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Policies implemented in the mid to late 1990s in Ontario by Mike Harris’s Conservative government have had undeniable repercussions for the population of that province. Kate Bezanson’s Gender, the State, and Social Reproduction is the first study to consider the implications of those policies for gender relations – that is, how women and men, families, and households coped with these changes, and how division of labour and standards of living were affected. Bezanson also considers implications of neo-liberalism more generally, for the lives of people living under such regimes. Beginning with an outline of the restructuring experiment which took place under the Conservative government between 1995 and 2000, Bezanson shows how this process dramatically altered the scope of the welfare state, labour market protections and conditions, and the capacity for people to manage and plan their own lives. She combines this detailed investigation of the changes introduced by Harris with data collected in in-depth interviews of selected Ontario households, in order to examine how neo-liberalism affects daily lives, particularly of low income people, and especially of women. Ultimately, Bezanson finds that the neo-liberal restructuring of Ontario in the 1990s consolidated a gender regime that was highly unsustainable for poor households, many of which were lead by women. A controversial and illuminating study, Gender, the State, and Social Reproduction crosses the disciplines of politics, history, gender studies, and sociology.

After long periods of activism and policy debate, Ontario and Quebec were the first two provinces to integrate midwifery into their health-care services. Despite its success and growing popularity in the post-legislative era, midwifery was a highly contentious policy issue, with debates emerging at every level of policy development. In this essay, the authors explore how these debates played out in media. Specifically, the authors suggest that the frames produced by newspapers during this period served to align midwifery with broader provincial socio-political discourses, which in turn legitimized state intervention in the area of reproductive health. At the same time, however, the authors demonstrate that where Ontario media representations muted differences between midwives and physicians, representations in Quebec emphasized them. Thus, the authors show that in very different ways, media representations of midwifery in Ontario and Quebec both established a discursive context in which the state had to “act on” midwifery and midwives, and also challenged the potential of midwifery to transform women’s birth experiences.

Canada's oldest and largest public housing project, Regent Park in Toronto, was originally conceived as an ideal community for low-income families in housing hardship. By the 1990s, however, it had become virtually synonymous with socio-economic marginalization and behavioural depravity. Indeed, the broader social identity of Regent Park has become an accumulation and escalation of the stigma of its residents. The first section of this article charts the historical escalation of polarization between Regent Park residents and the Metropolitan Toronto population by comparing a series of broadly illustrative statistical traits over a 40-year period. This long-term historical perspective allows us to scrutinize the development of socio-economic marginalization both before and after the boom period of postwar capitalism from the 1940s to the 1970s. It confirms that Regent's resident population underwent a dramatic process of socio-economic divergence in comparison to the general Metropolitan Toronto population, which began in the mid to late 1960s before the onset of outright assaults on the welfare state. I flesh out the stark statistical portrayal by considering various qualitative sources such as oral testimony, letters to the author by former tenants, rare resident case files, and internal and public documents from the various housing authorities. In the second section, I explain the rise of socio-economic inequality. Contrary to currently popular underclass theories, I directly point the arrow of responsibility for rising poverty and inequality towards state housing policies, including wider urban renewal strategies and internal public housing practices, and neoliberal economic restructuring. Unlike most studies, I centre in a third section on the potently deleterious effects of stereotyping Regent Park as an outcast space. Stigmatizing renderings by external observers were not free-floating ideological representations but real reflections and shapers of spatial and social divisions with concrete economic and social consequences for tenants. I conclude by discussing what residents themselves thought about their homes and how they coped with stigmatization and material deprivation. Sometimes accepting and internalizing negative external representations and/or projecting these labels onto their neighbours and other times resolutely battling against these brutalizing depictions, Regent Park residents were always active players in building a meaningful living space. /// Le projet de logements le plus ancien et le plus grand du canada, Regent Park à Toronto, a été initialement conçu comme une communauté idéale pour les familles à faible revenu ayant des difficultés à trouver un logement. Dans les années 1990, toutefois, il a est devenu virtuellement synonyme de marginalisation socio-économique et de dépravation comportementale. À vrai dire, l'identité sociale la plus large de Regent Park est devenue une accumulation et une intensification du stigma de ses résidents. La première section de cet article trace l'intensification historique de la polarisation entre les résidents de Regent Park et la population de Toronto métropolitain en comparant une série de traits statistiques largement illustratifs sur une période de 40 ans. Cette perspective historique à long terme nous permet de surveiller le développement de la marginalisation socio-économique tant avant qu'après la période de grande prospérité du capitalisme d'après-guerre, des années 1940 aux années 1970. L'article confirme que la population de Regent Park a subi un processus dramatique de divergences socio-économique en comparaison avec la population générale de Toronto métropolitain, qui a commencé vers le milieu et la fin des années 1960 avant que commence les assauts directs sur l'État-providence. J'enlève les statistiques pures en prenant en considération des sources qualitatives variées telles que les témoignages oraux, les lettres envoyées à l'auteur par les anciens locataires, les rares dossiers des résidents, ainsi que les documents internes et publics de différentes autorités en matière d'habitation. Dans la deuxième section, j'explique la venue de l'inégalité socio-économique. Contrairement aux théories populaires courantes des classes marginales, j'attribue la responsabilité de la pauvreté et de l'inégalité croissante directement aux politiques de logement de l'État, y compris les stratégies de renouvellement urbain et les pratiques internes relatives au logement public, ainsi que la restructuration économique néolibérale. À la différence de la plupart des études, je me concentre dans une troisième section sur les effets potentiellement dangereux de stéréotyper Regent Park comme un espace ostracisé. Les conclusions stigmatisantes des observateurs externes n'étaient pas des représentations idéologiques libres, mais plutôt de vraies réflexions sur les divisions spatiales et sociales ayant des conséquences économiques et sociales concrètes pour les locataires. Pour conclure, je discute de ce que les résidents eux-mêmes pensaient de leurs foyers et de la façon dont ils ont fait face à la stigmatisation et à la dépravation matérielle. Quelquefois, ils ont accepté et intériorisé les représentations négatives externes et/ou projeté ces étiquettes à leurs voisins; en d'autre temps, ils se sont battus contre ces expressions brutales. Quoi qu'il en soit, les résidents de Regent Park ont toujours été des participants actifs dans la construction d'un espace vital significatif.