The Bawdy Politic (constantly updated)

This just in:

A Toronto judge has struck down Canada’s prostitution laws, effectively decriminalizing activities associated with the world’s oldest trade.

“These laws, individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Justice Susan Himel of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice said in Tuesday’s landmark decision.

The long-awaited judgment had been on reserve for nearly a year.

The decision is effective immediately. (See update below.)*

Himel said she did not believe it was appropriate to temporarily suspend her finding that prostitution laws are invalid, as judges often do when they strike down legislation as unconstitutional. Temporarily delaying the invalidation of a law gives Parliament a chance to fashion new legislation, if it chooses.

“I have found that the law as it stands is currently contributing to dangers faced by prostitutes,” she said.

“I am mindful of the fact that legislating in response to prostitution raises difficult, contentious and serious policy issues and that it is for Parliament to fashion corrective legislation,” wrote Himel.

For background on this landmark case, check out my recent piece here:

Says Valerie Scott of Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), “I laugh when people say they've never met a sex worker. Yes you have. You just don't know it. And if you live in a condominium building, there are one or two sex workers in there. You just don't know it.”

All of which makes this new regulation absurd, says Scott, especially since there are many tough laws dealing with the very real problems of human trafficking, child exploitation plus other crimes associated with organized crime.

The new regulations should leave the consenting adult sex workers – small business operators, in essence—alone.

“Lumping us under organized crime and giving us a five-year prison sentence for working indoors, in safe clean environments, is ridiculous,'' says Jones, which, of course, is not her real name. “We're not trafficking in drugs, we're not trafficking in people, we're providing a service.''

But, to the minority Conservative government, it's all part of law-and-order agenda which includes a $9 billion investment in new prisons.

“This government engages a lot in symbolic politics,'' says lawyer Alan Young, who has been fighting a constitutional challenge on behalf of Ontario members of SPOC, arguing that the current laws put prostitutes at risk. “There are some things the Conservatives do that actually have a dramatic impact on the criminal justice system — and they may be negative — but there are a lot of things they do that have very little impact. They simply are being done to send messages that we are the tough old boys from a different moral era.''

Regular readers know I am a big supporter of the decriminalization of prostitution. More thoughts here and here.

But I acknowledge that there are huge rifts amongst feminists on the topic. There are those who feel it is the exploitation of women, which it most definitely can be; others who say it leads to sex trafficking, although the evidence doesn't support that and, anyway, there are separate laws to deal with that; and, finally, there are feminists like moi who feel that, if you are an independent sex entrepreneur, fully consenting and aware of what you are doing, then you have the right not to be beaten, raped, killed while plying your trade.

After all, prostitution in Canada is perfectly legal.

But keeping prostitutes safe?

Not so much.

Until now ...

Watch the usual suspects go cuckoo bananas.

More to come ...

* Note that this is an excerpt of the very first file on The Star's website which was subsequently updated and corrected. In fact, the decision is effective in 30 days. Sorry for the confusion.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: More.

If upheld on appeal, the decision will plunge Parliament back into the extremely divisive and complicated job of criminalizing an activity that is not itself illegal.

Indeed, successive governments have been branded hypocritical for taking a legal act and erecting criminal impediments to every aspect of carrying it out.

Judge Himel said that any doubt about the dangers to women was dispelled when serial killer Robert Pickton's targeted women in a killing spree at his Vancouver pig farm.

She heard evidence during a weeklong hearing last year that as many as 300 sex-trade workers, most of whom were street prostitutes, have disappeared since 1985.

“It is estimated that street sex work makes up less than 20 per cent of prostitution in Canada, but they appear to account for more than 95 per cent of the homicide victims and missing women,” said a key witness for the litigants, Simon Fraser University criminologist John Lowman.

Judge Himel stressed that several other provisions relating to the sex trade remain in effect. These include prohibitions against child prostition; impeding pedestrian or vehicular traffic; and procuring.

She said that these are sufficient to give police the power to keep prostitutes from bothering passersby or turning neighbourhoods into sleazy dens of iniquity.

Judge Himel also said that pimps who threaten or commit violence against prostitutes can still be prosecuted using other sections of the Criminal Code.

Developing ...

