Fringe Benefits

What started out a flippant tweet inspired by my Tweep @impolitical on Thursday, morphed into a column, then an avalanche of email, a Facebook group, a blogburst and maybe, just in time for the expected federal election, a movement!

So far, we have 700 members ... and counting.

Here's the column, published on Friday, with annotations and links.

I'm thinking of making T-shirts: "Proud to be a member of that `left-wing fringe group' called `Women.'"

They'd be pink, of course, for socialism – and also for the pink triangle, the badge the Nazis made gays and lesbians wear before shipping them off to the camps.

We already have a draft design, compliments of Francesca Dobbyn, who describes herself as ''Executive Director of the United Way of Bruce Grey, activist, feminist, artist, mother, child and most importantly: a work in progress.'' We also have plenty of offers from other graphically-gifted grrrls (and boys).

Oh, and we decided black would be more flattering -- but the graphics and writing would be pink.

Thanks to Prime Minster Stephen Harper, those T-shirts will make me rich!

Well, no actually -- although I have received something like 1,000 requests. Hence the Facebook group. It is just too much!

Also, I am stepping away from this, as it would not really be appropriate for me to get into the t-shirt business, or to be actively involved. So I have handed it off to others, and we're lining up a charity for fundraising. More on that below, and later -- when there is news.

So props to you, P.M., for letting down your hair, and your guard, last week at that not-so-closed-door speech in Sault Ste. Marie.

Thank you for finally admitting that your government shut down the Court Challenges program in 2006 not just because, as then-Heritage Minister Bev Oda claimed in Parliament, you "recognize the importance of women" but because you believe that that women's rights are "left-wing fringe" rights.

Truth is, you only "recognize the importance" of some of the women some of the time. Members of fringe groups such as R.E.A.L. Women, which opposes women's rights and same-sex rights, plus just about everything that doesn't hew to the "family values" one-man, one-stay-at-home-woman and lots-of-babies fantasy.

But they are not "fringe" to you, Prime Minister. At least not judging from how everything your government attempts to do comes right out of R.E.A.L. Women's playbook. So thank you for, once again, opening that not-so-hidden agenda, the one that you would impose if you ever won a majority government.

The agenda that thinks women's work is not as valuable as men's.

The agenda that would treat lesbians and gays as less than equal.

The agenda that would curb the rights of people with disabilities.

The agenda that would discriminate on the basis of race and religion.

The agenda that would leave women without reproductive freedom.

That's because that Court Challenges program your government deemed "wasteful," was, according to its website, "a national non-profit organization which was set up in 1994 to provide financial assistance for important court cases that advance language and equality rights guaranteed under Canada's Constitution."

Not just "important" cases, but landmark cases, many fought by LEAF, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund – a group clearly overrun by rabid fringe feminists.

They intervened in "left-wing fringe" court cases such as Torres v. Minto Management (2002), which prevented a landlord from increasing a single mother's rent by 41 per cent just because her husband had left the building.

Then there was the "left-wing fringe" case The Queen v. Keegstra (1990), which kept a Holocaust denier from teaching his anti- Semitic ideas to Alberta schoolchildren.

Or how about that "left-wing fringe" case Brooks v. Safeway (1989), which forced employers not to discriminate against pregnant staffers.

And here you are, Mr. Harper, such a champion of "childcare choices" that, last week, you boasted of your government's failure to create a single daycare space.

"We need to win a majority," you told your enthusiastic audience. "If we do not win a majority, this government will have a Liberal government propped up by the socialists and the separatists."

And later, you added: "Imagine how many left-wing ideologues they would be putting in the courts."

Frankly, I think more Canadians would find the alternative a scarier proposition.

Finally, thank you for revealing your nasty, petty and vindictive side, the one that you batten down when you know the cameras are on you.

Maybe, while you're scrapping the gun registry, you could start one for cellphone cameras so, next time, nobody in your audience can tape you, and then leak the videos to CBC.

