Today’s Random Green Party Policy of the Day from Vision Green is page 84:

“The Greens will vigorously defend every hard-won victory for women’s rights and for women to advance forward towards full equality in Canada. Women’s equality is fundamental to a just society. Among the best ways to break down barriers and advance opportunities for women are through poverty eradication, national affordable child care, programs to eliminate the financial barriers to post-secondary education, programs for affordable housing, and the adoption of a Genuine Progress Indicator that includes measures of unpaid and voluntary work by women.

Green Party MPs will:

Oppose any possible government move to diminish the right of a woman to a safe, legal abortion. We fully support a woman’s right to choose. We will also expand programs in reproductive rights and education to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and expand supports for low-income mothers.

Pass pay equity legislation, as recommended by the Pay Equity Task Force, immediately implement full pay equity for women employed in the federal sector and develop tax incentives for companies to meet the highest standard of gender and pay equity.

Establish specific job re-entry programs for women with children who want to restart their working lives either part-time or full-time.”

Quick translation: We do not have true democracy until all Canadians enjoy the full benefits of our economic abundance.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?

While perusing my Facebook updates I came across an article about Bill C510 (Roxanne’s Law) from the National Post. The idea of the Bill is that it would criminalize the ‘coercion’ of abortion. Interestingly, Harper is reported to be voting against the legislation and strongly recommending that his caucus do the same, though it will be a free vote. If so, it looks like the government will be keeping their promise to not introduce or support anti-choice legislation. Cool.

Dammit Janet did a great job of breaking down why it is ridiculous to call it Roxanne’s Law. And in the Comments to her post SustainableFamilies wrote the following:

“But I would like, in my imagined utopia, for crisis pregnancy services to basically first ask a woman if she could have her DREAM situation… if she had support, resources, emotional support, financial support… would she want to parent? And if so, I would like for her to be offered all known parenting resources in the area.

Likewise. If she says there is no way, this is not what I want right now, abortion services would be offered compassionately and quickly (and affordably.)”

I love that vision. Is it only possible in a utopia? Or is it possible for family planning/crisis services to step beyond their own political positions and empower the young women who come to them to make the choice that is best for themselves?

Has anyone had good or bad experiences with these services that they want to share? I’d love to hear about it. I think it is important that those who are most vulnerable are given the power to create their own lives.

I just watched this disturbing video on recent attacks on Afghan schools. These attacks are nothing new, the education of youth, and especially girls, is seen as a threat to theocratic rule.

It was accompanied by the words of Afghan human rights activist and government official Ranna Tareen on the violence carried out on prominent Afghan women. “I see my death too. What annoys me is to see no one cares about it.”

What saddens me most is that she feels all alone. How about we deploy our soldiers to protect these women of note while they attempt to change their country?

Yesterday, an update from Proud Fringers scrolled across my Facebook page regarding Vic Toews and his desire to re-introduce the term ‘rape’ as opposed to the now used ‘sexual assault’. With everything this government has been doing to crush women’s groups and anything resembling forward thinking and social progress I found it hard to believe that he was doing this in my best interest – or the interests of women as a group. So I thought I would dig a bit deeper.

My first question was, “Why was ‘rape’ removed as a charge and replaced with ‘sexual assault’ in 1983?” From the articles I checked, the change was instigated by women’s groups themselves, not for political correctness, but to reduce the stigma that women experienced as ‘victims of rape’ and to include people who had perhaps not been ‘penetrated’ (as rape was then defined) but were still violated (Tibbetts, Renner, Tang).

Back then, it was almost impossible to get a rape conviction, the vast majority of cases were not brought to police, let alone prosecuted, and sentences were very light. Sadly, this is still the case today, however the stigma has been reduced and more women do come forward.

It looks like Toews is trying to change the law so that they can more easily implement their legislation to eliminate pardons for sex crimes against children, the feeling now being that having three levels of sexual assault makes it too ‘confusing’ to figure out who should be allowed pardons and who should not.

Toews admitted that there may be issues with the change but brushed them aside, saying, “I understand the desire not to victimize women again in the court system, but that is something that may have to be looked at in the future” (Tibbett).

Very reassuring. It seems to me that with their brilliant legal minds they should be able to craft legislation that distinguishes between the three levels of sexual assault and does not re-introduce a term that led to the stigmatization of the victim and reduced the chances of conviction. How about we don’t roll the clock back 27 years but instead look towards a future where women are not treated as disposable property?

The April 11th issue of the Era-Banner had an article about York Region’s plan for a Common Roof Family Justice Centre where several social justice (victim services) organizations would be brought together in one location to make accessing services simpler.

It is inspired by The Family Violence Project of Waterloo Region in Kitchener.

Barrie and Orillia also have a Common Roof project, though it appears to be less victim and more generally social justice focused.

Newmarket is also working, with Belinda’s Foundation, to build York Region’s first homeless shelter specifically for women.

Maybe it would be an interesting idea to see if they can all be brought together.

Would it save money? Would it make it easier for those who need help, to find it.