UP YOURS DATE: Right on cue (Boldface mine):

Does anyone really believe that the likes of those women, the human wreckage who were killed by Robert Pickton, are going to spend their money on an “office,” advertise their services, keep accounts, submit to regular health testing and pay taxes on their income? Dream on.

<SNIP>

Being a prostitute is a shameful, indecent activity, and any sex worker who demands respect as a matter of course is fooling herself. She is not respectable. Politically correct people will say she is, but she isn’t.

Judgemental much?

Like I have said many times: Prostitution, Canada's Only Capital Crime^TM

READ UP ON IT DATE: CBC has the whole decision (PDF), all 132 pages of it.

UP THE HILL DATE: Surprise, surprise.

The Harper government says it will likely appeal a court ruling which strikes down parts of Canada's prostitution laws.

UPDATE TO THE UP YOURS DATE: Hmm, I see that the National Post's Barbara Kay realized that calling Pickton's victims ''human wreckage'' was, shall we say, a tad insensitive.

Note that it has mysteriously disappeared from her column. (Thanks to Brebis Noire in the comments for pointing this out!)

Does anyone really believe that they are going to spend their money on an “office,” advertise their services, keep accounts, submit to regular health testing and pay taxes on their income? Dream on.

<SNIP>

Being a prostitute is a shameful, indecent activity, and any sex worker who demands respect as a matter of course is fooling herself. She is not respectable. Politically correct people will say she is, but she isn’t.

For the record, every sex worker and/or escort I know, and I have come to know many, pays taxes.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE TO THE UP YOURS DATE: Looks like I am not the only one who had an issue with Kay's Kolumn.

UPRIGHT DATE: Like I said, surprise, surprise.

The federal government will announce today it is appealing the Ontario court ruling that has thrown Canada’s prostitution laws into chaos.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is expected to stand in Parliament during the daily Question Period and say the government will go to court to try to overturn the decision, sources told the Star.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty called on the federal government earlier Wednesday to appeal the ruling that struck down Canada’s prostitution laws as unconstitutional, and said Ontario would support an appeal.

“It proposes some profound changes to the laws that have been on the books here for decades, and we look forward to supporting the federal government in that appeal,” McGuinty said.

Pretty sad coming from a government that refuses to look into the disappearances and/or murders of some 500 aboriginal women. This court ruling may have helped to save some of them.

Oh but that's not all ...

A prominent Christian evangelical leader also urged the federal government to appeal the court ruling.

“It is imperative that Premier Dalton McGuinty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper act decisively to protect Canada from the scourge of legalized prostitution,” Charles McVety said in a statement.

“If they allow this ruling to stand they will be placing our children in danger, women at risk and families in jeopardy.

Um, how does that work?

More on McVety here.

 

 

What she said

Journalist Sheryl WuDunn, co-author with her husband New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof of Half the Sky, says it all at a recent TEDtalk.

H/T to my longtime -- from high school! -- friend Mark Takefman, who walks the talk in India.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot. Under PM Stephen Harper's ''maternal health'' plan, women in these countries are not entitled to the reproductive freedom, including contraception, they would need to achieve equality.

Making a hash out of Afghanistan

(TRIGGER WARNING ON SOME OF THESE LINKS!)

So you know how I like to repeat that Nellie McClung maxim about no nation rising above its women?

Could there be a better example of this than that disaster zone Afghanistan?

This was the subject of today's treeware column which laments the loss of Canadian life and waste of our tax dollars on playing whack-a-mole with terrorists. The longer Afghanistan lives with brutality, the more likely its sons, suffering from disease, poverty and other privations, will join up with the Taliban.

This I truly believe -- and I am not the only one.

I also believe we are helping the US to support a corrupt regime.

But first a word about a controversy surrounding the Feminist Majority Foundation which, critics say, has been co-opted, in the name of women's rights, to support US President Barack Obama's planned escalation of operations in Afghanistan.

Here's some of what former US Senator Tom Hayden had to say on the matter in The Huffington Post:

Over a decade ago a young woman approached me on the California Senate floor with a petition against the Taliban. Women are being repressed, tortured and killed by religious fundamentalists, she said. I signed on. The Taliban seemed like a Ku Klux Klan aimed at women. I was disgusted that the State Department and oil companies would negotiate with them over pipelines, with cursory regard for women's rights. I still feel that way.