So, anyway, I'm thinking of adding shimmy-shimmy-shake fringe to the T-shirts.

Rich! Rich I tell ya!

(Marketing types can contact me at my email address below.)

As I mentioned, I have passed the torch to others. If you're on Facebook, join us. (Supportive men are welcome. Trolls will be banned.) If you can help, let us know.

And stay tuned for the name of the cause and where you can buy that t-shirt.

(A hat tip to Scott Tribe for sending me the Hollywoodized edited version of Harper's speech. (A full-length version is here.))

UPPITY WOMEN DATE: For some reason, I am suddenly reminded of this...

Back during the big referendum battle of 1980, an insulting comment about federalist women might have made the difference between the Oui and Non sides:

It was early March 1980. René Lévesque’s separatist government had just tabled in the Québec National Assembly its long, muddled up, deliberately ambiguous referendum question. Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals had been re-elected in February following Jos Clark’s defeat. Claude Ryan was the Leader of the Opposition in Québec. Unfortunetely, the federalist forces were nowhere to be seen or heard. All what one could see or hear was about voting “Yes” to the question and to separation. The “No” camp was a complete vacuum. It was just terrible to watch.

On March 9, the péquiste Minister of the Status of Women (Lise Payette), formerly a well-known TV personality, while attacking in the Assemblée nationale the sexism of schoolbooks – the nice and docile little “Yvette” who always helps at home – concluded that the Leader of the Opposition in charge of the “No” forces loved women who were “Yvettes”, submissive women, as was his wife, Madeleine. Those in favour of separation applauded, while women in the “No” camp, insulted, took note. Still nothing was happening in the fight against separation.

It is then that a small group of unknown grassroot Liberal women organizers from Québec City decided, without a word, “to take over”, using to the federalist advantage this unbelievable political gaffe against women. The “Yvettes” were born.

All by themselves, with no money and no paid publicity, they organized on March 30 a first brunch in Québec City; 1,700 women of all walks of life came. The initiative caught women’s imagination like a bush fire. On April 7, they were 14,000 at the Montreal Forum. Everywhere in the province, they started expressing in their own words their passion for Canada. Many had never participated in anything political.

Here's the report from CBC's archives.

More here. And here.

Just saying.

Training wheels

Believe it or not, although women -- at certain levels anyway -- are slightly disadvantage when it comes to on-the-job training, this post isn't just about gender but also about social justice, good labour practices and, yes, collective bargaining.

A well-trained workforce is a productive workforce -- and productive workers are good for the economy. They make us more competitive on a global scale. They also make decent wages -- which means they are less reliant on social services, spend more and pay more taxes.

So on-the-job-training is a good investment.

I added the links:

You are less likely to receive job training if you are a non-unionized worker, low-waged, less-educated - or if you are a woman and one of the above. That is according to a new study of census data published in the journal "Perspectives in Labour and Income."

The study paper, entitled, "Barriers to Training Access," was written by a trio of business minds: Gordon Cooke, an assistant professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland's faculty of business administration, Isik Zeytinoglu, a professor of human resource and management at McMaster University, and James Chowhan, also of McMaster University.

Speaking with The Telegram, Cooke said census data evaluated by the team generally showed less opportunity for job training - whether on-the-job training or classroom training - for less educated or lower-waged workers, but that was "not surprising," he said.

"Normally people in temporary or part-time jobs are generally disadvantaged," said Cooke. "The so-called 'vulnerable workers,' however you define them, have lower access to training than non-vulnerable workers."

The surprise, said Cooke, came when the researchers looked deeper at the male versus female results from about 25,000 employees in approximately 7,000 work places across Canada.

"The study examines five overlapping groups of workers: all workers; low-wage workers; less-educated workers; non-union workers; and low-wage, less-educated, non-union workers (together). All five were also split by sex," the paper states.

