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On March 25, the government of Jean Charest announced Bill 94, an act that would prevent
women wearing the niqab from accessing hospitals, daycares, schools, universities, and other
public services, and would bar women in niqab from working in the public sector. In a press
conference, premier Charest described the legislation as defending two principles: gender
equality and secular public institutions.

We oppose this legislation and strongly believe that it will restrict rather than enhance the rights
of women. As we stated in November 2007 in our public response to the Commission de
consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles, while we
agree that the government should be doing more to ensure gender equality, we argue that this is
not achieved by creating a false opposition between secular values and religion, but rather by
attending to gender-based violence, poverty, women’s health, and women’s access to education
and work. In fact, Charest’s use of the terms “secular” and “gender equality” is misleading. It is
obvious that the government’s concern is not with all religious practices, but very particularly
with Muslim practices. Furthermore, regulating women’s public religious expression and
denying them access to government services and public life is not a step in the direction of
gender equality. Bill 94 chauvinistically casts Québec as having achieved gender equality while
implying a view of Muslim communities as inherently oppressive to women.

As feminists, we are committed to supporting bodily and personal autonomy for all women, as
well as all women’s capacity to understand and articulate their experiences of oppression on their
own terms. And it is as feminists that we oppose state interventions that promise gender equality
at the expense of women’s autonomy.

Signed: The Faculty and Students of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute,
with the support of The School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University,
April 7, 2010

For more information, please see the Simone de Beauvoir Institute’s November 2007 feminist
response to the Bouchard-Taylor commission.
Please circulate. To endorse this statement, please e-mail: gada.mahrouse@concordia.ca
Media Contact: Gada Mahrouse, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, 514-848-2424 x 2378,
gada.mahrouse@concordia.ca