Shelter in a Storm

Revitalizing Feminism in Neoliberal Ontario

Casey Ready, an academic and the executive director of a non-profit organization, combines the personal and the political to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time: What is neoliberalism? How does it harm women? And what can be done about it? Her book begins by looking at how three YWCA women’s shelters in Ontario were affected by Premier Mike Harris’s "Common Sense Revolution," which emphasized personal responsibility over collective responsibility, cut social assistance by almost 22 percent, and reduced funding to organizations that helped vulnerable people. The staff and clients of the three YWCA shelters expected their situation to improve, materially and politically, when Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government came to power. Instead, they found themselves responding to new challenges: a government that appeared more supportive but, in practice, built on its predecessor’s neoliberal policies, including trying to control the shelters’ organizational structures and services and to neutralize the language used to describe violence against women. In the process, Ready reveals, "they did little to address the poverty and marginalization of women and did much to control and weaken non-profit organizations working to empower women." Drawing on interviews with forty-one shelter staff, clients, volunteers, and activists, Shelter in a Storm exposes the dangers for women that are embedded in neoliberal policies and reveals the value of revitalizing feminism to counteract this powerful ideology.