"Surprisingly - in all categories - female workers receive less training than comparable males," Cooke said.

I don't know why that's so surprising but let's continue:

According to the paper's conclusion, the separate male-female results yielded two significant points. "First, having low education seems to be more problematic for women since the odds ratio showed that less than a high school education was associated with much lower odds of receiving training for women than for men.

"Second, non-permanent employment or a non-professional occupation was associated with sharply lower odds of receiving employer-supported training among women, but not men," it stated.

This could be the result of men going more into trades rather than, say, retail. I guess you need more training to operate a fork-lift than to sell a set of flatware.

Also, many women work in jobs -- say piece-work -- that rely on skills they learned at home.

What's more, there are more women than men doing part-time work -- although why the ''sharply'' different levels of training when both men and women are in non-permanent jobs is a mystery.

In and of itself, these statistics do not point to any inherent inequality.

But I think there may be a snowball effect.

If you're a man in a low-level job who gets training, you have a better chance of getting a promotion or another, better job than a woman who remains untrained.

Which could explain why men continue to out-earn women.

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.

Sneak attack

My friend Balbulican over at StageLeft scores again, this time with his observations on the Harpies' not-so-hidden agenda.

Back before the first Conservative Party electoral sort-of victory, we lefties were convinced that the Harperite wing of the party was driven by a secret program for Canada, a list of priorities antithetical to what we thought our country was all about. No-one ever set out their “secret Conservative Agenda” fears too specifically, but if they had, I imaging it would have looked something like this.

a) The Conservatives will dismantle or choke off funding to the organizations they perceive as “feminist”.

b) They’ll start quietly trying to reverse the growing trend toward social acceptance of gays and lesbians.

As Balbulican muses, who would have thought that the Conjobs would actually openly do these things -- and more? We all figured that, as a minority government, they'd be sneakier about it.

But why should they when, as my friend and colleague Susan Delacourt tweeted today, opposition leader Michael Ignatieff is ''coming to a milk carton near you.''

Go forth and readeth.

Body blow

Okay, once more into the burqa breech ...

Today's treeware column was basically a summary of my previously-blogged ideas about women's leadership in the Iranian uprising as well as some thoughts on hijab, especially in the wake of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's pronouncements on the burqa the other day.

You can read it here.

Note that NOWHERE do I endorse the wearing of a burqa. In fact, I say things like ''given my druthers, I'd rather not walk around with a black veil. But I'm a Godless feminist, with no time at all for patriarchal orders from male religious leaders.'' I call it ''a prison for women.''

But, judging from some of the comments and emails, you'd think I sold out my Muslim sisters to the regressive and controlling people -- yes, not always but usually men -- who treat them like chattel. That ''less than livestock'' theme is one that I have repeatedly explored on this blog.

The essential issue my column raises is CHOICE.

It asks this:

What gives anybody – the state, the mullahs, the media, husbands and/or fathers – the right to say what women can wear?

And further down, this:

Seriously: How can a state complain about women being forced to wear something – and then force the same women to take it off?

Why are there incredibly restricting rules for women, and not for men? Is this not sexist (a word I am denounced for using, by the way, by one commenter)?

And what good does such a law do? Will women who refuse to unveil in France be jailed like women who refuse to be veiled are in backward and repressive Islamic countries? Aren't they the victims? Why punish the victim?

Both the National Post and the Star ran editorials today essentially agreeing with my take. When these two political polar opposites concur, well, you have to know that an argument is pretty airtight.

But still.

One notable attack came in from a well-know Muslim Torontonian who claimed I was keeping Muslim women enslaved, that I was selling out his female relatives to the misogyny in the Islamic world. 

Me?

Where?

This was my response:

I advocate for women's complete dominion over their bodies.
Do you?
I believe that, if a woman wants to dress in a miniskirt, it is her right. She is not to be condemned for "asking for it."
Do you?
I think that the burqa - something I personally despise - should be a CHOICE.
Do you?
Why should the state go after women who have no choice?
I see that as sexist and counterproductive.
Do you?
I think that the state should be targeting those who abuse women - and I consider the burqa to be abuse - and not the victim.
Do you?

