Bread and Roses

Happy International Women's Day.

So much more work to be done. Get involved.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: What Judy said.

While no doubt thousands of women and men will still join together to celebrate IWD and in some cities still go into the streets, there is little question that the women’s movement is a shadow of its former self. The strategy of second wave feminism was firmly rooted in the welfare state. Women’s equality depended on social programs like social assistance, women’s services and child care. The neo-liberal turn begun by Brian Mulroney in the 1980s and continued by every government since put not only the women’s movement itself but almost all the policies we had fought for under attack. It was no accident that the National Action Committee on the Status of Women was the first organization to protest Mulroney’s neo-liberal turn towards free trade.    NAC saw that the turn represented by the Free Trade Agreement with the United States would impact disproportionately on women, through loss of jobs and attacks on social programs.   Women political scientists like Janine Brodie and economists like Marjorie Cohen have documented the impact of free trade and  corporate globalization on women’s economic and social equality. 

Please read the whole thing.

Comments

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

I have most of Ann Coulter's books. I will spent a chunk of today re-reading them, to celebrate IWD, in anticipation of having her sign them when she visits Canada.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

oh, and

"the rising of the women means the rising of the race?"

what ARE they talking about?

[Antonia]

That's a good question, actually, and a subject of much debate.
http://witherspoontnp.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/bread-roses-racism-and-song/
However I prefer to believe that it was just a rhyming shortening of ''human race'' since the song has its roots in a movement that encompassed immigrants from everywhere.
It makes no sense otherwise.

And it's still true today. This won't be a better world without improving the lot of women.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

http://www.teresahealy.ca/

Teresa Healy and Tom Juravich (who sing it better than Joan Baez into the bargain) deal with it this way:

http://www.teresahealy.ca/tangled/songs/breadandroses.php

"As we come marching, marching, we’re standing proud and tall
The rising of the women means the rising of us all"

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

is there a Spanish version?

and if it includes "La Raza"....... hmmmmmm