It is totally worth 94 minutes of your time to get to know New Zealand political economist Marilyn Waring. Her ideas, boiled down to their most basic, relate to how what women do and contribute count for nothing in a world measured by leading, lagging and other economic indicators.
For example, activities which involve monetary transactions count as production even when they involve the degradation of the earth's resources, such as strip-mining. A sunset has no value, nor a mountain, and trees only count when they have been chopped down and sold. At the same time, Waring criticizes traditional economics for not finding a way to value community well-being. By current thinking, war and disaster are 'good for the economy' because they create jobs such as arms production and clean-up.
As Gloria Steinem wrote in the introduction to Waring's book, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, she will change your worldview. She certainly helped me crystallize many inchoate ideas I have had about women's work and place in the world.
But Waring's about so much more than that. My young economist friend Aaron Braaten tweeted back at me the other day that Waring, one of his idols, was years ahead of her time when this film was made in 1995.
Unfortunately, she still is years ahead of her time.
But at least, now, there's a realization that, while it's still a man's world, women make it go round.
If you have an iPhone, get the free NFB app and watch it on your
commute or in bed or wherever you are. Or sit at the computer.
... is perfectly alright because girls (and women) play just as hard as men do.
We see that when they get a chance to shine: encouragement and not discouragement from getting sweaty, places to train, funding and scholarships equal to what boys get, etc.
Which brings us to the Olympics and the latest effort from the Vancouver-based Antigone Foundation. Every year they put out a "Dreams for Women'' calendar. But this year, it's a special sporting edition.
Female athletes from the US, Canada and the First Nations include (note the boldface):
US Figure Skater Ashley Wagner who declares “I dream of a world where the only bruises women receive occur during friendly competition.”
US Luge Team athlete Julia Clukey, “I dream of a world where girls don’t calculate what the mirror can show but rather create and build a body of strength, power and work.”
Canadian Ski Jumper Katie Willis with her Canadian Ski Jump team-mates (who are not allowed to compete in the 2010 Games), “We dream all women will soar.”
Vice President of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Olympic medalist speed skater Cathy Priestner-Allinger, “I dream of a world where women are front page, not centerfolds.”
Angela Ruggiero, US Olympic medalist & hockey player, “I dream of a day when all women will know that there are no boundaries, only dreams to be reached.”
The welfare of women continues to dominate the political agenda through the suspension of Parliament.
And so, a few items of note.
Over at Rabble.ca, Murray Dobbin nicely sums up how the Harper government has run "roughshod'' over women.
Nothing new there as regular Broadsides readers know. If I had the time, I would add in a lot more starting with the threats to our reproductive choices and the pending elimination of the long-gun registry.
By coincidence, Regina Mom today documented the dollar value of some of the cuts to programs that helped women achieve equal rights and economic parity.
Finally, NDP leader Jack Layton took advantage of the current political climate to issue a news release challenging party leaders to put Canadian women and children first.
Mr. Layton invited Mr. Harper, as well as Liberal leader Michael
Ignatieff and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, to cooperate in 2010 to
improve the lives of Canadian women and children. He outlined a series
of concrete New Democrat proposals that, if embraced by the other
parties, would mean real progress for women and children. Those
proposals include:
Employment Insurance rules that deny eligibility to six in ten women;
adopting key recommendations of the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force;
increasing support for women’s groups working to prevent violence;
launching an inquiry into 520 missing or murdered Aboriginal women;
launching a federal initiative to ensure every child has daily access to healthy food;
boosting the Guaranteed Income Supplement to end poverty among seniors (overwhelmingly women).
It's stunning to me that, in this country, in this century, kids and seniors go hungry.
Who was it who said that, if you want to know the true measure of a man, watch how he treats old people, children and animals?
UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Layton had an op-ed in today's National Post.
Canada is among the wealthiest nations in the world, yet 70% of Inuit preschool-age children live in homes where there is not always enough food. There are many mothers in Canada who live in unsafe places, who are going without food, electricity or heat because of persistent, deep poverty. These deprivations have a devastating effect on Canada's very youngest, evidenced by the fact that infant mortality rates in low-income neighbourhoods are almost double those in richer ones.
