In September 2012, Canada’s federal Minister Responsible for Status of Women, Rona Ambrose, faced a barrage of criticism from feminists after she voted in favour of a parliamentary motion that would resurrect the abortion debate in Canada. Her actions drew attention to the consequences of having right-wing women in positions of authority over women’s equality measures. Using a case study of contemporary Canada, this paper proposes to examine the performance of women in right-wing governments who have held the post of Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. Ministerial portfolios assigned to address women’s inequality have become commonplace in governments worldwide since the 1965 UN Commission on the Status of Women recommended that countries develop structures and strategies to achieve women’s equality. While the now extensive literature on state feminism offers significant analyses of equality architectures both in single-case and comparative studies, the impact of the Cabinet role of Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women has received virtually no academic attention, despite the fact that such ministerial appointments tend to endure even when status-of-women machinery has been downgraded or even dismantled. Conversely, scholarly treatments of right-wing women similarly have paid limited attention to interrogating the impact of right-wing women holding Cabinet positions in which they have direct responsibility for women’s equality. The paper will draw from literatures on right-wing women’s political behavior, state feminism, theories of representation and recent scholarship on women in Executive branches of governments to frame an analysis of the performance and impact of the four women who have held the post of Minister Responsible for the Status of Women under the current Harper government in Canada, a government that continues to appoint a Minister Responsible for the Status of Women despite its adherence to a right-wing agenda that includes a systematic attack on women’s equality.