Now not all women agree, including devout Muslim women -- and, by the way, I know plenty, none of who veil themselves. Here is what a British Muslim woman had to say today:

Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department.

The irony of the situation was almost laughable. Here was a group of affluent women window shopping for designs that they would never once be able to wear in public.

Yet it's a sight that's becoming more and more commonplace. In hardline Muslim communities right across Britain, the burkha and hijab - the Muslim headscarf - are becoming the norm.
In the predominantly Muslim enclaves of Derby near my childhood home, you now see women hidden behind the full-length robe, their faces completely shielded from view. In London, I see an increasing number of young girls, aged four and five, being made to wear the hijab to school.

Shockingly, the Dickensian bone disease rickets has reemerged in the British Muslim community because women are not getting enough vital vitamin D from sunlight because they are being consigned to life under a shroud.

Thanks to fundamentalist Muslims and 'hate' preachers working in Britain, the veiling of women is suddenly all-pervasive and promoted as a basic religious right. We are led to believe that we must live with this in the name of 'tolerance'.

And yet, as a British Muslim woman, I abhor the practice and am calling on the Government to follow the lead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and ban the burkha in our country.

The veil is simply a tool of oppression which is being used to alienate and control women under the guise of religious freedom. 

Agreed on all points but one: the ban.

How many of us who advocate for a ban have actually approached a heavily veiled woman and talked to her? Asked her if she is happy under that black tent?

I haven't, even though I see such women almost every day when I walk my dog near a rapidly-expanding mosque near Donlands and Danforth. Some of them actually work as nannies for the yuppies in my hood. On summer evenings, in a local park, I see maybe a dozen women, completely veiled in black, sitting on the grass in a circle eating sweets and yakking away, their kids nearby on the playground. I have talked to the children, let them pat the dog, but I have NEVER spoken with the women. 

How sad is that?

I guess that's the point of the burqa.

Now obviously there's a big difference between the burqa and a scarf. As my friend and colleague Rosie Dimanno emailed this morning,

In a burqa, you can't see your feet. That's why women fall down.

(Well, I can think of other reasons but ... heh heh ... kidding Rosie.)

Point is, I have met very strong-minded women at U. of Toronto, who are in hijab. None of them seems to be under any duress.

Yesterday, while walking past a house where a Muslim family lives (and there are plenty near here), two little girls, maybe 5 or 6 years old, were playing Mommy with a doll and its stroller. One of the girls actually put a piece on of cloth on her head and tied it like a scarf so she could be ''grown-up.'' I stood there in astonishment.

Bottom line: choice.

Choice.

There should be no more rules for women than there are for men.

That's why it's legal for women to be topless in Ontario and some other jurisdictions.

That said, if a government were truly concerned about how women in burqas were being treated, it would set up mechanisms so that they could get help when they wanted to shed them, escape tyrannical family situations, and break the chains of "subservience.''

Otherwise, a ban will only cause more problems for these women.

Incidentally, I couldn't help but use one more image from the wonderful movie, Persepolis. (And yes, I know it doesn't depict a burqa ...)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot to link to this story from Cairo:

At the Embaba Youth Center in Cairo, teenage girls in headscarves that signify Islamic modesty whack at each other with deft karate moves.

It’s fun, they say, but also a defense against nasty boys and men on the Egyptian capital’s mean streets.

“No one is going to touch me when I can hit them real hard,” said Nada Gamal Saad, 16.

The training is a grassroots reaction to a problem Cairo women’s groups say is growing: public verbal insults, groping and even rape. Such harassment contrasts with emerging signs of female political advancement in Egypt and other countries across the Middle East.