Mr. Harper acknowledges that the solutions to maternal and child health problems are "not intrinsically expensive." This holds true for Canadian women and children as well: Providing safe drinking water on reserves, addressing the affordable housing crisis, and funding organizations that support women and children are all relatively inexpensive compared to the health and social costs of poverty in Canada, which are estimated at more than $20-billion per year.
<SNIP>
To put the full consequences of (Harper's) indifference into perspective, imagine a city the size of Winnipeg full of children: That is the number of our kids who live in poverty in Canada today.
As a country, we have the ability to take decisive action to end this cycle of marginalization, and Mr. Harper has shown that he knows that investing in women and children will get the job done in the developing world. It will be pure hypocrisy if he refuses to make similar investments here at home.
The Star's Peter Gorrie today neatly sums up one of the major flaws in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's supposed ''championing'' maternal health care and child mortality.
It's a point on which I have briefly touched several times.
Here's Peter, with linkage by me:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he wants to save the most vulnerable people on Earth.
"As
president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to
improve the health of women and children in the world's poorest
regions," Harper said in a recent opinion article in this newspaper.
Some
500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth every year, and 9 million
kids die before their 5th birthday, he wrote. "Far too many lives and
unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple
health-care solutions."
Details are to come – in the federal
budget scheduled for next month, and Harper's opening speech to the G20
summit, to be held here in June.
What should we expect from his sudden outburst of compassion?
Here's a clue.
A
few days after Harper's article, Environment Minister Jim Prentice
spoke in Calgary about climate change. Not only is Canada weakening its
target for greenhouse gas emissions "to ensure that it matches exactly"
the U.S. goal, Prentice said, but this country will also do nothing
until the Americans act.
"We will only adopt a cap-and-trade
regime if the United States signals that it wants to do the same. Our
position on harmonization applies equally to regulation."
Since
the U.S. Congress is unlikely to pass meaningful climate change
legislation, and lawsuits will snarl any attempt by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to impose regulations, our government
will happily continue the profligate status quo.
This
approach hobbles Canada's ability to develop a thriving low-carbon
economy: We'll leave that benefit to those with more ambition and
imagination.
It also makes a mockery of Harper's pledge to
help impoverished women and children. Even if Canada provides ample
medicine and food to developing countries – an outcome that's far from
certain – his "relatively simple" measures wouldn't suffice because
poverty and disease result from social, economic and environmental
wounds that require more than bandages.
Well, of course. This is the same government that cut off KAIROS -- which helps rape victims and works against environmental degradation -- because, or so Immigration Minister Jason Kenney claimed in Jerusalem, it's anti-Semitic. Which it is not.
Only goes to show how opportunistic Harper's initiative is. How can there be maternal health care and lower infant mortality when there's severe environmental degradation, causing droughts, floods, landslides?
It's women who walk miles to find water, kindling, fuel, food. It's women who are the back of the line when resources are scarce. It's women who are savaged when there are wars for food and water.
Continues Peter:
"If we invest in women's health while ignoring the impact of climate
change, then, we're doomed to failure," says Robert Fox,
executive-director of Oxfam Canada.
The most recent United Nations report on The State of the World's Population explains why:
"Women
... are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in
many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work
force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer
income-earning opportunities.
"Women manage households and
care for family members, which often limits their mobility and
increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural
disasters. Drought and erratic rainfall force women to work harder to
secure food, water and energy for their homes. Girls drop out of school
to help their mothers with these tasks (creating a) cycle of
deprivation, poverty and inequality."
As climate change
threatens their survival in rural areas, people flee to cities; forced
into crowded, squalid conditions where food and water are scarce and
diseases flourish. The precarious homes of these climate refugees are
usually first to be destroyed in a storm or flood.
In
general, women are more likely than men to die in weather-related
disasters, which have increased four-fold over the past 20 years.
Sending traditional aid into these situations could ease some pain, but it's akin to pouring water into a bottomless bucket.
If
Harper were serious about his new campaign, he'd put Canada in the lead
on climate change rather than keep us a laggard. He'd make that policy
part of a coherent effort to change the conditions that condemn so many
women and children to desperate, short lives.
"We don't see them connecting the dots," Fox says.
Despite being a major part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's speech to the World Economic Forum last week, the government's plan to champion action on maternal and child health is still a work in progress, CIDA Minister Bev Oda said Monday.
