2008 Jill Vickers Prize

Winner: Ethel Tungohan (University of Toronto)

Gender and Multiculturalism: Analyzing the Relationship between Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Women’s Rights (2007 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from jury report: This paper seeks to revisit questions surrounding the “paradox of multicultural vulnerability” by examining the tensions between liberalism and multiculturalism and between multiculturalism and feminism. It takes a critical look at attempts to reconcile these purported dichotomies, arguing that such attempts mostly either promote contradictory policies or are too removed from political realities to be fully realized. It comes to the conclusion that although compromise is feasible, individual rights should still remain sacrosanct, and it endorses a form of political liberalism that allows for a plurality in cultures and in beliefs, thereby allowing the individual to choose among a myriad of cultural choices.