Feminist intervention in Québec

In Quebec, in the mid-1970s, feminist intervention was widely practised to support women and defend their rights as a therapeutic and political alternative to traditional therapies in the field of mental health and the fight against sexist violence. It is based on a socio-political analysis of women’s problems, rather than focused on an individual’s intrapsychic dimensions. The “personal is political” has been the pillar of feminist intervention practices and political action from its origins to the present day. The foundations of feminist intervention in Quebec, as described in the pioneering work of Corbeil, Lazure, Legault and Pâquet-Deehy (1983) are: recognizing women’s potential, taking into account women’s life history, women regaining power over their lives, principle of egalitarianism in intervention relationships, and the overall aim of social change. Hundreds of women’s groups established themselves throughout Quebec, adopting feminist intervention and developing diverse practices and analyses. Groups inspired by the principles of feminist intervention adapted it in accordance with their needs and realities.

Some 30 years later, following extensive empirical research conducted with 60 women in various women’s groups, Corbeil and Marchand co-edited the book L’intervention féministe, d’hier à aujourd’hui: portrait d’une pratique sociale diversifiée (2010). This work was an effort to measure the evolution of feminist intervention. The book presents the writings of a collective of authors representing feminist organizations. It updates the foundations of feminist intervention while highlighting a set of plural practices and challenges underlying feminist intervention in its various spheres of application. These writings laid the groundwork for a feminist intervention framework that integrates intersectionality, a theory whose popularity has since grown rapidly in Quebec’s Anglophone and Francophone academic and activist circles (Bilge, 2009).

Intersectionality

The term « intersectionality » was coined by the jurist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1991 to analyze the response of American legislation to the violence racialized women experience as a result of the intersection of racist and sexist forces in their lives. The underlying theoretical underpinnings, however, were present in several works by African-American, Hispanic-American and lesbian (white and non-white) feminists dating back to the 1970s. While intersectionality is defined in various terms depending on the context—academia, the women’s movement—at the heart of these theories is the intersection of the different power relations formed by capitalism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, ageism, and ableism. Over the past few decades, researchers and practitioners have adopted an intersectional approach to better inform their work and practice. It is from this perspective that the research team wished to reflect on the application of intersectionality to contemporary feminist intervention, as embodied in women’s groups in Québec. The three posters are therefore part of a collective effort to consider feminist intervention in the era of intersectionality. With the aim of co-constructing knowledge for action, these posters are intended, not as an end in themselves, but rather as analytical tools to open dialogue on the scope and uses of intersectionality in our daily practices.