This article traces the theoretical foundations, evolution and limitations of Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+), which, twenty-five years after its conception, remains the federal government’s primary mechanism for attending to issues of equality and diversity in public policy. In line with recent scholarship, we argue that GBA+, as operationalized in the federal bureaucracy, is insufficient as a framework for intersectional policy analysis, not least due to a weak expression of core principles of intersectionality. Seeking to both elucidate and make more prominent within GBA+ its theoretical underpinnings, as well as nudge shifts in how the framework is applied over the course of the policy process, we draw on critical feminist and intersectional methods to adapt the GBA+ tool. By applying key elements of the adapted framework to examine basic income, a policy proposal that has gained favour in recent years as a transformative solution to poverty and inequality, we highlight how a strengthened GBA+ approach that embraces critical feminist and intersectional analysis—or indeed a shift to a more explicitly intersectional framework—can expand and enrich the ways we think about the potential and limitations of policies in the context of creating a more just society.
Canada’s GBA+ Framework in a (post)Pandemic World: Issues, Tensions, and Paths Forward (preprint)