Marriage Matters: 50 Years of Change and Continuity

Childcare available upon request: please email Cee [dot] Strauss [at] mail [dot] mcgill [dot] ca

Please note the new start time: the conference will now begin at 17:30.

July 1, 2014 marks 50 years since Marie-Claire Kirkland’s Loi sur la capacité juridique de la femme mariée recognized the full legal capacity of married women in Québec law. Kirkland was one in an illustrious line of strong québécoise women who spent the better part of the 20th century advocating for women’s equality, and the 1964 legislation was a significant gain in what came to be the stirrings of the second wave of Québec’s feminist movement.

On this 50th anniversary, we consider the historical, legal, economic, and affective implications of marital status on the lives of women, and we inquire into what significance marital status continues to hold in Québec today. From the ongoing injustices of Aboriginal women losing their Indian status by "marrying out,” to the Supreme Court’ of Canada's recent decision regarding de facto spousal relationships in Quebec, and on the ten-year anniversary of Quebec’s judicial recognition of same-sex marriage, marital status continues to confer basic protections and social status from within the legacies of a patriarchal legal structure. The status of family law as “everyday law”, as Marie Lacoste Gérin-Lajoie taught it, further enriches our legal picture, and invites us to understand the significance of the 1964 legislation in the context of married women’s lived experiences.

Cee Strauss and Professor Colleen Sheppard will moderate.

Speakers

Me Jennifer Stoddart, a feminist legal historian, lawyer and Canada's former Privacy Commissioner, who will be speaking on law reform and feminism in Québec
Professor Robert Leckey, a family law professor, who will address more recent developments concerning marital status in Quebec (on the occasion of the 10 year anniversary of the Quebec Court of Appeal decision on same sex marriage, and in the wake of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on de facto spouses) 
Ms. Michèle Audette, President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, who will be speaking to the legal implications of marital status in relation to the Indian Act

This event has been accredited for 1.5 hours of continuing legal education for jurists by the Barreau du Québec.