A Feminist Take on First Year Criminal Law” was drafted for NAWL by Elizabeth Sheehy, in the summer of 2010.

Professor Sheehy teaches at the University of Ottawa faculty of law. Her work concentrates on legal responses to violence against women and she has been involved in many legal and activist endeavours. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in July 2005 by the Law Society of Upper Canada for her feminist activism in furtherance of women’s equality in law.

Public income security programmes for individuals can take three forms.  Each kind targets different kinds of beneficiaries and requires a different type of financing.  Here the different kinds of programme will be defined relative to the objective of providing maternity, paternity, adoption and parental benefits for new parents and eventually for all parents with dependent children.

According to NAWL’s vision, every mother should receive income replacement and material support during the first years of caring for a child. Bearing and raising children should not impoverish women, as is now the case. No single initiative is sufficient to drastically improve the situation of all mothers in Canada. Nonetheless, several areas of the law cry out for reform by the Federal government.

For the last three years, NAWL has been exploring ways of improving maternity and parental benefits for women living outside Québec. The NAWL Working Group has had several in-depth discussions on this issue, did extensive research on existing literature in Québec, Canada and abroad, and has consulted widely with women across Canada.

On May 2 and 3, 2007, the National Association of Women and the Law, in cooperation with the Canadian Labour Congress and the other members of the Pay Equity Network, held a Canada-wide meeting on recent developments in pay equity. Activists from labour organizations and women’s groups of Québec and several other regions of Canada attended this exceptional and inspiring meeting.

Measuring the success of law reform advocacy is often difficult. In assessing success, are we to look only at outcomes -- did the government make the change that was being advocated for? -- or should we also look at process -- did we organize well, establish positive working relationships with our partners, get positive public attention?

As a consequence of a periodic five year renewal process which the federal government is obliged to undertake, the new Conservative government must very soon decide whether the Status of Women Canada Women’s Program will be renewed, reformed or whether it will lapse and disappear altogether.

This conference highlighted a series of challenges and questions relating to the privatization of justice, the interaction of cultural and religious practices with family law, the balancing of constitutional equality rights with freedom of religion and multiculturalism, and the rise of extreme right politico-religious fundamentalisms in the context of globalization and neo-liberal conceptions of the state.

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the legal implications of arbitration tribunals that will utilize sharia law in Ontario.    

On January 27th, 2004, the Québec Appeal Court ruled that the provisions of the Employment Insurance Act concerning maternity and parental benefits encroached on provincial jurisdiction and exceeded the powers of the Canadian Parliament. This ruling calls us to action, as the question of income during maternity and parental leave constitutes an absolutely pivotal issue in the struggle for women’s social and economic equality.

Information on women's access to political office, who is represented in the House of Commons, electoral systems, and a feminist's guide to political terminology.

The aim of this discussion paper is to engage equality advocates on specific questions of relevance to law reform initiatives pertaining to the relation between transgender and women's substantive equality rights. It proposes a framework for the discussions that will be held at the national consultation organized by the National Association with Women and the Law (NAWL) in Ottawa on February 22 and 23, 2003.

Pursuing electoral reform is an important issue for equality-seeking women in Canada, and is the main focus of the following paper. The limitations of the current First Past the Post (FPP) electoral structure will be examined from the perspective of the Canadian women’s movement and its policy priorities. Furthermore, three mechanisms for political change will be investigated according to the ability for elected representatives to pursue a feminist policy agenda, including the establishment of a national Feminist Party, the implementation of gender parity within the existing political parties, and the introduction of proportional representation. The possibility of fully realizing a women’s equality agenda within the federal legislature is doubtful without a means by which increased numbers of feminist women are elected to the Canadian Parliament, and are thereby sanctioned to participate in public policy debates on the basis of their feminist principles, regardless of party. 

In the Fall of 2000, the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) obtained intervener status before the Supreme Court in the Gosselin v. Québec (Attorney General) case. The Gosselin case is about a welfare regulation in force in Québec in the 1980’s that provided drastically reduced benefits (170$ a month) for persons under thirty years of age who were considered able to work. The Court’s decision could very well determine whether basic welfare benefits are a right covered by the right to security of the person set out in section 7 of the Canadian Charter and by the right to financial assistance set out in section 45 of the Québec Charter. The Court will also have to rule on whether the government has the right to deny last resort assistance to people on the basis of discriminatory distinctions such as age.

Historically the criminal law system has justified and condoned male violence against women. It allowed a man to use "reasonable" force to ensure the respect and obedience of his spouse; it immunized husbands from prosecution for rape of their wives; it did not sanction the rape of "bad girls;" and it ignored most forms of child abuse. Our law did not even recognize the existence of sexual harassment until the mid-eighties, and the use of professional and religious power to sexually exploit subordinates has only recently been acknowledged and condemned by our justice system.