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CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2010
A message from Alice West, President, BC FORUM Read about what International Women's Day means for BC FORUM member Millie Canessa International Women’s Day, March 8th, has been a date on which women around the world have come together to remember the inequities and tragedies of the past and to fight for a better world today and in the future.
In Canada the differences in income between men and women continues to exist with a disproportionate number of women living in poverty. The corporate world, abetted by right wing governments, is steadily pushing to have vast downward changes to our pension systems, our income levels reduced and our living standards lowered. They constantly try to push Canadian working people to a lower standard of living so that they may enjoy obscenely high rates of profit. These same corporations also manipulate governments so that they pay only minimal tax which is even less than working people pay.
70% of the world’s poor are women. Women living in developing countries face unbelievable difficulties in just feeding themselves and their children. However, women continue to find new ways of communication, sharing and supporting each other. National borders and differences are being overcome with new technologies. Almost 800 million people of the world are illiterate, with nearly 2 in 3 being women. It is imperative that girls and women around the world,, as well as here in Canada, be given the education and skills development so that they may earn a living wage as adults.
Poverty has also affected women’s health, their living conditions such as inadequate housing and their access to justice. The U.N. has made declarations of human rights for women, but the majority of countries have either only paid lip service to the idea, or ignored it completely.
Globally, at least 1 in 3 women is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. In Canada, at least 75 women are murdered by their spouse or partner each year. There appears to be an international lack of response to violence against women. War and militarism around the world has taken precedence over human rights and gender equity. Monies provided for the military should be directed to health, education and social programs for women.
The Labour Movement here in Canada has fought for, and gained some protection for their female members. Equal pay for work of equal value is still a hard won issue, but it has taken anywhere up to 25 years to gain this for unions through the court system. So far it has been won by only a few unions, and many are still in a battle. Non-unionized working women are still unprotected in this regard and depend on a possible whim by their employers. The total monies spent on the courts would have been more than enough to settle these cases at the onset. The majority of Canadian women work in non-union companies and are in dire need of the basic rights unionized women currently hold. There is still a glass ceiling, firmly nailed in place, as women are often overlooked and ignored for higher levels of work and pay.
Some have called for the word “International” to be deleted from celebrating women’s day. If that should occur, it would be a tragedy. Women of the world need each other for support, organizing, and action for equality. The ties that bind our sisterhood run from the girls who are denied an education, the single mom trying to exist on welfare and looking for work, the beaten women, the women with no access to health care and through all phases to the penniless African grandmothers who are raising orphaned grandchildren, many of them with AIDS.
Let us stay united and keep fighting for true equity NOW. | ||
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