A Decade of Leading the Way - now cancelled

Leading the Way

A Decade of Policy Research Fund Reports

from

Status of Women Canada


















March 2007

Introduction

Sound research provides the basis for policy change. Created in 1996,
the Policy Research Fund (PRF) of Status of Women Canada enabled
the review and discussion of many critical issues of concern to women, making sure women’s perspectives and experiences were included in policy making and promoting discussion of gender-equality issues between the public and policy makers. The projects critically examined the impact of many Canadian public policies on women: child care and custody, social and health policies and programs, fiscal policies, trade agreements, national security and immigration policies, rural development issues, legislative changes in the area of same-sex legislation, and the changes to the Indian Act and Bill C-31 determining the membership and status of First Nations people. An important factor in all the research areas was the recognition that women in Canada are not a homogeneous group, therefore introducing the requirement to take into account the effect of policies on women in their full diversity.

From the very beginning, one important hallmark of the program was the independent nature of the research. During each planning cycle, PRF staff scanned a variety of sources to determine the pressing issues and research gaps. Research themes were presented as openly as possible to capture unique perspectives, which often brought previously unconsidered ideas and options to policy discussions. An external committee, nominated and selected through a transparent process, selected the themes, evaluated and selected the projects, and assessed the final reports for publication.

External Committee Members 1996-2007
Vijay Agnew, social scientist and historian, York University • Caroline Andrew, political scientist, University of Ottawa • Marie-Andrée Bertrand, professor emeritus, Université de Montréal • T. Brettel Dawson, lawyer, National Judicial Institute and professor, Carleton University • Francine Descaries, sociologist, Université du Québec à Montréal • Vanaja Dhruvarajan, sociologist, University of Winnipeg • Elaine Herbert, social worker and therapist, Vancouver • Lucie Lamarche, law professor, Université de Québec à Montréal • Bonita Lawrence (Mi’lmaw), assistant professor, social sciences, York University • Martha MacDonald, professor of economics, Saint Marty’s University • Paula Mallea, lawyer and advocate • Isabelle McKee-Allain, sociologist, University of Moncton • Diane Meaghan, professor of sociology, Seneca College • Elizabeth Percival, psychologist, University of Prince Edward Island • Dianne Pothier, lawyer, Dalhousie Law School • Roberta Smith, Aboriginal women’s issues • Shannon Storey, academic co-ordinator, ESL, University of Saskatchewan • Pamela Sugiman, associate professor, sociology, Ryerson University • Cheryl L. Suzack (Ojibway), professor, University of Victoria • Bilkis Vissandjée, associate professor, nursing, Université de Montréal
The external committee reflected the diversity of Canadian women including members from various areas of research expertise, academic discipline and region. In addition to the review by external committee members, the reports also underwent a peer review by subject experts
and were evaluated for the accuracy of policy information by government officials. The PRF publications quickly became well known for their high standards and reliability.
Policy Research Fund Staff, 1996-2007
Sarah Bélanger • Angela Arnet Connidis • Julie Cool • Jo Anne de Lepper • Julie Dompierre • Beck Dysart • Amr Elleithy • Cathy Hallessey • Nora Hammell • Zeynep Karman, Director • Angela McLaughlin • Pat Poole • Vesna Radulovic • Pam Roper • Mary Trafford • Maureen Williams • Cathy Winters






We thank the 300 immigrant women and men who participated…. We thank you for trusting us to share your personal stories of rebuilding connections to the community post-immigration to Canada.
– Uzo Anucha, Nombusco Dlamini, Miu Chung Yang and Lisa Smylie
Social Capital and the Welfare of Immigrant Women, December 2006
By March 2007, 236 researchers-authors from across Canada, representing diverse Canadian women had benefited from the availability of the Fund and had produced 87 reports. The breadth and variety of keywords in the report titles encapsulate the challenge undertaken by
the Research Directorate when they launched the Fund. Members of the Research Directorate organized meetings with the external committee to determine research themes, issued 24 calls for proposals, arranged peer reviews, assisted authors, liaised with other departments, agencies, levels of government, universities and think-tanks involved in the research process, and managed the production process once the report reached final draft. Along the way, they helped build a network of leading researchers in Canada concerned with issues affecting women.