But I had no idea then that I was joining The Feminist Majority in a coalition with the Pentagon to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Given the respect I have for Ellie Smeal and Kathy Spillar, among others, it's still hard to believe that they think Afghan women can be liberated by an invading, bombing, imprisoning American army. It's hard to believe that Predators, drones, Special Forces, detention camps and foreign occupiers are solutions to Taliban fundamentalism. Even the US-supported Kabul government showed its real character this year by passing a law requiring women to obey their husbands in sexual matters, in violation of the country's own constitution and international norms.

A top United Nations official this month told a Kabul audience "that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned." This was eight years following the Bonn Agreement which included human rights at its core. In northern areas under Western occupation, the UN report found that in 39 percent of rapes "that perpetrators were directly linked to power brokers who are, effectively, above the law and enjoy immunity from arrest as well as immunity from social condemnation."

It's safe to say the Kabul government will not be recognizing any NOW chapters among its local non-governmental organizations in the foreseeable future.

Lest you think this sort of criticism is coming only from peacenikky former husbands of Jane Fonda, here's Sonali KolhatKar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission:

Recently prominent liberal voices in the United States have expressed the view that the US war in Afghanistan is being waged to help secure the rights of Afghan women. The Feminist Majority, a prominent women's organization in the US responded today to my critique of their pro-war position, co-authored with Mariam Rawi, a member of RAWA. The FM response was originally published under the title, "Why the Feminist Majority Foundation Supports Engagement in Afghanistan," and later changed to "Why Is the Feminist Majority Foundation Refusing to Abandon the Women and Girls of Afghanistan?" In it, Eleanor Smeal and Helen Cho assert that "As long-time peace activists, we did not support the bombing of Afghanistan after 9/11." But the FM also never came out against the war in Afghanistan as they did against the war in Iraq. Instead they called for full inclusion of women in any post-war government. That silence meant tacit support of the war. Today that support for war continues by equating the security craved by all Afghans with the war being waged by US troops. While I fully agree with the FM that the US must stop supporting warlords, and pour resources into development and aid I disagree that dropping bombs, fighting ground offensives, imprisoning Afghans, and all the byproducts of war are somehow making women safer.

More here.

So, with that as background, here's my column, with some links:

The past couple of weeks have proven to be the most deadly ever for NATO troops.

Canada has already taken a disproportionate hit, both in "blood and treasure" as the military types like to say. This month alone, the number of our dead climbed from 120 to 125. As for the treasure, we're somewhere around $9 billion, including projections for the next two years.

Our troops are stretched, our equipment is tired, and polls show that Canadians want out in 2011 – if not sooner – as Parliament has resolved.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is stepping it up, as perhaps it should have before then-U.S. President George W. Bush decided he wanted Iraq's Saddam Hussein deader or less alive than Osama Bin Laden.

If you recall, among the other slogans used to sell us on Afghanistan was "women's rights." That despite how women such as Canada's intrepid Sally Armstrong and, in the U.S., Mavis Leno (Mrs. Jay), had been attempting to focus attention on the plight of women under the Taliban for years.

But Western leaders did not care, not until it came in handy as a casus belli.

Then those burqa-bound women became part of the propaganda, a sign of progress, a reason to keep on fighting.

"The U.S. military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban," write Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, and Mariam Rawi, a pseudonymous Afghan feminist.

"Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai."

Yes, there has been lots of good news about girls going to school and women in Parliament – although the latter are mostly pro-warlord and keep silent.

But really, these things mean nothing if they are immolating themselves rather than being married off to old men, if they are attacked with acid on their way to class, if they are imprisoned for being raped only to be raped by their jailers, if they are killed for being outspoken.

All these things are happening now, aggravated by relentless war that displaces and impoverishes people. There's no clean water, no sanitation. Children are diseased and hungry.

Widows, with no marketable skills and less literacy, are forced into prostitution. (And how many NATO soldiers are their customers?) A woman is lucky to make it to 40.

Or not so lucky.

A UN report released this month shows that women face more violence than ever.

