Gender and Class Identities in Process and in Place: The Local State as a Site of Gender and Class Formation

In this paper I argue that gender and class formation within local states involve processes of conflict, accommodation, co-optation, and transformation, which are simultaneously conceptual, discursive, practical, and material, and hence subjective as well as objective. Variations in material conditions of struggle over local state policies and procedures, both within and between localities, contribute to the uneven development of practices of dissent and to ‘fragmented’ or contradictory experiences of gender and class relations in and against local states. The meanings assigned to these experiences and how they are incorporated into political identities, views, and action strategies play a vital role in determining whether and how collective opposition to gender and class biases in local states will proceed. Two Canadian examples are used to illustrate this approach to understanding gender and class formation in local states. The first example is that of recent feminist and working-class struggles within Ontario's legal-aid clinic system. The second example is that of the development of a women-only housing cooperative in Hamilton, Canada.