Through the work of these researchers-authors, the PRF gave a
voice to countless women and men, and young people who would not otherwise have been heard: the homeless, trafficked women, young single moms, recent immigrants, female agricultural workers on pig farms in Saskatchewan, store clerks, Innu women in Labrador, Aboriginal women across Canada fighting status laws, land claims and social conditions on reserves, exploited Filipino caregivers, abused mail-order brides, garment workers, call-centre employees, forestry workers, pregnant women without accessible medical care. The list goes on.

Calls for Proposals: Themes 1996-2006

Bill C31 – Membership and Status – Unrecognized and Unstated Paternity (September 2003)
Canada Health and Social Transfer and Its Impact on Women (June 1996)
Changing Role of the State, Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work, and Women’s Vulnerability to Poverty (April 1997)
Custody and Access (September 1997)
Engendering the Human Security Agenda (August 2002)
Factoring Diversity into Policy Analysis and Development: New Tools, Frameworks, Methods
and Applications (September 1997)
First Nations Women, Governance, and the Indian Act (April 2001)
Gender Dimensions of Canada’s Social Capital (September 2003)
Integration of Diversity into Policy Research, Development and Analysis (April 1997)
The Intersection of Gender and Sexual Orientation: Implications of Policy Changes for Women in Lesbian Relationships (August 1998)
Polygamy (January 2005)
Reducing Women’s Poverty: Policy Options, Directions and Frameworks (September 1997)
Restructuring in Rural Canada (August 2002)
Social Security Review: Ten Years Later (September 2004)
Trade Agreements and Women (August 2001)
Trafficking in Women: The Canadian Dimension (September 1998)
Urban Migration and Gender Equality (November 2005)
Violence and Control (September 2004)
Where Have All the Women Gone? Shifts in Policy Discourses (September 1999)
Women and the Canadian Human Rights Act (June 1999)
Women and the Canadian Tax System (August 1998)
Women’s Access to Justice (July 1996)
Women’s Access to Sustained Employment with Adequate Benefits: Public Policy Solutions (September 2000)
Young Women at Risk (September 1999)

The Influence of the Policy Research Fund Reports

By 2003, 68 research reports had been published in hard copy and
on line. With the increasing importance of the Internet as a means of communication and as a research tool, the timing was perfect to determine the reach of the PRF reports. Were the reports being used as widely as anecdotal evidence suggested?

Hints as to their wide use came from SWC Reference Services staff
who tracked PRF reports in journals through a citation search of specific databases.[1] By November 2006, SWC could track 209 citations, 88 in
the last 11 months alone. The journals in which the PRF reports are referenced represent a scholarly overview of social, political, health, geographic, legal and labour thinking in Canada and, in some instances globally. While print circulation figures are not generally available,
they range from about 3,000 for some of the smaller journals to upwards of 34,500 for popular publications like Canadian Family Physicians. Circulation departments generally estimate that an average of three people read each copy of a scholarly publication. For the PRF and its authors, those 209 citations over the 10 years of the program’s existence, extrapolate out to an area of possible influence ranging from a minimum of 1.9 million readers to 21.6 million readers[2] — many of whom are professionals who either work in or influence policy development over
the wide range of PRF research areas.

Well aware that the Internet has changed the way people access and read publications, the Research Directorate also began tracking the number of times PRF reports on the SWC Web site are accessed.

Number of Times Publications on SWC Web Site Accessed
1999 58,604
2001 371,493
2003-2004a 1,322,915
2005-2006a 2,102,555
2006-2007b 1,402,484
Notes:
a Fiscal year of April 1 to March 31.
b April 1, 2006 – October 31, 2006. This extrapolates out to over 2.4 million hits for fiscal 2006-2007.

In addition to the citations and web-site traffic data, in 2003 Status of Women Canada commissioned a customized analysis that tracked URLS referencing PRF reports. Searches were carried out in both English and
French using Google by inputting author names and key words from the title that would delineate the search. Google was chosen because it lists the results in order of popularity with users. (The order in which URLs show up on some search engines can be influenced by owners of the
Web sites by purchasing a location near the top of the search results.) In English, the reports averaged 111.7 URLs making a reference to the report being queried; the range was from 439 hits to 1 hit. In French, the reports averaged 46.6 hits each. The range was from 0 to 227 hits. In December 2004, searches were repeated for the reports with the most and fewest hits during the 2003 research. The 2004 results reinforced the conclusions reached in 2003 that the reports had a growing influence around the world.