And yet there's still legislation in the works that will force the minority Shia women to have sex with their husbands or else starve, a bill that the ever-smiling Karzai approved in order to win the coming election.

The occupation has only managed to make Afghanistan more fundamentalist.

In the new documentary Rethinking Afghanistan, human rights activist Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, recalls Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, the chief justice from 2001 to 2006, declaring that women have two rights.

"One, every woman has the right to obey her husband," she quotes him as saying. "Two, every woman has the right to pray, though not in the mosque. That is reserved for men."

This is what we have supported?

Estimates are, we will be spending $3 billion over this year and next. That's assuming, if experience is any indication, that costs don't spiral.

What a waste.

The only way to bring security is protect the women and children, not with bombs and bullets, armour and airplanes, but with secure schools, clean wells, steady supplies of food and legislation that punishes men, not women.

That's how you change a country.

Canada can do much better.

Not much more to say except that I have been hearing, as usual, from both sides of the debate, including from Canadian military personnel. Some agree, some don't.

What the more intelligent emailers all concede however is that there has to be a better way -- even if, as one corporal suggested, Canada starts buying up the poppies to make morphine and legalizes pot to buy Afghan's stash of hash.

Here's part of one of his emails to me:

Is there a bigger solution to everything? I feel there is, it does involve us sticking it out there, but it involves a gradual step away from violence and a large step towards development.  In Southern Afghanistan there are no jobs, thus no reason to go to school.  Children are drawn to the Taliban not only because of anti-NATO sentiments, but because they have no income and the Taliban offer money for killing NATO soldiers.  If we provide these people with an economy they will eventually have a need for education, and then we can start to teach them equality as they become more developed.  In my personal view, the West should subsidize Afghan opium production and buy opium to create morphine and other medical substances that we use in our hospitals already; this way we take away the initiative from the Taliban to use opium for their gains, we do not take income away from the farmers(and possibly create more income for them), and it creates other jobs.  I also believe if Canada legalizes marijuana it could save Afghanistan, if we simply subsidize Afghan dope we create another form of income that helps them out, I think we could also get the Dutch on board with this as they have a vested interest in this mission too and one of their biggest tourism selling points is marijuana and Amsterdam.  Foriegn countries putting money into Afghanistan for these reasons would create an economy, a need for bankers and managers and other skilled professionals, teachers to teach those skilled professionals, schools to house those teachers and so on.  And once we have schools we could start pushing for change in equality.  Unfortunately I'm just a lowly Corporal in the Canadian Forces so what I have to say carries no wieght, and this sort of change goes way higher then the Military, but this is what I think needs to be done, and if our parliament ever stops squabling and starts working together on the issue I think change can be made and it's better then cutting and running and it's better then increased violence.

It's an idea.

Sure maybe it sounds crazy.

But it's no crazier than what is going on now.

In fact, less so.

Thank you Corporal, for your service, your sacrifice and your emails.

If you want to help the women of Afghanistan, here are some ideas. But first, write your MP and prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, NDP leader Jack Layton and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe. Tell them that Canada has to straighten Karzai out.

Hooked on a feeling

Regular readers know I fully support the rights of sex workers to conduct their business safely and  without harassment. As one sexpert put it, ''Nobody screws more prostitutes than the government.''

This is also why I believe in the decriminalization of the vagina-for-rent trade.

Note that I said decriminalization and not legalization. There's a fine distinction, which you can read about here.

Which brings me to Victor Malarek's latest book on the sex trade. It was the topic of today's treeware column, posted here in its entirety, with some annotations and links.

Victor Malarek is practically shouting over the phone.

Maybe it's because he's talking on his mobile, on his way to satisfy a craving for strawberries and ice cream.

More likely because the investigative reporter, formerly with CBC's the fifth estate and now with CTV's W-FIVE, is frustrated with my objections to his new book, The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It.

It's a follow-up to his The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade.

It's not that we disagree on many points. Human trafficking is, indeed, very wrong. Child prostitution is horrifying. Sex tourism is disgusting. What happens to women who hit the streets, where they fall prey to drugs, violent clients, brutal pimps, corrupt cops and even serial killers, is unspeakable.

