Unless Trudeau and his government is willing to sit down for an intersectionality 101 workshop, we can only depend on ourselves for change. And change starts with problematizing the mainstream feminist discourse, and looking beyond the facade of equality and diversity.
