Two cheers for International Women’s Day

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This article was published 07/03/2022 (1499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Tuesday, we celebrate International Women’s Day. Let joy be unconfined, etc.

But admit it, it’s difficult in one of the most fraught years in the planet’s history to see advancements in women’s rights. We’re in the shadows. It’s a twist on what women are told whenever they ask for a raise: “Now is not the time.”

It seems now is not the time for women to close the wage gap, for femicide to decrease, for abusive men to be exiled from the home rather than the women and children they torment, for women to prosper at work while raising children, to retain access to abortion, or even to feel easy about using the word “woman.”

No, we have been called “menstruators” and even “chest-feeders” and “pregnant people.” When so many of us never did or no longer do menstruate, breastfeed or give birth, we do not exist, I suppose.

This last one is a minor fringe issue, already fading. The others will not fade. Money rules all. Access to money is at the heart of women’s advancement, and it’s not going well.

As Armine Yalnizyan wrote in the Star in Sept. 2021, “Canada-wide, just 56.7 per cent of the population of women aged 15 and over have paid work, levels last seen in 2002.” That was 20 long years ago. Although Quebec and B.C. have recovered to 2016 levels, Ontario is in the backwoods of 1999.

I hope those numbers have gone up as we slowly reopen. Retail jobs sustained so many women. As you walk down the street, look around you. Do you see an open store and if so, is it well-staffed? Should you bother? This is not an anecdote but a national problem. It’s unclear if retailers understand their own shrinkage or the appeal of Amazon.

As our population ages, employment changes. As Yalnizyan put it in another column, do jobs deserve that old “devotion?” Unless caregivers, usually women, are paid fairly with steady, safe work and good benefits, our current crisis will widen again.

Women are seeking to enter new fields in large numbers, including medicine, surgery, trades, law, architecture, possibly policing, and the highest reaches of politics. It was a sorrow to see Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott announce her departure from politics. She was the only competent member of Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet, and he has always taken care to have no plausible successor in place.

On the other hand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a feminist, has always advanced the cause of women. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has been called “Minister of Everything,” having served as minister of international trade, foreign affairs, and intergovernmental affairs — and (still) as deputy prime minister.

And she has been strikingly competent in every portfolio, thanks to her intelligence, breadth of knowledge, human understanding and patience. The quality we most need in politicians right now is unflappability, a radiating confidence that problems can indeed be solved.

I see fatigue, rage and panic among citizens. Trudeau has been a calming figure offering careful confidence. He hasn’t been afraid to hand over to Freeland to let her do her finance job but also to comment publicly on a devastated country she knows well: Ukraine.

Politicians are rarely so generous about the local competition. U.S. President Joe Biden hasn’t allowed Vice-President Kamala Harris to range widely, to allow Americans to get to know her. At his age with poor prospects for re-election, the Democrats — and the planet — may pay heavily for this.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t leave, partly because he knows voters can see his cabinet is packed with no-hopers. That’s his plan. It’s not a great one for Britain. He’s rather Putin-like that way.

Things to cheer about: abortion pills are becoming more commonly used, the concept of “femicide” as a particular kind of killing is slowly being recognized, #MeToo has finished off many old beasts, and then there’s this last crucial fact: Women don’t give up. We never have. We never will.

Happy International Women’s Day, and may we see many more.

Heather Mallick is a Toronto-based columnist covering current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @HeatherMallick