Or, would it make it easier for abusers to find their spouses, knowing that all the services were under one roof? I suppose having police stationed in the building would certainly make it safer, but I wonder…

This is going to be one amazingly ‘signature’ Conservative plan. No abortion – deep sigh but okay. But to not even include access to contraception as part of our super-duper G8 ground-breaking plan to improve maternal and infant health? I’m having a hard time imagining what will be in this plan.

Guaranteed access to:
Clean water? Not sure how they would do this…
Affordable medication? Nope, this would threaten pharmaceutical monopolies.
Nutritious food? Nope, this would interfere with free-market agribusiness.
Education? Nope, then women might learn about family planning and their rights.

Or maybe they’ll just make sure that every newborn gets a Tory-blue swaddling blanket and a booklet on how to keep their legs crossed in the future.

Over at thelongview.ca I’ve put up a link to Transforming Power by Judy Rebick. I only found out, far too late, that she is speaking tonight in Toronto on how mobilizing citizen participation in democracy will increase the number of women in government. That would have been great to hear.

Instead, here is a link to the article she wrote for rabble.ca, discussing the progress of feminism and where we need to go. In the political spirit of this blog, I thought I’d quote this little nugget of information: “A recent report written for the UN by the Canadian Labour Congress and FAFIA states, ‘in 2004 the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index, Canada was ranked 7th. In the 2009 Gender Gap Index, Canada ranked 25th.’ This shocking drop in the status of women is not only due to a series of policy changes by the anti-feminist Harper government. It is also due to the impact of corporate globalization on social programme, poor people, workers and on the women’s movement itself.” There is still so much work to do.

Thanks to Jim Harris for passing along the rabble link.

“On his watch, the proportion of women on the government benches has fallen to 11 per cent, from 25 per cent under Paul Martin and 23 per cent under Jean Chrétien.”

I didn’t know that. How interesting. And distressing.

From this article by Carol Goar in the Star discussing Minister Guergis’ less than inspiring performance at the UN this week leading up to Monday’s celebration of International Women’s Day.

I was incredibly happy to hear the government state their commitment to investigating the ‘missing’ aboriginal women – over 500 of them now in both the throne speech and the budget.

I’ll believe it when it happens.

I was incredibly happy to hear the Mr. Harper’s primary objective as head of the G8 this year is to improve maternal and infant health.

I’ll believe it when the numbers change.

… oh! Wait. It’s just our uterus’ that he cares about. Okay, no change there.

A funny thing happened a couple of weeks ago. In his inaugural speech as 2010 President of the G8, Mr. Harper proclaimed that he was very, very concerned about maternal and infant health and that, during his term, he was going to champion these two causes (Millennium Development Goals #4 and #5) and bring much needed attention and funding to them – on a global basis. No. Really. He said it.

Immediately, other commentators began to question his good intentions. Mr. Ignatieff, for one, thought it a bit odd and discussed how “Harper has made cuts to the status of women and equality programs, while salary gaps between men and women are increasing in Canada” and that, perhaps, Mr. Harper could “start showing at home in Canada the same commitment to women.”

And this is all well and good. I expect certain people to have problems with everything that Mr. Harper announces.

But when Stephen Lewis has problems with the same announcements, then my ears prick up. Why? Because I have seen no evidence that he is anything other than a profoundly humane and compassionate man in a very challenging and frustrating position, exposed to the most heart-breaking conditions on Earth and managing to carry on year after year. To him I listen.

His critique is that it seems odd that Mr. Harper would trumpet Canada’s burgeoning awareness of the issues of maternal and infant health when the G8 has been working on securing funding for the past year. Note that the MDGs were first developed leading up to 2000 with a due date of 2015 – sometimes it just takes a while to get the ball rolling, y’know.

In addition, Mr. Lewis noted that none of the other MDGs were mentioned and that it didn’t “include sexual violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation, economic autonomy, political representation, land rights or inheritance rights. It include[d] none of the panoply of women’s issues which consign women to subordinate positions around the world.”

Anyway, I’m sure that members of the G8 hope that Canada will stop actively opposing humanitarian causes and denying human rights and freedoms to as many groups as they possibly can. I wish I could believe Mr. Harper but I have seen no evidence that he cares about anyone except for white, straight males, and preferably corporate oil executives at that.

Especially since he considers women to be a ‘left-wing fringe group’.

The audacity of Mr. Harper is threatening to make my brain explode – is this his attempt at a kinder, gentler Harper to try and make us forget that he is a cynical, arrogant, autocratic leader who has shown only contempt for Canadian citizens and our democracy. Is this a reaction to the pro-democracy, anti-prorogue rallies that occurred all across Canada last month?

Probably. He honestly seems to believe that we will be easily lulled back to sleep with the belief that he is going to take care of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. When he doesn’t care about those same people right here.

How about raising the quality of life, or, heck, even the standard of living for our own aboriginal populations? How about taking care of the poorest and most vulnerable right here?

How about that Mr. Harper?