Category: Uncategorized

  – Janice Williamson

Isabella Bakker, York University

Over the last few decades, Canada has been a signatory to a number of United Nations commitments to women’s equality and more inclusive economic development, such as theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA), and more recently, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The signatory countries, including Canada, made commitments to integrate the stated goals of these international agreements into their policy plans. This included mobilizing resources to realize these commitments as well as the monitoring of progress toward these goals on the basis of the documented links between women’s equality and broader economic and social progress.

Despite these stated commitments in both international obligations as well as within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there remain significant gender inequalities in the life experiences and distribution of opportunities among women and men, and between women, in Canada.  For example, in 2007 the average earnings of women working full-time, full year were 71.4 percent of those of men; women accounted for 60 percent  of all minimum wage earners in Canada in 2008; even after transfers and tax credits, 24 percent  of Canadian single parent women were poor as were 19 percent  of unattached senior women (compared to 14.7 percent of men); only 39 percent of unemployed women received EI benefits compared to 45 percent of men; and, regulated child care spaces existed for 18.6 percent  of children 0 to 12 in Canada in 2008.

While women in all social groups face inequalities compared to men, there are also significant differences among women. The erosion of social rights is particularly pronounced among racialized women (29 percent live in poverty), aboriginal women (36 percent live in poverty) and women with disabilities (26 percent live in poverty).

Isabella C. Bakker, FRSC, is a professor of political science at York University and a Trudeau Fellow.

This is published in the Fedcan “Equity Matters” blog. Continue reading at: Connecting the canadian women’s human rights legacy to budgets « Fedcan Blog.

with photos by Choo-kien Kua

In the face of the enormous devastation that is destroying forests across northern Alberta, a peaceful group of people are steadfastly asserting the need to heal the land and waters.  On June 25, 2011, the second annual Healing Walk for the Tar Sands occurred, bringing together Indigenous people, Keepers of the Athabasca, elders, children, and supporters, who walked 13 km through the heart of where Syncrude and Suncor extract bitumen on a massive scale.

Bitumen, a tar-like substance that holds petroleum, sits below what the industry, in an Orwellian turn, calls “overburden” – not forest. The destruction we saw is so vast it goes far beyond the visible horizon. The urgent need for healing is evident to anyone who visits this barren expanse. People from many places came to support and join in–including a few activists who participated with Zapatista Indigenous communities and the movement in Oaxaca, Mexico–together they chanted: “Zapata Vive! La Lucha Sigue!”

The Tar Sands Healing Walk was led by elders such as Lillian, a Cree woman, and Violet, an 83-year-old elder and the oldest woman in the community of Fort McMurray First Nation. These elder women possess a wonderful sense of humor and sharp minds, and with other elders, guided the traditional prayers, smudge and ceremonies. This walk faced the enormity of the land stolen from Indigenous peoples that is now destroyed, lifeless, and empty save for ugly scarecrows called “bit-u-men” to keep out the birds from its poisoned soil.  Horrid continuous booms from sound cannons scare the birds from landing in the enormous reservoirs of toxic waste.  We marched beside the machinery of destruction, the surreal gigantic Tonka trucks, cranes and pipes. The air pollution, a putrid stench, gave a headache to many of the people who participated in the healing walk.

Continue reading ““Witnessing the Alberta Tar Sands Dead Zone and Asserting the Need to Heal” by Aidee Velasco Arenas, Choo-kien Kua, Christine Leclerc, and Rita Wong” →

Political scientist Janine Brodie,  FRSC, is a University of Alberta Distinguished University Professor, Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance, and a Trudeau Fellow.  This excerpt from a panel presentation delivered at the Trudeau Foundation’s 2011 Summer Institute in Whistler, British Columbia, is republished here with the author’s permission. It was originally posted on the FedCan Equity Matters blog, an excellent resource for insightful discussions of equity and an initiative developed by Malinda Smith, Equity Issues board member of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Science.

The spring of 2011 opens an instructive window to reflect on the question of courage in policymaking. For some months now we have witnessed “the Arab Spring” when millions of people filled streets across the Middle East in defiance of oppressive regimes and in the face of violent state repression. Paradoxically, the blurred YouTube images of the multitudes are actually variegated composites of profound acts of individual courage, ordinary people willing to risk all for the promise of democracy, human rights, and a more equitable future.

These images resonate with familiar lexicons of courage as a quality that enables a person to confront difficulty, danger, or pain instead of withdrawing from it. All of us at one point in our lives or another are challenged to confront threatening obstacles, but these private and daily acts of courage, by definition, defy a common yardstick. How then are we to think about courage in the collective enterprise of policymaking? How does the personal capacity to stand up in the face of threatening obstacles intersect with the negotiations and compromise, the institutional constraints, and the gradations of power that together shape public policy?

Continue reading “Janine Brodie “On courage, social justice and policymaking” & a short doc about her work” →

“Survey shows Congo, Pakistan and Somalia also fail females, with rape, poverty and infanticide rife”

The women in Afghanistan resorting to self-immolation
India, where domestic violence is endemic
‘No woman in Somalia is happy to be a woman’
Congo, ‘the rape capital of the world’
A Pakistani acid attack victim fights for justice

A woman works at a sunflower field at Kunwarpur village, east of Allahabad, India. Her country has been ranked the fourth worst in the world for women. Photograph: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP

Targeted violence against female public officials, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, according to a global survey released on Wednesday.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan, India and Somalia feature in descending order after Afghanistan in the list of the five worst states, the poll among gender experts shows.

Continue reading “Afghanistan worst place in the world for women, but India in top five | World news | The Guardian” →