“Changes for women are surface improvements,” said Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. “There is a deeper cultural problem: male hostility toward women who want to do more than stay at home.”

I wonder how much freedom a woman will have once she can no longer wear a burqa -- but her family won't let her out of the house because she is ''exposing'' herself.

Surely there are better solutions than bans.

ONE UP ME DATE: Balbulican sure knows how to reduce a blog post to the very basics.

a) We find it appalling that your religion dictates what you may and may not wear.
b) We therefore propose to dictate what you may and may not wear.

Questions?

I am not worthy.

Burly men

''Mens Rights Now,'' whose handle always cracks me up, suggests somewhere in the comments on some other post that I blog this piece of propaganda by a right-wing think tank type for an ultra-conservative publication.

Well, you know how I just live to please guys like Men's Rights Now.

Anyhow, the piece is about how unemployed ''burly'' men in the US -- who, admittedly, have been hit hard by the decline in construction and manufacturing jobs -- are supposedly being shortchanged by some grand feminist conspiracy to keep them from benefiting from stimulus spending by President Barack Obama.

Seriously.

Never mind how the author cherry-picks statistics, and compares apples with oranges, to make it seem as if women are living high off the hog while men are on the bread lines. Never mind how women make up the bulk of the poor. Never mind how, except for right now, the unemployment rate for women is consistently higher than for men. Never mind how so many families are headed by women who have no fallback support. Never mind that most women struggle in part-time jobs that the author never mentions. Never mind that women are less like to qualify for unemployment benefits. Never mind how women make less. Never mind how, when the government bailed out the financial sector, it was men's jobs that were saved.

According to the author:

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.

Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan." A group of "notable feminist economists" circulated a petition that quickly garnered more than 600 signatures, calling on the president-elect to add projects in health, child care, education, and social services and to "institute apprenticeships" to train women for "at least one third" of the infrastructure jobs. At the same time, more than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Obama not to favor a "heavily male-dominated field" like construction: "We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges." As soon as these groups became aware of each other, they formed an anti-stimulus plan action group called WEAVE-- Women's Equality Adds Value to the Economy.

Now, although this story is American, it has some relevance here in that Canadian men have also suffered in the job market -- although our government completely ignored what women said about so-called ''shovel ready'' projects.

I won't bother to eviscerate the entire piece, despite the easy pickings. I will point out however that these evil feminists were not conspiring to take away jobs from men, but to ensure that money went to families for such things as, horrors, health care and food. They also thought it would be only fair that, since women's tax dollars were going into this (and so much has been lost by the macho men on Wall Street), that it would be a good opportunity to even out some of the incredible inequalities that persist in the trades.

Here's a summary of what WEAVE wanted:

No. 1: Affirmative action plans:
These ensure that women and people of color are actually hired and trained for public-sector jobs. In the years since Bush took office, the number of federal contracts has risen sixfold. Spending has also gone way up, to almost $368 billion currently from $209 billion in 2000. Staff to monitor these contracts at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, meanwhile, dropped. In his inaugural address Obama talked about government conducting its business in the "light of day" and on his first working day in office he emphasized financial transparency. Government contracts are the place to put those sentiments into action.

No. 2: Infrastructure projects:
In 2003 only 4 percent of the roughly 400,000 registered apprentices were women. Scholars with expertise in these matters must be brought to the policy table so this gross discrepancy can be fixed. This is critical because while women hold 10 percent of construction jobs, most--5.8 percent--work in offices where wages are about 16 percent lower. Unless the Labor Department recommits to workplace integration--by gender and race--the jobs that pay a truly livable wage will not benefit women or people of color in proportion to their presence in the labor force.

No. 3: Spending on health care, child care, education and social services:
This spending both provides jobs to women and provides services needed by all families. The fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is families. Forty percent of requests for emergency shelter come from families. More than 85 percent of homeless families are headed by a lone parent, and most are women.