As for the misogyny online, where Malarek found 16 "johns" he interviewed and "five thousand posts" he analyzed, well, tell me something I don't know. Cyberspace is one-handed nirvana for misogynists who cruise degrading porn and talk trash about women.

And many of them try to post their trash in this blog's comments section.

What I object to is Malarek's contention that all sex work is wrong; that there is, for all intents and purposes, no such thing as, to use his words, a "happy hooker.''

Which infuriates "Ginger,'' one of several women I know, maybe even the mom next door to you, who love their escort jobs.

A fortysomething divorcée with two teens, she stumbled into the trade through a friend 10 years ago. When she discovered that she could support her family working only a few days a week – with NHL players, touring rock stars and even (former) provincial premiers – she quit her social services job and never looked back.

"(Malarek) just cannot see anyone choosing to do this," Ginger tells me, echoing other professional escorts. "It's a very paternalistic, patronizing attitude he has and he chooses to ignore all the women – I know women are talking to him. I know women are saying, `Listen to me' – and he brushes them off as the happy hooker contingency."

To Malarek, those who lobby for the decriminalization of prostitution are "bozos'' who are "unrelenting and vociferous shills for the sex industry" and "staunchly defend women's rights to sell their bodies and men's rights to buy them.''

Now, before you jump all over me and attack me for being a feminist who supports the ''sexual exploitation/objectification'' of women, I have to say that I am not alone in this seemingly paradoxical camp.

Far from it -- although there are rifts.

But, the point is, it's a woman's body and she's free to do what she wants to do with it. Choice is choice.

So ...

Well, as a supporter of this "happy hooker lobby," I must say that most of the groups he lists do not represent men at all, except for those men who work in the sex trade.

Instead, what the groups, such as SPOC (Sex Professionals of Canada), do is fight for the rights and safety of adults – mostly women – who choose to work as "call girls.''

After all, sex is not illegal here. Neither is buying a woman a drink and/or dinner and getting consensual sex in return. And neither, for that matter, is prostitution.

What is illegal are the means that protect sex workers from harm.

Canada's Criminal Code, for example, prevents the keeping of a "bawdy house." That means women can't set up shop together. Isn't there safety in numbers?

It also prevents people from "living on the avails'' of prostitution. That means, if you're working to put your live-in teenage son through college, he could be construed as a "pimp.''

(Note that, in Ontario, SPOC is fighting a legal challenge against these laws.)

Malarek's book really doesn't get into the legal details, except to rant against how legalization – which he conflates with the very different decriminalization – has been a failure in other countries.

But where is his research? His footnotes? His citations?

Instead, he relies heavily on American clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, whose work is subsidized by a group that equates sex work with human trafficking.

But, if there's so much human trafficking in North America, how come there haven't been mass arrests? Why do abolitionists such as Malarek (and Farley) focus only on street workers and sex slaves?

As Ginger points out: "There aren't data on average mainstream sex workers because they don't get arrested, don't have drug problems and don't fall within statistics. The only thing I do that's illegal is that I work for an agency."

An agency that supplies drivers to keep an eye on things, maintains "bad client lists'' and takes about $45 from every $200 one-hour "call." All sex is "covered'' – i.e., safe – and, according to Ginger, who has never had a bad experience, makes up only a few moments of the typical hour.

But Malarek ignores such escort services – which are legion – to complain that "in the world of prostitution, there is no such thing as safe sex. It is a world prone to violence, drug addiction, degradation, disease, depression, vulnerability.''

No argument there, with one caveat: That usually happens only when sex workers are treated like criminals, pushed to the margins and have no rights.

In fairness, Malarek reserves his harshest judgment for men who, in his opinion, should never have a reason to buy sex, no matter what. Even if they're infirm, socially awkward or butt-ugly.

"They can get a relationship!'' he shouts into the phone.

To him, it's simple. Go after the "male urges.'' Punish the johns.

But to Ginger, that's simplistic.

"I think the abolitionist theory is dangerous," she insists. "You're not going to abolish it, first of all. So that makes the book profoundly unrealistic.

"The problem is, if you punish the johns, if you go by the Swedish example, the only customers you lose are the good ones, the ones with good jobs and lives who are afraid of infringing on that with criminal charges. The ones who stay are the bad guys who don't care.''

