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Harper's defence of women rings hollow

By: Frances Russell

10/02/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 21

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's initiative to "mobilize" the Group of Eight wealthiest nations to improve the health of women and children in the Third World has neither details nor money and is so narrowly focused it lacks credibility.

Stephen Lewis, Canada's former ambassador to the UN, calls Harper's plan "a piece of crass political opportunism" that sees women as mothers and little else. "You don't just throw out the phrase... you actually spend some time setting out what you intend to do and putting a dollar figure on it...

"None of the spectrum of human rights and issues is encompassed in (Harper's) announcement," the former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS says. "It includes none of the panoply of women's issues which consign women to subordinate positions around the world."

He lists sexual violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation and lack of economic autonomy, political representation, land rights and inheritance rights.

Not only is Harper's announcement silent on these global concerns, since taking office, his government has been disempowering Canadian women. As one of their first acts, the Conservatives cancelled the former Liberal government's national daycare program. Critics' claims to the contrary, it was up and running, complete with a $5-billion budget and federal-provincial agreements signed between Ottawa and all 13 provincial and territorial governments.

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. Their rationale, that the government shouldn't pay people to sue it, masks the odious hierarchical view that human rights are a privilege restricted to the wealthy.

Also that year, they removed the advancement of women's equality from the mandate of Status of Women Canada and cut $5 million, or 43 per cent, of its funding.

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.

Bev Oda, minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, has refused to say whether contraception and access to abortion will be included in the prime minister's initiative.

All of these actions underscore the power and influence the religious right enjoys within the Conservative party. Last December, the Toronto Star's Linda Diebel reported that two pillars of the movement -- evangelist Darrell Reid of Focus on the Family and Christian educator Paul Wilson -- now hold key positions in Harper's PMO, Reid as Harper's deputy chief of staff and Wilson as director of policy.

Winnipeg South Centre Liberal MP Anita Neville says she believes the Conservatives are worried about their base. R.E.A.L. Women, the anti-feminist women's group that lobbies to preserve the traditional family and the stay-at-home wife and mother, "has the Conservatives' ear, they are very influential," the Liberal's status of women critic said.

"They (the Conservatives) see women's rights in the strictest sense -- equal before the law and that's all. What does that mean? It means a lack of advocacy. Implicit in it is the lack of advocacy."

Neville says maternal mortality, human rights, family planning and reproductive health services, health care and pre- and post-natal care for mothers and newborns must be added to Harper's narrow focus on clean water, better nutrition and immunization.

She points out that 70,000 women die annually in developing countries due to botched abortions. "Access to the full range of reproductive health services is an integral part of a strategy that empowers women. Without reproductive choice or access to birth control, women are less able to benefit from education or economic opportunity, and remain susceptible to child marriage, sexual violence and female genital mutilation."

Gerald Caplan, former NDP national director and author of The Betrayal of Africa, says no amount of aid can compensate for the hardships wreaked on the Third World by free trade and structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, endorsed by the Group of 8 richest countries.

Writing in The Globe and Mail last month, Caplan also pointed out the Harper government recently cut off funding for Kairos, the international development agency funded by all Canada's mainline Christian churches.

"I wonder if anyone told him (Harper) that Kairos worked in the Congo with a Congolese group that was planning to set up a legal clinic to protect women's rights," Caplan continued. "One of its intended projects was to support Congolese women who had been raped."

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg author and political commentator.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 10, 2010 A12

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21 Commentscomment icon

Right wingers and conservatives are so happy to bandy around the term Socialist about left wingers but would demand apologies from anyone that would infere that right wing leaders treat national leadership like a dictatorship or facist regime. We all need to settle down and fix this country period. stop with the name calling and grow up.

"Is the Democracy worth all the risks and the problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn't worked out, to hell with it." - H.S.T.

Harper is stuck in the 1940's. Time to vote him out and send him back to oil country.

