From time to time in this current political mess, someone will toss the phrase “women’s rights” into the mix. Apparently, in saying that government employees can’t go to Human Rights Tribunals over pay equity disputes, the Harper government is against women’s rights. I think that’s what it is about, anyway. Hard to tell. Why? Because those people bandying about the phrase don’t have a sweet clue either. They never explain, and I’ve not heard a reporter ask for or offer clarification. Fortunately, however, they don’t need a sweet clue. Because paying lip service to “women’s rights” is all they want to do.
Look, one thing I won’t do on this blog is pretend to represent all women. So let me say this for myself. I’d really love the government to stop funding “women’s rights.” I want Status of Women Canada to lose every tax dollar it gets. I’d love it if the “women’s caucus” stopped defending things like “gender-based analysis.” I will never even bother reading The Pink Book.
I don’t represent all women. So I find it fascinating when others speak up for–wait for it–me. Why–Ed Broadbent did so just the other morning on a local Ottawa CBC show. The Conservatives are against “women’s rights”, says he. But just what might those rights be? The right to unionized jobs? The right to be defended by him? So kind of him–I’ll invite him to tea and we can chat about a coalition of women’s defence. I’m sure he, maybe with Duceppe and Dion can swing it.
“Women’s rights” indeed. Are you buying it?
by 
Incidentally, this was in a Yahoo news item posted yesterday http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081203/national/parliament_crisis_rallies
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“Traditionally, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women is held Dec. 6, commemorating the anniversary of the killing of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.
That coincidental timing of the rallies is “appalling,” said Jessica Notwell of the Canadian Women’s CED Council.
“It’s so important to recognize and respect (the day),” Notwell said from St. Catharines, Ont.
The Harper government has removed research and advocacy funding for the Status of Women Canada and scrapped a universal child care program, moves which makes rallies in support of it on Saturday all the more offensive, said Notwell.”
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The downsizing of the Status of Women department and the scrapping of a universal child care program makes pro-government rallies “all the more offensive”, given that those rallies happen to fall on the same day as the anniversay of the Montreal massacre. Right…
The “all the more offensive” description is telling. It implies that, regardless of when the pro-government rallies are scheduled, these two acts alone make the government offensive to women. You don’t support the public provision of child care? Why you must be opposed to the full economic equality of women!
THANK GOD for the de-funding and downsizing of the SOW department!! It doesn’t speak for THIS woman, and I’m surely a WOMAN, a professional, a wife, mother and grandmother who believes that women ought to have the option to actually raise and nurture their own young, not just abort or pawn them off to government-funded surrogate parents!!!!!!
QUIT WHINING “FULL ECONOMIC EQUALITY OF WOMEN” willya for heaven’s sake! It’s a DEAD issue. Get up-to-date on the recent studies and quit blathering 20-yr.old rhetoric!
I believe they are complaining about the appearance of what is going on.
First of all, I know there are problems in Pay Equity, as my sister was getting paid less for doing more than what her coworkers were doing. That was resolved when she considered leaving.
But for women who know the problem exists, believe in the right to equal pay, and see the Human Rights Commission as the promoter of their equality, then for the government to block their appeals to the HRC and to have them seek a resolution at the bargaining table instead will be interpreted as divorcing the problem from the issue of rights. Even if good results were acheived in these bargaining agreements, this action still has the appearance of demoting the problem from one of rights to just another issue at the bargaining table.
I can therefore understand why they are upset, even though I think they are narrow-minded in their view of how inequalities can be dealt with.
If this is the reason, this wouldn’t be the first time in Canada where people took up positions based merely on the appearance of things.