Conservatives Bring Woe to Women

Stephen Harper has made it public that he’d like the Conservative government to put women’s health issues first, while hosting the G8. Nice, but unfortunately this is coming from someone who’s party has largely worked in the reverse direction. The Conservatives’ history has not only neglected women’s issues, but reveals programs originally designed to help, instead cut.

According to the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) 28 January¹ 2007, Harper committed in 2006 to

“. . . support women’s human rights and I agree that Canada has to do more to meet its international obligations to women’s equality. If elected I will take concrete and immediate measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women.”

Instead, he started off by cutting 43% of the operating budget from the Status of Women Canada by closing 12 of the federal agency’s 16 offices. But that’s just to start.

Consider this column in the Winnipeg Free Press² (10 February 2010) about Harper’s Conservatives’ deeds.

“In late summer 2006, the Conservatives killed the internationally acclaimed $2.75-million Court Challenges Program created in 1978 to provide federal funding for women and minorities to fight systemic inequality and discrimination. . . .

Also that year, they removed the advancement of women’s equality from the mandate of Status of Women Canada. . .

They have been diligently rewriting Canada’s foreign affairs language to erase advocacy and empowerment. The phrase “gender equality” has been replaced with “equality of men and women.” Currently, the federal cabinet is being lobbied by a group of its own backbenchers to end funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation.”

The article points out that in order to advance women’s health, you need to take into account the various interconnected issues that contribute to health problems, particularly with respect to rights covering “. . . sexual violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation and lack of economic autonomy, political representation, land rights and inheritance rights” Unfortunately the Conservatives continue to be less than great proponents for birth control or abortion safety.

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is making press with its report (PDF) on the backwards slide of women’s status in Canada since 2004. The CBC published news³ (23 February 2010) about this report

“Women currently account for 22.1 per cent of members of Parliament, even though they make up just over 50 per cent of the population. And while that’s the highest political participation rate for women in Canadian history, it’s inched up only marginally over the past dozen years.

The report also slams the government for scrapping a nascent $5 billion over five years national child care program and contends that “senior advisers within the office of the prime minister [have] strong links to anti-feminist organizations.”

It’s true that there are some areas in which we’ve seen slight improvements such as better access to higher education but the larger setbacks are the more telling story. Consider the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap reports. As you can see from this image from the report (PDF), Canada has dropped to 25th in 2009 from 14th in 2006 in terms of worsening gender inequality.

It’s also clear that Canada is behind the sample average on the economy, education, and health: that’s three out of four of the dimensions being graphed.

The Toronto Star⁴ (23 February 2010) also reported on the topic. It focused more on some of the differences over the last several years, leading to the reports claims that we’ve seen an erosion in the status of women.

“Kathy Lahey, a professor of law and gender studies at Queen’s University, whose research is part of the report sent to the UN this week, says Canada can’t claim many bragging rights.

She points out, for instance, that while more women may be in the workforce and at post-secondary institutions, their wage gap with men was actually worse in 2001 than it was in 1981. . .”

There may be a lot of different factors contributing to these declines, but it’s clear that the concrete cuts Conservatives have made to federal programs assisting women, do not help. If Harper really wants Canada to lead on women’s health, he’s got to do more than doublespeak on an international stage.