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This chapter provides the introduction of the book and argues why gender and feminism matter in theory and praxis in the 21st century. It includes the conceptual interrogation of the meaning of gender and feminism and its practice in western and non-western contexts; global currents in feminist struggles; thematic organization of the book; and the future under ‘feminist eyes’. The thread of shared struggles among diverse groups of women based on selected themes — movements, spaces and rights; inclusion, equity and policies; reproductive labour, work and economy; health, culture and violence; and sports and bodies — situates Canada as a western society with avowed egalitarian ideals favouring gender equality and social justice, but with its own issues and concerns like women in other countries facing their own challenges.

This chapter aims to understand how the role and status of Sámi women in kinship system and in reindeer herding were transformed over time in Norway and Sweden. What is the reason for considering men as reindeer herders and not women? Has it always been men who play a more important role in reindeer herding and so have higher status in Sámi society than women? This has not always been the case. Reindeer herding has instead become a dominant male occupation with the implementation of the nation-states’ reindeer herding legislation. Gender roles in Sámi communities are changing and new strategies for surviving and maintaining a Sámi identity are being formed. Many women in reindeer herding Sámi communities are now working as wage-labourers and professionals, bringing in money to the family. Their income often facilitates the continuation and transformation of subsistence practices, and power relations. This chapter proposes that the ascribed ethnic identity of Sámi women became linked to the identity of their brothers and husbands with the implementation of modern legislation, and still is, although Sweden is striving to be a gender equalitarian society.

In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of craftivism — yarn bombing, specifically — in a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on feminist praxis. We suggest that knitting in the classroom, as an ‘everyday [act] of defiance’ (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 283), opens a productive space for complex and challenging conversations, in the process enabling not only different ways of listening, but also different ways of learning. Knitting, as a meditative and embodied practice, encourages and supports critical attentiveness. We also argue that craftivism can operate to make change in a way that emphasizes collaboration, non-violence and critical self-reflection. Social change, in a craftivist framework, happens in the everyday, and perhaps more radically, within the domestic spaces of the normatively feminine. Finally, our project demonstrated that knitting as feminist praxis serves a bridging function: we contend that systems of power may be challenged through knitting-as-protest, and that students may be able to practice engaged citizenship as they navigate the slippery borders between public and private, and academic and community-based feminisms.

This chapter argues that feminist inquiries and activism must be pursued considering women’s marginalized position within a religious institution in Canada in the 21st century. Drawing on Canadian Catholic nuns’ unique accounts of their experiences with the Roman Catholic Church, this chapter brings nuance to the complicated power dynamics navigated by women religious to show how women remain excluded and exploited in various ways in their own religious institutions. We point to the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church’s long-standing control over women’s reproductive rights, as well as its ongoing prohibition and recent criminalization of women’s ordination. We also address recent structural dynamics at play by drawing attention to a recent Vatican investigation and ongoing surveillance of women religious in North America under newly established church doctrine. We view these recent tactics as evidence of the Vatican’s renewed commitment to existing gender hierarchies within the Church. Feminist intervention is especially important considering this deepening patriarchal power and how, by extension, the church is regressing rather than progressing towards gender equality, even while it shows evidence of shifting attitudes on other social issues. This chapter also underscores the implications of a global religious institution for women in Canada.