And, as Malarek insists, there are enough bad guys buying sex as it is.

One more thing: As I suggest, you'd be surprised who is in the escort biz. Professionals and professors, police officers and students. As one friend in the game joked,''It's just like going back to the 60s. Only now there's condoms and money.''

More myths about sex work shattered via here.

And this video came to me via My Sex Professor.

Bridle path

Something to think about next time you fill up at the pump:

(CNN)  -- A Saudi judge has refused for a second time to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man, a relative of the girl told CNN.

The most recent ruling, in which the judge upheld his original verdict, was handed down Saturday in the Saudi city of Onaiza, where late last year the same judge rejected a petition from the girl's mother, who was seeking a divorce for her daughter.

The relative said the judge, Sheikh Habib Al-Habib, "stuck by his earlier verdict and insisted that the girl could petition the court for a divorce once she reached puberty." The family member, who requested anonymity, added that the mother will continue to pursue a divorce for her daughter.

The case, which has drawn criticism from local and international rights groups, came to light in December when al-Habib declined to annul the marriage on a legal technicality. The judge ruled the girl's mother -- who is separated from the girl's father -- was not the girl's legal guardian and therefore could not represent her in court, according to Abdullah al-Jutaili, the mother's lawyer.

The girl's father, according to the attorney, arranged the marriage in order to settle his debts with the man, who is "a close friend" of his. At the time of the initial verdict, the judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty, al-Jutaili told CNN. The judge ruled that when the girl reaches puberty, she will have the right to request a divorce by filing a petition with the court, the lawyer said.

According to the UN, a third of the world's women are married off before age 18:

• Globally, 36 per cent of women aged 20–24 were
married or in union before they reached 18 years
of age.

• An estimated 14 million adolescents between 15
and 19 give birth each year. Girls in this age group
are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or
childbirth as women in their twenties.

• Marriage of young girls is most common in sub-
Saharan Africa and South Asia. in niger, 77 per
cent of 20- to 24-year-old women were married
before the age of 18. in Bangladesh, this rate was
65 per cent.

More on child brides here and here and here and here.

A few things to note about this particular Saudi case.

One, the girl's mother gets no say.

Two, the father basically sold his daughter, like an old car or furniture.

Three, no matter how much you knock Islam and sharia law for this kind of thing, if you're burning oil, you're guilty of aiding and abetting the sexual enslavement of girls and state-sanctioned rape.

Just saying.

There's a brief and very compelling documentary about child brides here.

International Women's Day

How ironic that, this year at least, the shortest day of the year is devoted to women's rights.

But whatever. I'll take it.

Two articles by my Star sisters to note.

First up, by Andrea Gordon, is a look at the turnout on the streets of Toronto marking the day.

The theme of this year's event was government's role in ensuring "good jobs and dignity for all." Organizers estimated 1,500 women, men and children braved the rain to wave placards and chant that message as they marched through one of the city's busiest intersections at Yonge and Bloor Sts.

Chantal Sundaram of the local International Women's Day organizing committee stressed that women's security, health and well-being are particularly vulnerable amid the highest job losses in decades and an unemployment rate of 8 per cent in Ontario.

While headlines tend to focus on news like last week's layoffs at Stelco in Hamilton, and at Chrysler in Windsor, there is "a low-level bleed" among the many women who are in non-unionized jobs, or are temporary or migrant workers, and their families.

Sundaram added that women are also hurt by shortages of child care, cuts to health care and lack of affordable housing that worsen during an economic downturn. And they are further at risk because of reduced services and supports such as shelters that would help them.

A statement yesterday from the Canadian Auto Workers union noted that women account for two-thirds of Canadians earning minimum wage and hold 70 per cent of part-time jobs, making it difficult to qualify for employment insurance.

"We need to demand a change to EI eligibility requirements that will provide women and their families with a safety net during these tough economic times, as well as stringent pay equity legislation that would finally work to close the wage gap," said Julie White, women's director for the union. Women make only 70.5 per cent of the average male salary, she noted.

Second, Olivia Ward examines how women everywhere are getting the worst of the economic downturn.