No kidding. She might consider starting right here at home. As former Minister of State for the Status of Women, she did nothing either.
Meanwhile, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS Stephen Lewis has described Mr. Harper's speech as "a piece of crass, political opportunism" amid accusations the government is late to the issue, and sees women as mothers and little else.
Last Thursday, Mr. Harper outlined his goals and priorities for Canada's presidency of the G8 in a speech to state and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. He noted that in developing countries, more than 500,000 women die each year in pregnancy and 9 million children die before the age of five.
"As president of the G8, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world's most vulnerable regions," he said. "It is therefore time to mobilize our friends and partners to do something for those who can do little for themselves, to replace grand good intentions with substantive acts of human good will."
Reducing the number of children who die before the age of five is the fourth Millennium Development Goal, while doing the same for mothers during pregnancy or childbirth is the fifth goal. They are the two MDGs that are furthest from being achieved by 2015.
Ms. Oda said the government has had its eye on these targets for some time, and argued that they fit neatly into CIDA's priority focus on children and youth, though nutrition for infants and mothers also relates to food security.
Ah. Might this explain its total withdrawal from anything to do with Palestinian human rights?
Ms. Oda said the plan now is to hold more consultations with an expanded list of stakeholders, particularly obstetricians and pediatricians in Canada who have worked internationally, as well as multilateral organizations, developing countries and G8 partners "to see what they had been supporting in the past and how and where they might chose to support the general initiative." She also plans to review projects currently supported by CIDA "to find out which ones are most effective, which ones are really making a difference."
So Harper takes all the international credit while Oda has all the 'splaining to do now and later, when nothing happens?
"You don't just throw in the phrase 'maternal and child health,'" Mr. Lewis said. "You actually spend some time setting out what you intend to do and putting a dollar figure beside it. And because there was none that, it's not that I can't take it seriously, it's just that it has to be taken cynically."
He also noted that other countries have been extremely active on the issue over the past three years, and his perception is the Conservative government "stumbled on it and finds it politically advantageous to pursue it at the G8."
"My objection is that you make an announcement without any dollar sign," he said, "without any appreciable planning, without any sense for how long Canada's commitment lasts, and what research and work has gone into laying the groundwork for it. And you pretend that somehow you're leading the world.
Can somebody please look yo the meaning of empty promise?
Equally troubling to Mr. Lewis is that the stated focus avoids many of the root causes of maternal and child deaths, particularly gender equality—which is actually another Millennium Development Goal.
"To deal with maternal health is also easy for Canada because it avoids all of the issues with which women are engaged beyond being mothers," he said.
"I don't think you'll ever overcome maternal mortality and you'll have a great deal of difficulty with child health until equality or something approaching equality is achieved. And women don't lead lives simply as child bearers. They lead whole lives where discrimination and hardship are felt in a whole world of other ways."
As if the Con men care.
According to sources, CIDA's efforts over the past decade to improve gender equality were reviewed a few years ago and an internal evaluation was released internally in April 2008. However, while the agency has been developing a plan to improve those activities, nothing has emerged.
No. Really?
Ms. Oda said the gender equality plan has not has been delivered to her office yet, but that Canada has been recognized for its leadership on work on "gender issues," which remain a cross-cutting theme for CIDA's work.
It was in response to PM Stephen Harper's scary speech in Sault Ste. Marie, where he thought only the party faithful were in attendance. Thankfully, a non-con was there and made a video which exposed Harper -- again -- for the nasty angry piece of work he is.
(The video is by my friend Pale Cold of A Creative Revolution, one of the admins for the group.)
We are now 4,072 members strong. Not the size of that wildly successful Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (CAPP) Facebook group, where there are now more than 221,000 members.
You want to know more about UNreal Women? Read this, one of their latest missives designed to make it harder and harder for women to maintain their rights, economic independence, political voices and reproductive choices.
These people -- just how many women are there in UNreal Women anyway? -- are so extreme that they believe Harper's little poppet Minister of State for the Status of Women is too liberal.
Where is the Conservative Minister responsible for the Status of Women
in all this, since she must approve these questionable grants before
they are finalized? The current Minister, the Hon. Helena Guergis
(Simcoe Grey) must either be lacking in common sense to believe the
nonsense plied her by the bureaucrats in her department, or she is
sympathetic to the duplicity being carried out by her department and is
delighted to push these funds into feminist hands. Either way, she is
an ineffective, toothless representative of the Conservative government
and should be removed.
