2007 Jill Vickers Prize

Winner: Paul Kershaw (University of British Columbia)

Changing the Subject: Violence, Care and (In)Active Male Citizenship (2006 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from jury report: In this paper, Dr. Kershaw develops a critique of the concept of active citizenship that underlies welfare-to-work programmes whereby women’s caregiving as a mode of active citizenship is discounted. Kershaw’s empirical research also attests to the fact that labour force attachment policies obscure the ways in which men’s behaviours (violence and/or unwillingness to participate in childcare) affect women’s economic status and employment decisions. Welfare policies premised on promoting women’s paid employment need to be expanded to include policies directed at fostering men’s active fatherhood. Kershaw distinguishes his approach from US discourse on fatherhood which, in seeking to reinforce the traditional nuclear family, does not challenge the inequalities of power and responsibility associated with it.