- Teghtsoonian, Katherine. 2005. “Disparate Fates in Challenging Times: Women’s Policy Agencies and Neoliberalism in Aotearoa / New Zealand and British Columbia.” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 307-333. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Political Science Association.
- Abstract:
This article develops an explanation for the different approaches to existing women’s policy agencies adopted by governments of the right elected to office in Aotearoa / New Zealand (in 1990) and in the province of British Columbia (in 2001). In Aotearoa / New Zealand, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs remained structurally intact, while in British Columbia the Ministry of Women’s Equality was eliminated and replaced with a women’s policy agency that constitutes a small subunit within a much larger ministry. My analysis of these developments focuses on the impact of two institutional features of the women’s ministries: (1) the nature of the activities in which they were involved and the different allocations of their budgetary resources that these activities entailed; and (2) the relationship between each ministry and community-based women’s groups. I also explore the interaction between these institutional variables and the particular way in which a discourse of “special interests” has been expressed within the party of the right in each case.