Now, while it's true that WEAVE pushed for more jobs for women in the trades, it also recognized that people were in serious trouble:

Overall, two-thirds of the stimulus program will go toward tax cuts, relief for state budgets and direct payments to the unemployed and others hurt by the recession, part of the administration's desire to provide immediate fiscal relief. Much smaller pieces of the pie will be allocated for weatherization, affordable housing and other projects designed to create jobs.

John Husing, a Southern California economist, said keeping teachers and police officers employed should help prevent the recession from getting worse. But he said the stimulus package would have improved communities' ability to grow over the long haul if it had dedicated more money to public works.

While billions of dollars eventually will flow to infrastructure projects, Democrats who crafted the package say they directed most of it to existing government programs such as Medicaid and education to prevent state economies from slipping even more. One goal was to help fill state budget gaps, keeping teachers and others employed while strengthening the social safety net.

Let's be clear about one thing: A bunch of feminist economists, no matter how smart, are not going to divert gabillions of dollars in government spending away from men just because they hate them.

Which is what this ridiculous piece insinuates.

The truth is, when you look at who wrote it, who paid her, and where her piece was published, the truth emerges.

Any money that doesn't go to business is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Any money that goes to the public sector is feminist-driven socialism.

Talk about shovel ready.

Happy Men's Rights Now?

Mind the gap

This is an American event/organization but it's still worth a pointer.

Today is Equal Pay Day in the U.S.! 

No, this doesn't mean women have achieved pay equity. It just means they're still waiting.

According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2007 the ratio of women's and men's median annual earnings reached almost 78 cents on the dollar for full-time year-round workers, up from just under 77 cents in 2006. This is the narrowest the wage gap has ever been, but it's only an additional one cent on the dollar. One cent is chump change. It isn't real change.

And:

To match men's earnings for 2008, women have to work from January 2008 to April 2009 — an extra four months. In recognition of this inequity, Equal Pay Day will be marked on April 28, 2009.

Of course, women may show big gains for 2008 and 2009 because the economy is hitting male-dominated jobs harder than women's. But that looks like just a temporary blip.

Anyway, the sponsoring website has tons of research, which the usual suspects who complain when I post about pay equity should read before they start on their usual men-are-daredevils-who-deserve-more-money lectures. 

By the way: The pay gap in Canada is much wider. Women here are worth 71 cents on the male dollar, Canadian.

Rebel yELLE

Can't quite remember where I found this (pdf) the other day -- maybe Twitter, maybe Facebook, maybe via my friend Hysperia -- but it's now going viral among English-speaking feminists in the most of Canada.

It's a feminist manifesto for our times, and it has its roots in Quebec where they  are better organized than they are elsewhere in the country, and farther to the left.

It comes from Rebelles, which has held several gatherings. Now there's action in Ontario. (You can find a Facebook group here.)

Here's a snip:

We are told that feminism is over and outdated. If this were true then we wouldn't need to denounce the fact that: In reality, many of the demands of our feminist mothers and grandmothers remain unmet. Women continue to be the victims of sexual violence. Our communities are haunted by the silence that follows these assaults. Throughout Canada, in spite of our right to it, access to abortion services remains insufficient.

Across Canada as well, colonized, marginalized, racialized and disabled women are coerced and/or forced to undergo unwanted or uninformed abortions, forced to use contraception and are subjected to forced sterilization.

The hyper-sexualization of women in the media has taught us to view women as sexual objects rather than complete human beings. Getting off, lesbianism and being queer are taboo and a women's choice to seek sexual pleasure is seen as negative.

Our identities are eroded as we are taught, from the time we are children, and through television
and magazines, that how we should look, dress, and act is determined by our sex. Violence is normalized, sexual abuse eroticized. Our sexual health education is inadequate and our reproductive rights are disrespected. Our needs are not being met.

