Agnes Macphail ... too white?
The only response I could muster in reaction to this week’s news that a Canadian woman will be featured on the next series of banknotes was dread: dread for the succession of agonizing conversations we will now have to endure to decide which flawed person with a uterus we’re going to plaster on those little slips of polymer that are supposed to survive a trip through the laundry.
We’ ll start off with the usual suggestions: astronaut Roberta Bondar? No, she’s still alive. Nellie McClung? You mean, the eugenics advocate? Emily Carr? Let’s try some women of colour. OK, anti- segregationist Viola Desmond? Hmm … she was already on a stamp. Scientist Irene Uchida? We don’t want to stereotype Asian people. How about this adorable picture of a raccoon stealing a doughnut from a Toronto coffee shop? Hmm … not bad … but I’m not sure if something wearing a veil properly reflects “Canadian values.”
In any case, the mere fact that we will soon have these conversations is a huge coup for those women, and men, who have long pushed for a Canadian woman to be featured on our banknotes, including more than 73,000 people who signed an online petition pushing for the change. Historian Merna Forster, who started the petition, called the announcement “long overdue,” and said that the news made “a memorable International Women’s Day. Fantastic!” Others were less elated with announcement, and some went so far as to question why we should consider gender before accomplishments when deciding which individuals to honour on our banknotes.
I fell into neither camp: not jubilant, nor perplexed ( except for the aforementioned dread for our exercise in national vacillation). Mostly because we’ve long had a woman on our banknotes — albeit, not a Canadian — and she earned her spot entirely as an accident of birth, not accomplishment, so it would not be a huge digression to prioritize gender, then merit, when deciding on the face for our 2018 bills. But more than that, I’m having trouble mustering more than a shrug at this purportedly big announcement because it will have roughly zero effect on the lives of regular Canadian men and women. More and more people are using cards and phones to pay for their purchases anyway, and those who do pause to examine the bills in their wallets usually just end up thinking, “Hey, didn’t I have another $20 in here?”
I’ ll grant that the point of this change is not necessarily to improve the lives of contemporary Canadian women, but rather, to recognize the accomplishments of women in Canada’s past. Indeed, it’s a symbolic gesture; the government’s way of making a point, in the same way that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “because it’s 2015” quip about gender parity in his cabinet was his way of winking to feminists as if to say, “I’m on your side.” Changing the lyrics to Canada’s national anthem to make it more gender neutral, as proposed by Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, is another: for most of us, it will only matter when we try to sing along at sporting events.
Symbols are good: they tell us where our government stands on the issues on which we can expect to see action in the future. But symbols can’t help women find daycare for their kids, or money to pay for it, or help them pursue their career ambitions. And sometimes, they can have the opposite effect: by incessantly talking about the disadvantages women face for being women, we can fall into a trap of seeing them as the sum of a gender, not as individuals.
The Trudeau government has, so far, offered a decent selection of feminist feelgoodery: gender parity in cabinet, a leader who proudly calls himself a feminist, the promise of women on banknotes and perhaps even an improved, gender- neutral national anthem. (It has also launched an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, though since more men go missing and murdered in aboriginal communities than women, this is less a “women’s issue” than it is a crisis plaguing all First Nations.) These are all fine gestures, but they’re emblematic of a type of “easy feminism” that looks good on a partisan checklist, but doesn’t actually do a whole lot to improve the lives of women. That might be worth considering during the hours we’ll soon eat up squabbling about whether Agnes Macphail’s white privilege disqualifies her from a spot on the $100 bill.
PUTTING A WOMAN ON OUR PAPER CURRENCY IS FINE, I GUESS, BUT I CAN’T SAY I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SELECTION PROCESS.