by Marjorie Griffin Cohen

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) distributed this booklet during the 1988 election. It highlighted the impact of free trade on issues important to women, including jobs, wages and conditions of work, education, daycare, health care, and the environment. 

In all the responses to Trump’s bullying and threats, women are not central to the discussion of either the impact this trade war will have or what the solutions should be. It was not always this way. Although it is rarely remembered now, the women’s movement in Canada was central to the anti-free trade movement that emerged in the mid-to-late 1980s.  

The initial debate about free trade occurred in response to the Macdonald Commission Report  in the mid-1980s. One of its major recommendations was having much closer economic ties with the US through free trade. At that time, I was vice-president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and chaired its Employment and Economy Committee. My interest in trade originated from my work with Latin American and Portuguese Women in establishing a skills training and language centre in Toronto. I wrote initially about how many immigrant women’s jobs would be affected by free trade, primarily through the impact on manufacturing jobs in textiles and clothing. As the trade issue developed, I expanded my research to include the significance of the services sector and wrote a book on women and free trade.

This 1988 election flyer by NAC’s Visible Minority and Immigrant Women’s Committee addressed some of the barriers that minorities would face due to the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Their concerns were echoed in the Spring 1988 Women Working with Immigrant Women newsletter.

Three main things stand out as significant regarding women and the anti-free trade movement of the late 1980s. The first is that dealing with free trade extended feminist analysis and actions beyond what were normally considered “women’s issues.” Feminist action at that time was highly visible on legal issues and social policy questions crucial for women, such as childcare and reproductive rights. But increasingly, we recognized that structural issues in our economy greatly affected the success of feminist actions to advance women’s equality. Contesting free trade brought women squarely into the national discussion about how our economy should function—and for whom. 

In February 1987, the Alberta Status of Women Action Committee Newsletter re-printed a piece from NAC’s FEMINIST ACTION. In it, Marjorie Cohen spoke about public policy’s important role in addressing the “discriminatory and unjust features of the free market system.” 

The second important contribution of feminists to the free trade debate was creating an economic analysis and focus that included, for the first time, the implications of including the service sector in a trade agreement. This was the area where most women worked and, in discussing this, feminists extended economic analysis itself. It was recognized that free trade would significantly impact employment in the service sector and, therefore, for women. But what feminists also came to realize is that free trade would limit government activities in social services, including many that impacted women’s lives directly, such as healthcare and childcare. In a way, making this connection was a democratization of economic analysis. While I knew the basic economic issues and free trade’s general effects, women’s groups across the country worked collectively to understand not only how free trade would affect them in their various occupations but also in the social services they used.

Two examples of buttons reflecting feminist organizing against free trade.

The third major contribution of women was in coalition building. The first anti-free trade coalition developed in Toronto in early December 1985 at a meeting organized by Laurell Ritchie, a member of NAC’s executive and a trade unionist. It is significant that NAC, a national organization representing 576 women’s groups across the country at that time, hosted the event at its offices, which was considered neutral ground for organizations that did not normally interact. I chaired the first meeting.   

Coalitions were a relatively new way of working together and about 30 groups were represented at the first meeting. The coalition grew to over 55 groups over the next few years and included unions, churches, and feminist groups, among others. I co-chaired the Ontario organization, The Coalition Against Free Trade, and subsequently co-chaired, as NAC’s representative, the initial national coalition, the Pro-Canada Network. 

Women Against Free Trade was established in Toronto in 1988 to campaign against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Their Manifesto focuses on a few key themes, including health, social services, and employment.

The 1988 election was unique in that it was about a single issue: free trade. Going into the election, the polls showed that most Canadians opposed free trade, but particularly noteworthy was the gender gap: 53% of males favoured free trade, but only 33% of females did. Unfortunately, electoral results often do not reflect majority opinion. The Conservatives won that election, and Brian Mulroney’s government entered into the first free trade agreement with the US.

Marjorie Griffin Cohen is a feminist economist and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University. She has written extensively about the Canadian economy, women, labour, climate change and women, and international trade agreements. For many years, she was on the executive of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She co-established and was the first Chair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in British Columbia and has also served on several government boards and commissions, including being the first Chair of the BC Fair Wages Commission. Most recently, Marjorie established The Care Economy Group (thecareeconomy.ca).