Belinda Stronach hasn’t completely disappeared. Here she is in the Star discussing the horrifying plight of women – or something. It’s not entirely clear what she wants given the long way women still have to go in order to get to a destination that is not specified by ways that are altogether imprecise.
“We need to encourage policies and build institutions that help to empower the equal treatment of women,” she says at one point. Huh? What kind of institution helps empower the equal treatment of women? For the matter of that, what kind of equal treatment is amenable to being empowered? Or is it equally empowering institution building?
I get lost amidst all those buzzwords, forgive me. Where were we? Oh yeah. Institutions that empower the equal treatment of women. Such as?
Among other things, that means stepping up the pressure on governments to make a priority of implementing quality and affordable child care right across our country. It is distressing that at a time of massive government spending in the name of stimulus, there has been little public pressure on Ottawa to fund a system of child care and early learning, an investment that would create jobs in the short-term but would pay off again down the road in the form of better educated children and more successful women in the workforce.
Of course. Nothing says institutionalized empowering equal treatment of women like a crazy expensive national program they don’t even want.
Happy Women’s Day, everyone!
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Andrea adds: Since I’ve been humming ABBA all weekend, why I don’t know, but why not, I also say–I might as well say I have another dream, another song to sing… I dream of the complete and total defunding of Status of Women Canada. I have no political aspirations, none. But if I did, I’d dream of being the person to cut all that funding, and I’d do it on International Women’s Day. Just for fun.
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Brigitte says: Me too! I’ve been humming ABBA all weekend, why I don’t know…
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Tanya thinks she’s mentioned this before… but it warrants being repeated. Cheap daycare is a lifesaver for the single mom who would work regardless.
Don’t get me started on the fact that most of the low-paying jobs are not Monday to Friday 9-5. What’s the single mom working retail supposed to do with her toddler on Thursday night and Sunday? Especially when the following week, she’s actually working Wednesday night and Saturday.
For the middle class, that big ambiguous cloud somewhere in the middle of all this, cheap daycare is something of a curse, too. For that woman who dreamed of getting to stay home with her kids, her sense of financial obligation scoots her out into a working world while her children are being cared for at the cost of half an hour’s salary a day. Now her family can go on that vacation and buy that big sectional couch.
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