2024 Jill Vickers Prize

Winners : Kelly Gordon, Jaymes MacKinnon and Esli Chan (McGill University)

In a Different Partisan Voice: Gender, Feminism, and Conservative Women in Canada

Excerpt from jury report : This article examines women in the Conservative party, both politicians and movement activists. The authors ask: how do conservative women understand themselves and their politics in relation to gender and feminisms? Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with women involved in Conservative party politics, Gordon, MacKinnon and Chan find that conservative women do not deny the relevance of gender to politics. Instead, they are gender-conscious political actors, for instance, emphasizing that women are capable political leaders. Above all, most of the conservative women interviewed understand themselves as feminists. They emphasize that they endorse personal choice, among other values, attesting to a conservative feminism within the Canadian political landscape.