Examining the "Promise" of Intersectional Policy Analysis to Drive Social Change

• Author / Creator

  Sumaru, Ashima

• This thesis examines the adoption of intersectional policy analysis within governments and governmental bodies in Canada, focusing on the years 2019-2020, to understand what led to the adoption of intersectional policy analysis frameworks and what these frameworks accomplish through governments and governmental bodies. I interviewed intersectional policy practitioners from all levels of government and governmental bodies in Canada and triangulated this data with political transcripts from provincial and federal parliamentary debates and key government documents about intersectional policy analysis. A critical decolonial feminist framework is employed to analyze the data and to align with intersectionality’s promise as a “resistant knowledge project” (see Collins, 2019, pp. 87-120). Key insights that emerge from this study are that intersectionality is disassociated from its history as it is adopted by governments, limiting its potential for meaningful public engagement through a policy process, and the Gender-Based Analysis Plus methodology, the primary intersectional policy analysis framework employed by public bodies in Canada, functions as a technology of performative accountability rather than a means for radical justice or imagining decolonial futures.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Intersectionality
  • Intersectional Policy Analysis
  • Social Policy
  • Critical Policy Analysis
  • Canadian Government Policy

• Graduation date

  Fall 2022

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Education

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-d58x-0767

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.