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Changing State Forms, Competing State Projects: Funding Women’s Organizations in Quebec

Dominique Masson Introduction State funding for women’s movement organizations and its consequences for the pursuit of feminist politics have been the objects of a longstanding debate since the 1970s. Does state funding necessarily contribute to the co-optation, instrumentalization, and depoliticization of women’s groups and, eventually, to the demise of their ideals of social change? Or, as it has been argued in more nuanced and interesting ways, are its effects likely to vary and even to be found enabling in some contexts, depending on the specifics of the funding conditions in which groups find themselves?1 At a time when neoliberal governments in Canada have gained a reputation for making severe and successive cuts to the few funding programs available to women’s groups, going so far as to singlehandedly defund a good number of national, provincial, and local women’s organizations,2 the relevance of trying to better understand the conditions and potential impact of state funding may seem moot to many. Yet unfettered neoliberalism may not be all that is happening with the funding of women’s groups across the country. Although little empirical research has been done on the situation in the provinces, there are indications that it may be less straightforward. This article aims to address these shortcomings by documenting and analyzing the institutional forms that govern state funding for women’s groups in Quebec. This case is particularly interesting because Quebec—where granting core, operational funds to women’s groups is the rule rather than the exception—breaks with the seeming unanimity of Canadian stories about the demise of state funding under neoliberalism.