Hey, as a woman who is neither extreme leftist nor radical feminist (in fact at the moment I would really like to get married and have kids), I gotta tell ya, I am extremely uncomfortable with Harper and his party's stance on women's issues, both domestic and international.

Would I ever have an abortion? Highly Doubtful. Should women have the right to unhindered access to abortion? Unequivocally yes. Should women who choose to be mothers be supported? Of course. Should women only be defined by motherhood? Please no. And I'm sorry, but the cuts to funding for and mandate of Status of Women are troubling. I still make less money for equivalent work. I still need more education to get an equivalent job. I still take on more household duties. If I had kids I would still take on more child care responsibilities IN ADDITION to work duties. Harper's "commitment" to improving the status of women internationally is at best, a tiny, belated, and inadequate step in the right direction and at worst, mere lip service.

Also, if you truly disagree with Ms. Russell's opinions on this matter, how's about providing facts and analysis of her statements rather than simply attacking what you presume to be her political viewpoint? I couldn't even count the number of times I've been told my opinion doesn't matter - either because I'm just a dumb blonde or because I'm some kind of lesbian feminist (which is patently untrue if you've actually ever read lesbian feminist theory).

Why are so many people posting here just slagging the writer's 'record' rather than addressing the women's rights record of harper (which is the topic of the piece...regardless of which way your opinion goes on the matter)

I know why...

and you don't have to be Columbo to figger it out...

It's because we ALL know that this women's right 'initiative' of Harper's is just lame lame lame on many levels...

Western expat:

"Canadians are finally becoming increasingly aware that Canada's highly organized, well funded, and determined Evangelical Christian organizations, Catholic and Protestant, are driving the Harper government's domestic and foreign agendas."

Wow. Scary. I was wondering why Harper's direct phone was in my church bulletin last weekend. Oh the power we wield.

Actually the scary thing is that you believe that. Even a casual political observer knows that Harper does little to pander to social conservatives.

I rather dislike Harper for many reasons but I have to give him credit for speaking out for women's health on the world stage when no other world leader did so. If you believe that it was merely for "political opportunism" then you should equally criticize Iggy for trying to link abortion into it.

70,000 die annually. I always wondered where morons like Russell got these unverified numbers from. Now I know....from other morons like Neville.

Bravo to Frances Russell and to the WFP for having the courage to discuss this topic. In a "free" society we should hear all sides of these major issues, and we need the print media to give us access to a variety of views. This openness may not please the followers of the Harper Control policy, but it is vital to have it.
P.S. I am not the same "null" who posted here earlier.

I read this column. So what. Unless you're an extreme left-wing feminst, I'm not sure I see the problem.
Frances, unfortuantely, you are so far removed from the common Canadian, you have no idea what you're talking about any more. You're an elite lefty full of guilt, ready to take it out on anything that doesn't fit in with your socialist ideals.

PM Harper's conception of women's rights, if indeed such rights really do exist and must be acted upon and protected and promoted, is that of REAL Women, an organization that lobbyed aggressively against the Canadian Charter of Rights, especially section 15 on substantive gender equality rights and section 28, a reaffirmation of gender equality and affirmative action if necessary, that is immune from s. 33, the notwithstanding clause.
Canadians are finally becoming increasingly aware that Canada's highly organized, well funded, and determined Evangelical Christian organizations, Catholic and Protestant, ( see the website of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada) are driving the Harper government's domestic and foreign agendas. This is clear in Harper's vague commitment to urge the G8 nations to address the plight of women and children in the 3rd World. It is clear in the crisis facing the federal government's Rights and Democracy Agency in Montreal where the government has taken over the Board of Directors and the Board has put senior staffers on leave with pay, and hired a detective to monitor the support staff! Why? All because the Harper government is determined to use the Rights and Democracy to advance its values conservative agenda throughout the 3rd World and to ensure that the agency does not fund organizations that do not fit into Harper's parameters.

"Socialists care about no-one but themselves"

Wow, Durward. You do realise that this is in direct conflict with the definition of socialism, don't you? By definition socialism is about caring for everybody.

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