The federation, formerly the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada
and still the Canadian member of the International Planned Parenthood
Federation, has charitable status, according to the Canada Revenue
Agency. The CFSH says on its website that it “promote(s) sexual and
reproductive health and rights in Canada and abroad.” It also admits
being a “pro-choice organization.” Its member affiliates, which operate
in all 10 provinces, provide sex information, contraception and
abortion referrals; according to REAL Women of Canada, it is the
leading abortion referral service in Canada.
According to the CFSH’s website, it is also involved in advocacy,
“act(ing) as a national voice to protect and improve sexual and
reproductive health and rights.” Although the CFSH does not list an
amount it spends on lobbying, the old Planned Parenthood Federation of
Canada admitted to spending up to 10 per cent of its annual budget on
political advocacy, which is permitted under Canada Revenue Agency
rules for charities.
According to the financial returns of the CFSH and the former PPFC,
which are public information available at the Canada Revenue Agency
website, the federation received $1,143,358 in federal government
grants in 2005, while their total expenditures that year came to
$2,360,903. In other words, Ottawa provided about half (48 per cent) of
their operating budget.
In 2006, they received $1,285,674 in federal grants and spent
$2,278,884. Government handouts accounted for more than half (56.4 per
cent) of their expenditures in 2006. In 2006, the Planned Parenthood
Federation of Canada changed its name to the Canadian Federation for
Sexual Health.
Beginning in 2007, grants from the federal government began to
decrease as it received $743,745. Its expenditures fell to $1,655,249.
In 2008, grants totaled $482,498 while its expenditures dipped to
$1,467,005, about a million dollars less than it spent just three years
earlier.
In 2009, total grants were $9,381. The Canadian Federation for
Sexual Health’s expenditures last year totalled $815,153. Federal
grants accounted for just 1.1 per cent of its spending.
Anyway, we left-wing fringed ladies are taking advantage of the CAPP momentum to get some action going. We're tired of women's issues always taking a back seat to those of men, often in the name of economic expediency.
Which is why our Elizabeth Pickett, the group's life force, wrote this today on Facebook. I quote it here in full for those who don't have accounts -- although I urge you to please join us.
I feel as though we've been sitting on a lot of eggs over here at Proud Fringers since the group blossomed from the work of Antonia Zerbisias. We've grown the group to 4000 women and men, we've been the keepers of the links, the followers of issues affecting "left-wing fringe groups", we've written letters and even had them published, we've expressed our outrage and given our support and encouragement to each other and to other groups.
I think we've reached a critical point. Spurred on by the work we've all done and perhaps by the excitement created at CAPP, many more people are energized by the issues we've tried to bring to attention over here at Fringers. The issues are exploding all around us. More and more often I hear us saying, "We have to do something."
I couldn't agree more. I believe now is the time. As Judy Rebick said, Harper has given us an opening. Many of us know that what we are seeing now has been there all along - Harper's Conservative government doesn't just ignore women and children and minorities and the disabled and vulnerable children and poverty and gays and lesbians - his government is active in attempting to propogate oppression. Strong word that, but appropriate. The call outs on Harper have started to gain attention in the mainstream. Now is the time to organize and act: now or possibly never.
As a second wave feminist, I'm aware of some of the mistakes we made, the things we failed to see and the way those mistakes and failures weakened our movement from within so that it could be more easily attacked and fractured from without. There were lots of things but I'm going to choose two, or maybe two and a half: 1.) we were fractured from within by our difficulty in seeing and integrating lesbians, trans women, racialized women - African and Caribbean women, Aboriginal and Inuit women, disabled women, women who were not middle class and who often were the poorest of the poor; 2.) we were more easily attacked from without because we were disorganized by our inability to act for all women, to speak with something resembling one voice.
If we're going to make Fringers into a movement, even a small one, we have to reach out to those people who are not now among us. To young women and much older women and any woman without an effective political voice. And to the men who are willing to join us, support us and to act with us, not just for us. I believe we have to do this as part of planning for action. And I believe we have to begin planning and organizing. It's been exhilarating doing the research, adding the links, getting in touch with women and men across the country. We can keep doing that and we'll have some effect. But to have the kind of impact I believe many of us want, I think we have to have plans.
