Women’s Health Centres: Creating Spaces and Institutional Support

Abstract

The Canadian women’s health movement learned with and from movements in other countries, and like them had roots stretching back long before second wave feminism (Vickers, 1992). Nevertheless, Canadian feminists have carved their own path and even taken the lead in some areas. Like other western activists (Kuhlmann, 2009), they were concerned about what Sherwin and her colleagues (1998; see also Sherwin, 1992) called agency and autonomy. But the Canadian women’s health movement from the 1960s also addressed the structural and institutional supports that promote or undermine women’s health (Feldberg et al., 2003). Like their European counterparts who fought for gender mainstreaming, the movement demanded gender-based analysis in research, policy and practices (see Chapter 24 by Lagro-Janssen and Chapter 5 by Klinge). However, it also sought to create and maintain separate women’s centres for research and action on women’s health, centres that are connected to the movement (Johnson et al., 2009). The differences are explained by multiple factors, including the small population that encouraged interchange among various factions within the feminist movements, by resistance to influences from what were often defined as colonial powers and by welfare state traditions that meant there was some faith held in appeals to state intervention and institutions (Black, 1992).