The reports also influenced current and future generations in Canada.
The 2003 and 2004 research turned up links to Supreme Court of Canada and Federal Court of Canada decisions, to associations providing support to women and children, and to 18 university courses in Canada using
21 of the reports as course reading material. The courses ranged from judicial/law courses, to family mediation and conflict, to nursing programs. Eleven universities across Canada were involved. Their use continues. Yet another university professor at yet another university assigned a PRF report as reading for a graduate class at the Centre for Health Promotion Studies at the University of Alberta for the winter semester of 2007. Similarly, the University of Regina library flagged
PRF publications for student use in studying gender issues.

The most recent URL analysis was undertaken in the fall of 2006. However, it quickly became apparent that the explosion in Internet use
in the two years since the last usage assessment would call into question the results. For example, in the 2003 report, a paper by Claire Young,[3] Women, Tax and Social Programs, published in 2000, yielded the most hits in both languages. The search was repeated in both languages in 2004 yielding 701 hits in English compared to 439 the year before. By 2006, using the same key words as in the previous two searches (Claire Young, women, tax, social programs gendered impact through funding system) a Google search generated 268,000 hits. As it had in previous years, the results broke down after about 50 hits. That is, while all or most of the
key words used for the search were present, they didn’t necessarily refer
to the Claire Young report after about 50 hits. However, Google had a new advanced search technique in its arsenal: Google Scholar. It gives a user the capability to search scholarly literature. The results include peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, articles, works published by
professional societies, academic journals, universities and scholarly organizations in all disciplines. The results identify citations and libraries in North America with a hard copy of the work. It also enables a search on the author’s name alone. Because Google Scholar is new, Google is still working with scholarly organizations and publishers to ensure all of their works are linked to the site.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the Policy Research Fund of Status of Women Canada … for having the foresight to recognize how important it is to evaluate the impact of the tax system on women.
--Claire Young Using the same English search terms for Claire Young as had been used elsewhere, Google Scholar yielded 2,270 hits, still almost three times larger than the general Google search in 2004. Google Scholar puts the most relevant results on the first page. The Status of Women report appeared first, with Google Scholar indicating five citations to Women, Tax and Social Programs: a book on welfare law, another book on non-standard work and lone mothers, a paper on pension reform in Canada, a Canadian Tax Journal article and a Spanish-language article on CEDAW. Of Claire Young’s work available on the Internet, the Status of Women report had the most citations. In French, hits for the Claire Young report declined from 227 in 2003 to 172 in 2004. The 2006 general Google search pulled up 19,100 hits; the Scholar Search led to 55 with the SWC report as number one on the list. It had one citation in a research report produced at another Canadian university. As in the previous years, the search results quickly broke down.


Leading the Way

Throughout its 10 years, the PRF program attracted many of Canada’s best and brightest — researchers already well established in their chosen field and younger up and coming researchers trying to put their talents to work to synthesize and transfer knowledge into the policy-making arena. All cared passionately about issues of concern to women everywhere.

The researchers/authors gained valuable experience, advancing participatory research techniques and their own expertise in a particular field. And they came from many walks of life: professors, health-care workers, sociologists, social workers, lawyers, business analysts, trade experts. Many of them credit the Policy Research Fund with their own career advances. Angela Campbell, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law
at McGill University credits the research she did in 2005 for the Policy Research Fund on plural marriage in Canada with helping her obtain
a three-year research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to further probe the issues identified in her work for SWC. The publication of the 2005 compilation of research into polygamy also led many of its authors to a panel on polygamy at the 2006 annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers.