I'd like to begin to contact those young women like Ontario RebELLES and women who have come to Canada from other countries, the groups of women advocates for the disabled, against child poverty, working for women against male violence, Aboriginal women, advocates for women in prison and so forth. I don't think it's an overwhelming task.
I'd like to meet in person with whatever core group can take part and skyping with those women who can't be physically present. We need ideas, we need some wisdom, we need to know what works and what doesn't, what HAS worked and what hasn't and we need a plan. We've started out slowly and we've built something. It's time to take the next step.
Let's get it together.
Together.
Support Bros included.
P.S. I took the photo at Dundas Square during the anti-prorogation rally on Jan. 23.
P.P.S. I have to question the pathetic media coverage of the Toronto rally.
CFTO-CP24 gave it maybe 20 seconds top on its 6 p.m. local ''newscast.'' The now misnamed Citytv have it nothing -- because it has canceled its weekend supper-hour newscast. All reports seriously understated the attendance.
Police estimate that, at any event, 7,000 people fill the square. At the rally's peak, people had spilled into Yonge Street, necessitating its closure. So, it was 7,000 at minimum. Perhaps more. Add in rallies in Oakville, Mississauga and other 'burbs -- and it's a movement.
It's no secret that male and female brains are hard-wired differently.
Years ago, I saw a documentary that showed a couple having sex in an MRI or similar scanning machine.
While the man's brain was red hot in one segment of his brain, the woman's brain was various densities of pink all over. This was interpreted to mean that men's brains are more specialized -- ie. with different sections responsible for different neuro- or motor functions -- while women used more of their brains, or at least greater parts of them.
I joke to my friends that, during sex, guys are focused on the deed while women are thinking stuff like ''Oh God, look at my stomach jiggling''' and/or ''I hope the kids stay asleep'' and/or ''Better remember to pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow'' and/or ''Geez, how did I miss those cobwebs on the ceiling?''
Whatever. These basic differences, the doc explained, could be why women have a better chance of
recovering normal verbal or movement abilities after a stroke. Other
sections of their brain would take over those functions -- while men
were left with gaping neurological deficits because a pertinent part of their
brain was wiped out.
I suppose you could explain this all with evolution. Women are
generally better multi-taskers because they have to be. Through the
ages, they minded the kids, tended the fires, gathered the nuts and
berries, made the clothes, and all that other ''work is never done'' work. They also had to, as the weaker sex (at while least pregnant or nursing), be better able to get along with others in order to survive.
Men had to be more single-minded in order to seek and hunt down dinner -- or to fend off the neighbouring marauding tribes.
Following this logic, it would explain why men are more aggressive and/or assertive than women. Survival of the fittest, the biggest, the loudest, the most confident ...
[W]omen in general, and the women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, ... aren't just bad at behaving like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can't say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.
<SNIP>
Now I don't know what to do about this problem. (The essence of a rant, in fact, is that the ranter has no idea how to fix the thing being ranted about.) What I do know is this: it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact f**k up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying "I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome," no matter how many people that behavior upsets.
<AND>
Now this is asking women to behave more like men, but so what? We ask
people to cross gender lines all the time. We’re in the middle of a
generations-long project to encourage men to be better listeners and
more sensitive partners, to take more account of others’ feelings and
to let out our own feelings more. Similarly, I see colleges spending
time and effort teaching women strategies for self-defense, including
direct physical aggression. I sometimes wonder what would happen,
though, if my college spent as much effort teaching women
self-advancement as self-defense.
Gotta say, there's something to that. Instead of women spending so much time on Oprah admonitions to self-improve, maybe they'd be better off acting like it's everybody and everything else that needs fixing -- and they are just the -- irony alert! -- man for the job.
Okay, first the photo at right. My sister Irene and me, circa some year I prefer not to reveal. I am about seven years old. The dress I am wearing, which came with a matching coat. It was a gift from my childless Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Jimmy who lived in the US who would frequently visit us bearing all sorts of goodies.
I still have the Ponytail ''My Treasures'' box Irene and I each got. For once I got the pink one, because it wasn't clothing, I guess. Ponytail was THE thing back then. I also had a hair curler box, a diary and an autograph book, none of which came in pink. (This is relevant, believe me.)