In reality, women still represent the majority of the underprivileged. Our government steals children from poor and Aboriginal women. Capitalism exploits working-class women and confines middle- and upper-class women to "consumer" roles. We are told that equality has been achieved, but still the wage gap persists. Immigrant women are denied acknowledgment of their academic credentials and are forced to endure intolerable work environments in order to stay on Canadian soil. We lack affordable and accessible childcare.

Women remain underpaid, underappreciated, and undervalued in the work force. We have gained the right to vote, yet gender-based discrimination keeps women virtually unrepresented in political office.

The manifesto acknowledges the support of men, and includes them as well as ''allies'' on the fight for equity and justice.

Yes it sounds radical. But radical is what is called for in what are shaping up to be revolutionary times.

If women all over the world are not liberated, then we will all continue to be plagued by war, famine,environmental degradation and overpopulation. Lift up the women, you lift up the world.

And if you don't buy that, perhaps you'd like to move to Adghanistan? or Congo?

Numbers game

The good news? 

Married woman who work outside of the home for pay are making more money.

The bad news?

Married women who work outside of the home for pay are working more outside of the home.

Here's the latest from Statistics Canada:

The relative contributions of wives and husbands to paid work hours and earnings have become closer over the past 12 years. Wives now work longer hours at their paid jobs and they earn more than in the past.

But in 2008, most dual-earner wives still contributed less than 45% of total family earnings, making the majority of them the secondary earner in couples with paid jobs.

Between 1997 and 2008, the proportion of wives earning at least 45% of the family total increased from 37% to 42%. Most of this change was driven by an increase in the proportion of women who were primary breadwinners.

The working hours of husbands and wives also became closer between 1997 and 2008. In 2008, 65% of wives were considered equal workers in terms of weekly paid hours, up from 60% in 1997.

During the 12-year period, the average combined work week for spouses in dual-earner couples remained relatively unchanged at around 77 hours.

However, the average weekly hours worked by wives increased steadily, while husbands put in fewer hours on the job. In 1997, husbands worked over 9 hours a week more than their wives (43.3 compared with 33.8). By 2008, this difference had declined to just over 7 (42.0 compared with 34.7).

Over the same period, women's average weekly earnings increased at a faster pace than men's. In 1997, $640 (39%) of total family earnings came from wives; by 2008, wives were contributing $740 (41% of the total).

If I am reading this right, nothing much has changed. Women, who put in more hours doing domestic chores and running errands than do men, still work harder for less pay than men.

Please, correct me if I am wrong.

UP THE ANTE DATE (April 25/08): Facebook friend and fellow blogger Aaron Braaten left this comment on my link to this post on my profile page. I thought it was good enough to repost here, although i wish he had posted here in the first place!

Plenty of layoffs have hit male-dominated industries like manufacturing and construction, which also tend to be high-paying. This has decimated average daily earnings for men, thus narrowing the gap. So it's a bit of a false gain for women, at least since 2006. With plenty of men laid off, maybe they pick up the slack on the homefront. But, anecdotally, I have seen women feel the strain of having their spouse laid off, in terms of feeling like they have to pick up the slack and work more hours.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87ea8332-2d43-11de-8710-00144feabdc0.html

I also wonder if companies keep women onboard during downturns precisely because they do the same work for less pay. This probably explains why the unemployment rate for women is lower than men's unemployment right now. Is it better to have less pay. This probably explains why the unemployment rate for women is lower than men's unemployment right now. Is it better to have less pay with more job security, or the opposite?

In fact, the Star's Barbara Turnbull tackled the subject of laid-off husbands/dads today.

Running a household, he says, "is a much more difficult job than one would even imagine."

It's also a reality for more fathers, because men are taking heavier hits from this recession than women. The adult male unemployment rate is 7.5 per cent, almost two points higher than that of women of a similar age.

"Layoffs really need a whole kind of redefinition and reframing of stereotypical and gender-specific roles," says Tom Triantafillou, who is with Family Services of Peel.

