Happy International Women's day, Y'all come back now...ya hear?
Well, March the 8th again. And again, here we sit watching much of the rest of the world striving towards equality for women, while Canada goes backwards into a 21st century stereotypical Ozark vision for the Wimmin's.
We got the vote in the last century, made progress, and now are going backwards.
Instead of deciding to set examples, and be the leader? The Harper Conservatives would rather follow, and suck up the dust left by other countries that have figured out that the majority of the population is quite worthy and capable of working and governing right alongside the men.
The women leaders were in the mid-range on egostrength resilience), which was lower, though not significantly, than male leaders. But they possess stronger interpersonal skills (empathy, flexibility and sociability) and are more assertive than their male counterparts.
We in Canada suck up the dust of such places as Pakistan, Bolivia and the United Arab Emirates when it comes to women participating in Government.
How do we get more women into the political sphere? There are several different thoughts on this issue. Some think that we need to place gender quotas, some think that we need to make it easier for women to enter politics; Daycare, gender roles domestically, pay scales. There is a corelation perhaps between Liberal democracies and transparency? The Harper Conservatives are definately the most closed down, secretive regime to gain status as a government in Canada.
This is an interesting paragraph in a summary I found:
There is, as the World Bank pointed out in its publication Engendering Development
(2001), a strong correlation between low levels of corruption and high levels of women in public office. However, a study cited in UNIFEM’s Progress of the World's Women 2008/9 shows that both women in government and low corruption are in fact associated with liberal democracy. Democratic and transparent government enables more women to participate in politics, and it minimizes opportunities for widespread corruption too. Enabling more women to compete for public office is a democratic good in and of itself but would not on its own clean up government. Effective checks and balances on power are needed, whatever politicians’ gender.
How about a little of both? Quotas and equalization in Private life?
We should stop asking what women can do for democracy but rather, in a reversal and paraphrase of Kennedy’s famous statement, we should ask what democracy can do for women.
It can be a circular argument, how can we break the glass ceiling, unless someone is there to hold the ladder? How can we have someone to hold the ladder, if there is a concerted effort by the current set of Harper conservatives to undercut every inroad made in the last 50 years?
Of course, maybe the Harper Conservatives want to be number one on the other end of the equality scale? 1st worst? They have a good head start on that goal.
Also in the news today, 1 in 4 Canadians think that a woman's place is in the home. That is roughly the Harper Hardcore base. Glaringly, the majority do not agree, but the Harper Conservative vision of Canada has always been a right wing fringe ideal and out of step with the values of most Canadians.
It is International Women's day, and we have a long way to go baby. In fact, now we have to make up the time some of the men'z have spent on the rest stops so they can hold pissing contests.
We should tell them they just need to hold it.