Anyway, about the dress. It was baby blue. Irene got a pink one, which made me crazy with jealousy. (I imagine she's not wearing it in the photo as she was a tomboy and probably got it dirty.) Irene always got the pink outfits while I got the blue ones. This was because, as was explained to me, I was the fair one and blue was more flattering while pink looked better with Irene's olive skin.
Yeah. Try convincing a seven year old with an answer like that.
My mania for pink continues today, as anybody who walks through much of my house soon learns.
Seems that little girls' are now obsessed with pink -- as any modern parent can confirm. This, apparently, at least according to a couple of sisters in the UK who have launched PinkStinks.com. Here's The Guardian on their colour war.
For maybe the past decade or so, little girls have inhabited a
universe that is, almost entirely, pink. It is made up not just of pink
princesses and fairies and ballerinas and fluffy bunnies, but of books,
bikes, lunchboxes, board games, toy cookers, cash registers, even games
consoles, all in shades of pink.
This Christmas is no exception.
There is a pink globe, specially for girls. Scrabble has been
repackaged in pink (the tiles on the front of the box spell FASHION).
Monopoly has gone pink, with the dog, thimble and shoe pieces replaced
by flip-flops, a handbag and a hairdryer, houses and hotels becoming
boutiques and malls, and utilities turned into beauty salons. In at
least one major supermarket chain you can now buy slices of bright pink
ham, cut into heart shapes and called Fairy Hearts.
Something,
plainly, has changed. "There's been," says Abi Moore, a 38-year-old
freelance television producer, "a wholesale pinkification of girls.
It's everywhere; you can't escape it. And it needs to change. It sells children
a lie – that there's only one way to be a 'proper girl' – and it sets
them on a journey, at a very, very early age. It's a signpost, telling
them that beauty is more valued than brains; it limits horizons, and it
restricts ambitions."
Oh come on. For real?
As the Guardian explains, it used to be that pink was for boys, way back when. Blue was seen as more appropriate for girls, ''because of its associations, in art, with the Virgin Mary.''
It wasn't until after the second world war that the colour code was
reversed. In 1948, as the author of an authoritative item in the
Chicago Reader notes, "royal watchers reported that Princess Elizabeth
was obviously expecting a boy, because a temporary nursery in
Buckingham Palace was gaily decked out with blue satin bows".
Some
claim the tide turned for innate biological reasons. Research into
colour preferences in monkeys have apparently shown that females prefer
warm colours such as pink or red, perhaps because the pink face of a
baby primate brings out the mother's maternal instincts. A widely
reported study at the University of Newcastle in 2007 asked 200 men and
women to choose their preferred colour from rectangles on a computer
screen. It found that women showed a distinct preference for reddish
colours. The researchers speculated that the gender d ifferences may be
genetically determined: "Evolution may have driven females to prefer
reddish colours – red, ripe fruits, healthy, reddish faces".
But
the study failed to take full account of cultural factors: the enormous
combined impact, for example, of parental preference, peer pressure
and, above all, consumer marketing.
Now I will not for a minute disagree that little girls are targeted by marketers in many more ways than boys. There's no doubt that, today, despite the fad for pink dress shirts some years ago, no guy would be in the pink, at least not clothing-wise.
But should pink be such a concern to feminists? Does ''pinkification'' determine gender roles and careers, futures and psyches?
Why, though, does pointing this out, as Abi and Emma have done,
strike such a raw nerve? "Guilt," says Sue Palmer, education writer and
broadcaster and author of Toxic Childhood. "The obvious reaction is
denial. When you don't buy into the whole competitive consumerist
status quo, you have to be dealt with – and that's done by either
bullying you or mocking you into submission: you're either mad, or a
lesbian."
Commercial marketing, Palmer insists, is behind
pinkification. "When you're two and a half or three,' she says, "you
have two key instincts. The first is towards inclusion: the
overpowering need to be part of the group. And at the same age,
children become aware of gender. So there's this deep emotional need to
be part of a group, and the group you want to be part of is your gender
group – so that's how you capture them. Quite simply, the medium for
catching girls is pink. The marketers have been at it, driving gender
stereotypes, for 20 years; it's immensely insidious and it's mostly
gone on under parents' radar."