"I think this economic meltdown also means a sort of social revolution in terms of how we view work and how we view relationships."

Kathleen Deck, a counsellor for Family Services' Employment Assistance Program in Toronto, says almost every laid-off person goes through a period of shock and intense emotion and they experience hurt, anger, anxiety, fear and, for the lucky ones, relief and excitement.

But for families already on shaky ground, she cautions, large cracks can quickly appear.

"Oftentimes, not only is there the difficulty of seeing meaning in making breakfast but also, if people are struggling with the transition, they may behave in ways they don't feel very proud of."

Triantafillou says Peel family services is seeing more men and, although manufacturing and construction sectors are the hardest hit in Ontario, plenty of their new clients are professionals with degrees and pink slips. Those who strongly identified themselves by their career are having the hardest time.

"They don't feel they are living up to their manly, breadwinner duties."

Why I am a feminist: Chapter Sixtyhundredeleventy

A wowser of a front-page story by Living (yeah, I hate that too) section colleague Susan Pigg.

Looks like women who are pregnant are the first to get the pink slip during these depressed economic times.

Human rights advocates are seeing an alarming surge in cases of pregnant women being fired by "Neanderthal" employers across Ontario, who claim hard times are the cause.

What's especially stunning, they say, is how brazen some bosses are, almost 50 years after Ontario enacted the Human Rights Code to prevent such discrimination.

"We actually have an email from one employer saying, `Sorry, but with your little bundle, I don't think we'll be able to (re)hire you. We want a permanent solution,'" says Consuelo Rubio, manager of client services for Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre, an independent agency funded by the province to provide free legal services to people experiencing discrimination.

The firings are in all sectors: "It's happening to women in senior positions and women in minimum-wage jobs," says Katherine Laird, executive director of the centre, who says she hasn't seen this level of discrimination through two previous recessions and 30 years in the human rights field.

"It's outrageous and illegal," Laird says.

The spike in calls from pregnant women who are frightened for their jobs, can't nail down return-to-work dates or have been told there will be no job waiting for them at the end of their maternity leave, started last fall. But they hit "nightmare" levels in January, says Rubio, and are now averaging 10 to 15 calls a week – accounting for about 10 per cent of all calls from workers inquiring about their rights.

<SNIP>

The centre is also fielding more calls from injured workers and disabled people – who have always accounted for the vast majority of inquiries – and are seeing troubling signs on that front as well, especially among people who work for hard-hit auto-parts manufacturers, some of them unionized shops.

Human-rights advocates are investigating a Peterborough firm that produces car bumpers and other plastic parts. It laid off 18 workers back in January – every one of whom had at some point claimed disability benefits or were on modified work assignments to allow them to do less strenuous work to cope with their injury.

Meanwhile, 18 "healthy" workers were called back from layoffs.

"The Human Rights Code is supposed to be about recognizing the worth and dignity of every person – and sometimes the real test of an employer's commitment comes when economic times are tough," says Kate Sellar, a lawyer with the centre.

"Bad economic times aren't a licence for employers to discriminate against pregnant women and workers with disabilities."

Especially alarming to me are a few of the nearly 100 comments (so far) on the Star's main web page. It's as if the writers want to roll back the calendar back to the days when public school teachers were fired for ''showing.''

In 1975, in Toronto, I applied to a well-known ad agency for a position as a copywriter and was told point blank that there was  no point in hiring and training me because, as a newlywed, it was inevitable I would end up pregnant and gone. That incident helped shape my politics.

But now leaves/benefits are the law. No discrimination.

Canadians have fought hard for these rights, which can be shared (to some extent) by both the mother and father. (It was the Canadian Union of Postal Workers who nailed these benefits after a 42-day strike, bless 'em, back in 1981.)

But, of course, fathers don't ''pop'' at about four months. And it usually falls to women -- who make less than men -- to stay home with the baby, particularly if nursing is part of the plan. So, of course, it's women who get screwed ... again.