PRF Researchers-Authors, 1996-2006

Mona Abbondanza • Lisa Addario • Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre • Bita Amani • Leonora Angeles • Uzo Anucha • Linda Archibald • Nan Armour • Pat Armstrong • Joan Atlin • William Avison • Joséphine Bacon • Martha Bailey • Beverley Baines • Erin Baines • Abigail Bakan • Isabella Bakker • Nicholas Bala • Morton Beiser • Marie-Claire Belleau • Jocelyne Bernier • Stephanie Bernstein • Lorne Bertrand • Kate Bezanson • Chantal Blouin • Isabelle Boily • Lyne Bouchard • Pierrette Bouchard • Lorraine Boudreau • Lise Bourque • Paul Bowles • Jane Boyd • Janine Brodie • Gwen Brodsky • Joyce Brown • Ingrid Brueckner • Ruth Buchanan • Marilyn Callahan • Angela Campbell • Canadian Housing and Renewal Association • Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women • Michèle Caron • Gail Cassidy • Judy Cerny • Josée Charlebois • Marie-Anne Cheezo • Ester Cole • Wendy Cornet • Andrée Côté • Denyse Côté • Marie-Louise Côté • Rachel Cox • Mary Crnkovich • Diane Crocker • Rosalind Currie • Marlène Dallaire • Catherine Dauvergne • Lorraine Davies • DAWN Canada • Myrna Dawson • Vilma Dawson • Shelagh Day • Connie Deiter • Annette Desmarais • Irène Demczuk • Diane Demers • Madeline Dion Stout • Nombuso Dlamini • Alexandra Dobrowlsky • Tanis Doe • Gillian Doherty • Katherine Duvall-Antonacopoulos • Jacquie Eales • Margaret Eberle • Ruth Emery • Equality Matters! Consulting • Janet Fast • Barbara Field • Jo-Anne Fiske • Christa Freiler • Marlinda Freire • Martha Friendly • Eric Gagnon • Sherry Galey • Lindsay Galvin • Evelyn George • Heather Gibb • Claude Gilbert • Michelle Giroux • Nadine Goudreault • Sandra Goundry • Hugh Grant • Lorraine Greaves • Donna Greschner • Elizabeth Griffiths • Holly Grinvalds • Stefan Grzybowsky • Nancy Guberman • Bonnie Hallman • Olena Hankivsky • Kelly Hannah-Moffat • Kevin Hayes • Michael Holosko • Joseph Hornick • Hui-Mei Huang • Ilene Hyman • Hypatia Project • Lori Irwin • Martha Jackman • Suzanne Jackson • Bob Jeffcott • Joy Johnson • Laura Johnson • Kartini International • Colleen Kasting •
Amy Kaufman • Norah Keating • Edna Keeble • Carolyn Kenny • Michèle Kérisit • Nazilla Khanlou •
Kenise Kilbride • Sally Kimpson • Gregory Kipling • Sandra Kirby • Brigitte Kitchen • Bartha Maria Knoppers • Audrey Kobayashi • Sarah Koch-Schulte • Karen Korabik • Jude Kornelsen • Deena Ladd • Kathleen Lahey • Lucie Lamarche • Manon Lamontagne • Louise Langevin • Belina Leach • Donna Lero • Carole Lévesque • Waheeda Lillevik • Josefina Moruz • Katherine Lippel • Clarence Lochhead • Brishkai Lund • Audrey Lundquist • Kelly MacDonald • Fiona MacPhail • Ann Manicom • Michelle Mann • Carol Martin • Lise Martin • Diane Martz • Shirley Masuda • Maire McAdams • Lynn McDonald • Julie Ann McMullin • Leslie McRae • Baukje Miedema • Susan Miklas • Suzanne Mills • Christiane Montpetit •
Brooke Moore • Sylvie Morel • Marika Morris • Marina Morrow • Josefina Moruz • Martha Muzychka • National Association of Women and the Law • Melonie Newell • Cecily Nicholson • Jean-François Noel • Sylvia Novac • Mab Oloman • Michelle Owen • Doreen Parsons • Joanne Paetsch • Dana Peebles • Ann Pederson • Yvonne Peters • Philippine Women Centre of B.C. • Nancy Poole • Bruce Porter • Mark Prescott • Marie-Claude Proulx • Doris Rajan • Pauline Rankin • Maureen Reed • Marge Reitsma Street • Janet Rhynes • Jane Robinson • Roeher Institute • Jennifer Rooney • Carla Roppel • Ruth Rose • Allison Ruddock • Darlene Rude • Deborah Rutman • Francine Saillant • Adil Sayeed • Judith Sayers • Josie Schofield • Katherine Scott • Bianca Seaton • Josefina Moruz • Luba Serge • Margaret Shaw • Janet Simpson • Felicite Stairs• Marlene Stephenson • Kamal Sehgal • Deborah Stienstra • Evangelia Tastsoglou • Nicole Thivierge • Natalya Timoshkina • Sara Torres • Jocelyne Tougas • Louise Toupin • Monica Townson • Marielle Tremblay • Lindsay Troschuk • Nadine Trudeau • Colleen Varcoe • Jill Vickers • Bilkis Vissandjée • Sandra Wachholz • Colleen Watters • Christine Sioui Wawanoloath • Sandra Welsh • Ann Weston • Denise Whitehead •
Wanda Wiegers • Women’s Economic Equality Society • Miu Chung Yan • Lynda Yanz • Claire Young •
Urla Zeytinoglu
Jo-Anne Fiske[4] believes one important legacy of the PRF is the involvement of Aboriginal women, student researchers and community researchers. Through work by Dr. Fiske and others for the PRF, hundreds of Aboriginal participants in PRF studies acquired research and policy formulation skills. According to Dr. Fiske: “This is most important as no other program of the federal government has provided this opportunity in bringing together Aboriginal women from across the county to formulate important research initiatives addressing policies that affect them, their families and communities in complex and interlocking ways.” As for
Dr. Fiske’s own career, she credits the work she did with the PRF with enabling her to respond to research needs of First Nations communities.
“I have conducted research requested by them, trained community researchers and graduate students, and have had my work widely disseminated. Dissemination of this work has enhanced my profile
as a scholar and teacher…. It was a wonderful and rare opportunity
to be invited to the round tables with Aboriginal women and to see the development of their work over the years as junior scholars matured and became leaders in their fields.”
The fund also gave me the opportunity to do research I would not otherwise have been able to
do as other funding agencies have different goals and mandates, which
do not provide for the same level of community engagement.
- Jo-Anne Fiske

