In PM's World, Girls Will Be Herded Back To The Kitchen, And Gays Back To The Cl

In a recent move that got relatively little attention, the Harper government actually removed the word "equality" from the list of goals of Status of Women Canada, ending decades of advocacy for equality on the part of that federal agency. Such advocacy itself is now under attack. The Harper government has cut off funding for advocacy done by women's organizations, which have fought hard to overcome discrimination that has, for instance, left women earning substantially less than men, regardless of occupation, age or education. Canadian women earn 72 cents for every dollar a man earns. This pay gap exists despite federal and provincial pay equity laws, and would undoubtedly be bigger if it weren't for women's groups pressuring governments to enforce and strengthen these laws, despite opposition from business. The Conservatives have also stopped funding women's groups that carry out research about women's status. Evidently, the less women know about their inferior status, the better. These moves are aimed at appealing to Harper's base of social conservatives and religious right wingers, but are wildly out of sync with the Canadian mainstream. Pollster Michael Adams notes that, while Americans have become more deferential to patriarchal authority in recent years, Canadians have gone dramatically in the opposite direction. As Adams writes in his book, Fire and Ice: "Canadians' more egalitarian views regarding the status of women and the structure of the family ... seem to lead them to a more relaxed view of what constitutes a family." No wonder the Harper crowd is apoplectic. This "more relaxed view of the structure of the family" implies the very things they oppose — single-parent families, working mothers and gay marriage. Hence Harper's decision to cancel the national child-care plan, created by the Liberals last year after decades of advocacy by women's groups. http://tinyurl.com/yzlsdf [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 16, 2006]

Note: http://tinyurl.com/yzlsdf