“For their own good”: Patriarchy and Protectionism in the Conceptualization of Laïcité and the Equality of Women and Men
Over the past decade, several public reports and discussions have exposed the relationship between secularism and equality between women and men. In many instances, gender equality seems to be considered only in a secular context. Recent public debates on religion and diversity in Quebec illustrate how secularism and equality for women are paralleled. In this article we examine how the notion of gender equality is manifested in some of the briefs submitted before the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, in the report of the commissioners, and in subsequent public discussions conducted on the subject. We then explore the ways in which gender equality has emerged as the central theme of the briefs submitted to the National Assembly of Quebec on the occasion of the debate on the Quebec Charter of Values. Our analysis reveals that both religious and non-religious women are imagined to be in need of protection: religious women because they are assumed to have no agency and non-religious women because they should not be exposed to religious dogma. Both positions, we argue represent the continuation of a patriarchal approach that refutes a woman’s ability to act of her own volition. Further, we challenge the idea that gender equality is the property and domain of laïcité, which is itself implicated in patriarchy and invested in the inequality of women.