The Policy Research Fund led the way on a number of issues, including trafficking in women and girls, which is now the subject of a private member’s bill in the House of Commons and a focus of study by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. The RCMP credits the Policy Research Fund with providing much of the early research the police force used when it began investigating the problem
of trafficking in women in Canada. Yvon Dandurand, Senior Associate, International Centre for Criminal Justice Policy, University of British Columbia also attested to this in an October, 2006 brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women where he credited Status of Women Canada for conducting the earliest research in Canada on trafficking.

Mr. Gay Lepkey, Librarian Head of Documentation at Public Works
and Government Services Canada identified the PRF as a “most valuable source of significant research on women’s issues” when it came time
to prepare a compilation of resources on women’s issues for public dissemination. “We mined your web site for our project and it was very impressive to see how much work SWC has done on such diverse areas
of policy research on women’s issues.”

In addition to the review by external committee members, the reports also underwent a peer review by subject experts and were evaluated for the accuracy of policy information by government officials. This process attracted the attention of other departments and agencies that used the PRF model when setting up their own research publication programs, including the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Income Security Branch at Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

Policy Research Fund reports have been commended for their style,
which made them readily accessible and very readable for a wide range
of Canadians. But how did they stand up to other available Canadian research on the Web? This led to an assessment of on-line interest in
PRF reports, compared to publications from other Canadian think-tanks, agencies and departments. Studies on similar subjects, with similar publication dates, from equally strong authors from other respected organizations were checked through Google Scholar in November and December 2006. As with PRF reports, the comparison reports had to be completely available, free of charge in hard copy and on-line. Several organizations were rejected because their publications were not completely available on-line or were not free. The authors also had to have some degree of recognition in policy and research circles. The difficulty in finding reports from established authors and organizations that met all these
criteria quickly became apparent, further indicating the uniqueness of the PRF program for Canadian policy development and research. A handful of reports from the Applied Research Branch of Human Resources and Social Development Canada, the Canadian Council on Social Development,
the Institute for Research on Public Policy and the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation were searched. Every effort was made to target the search words as concisely as possible. These comparisons revealed that PRF reports are among the most-accessed on the Web when it comes to Canadian content on a particular issue of concern to women.


A World of Influence

Globally, equality continues to be a daily struggle for women. Throughout its existence, the Policy Research Fund at SWC was very much a world leader. While other countries, such as New Zealand and Australia or
the United Kingdom all had women’s directories, their publications concentrated on the statistical elements of women’s issues with little
or no policy discussion.

