Policy 4 Women

Engendering Public Engagement, Democratizing Public Space (EPE) – also known as Policy4Women – aimed to strengthen and extend partnerships among civil society organizations and academics to bringing the voices of a wide range of communities into a public conversation about the status of women in Canada today and the public policy changes needed in the decades ahead.

The Policy4Women research project developed and tested inclusive models of public engagement that seek to mobilize the academic, community, and first-hand knowledge necessary for the renewal of a Canadian gender justice policy agenda.

Policy4Women was inspired by the innovative and extensive public engagement strategies used by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women that centred on grassroots consultation with local groups and individuals supported by background research.

The specific objectives of this project were to:

1. develop an accessible model of public engagement that mobilizes academic, advocacy-based, and experiential knowledge.
2. increase the policy capacity of organizations concerned with gender justice issues and bridge their work to academic research.

Throughout the project, the partner organizations, participating civil society organizations, and academics created a Gender and Public Policy Research Network, with the goal to link academic and community-based researchers.

You can find out more about this project at http://policy4women.com/

Partners

Policy4Women centres on a partnership among three organizations: the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF), the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), and the Centre for Feminist Research (CFR). This project was led by Barbara Cameron, Project Director, and included 18 Co-applicants.