FATHERS’ RIGHTS, FEMINISM AND CANADIAN DIVORCE LAW REFORM: 1998–2003

Abstract

This chapter addresses a five-year phase of protest activity set in motion by fathers’ rights and shared parenting groups’ resistance to the Federal Child Support Guidelines, which were incorporated into Canada’s Divorce Act in 1997. Drawing upon Department of Justice discourses, parliamentary hearings and debates, and advocacy websites it examines the dynamics and outcomes of the protest cycle. It argues that the government’s legislative response signals a failure of fathers’ rights activism in Canada. This failure is a consequence of the collective identity that advocates and their supporters enact and celebrate in various public arenas, the effectiveness of feminist counteraction, and the contingencies of governance in Canada’s left-of-centre advanced liberal democracy.

Citation

Mann, R.M. (2005), "FATHERS’ RIGHTS, FEMINISM AND CANADIAN DIVORCE LAW REFORM: 1998–2003", Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 35), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 29-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(04)35002-7