The 2003 in-depth research into URL references to PRF reports indicated people and governments in 14 countries (United States, Australia, India, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, England, France, South Africa, Italy, Germany and Russia) and organizations
serving Central America and the Caribbean routinely making use of the reports. They are also referenced by the United Nations and World Bank. The 2006 update of only two PRF reports added Finland, Korea, Poland, Bulgaria, Thailand, Azerbaijan and Spain to this list. Through agencies, such as UNIFEM and the World Bank, these research reports are now used in developing countries to implement gender-based analysis and promote issues of concern to women and societies around the world.
[The PRF has been an] exemplary program in terms of producing high-quality research clearly focused on the gender implications and consequences of policy.
I also believe it to be exemplary in terms of the arm’s length relationship of government and researchers and respect for integrity of the research process.
-Professor Marian Sawer, Australian National University

To illustrate, the 2006 update on the URL use of the McDonald, Moore and Timoshkina report, Migrant Sex Workers from Eastern Europe, published in November 2000, identifies the reach the Internet has given PRF reports. When first researched in 2003, a general Google search
led to160 results in English. Exactly three years later, using the same keywords, this report generated 66,500 hits. In addition to an RCMP report on the problem in Canada, a report from the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa on sex trade work as marginalized labour and appearing on a third-year sociology course
on women migrants at the University of Toronto, the SWC report turned up on URLS concerned with

• human trafficking in Southern Africa;
• trafficking of Eastern European women in Italy;
• a United Nations Research Institute for Social Development report on gendering migration;
• a Minnesota site dedicated to stopping the violence against women;
• a Swedish analysis of the trafficking of women problem in their country, prompted in part by the Canadian report;
• a report by the Latin American Coalition to End Violence against Women and Children;
• a United Nations Population Fund report on trafficking in women, girls and boys;
• a Polish research guide on trafficking issues;
• a report by a Brazilian researcher working in Canada on Latin American sex trade workers in Canada;
• a Bulgarian report on the problem;
• a study by the International Organization for Migration on trafficking in Azerbaijan;
• a Finnish web site on research into trafficking of sex workers; and
• an Australian Institute of Criminology bibliography of available resources from Canada.

The Google Scholar search turned up 422 results — 2.6 times more than in a general search in 2003. The SWC report appeared first and indicated
eight specific citations in other scholarly literature. In addition to some of the previously cited works, the citations included

• a UN report on the problem in the Baltic region;
• a survey of trends in organized crime in Canada; and
• a European study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine et al. on the health risks of trafficking of women and adolescents.

There was also a University of Alberta study on international correspondence marriages. The Scholar Google search turned up the
hard copy of the report in Canadian libraries and libraries in Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia. A French Google Scholar search in 2006 led to three citations of the McDonald et al. report in academic works in French.
My research activities with the PRF on macroeconomic issues, unpaid work and social policy have given me the opportunity to consider socially relevant and timely questions…. The published studies have in turn impacted on academic debates within the gender and economics field.
– Dr. Isabella Bakker


Because the PRF program attracted many of the best scholars from
across Canada, the work of Status of Women Canada was also recognized through the reputation of these scholars. Beverley Baines, Professor of Law and Women’s Studies at Queen’s University[5] co-authored one of
the polygamy studies in the 2005 compilation from the PRF. She also co-authored a recent PRF publication on the legal implications of recognizing foreign polygamous marriages in Canada. As a respected scholar on constitutional issues, she is frequently invited to speak in other countries. In the fall of 2006, speaking invitations from the faculties of law, and gender, feminism and equality at the University of Oslo and the law faculty at Hofstra University enabled her to introduce her audiences to
the PRF reports, which were well received in both instances.

Another internationally recognized Canadian scholar, Isabella Bakker became involved with the PRF program very early on when SWC published her research, Unpaid Work and Macroeconomics in 1998.
She returned, in early 2007, providing the PRF with a 10-year assessment
of Canada’s social policy. In the intervening years she built a career as
a professor and chair, Political Science Department, York University. Consultation projects included work with development agencies in Canada and with the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat and APEC. She also became a Fulbright New Century Scholar.

The 2003 search on Unpaid Work and Macroeconomics produced 242 hits in English, including the reading lists for a couple of Canadian university
courses, UNIFEM and Commonwealth Secretariat publications and references from Italy and Germany. The report also showed up in an analysis of the distribution of compensation to 9/11 victims’ families.
The 2003 French search found 38 hits, including a United Nations Development Programme workshop. The report was not part of the 2004 search, but an update for 2006 (using the same search terms used in 2003) highlighted the tremendous growth in the use of the Internet and the importance of this particular report on the world stage. A general Google search in English turned up 14,700 hits. In addition to the results from 2003, Unpaid Work and Macroeconomics now surfaced on

• a UNIFEM site on gender issues in Egypt;
• at a national rural women’s conference in the United Kingdom;
• in a working paper from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London;
• in South Africa in a policy paper on feminist knowledge;
• in a handbook on gender and economics from the United Kingdom;
• on the web sites of the University of Melbourne in Australia, an Italian university, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins University;
• at a public policy seminar in Italy;
• at a regional conference on women in Latin America;
• a conference on Korean women; and
• a UN workshop on the policy implications of time use in Bangkok.