The only reason our ''Proud Member of that Left-Wing Fringe Group called Women'' tees turned out black was because black is more flattering and goes with more colours. Based on the feedback, all of us define ourselves as feminist. Pink didn't screw us up.
After all, the colour has many positive associations. "In the pink'' is to be happy and healthy. ''Rose-coloured glasses'' denotes optimism, although perhaps naively so. The opposite? ''The blues.'' ''Black and blue.'' Okay, I am stretching it a bit. But I loved how Canada was always coloured pink on our classroom wall maps, and that public healthcare was ''a pinko'' concept, somewhat socialist but not quite ''Red.'' This is why I like to call our home and native land The Great Pink North.
The real problem is not pink, or lilac which is another little girl fave. It's the insidious way that corporations make girls become women wracked with with insecurity and self-loathing over body image -- and PinkStinks.com does recognize that.
It took a lot more than pink to convert us from the Our Bodies, Ourselves confident women of the feminist movement of the 1970s to a culture where botox and fake boobs have become a $15 billion a year industry.
As Ed Mayo of Co-operatives UK, former head of the National
Consumer Council and co-author of Consumer Kids: How Big Business Is
Grooming Our Children for Profit, tells The Guardian: "It's as if the women's movement had never
existed.''
Being pretty in pink is the symptom, not the cause.
Feminism is back in the news, south of the border anyway.
As for sexism, that never really went away – not if you monitor how women, left and right, are treated by the media.
Hillary
Clinton and Sarah Palin? Both still get "bitch-slapped'' around in the
most virulent sexist terms. Women's looks, their clothing, even their
voices – all are not-so-fair game, no matter how accomplished they may
be.
Still, somehow, "the feminists'' remain the enemy in the endless battle to protect women's rights.
That's
what's happening in seven states, where there are attempts to define
personhood as beginning at conception. In Oklahoma, the legislature
recently approved a move that would compel doctors to fill out 10-page
forms on each abortion they perform – complete with questions about the
woman's relationship with the sperminator – and then post all the
details on a public website.
This vociferous anti-choice push
is growing both in the U.S. and in Canada, where groups that would
limit women's rights have a direct line to the Conservative government.
The
Shriver report is a 400-plus page effort that examines how far women
have come in a society that has yet to catch up with the changes the
second wave, '60s and '70s feminists, fought to bring about.
Know
that, here in the Great Pink North, where we have socialized health
care and legally mandated maternity leaves, we are ahead of our U.S.
sisters. That said, despite our greater numbers in the workforce and
halls of academia, Canadian women still lag behind on everything from
how many seats we fill in Parliament to how many corner offices we
occupy.
And, of course, there's the persistent wage gap which is
not just because "women's work" is undervalued but also because women
bear the greater burden of child-rearing, elder care and housework.
That means our paycheques and pensions are lower and more of us,
especially in our "golden'' years, end up impoverished.
As for
Collins' book, well, it is a masterpiece of little stories of huge
significance. The woman who couldn't get a lease unless it was signed
by her institutionalized mental patient husband. The woman who was
shouted out of traffic court by the judge for showing up in slacks.
Oh yes, it really was like that. Mad Men is not made up, not at all.
As
Collins writes in an open letter to young women on CNN's website, "Back
then, if you wanted a career that involved travel, you'd have to have
become a flight attendant ...''
"Coffee, tea ... or me?'' was the line for "stewardesses."
In fact, the back of the line is where you usually found women.
Now,
despite the efforts of some hard-fighting young feminists with websites
such as feministing.com and shamelessmag.com, many young women reject
the F-word because it's been stigmatized as representing a
hairy-legs-and- Birkenstocks pack of man-haters.
What a way to keep women in their place: with the "feminazi" lie. And, as we all know, young people are oh so label-conscious.
As
my Twitter pal Cristina Simonetto – an ad copywriter, so she's the
expert – wrote the other day, "Feminism needs to rebrand.''
Trouble is, too many misogynists control both the media and the message.