Seventy per cent of the poorest people on the planet are women and girls, and even in a wealthy country like Canada they are the majority of the poor.

Although the global downturn began in the financial sector, dominated by men, it is now bearing down on women, most often found in low-wage and part-time jobs.

The recession has plunged from wealthy to developing countries, where women lack safety nets to help them survive.

"As the economy slows, the disaster in the financial institutions is affecting the real economy," says Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a coalition of groups in 100 countries.

"What happens is the informal sector suffers first – the cleaning women, gardeners and people who do the household jobs. They are mostly women."

As worldwide consumer confidence fades, says the International Labour Organization, traditionally female service jobs in cafes and retail stores are also disappearing. It predicts that 22 million of an estimated 51 million to lose their jobs this year will be women.

Adding to the problem is a global food crisis that has caused a spike in the price of dietary staples like rice, narrowing the line between malnutrition and starvation.

"The increase in hunger and economic stress is accelerating fast, and that affects women in a number of different ways," says Borren.

Because women earn less than men even in good times – a 16 per cent global pay gap, according to the International Trade Union Confederation – they have less to fall back on when times turn bad.

But those at the bottom are also caught in a vicious circle of poverty and abuse. Women who held normal jobs are forced into the "shadow" economy of prostitution, drug smuggling and other criminal activity. Or they are drawn into the nets of vicious international traffickers.

Last but not least, a little something I picked up on Twitter just now via @canadianmom and @reuters_women:

"No nation rises higher than its women." - Nellie McClung

Look around the world, especially in the places where women are treated like property, or worse. Can you see a single country where women are second class citizens where you'd like to live?

Women's rights are human rights.

UPPITY WOMEN DATE: While reading my colleague Haroon Siddiqui's trenchant column on Israeli Apartheid Week -- and seeking to kick his butt for referring to the KINGdom of Canada on International Women's Day -- I saw this contribution by former Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Belinda Stronach:

Women with young daughters know the mixed emotions that can stem from conversations about the rights and relative status of women. So many young people today hold the belief that the battle for equality has been well and truly won.

This is encouraging because it means they themselves are encountering few obvious systemic obstacles or barriers.

But it is also unsettling because it means they may be unaware that too many are still subjected to discrimination and disparity.

Taking stock of the state of Canadian women in 2009 means taking a hard look at the inequalities that remain, and taking action to help eliminate them.

There is much we can do as individuals.

First, we need to understand that the price of our century of achievement is the need for vigilance. The recent decision of the federal government to weaken provisions relating to pay equity for Canada's federal public servants demonstrates how tenuous some of our victories may be. If we are silent on this issue, it will become easier for governments to ignore the voices of women.

Second, we need to encourage policies and build institutions that help to empower the equal treatment of women. Among other things, that means stepping up the pressure on governments to make a priority of implementing quality and affordable child care right across our country. It is distressing that at a time of massive government spending in the name of stimulus, there has been little public pressure on Ottawa to fund a system of child care and early learning, an investment that would create jobs in the short-term but would pay off again down the road in the form of better educated children and more successful women in the workforce.

Third, we need to embrace mentoring. I would encourage successful women from all walks of life to give of their valuable time to organizations that provide Canadian girls and young women with access to the life-changing benefits of mentorship. This empowers them with knowledge, experience and leadership at a time in life when that guidance and support can make all the difference.

Fourth, we need to work to elect more women to Parliament and other levels of public office, not merely to fight for the issues that matter most to us, like equal pay for equal work, a national caregiver agenda and more flexible parental benefits, but to bring a woman's perspective to the issues that matter more broadly to our nation.

We are of course long past the time when a woman entering politics prompted men to gasp at the audacity of it all. But we haven't achieved equality of numbers. In fact, we're not even close.

While women represent 52 per cent of the Canadian population, only 22 per cent of federal Members of Parliament are women; this ranks Canada 46th out of 189 countries in this indicator, behind countries like Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing.

And Haroon? We are not amused.

The Sex Slavery Monologues

Eve Ensler, she of The Vagina Monologues and anti-violence activism, brings it all home in 8:20, as she riffs about all the girls in the world dragged into sex slavery. This bit is specifically about Congo.

For more info, go here. And here. And here. And here ...