A Google Scholar search added

• the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands;
• several scholarly journals;
• the Osgoode Hall Law School and other faculties in Canada;
• a Spanish library service and institute for women’s studies; and
• a paper on gender budgeting from a German women’s group and a reference in a German library.

The Google Scholar search indicated 11 citations in other academic
papers on its site to the Bakker paper from Canadian and Italian researchers. Despite the fact that Dr. Bakker is a prolific author in her chosen field, this put the SWC paper tied for sixth place among all her publications. Academic libraries across Canada had a hard copy in their collection as did libraries at the University of Georgia and the University of Washington. A Google Scholar search in French generally led to the
same results as in English.

PRF reports more than held their own on the world stage. The same criteria as used in the Canadian search were applied internationally. Publications with themes similar to PRF reports from the World Bank, the Brookings Institution and the federal women’s bureaus in New Zealand,
Australia and Great Britain were checked to see how the PRF compared. In all instances, PRF reports generally equalled or surpassed their international counterparts as far as citations in Google Scholar were concerned.
The research the Fund supports…uncovers real gaps that need to be addressed and remedied… [and] provides a catalyst for academics and activists to fill in gaps not only theoretically but practically. The series of policy reports SWC Policy Research Fund has issued over the years has had an important impact on Canadian scholars, students, but also communities and policy.
--Dr. Evangelia Tastsoglou, Professor and Chair, Sociology and Criminology
Saint Mary’s University

A Lasting Legacy

The Policy Research Fund was unique in Canada, and perhaps the world, in its focus on gender-based policy research. The distinctive blue and green PRF publications fill the shelves of university libraries, policy analysts’ offices and judges’ desks. They are visible reminders of the knowledge generated by the Policy Research Fund during its 10 years
of existence, about the issues affecting women’s lives. The Fund achieved its goal of bringing a gender-based perspective to policy discussions and nurturing the creation of a network of feminist researchers with policy research expertise. Policy is essentially about power and gender-based policy approaches, by their nature, widen our conceptions of power and its impact on people’s lives. But good policy making requires good evidence-based research. The PRF publications brought the reality of women’s lives and their struggle to achieve full and equal participation to the attention of policy makers. They made a world of difference.


[1] The 2006 search included Dialog ONTAP Social SciSearch, the Canadian Periodical Index, Contemporary Women’s Issues, Wilson Web, the Dialog ONTAP Arts and Humanities Search and Quick Law.
[2] 3,000 circulation X 3 readers for each X 209 citations = 1.9 million readers. 34,500 circulation X 3 readers for each X 209 citations = 21.6 million readers.
[3] Dr. Young is Associate Dean, Academic Affairs, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia. Her research interests focus on women and tax. Her bibliography includes over 32 books, articles, essays and commissioned reports. In addition to her duties at UBC, Claire is a member of the joint Commonwealth Secretariat-IRDC research team working on The Gender Responsive Budget Project. She was the Visiting Chair in Women and the Law at the University of Australia in 1999.
[4] Dr. Fiske is a Professor at the University of Lethbridge. Her interests include legal anthropology, feminist theory, social justice, Aboriginal women, intergovernmental relations and political economy. Dr. Fiske co-authored a report as part of the compilation, First Nations Woman, Governance and the Indian Act, in 2001. In 2003, the Fiske et al. report had 40 hits in a general Google search, most being links to the SWC site. By 2006, this had expanded to 296 hits, which was further delineated with the addition of her co-authors’ names. This yielded links to bilingual bibliographies on specific native issues from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the University of Winnipeg, the First Nations Governance Centre and the Aboriginal Children’s Circle of Early Learning.
[5] Dr. Baines teaches public law, constitutional law and law gender equality at Queen’s. She was a constitutional advisor to women's groups seeking to entrench women's equality rights in the Charter in the early 1980s and has continued to take an avid interest in the Supreme Court of Canada's interpretation of these rights.