So, while feminism may be back in the news, women still have yet to move closer to the head of the lines.
a groundbreaking examination of how "women's changing roles are
affecting our major societal institutions, from government and
businesses to our faith communities." For the first time in American
history, women are half of all U.S. workers
and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly
two-thirds of American families. Considering that in 1967, women made
up only one-third of all workers, this is a dramatic transformation
that fundamentally changes how all Americans work and live, "not just
women but also their families, their co-workers, their bosses, their
faith institutions, and their communities." Unfortunately, America as a
nation has not yet come to terms with what this means. "This report
tries to chapter those things out and say all of these institutions have failed to adapt to this change
that has happened, and that in order for them to survive and become
smart about the American worker they must adapt and must
change," Shriver said on NBC's Meet The Press yesterday. "Our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past,"
writes CAP President and CEO John Podesta in his preface to the report.
"This report contemplates what a new America should look like after we
finally embrace this important new dynamic in our lives and the changes
it has caused in our homes and businesses."
Now, while the report deals with mostly US issues -- they have neither the healthcare nor paid maternity leaves we Canadian pinkos do -- there is some relevance to us here. For example, just like in the States, male-dominated jobs have been more affected by the recession than female-oriented jobs.
Men still have many advantages and way better paycheques.
Men never get discriminated against for being fathers the way women do for being mothers, or having the potential to be mothers. While women may be graduating from law schools in equal or greater numbers than men, men have the major share of legal firm partnerships, for example. Although you'd never know that from the media.
The gains of the last forty years--in political representation, reproductive rights, education, combating violence against women--would never have happened without the steady and massive increase in the number of working women and the transformative effects of all those paychecks. Some might be tempted to spin the magic 50 percent to suggest that feminism's job is done. First it was dead because it was a failure; now it's dead because it was such a success.
Maybe too much of a success. As Reihan Salam worries in his article "The Death of Macho," "The problem of macho run amok and excessively compensated is now giving way to macho unemployed and undirected--a different but possibly just as destructive phenomenon." If 78 percent of those who have lost their jobs in this recession are men, that must mean women's gains are coming at men's expense, right? Actually, no. Women may have a bigger slice of a shrunken pie, but because the labor force is still quite gender-segregated, mostly they are not competing with men for work. The top ten jobs for women are, in order, secretary, nurse, elementary- and middle-school teacher, cashier, retail salesperson, health aide, retail supervisor, waitress, bookkeeper and receptionist. Men have lost more jobs than women in the recession because the ax has fallen more sharply in heavily male fields like construction and manufacturing than in female ones like healthcare and clerical work. As economist Barbara Bergmann wrote in an unpublished letter to the New York Times, "An important reason for the failure to reduce the gap between women's and men's average wages is that little progress has been made in reducing gender segregation in jobs that do not require a college degree." Interestingly, according to the Wall Street Journal, on the professional end of the workforce, where men and women are more likely to have the same or similar jobs, as many women as men have been laid off.
The good news in all this, as Gloria Steinem points out, is that this economy-driven revolution in the workplace could result in a revolution at home.
Personally, I'm rooting for The Shriver Report to be right in its
underlying assumption that government and business will have to adjust
policies to meet women's needs as parents and workers in order to keep
the economy going, and also that more men will get accustomed to women
as indispensable co-workers and co-breadwinners, and thus increase
their share of housework and childcare. Men will still have more to say
about the success of this report than women do, so I recommend the
essay, "Has a Man's World Become a Woman's Nation?" by sociologist
Michael Kimmel. He offers a long list of benefits to men, women and
children when fathers are egalitarian. It stretches from better sex for
the parents to children who get along better with their peers and have
more friends because they learn cooperation by doing housework with
their fathers. This alone could be worth the price of admission.
For the record, that last bit is what feminism is all about: egalitarianism of the sexes.
Antonia Zerbisias has been a Star columnist since 1989 but has been telling people what she thinks ever since she could open her mouth. Her career ambition as an opinionator dates back to Grade 9 when a cartoon commentary on a teacher resulted in her suspension from high school. The principal sent her home with a note calling her "rude, obstreperous and bold." Her parents were neither amused, nor surprised. Once she was punished for being that way. Now she makes it pay. And, because she can take it as well as dish it out, she wants to hear what you have to say. Fire away!
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they involve the degradation of the earth's resources, such as strip-mining. A sunset has no value, nor a mountain, and trees only count when they have been chopped down and sold. At the same time, Waring criticizes traditional economics for not finding a way to value community well-being. By current thinking, war and disaster are 'good for the economy' because they create jobs such as arms production and clean-up.
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