| | International Journal of Canadian Studies - Issue # 17 Abstracts |
 | | In their quest for representation in the processes and outcomes of constitutional deliberations since 1980, individual women and womens groups have pursued broad and varied constitutional agendas and have addressed all aspects of the constitutional order. |
 | | Yet much of the literature describing Canadian constitutional discourses and dramas during this time period inscribes women as "Charter Canadians" whose present and future constitutional interests are (wrongly) assumed to be shaped entirely by a singular desire to protect and enhance their Charter rights and whose constitutional interventions are, therefore, self-interested, particularistic and even disruptive. |
 | | This paper argues that the conventional assumptions about womens constitutional participation (especially their representational claims) are based on patriarchal conceptions of citizenship which construct women as inherently partial, private and dependent and, therefore, as unable to measure up to the supposedly universal, but actually masculinist, norms of political engagement. |
| www.iccs-ciec.ca /pages/7_journal/b_issues/abstracts17.html (1447 words) |