Given NAC's critique of the National Advisory panel on Violence Against Women, the fact that the section on racism is followed by a section on violence is subtly done. Too bad this book did not emerge earlier. Here Catherine MacKinnon - well-known in both Canada and the U.S. - comments critically on the action on sexual assault while Patricia Monture-Okanee links the racism against First Nations women with violence.
Since the economy is a crucial issue, it is disappointing to find no comparative reflection between the two U.S. authors, Marianne Ferber and Marjorie Hein, and the Canadian, Marjorie Cohen. Unlike the institutions of politics and justice, the two countries' economic institutions are close and getting closer. But the Canadian article deals extensively with free trade, while the American articles make no mention of it. What we have in common are employment equity (affirmative action) and pay equity (comparable worth) in addition to historically linked companies and economies. In these articles no attempt is made to analyze the linkages or the comparative data.
The two interesting articles on reproduction, by Christine Overall of Canada and American Patricia Fernandez Kelly, are not comparative either although, read together, one gets an interesting picture of the common problems in the pro-choice and anti-choice positions.
In a comprehensive closing essay, Greta Hofmann Nemiroff addresses the two solitudes - north and south of the border. The U.S. participants, she notes, were not much interested in the Canadian women's movement while the reverse was not true. Even so, much of the conference and the book is taken up with intra-Canadian debates and viewpoints but there is a great deal of crucial comparative work to be done. At this first conference, views were more inward than outward looking; surely as the effects of the Free Trade Agreement are explored, more and more issues will be felt in common.
- Lorna Marsden, “Cross-border talking: women discuss the price they've paid” The Globe and Mail (7 November 1992) C19
