Joan Kingston

Chairperson, NB Advisory Council on the Status of Women

International Women's Day is alive and well in New Brunswick. Over 20 groups have called the Council regarding the activities they are holding over the month of March.

Over the last three months, I have met with over three hundred women's groups through focus groups discussing priority issues. I have discovered that women are committed to changing and dealing with issues, and are very knowledgable not only with the problems but also with solutions to the issues of economic equity, violence and sexism.

In New Brunswick, International Women's Day has been celebrated since the 1970's. Why International Women's Day? Because we are involved with a movement that is worthwhile celebrating. Our struggle to improve the status of women is difficult and long but it is a positive act. International Women's Day brings attention to the accomplishments and aspirations of women. It recognizes the fact that women are involved in ongoing efforts to change the world, to make room for our reality. But for all that, International Women's Day is often celebrated in fun and among friends. Women celebrate their friendships and the strength of the movement. Basically there is an International Women's Day for the same reason there is a women's movement. I have a little diddy why women join the used to be called "Women's Liberation Movement". I think we might be partially liberated now but we are not yet equal.

Because women's work is never done and is often underpaid or unpaid,

Because what we look like is often more important than what we do,

Because if we are assaulted it is our fault,

Because we still can't get adequate safe contraceptives but men can walk on the moon,

And for lots and lots of reasons we are part of the movement!

Without continued pressure to address women's specific concerns, that is without the movement, it is doubtful that progress would continue. One of the most dangerous notions is that women's equality is now only a matter of time. In some areas women are approaching a level of critical mass that may make continued progress inevitable. I am thinking of women in certain professions, but even in those professions there is still danger in losing some of the recent achievements and of not achieving consistent progress such as in the sharing of power, pay equity and child care.

It's becoming critical that government policies and economic programs, including national and provincial budgets, be submitted to a gender analysis. Their impact on women, as opposed to men must be measured. An excellent example of the difference a gender analysis can make in the interpretation of data can be found in the recent UN report on human development around the world. This report documents human progress in industrialized and non-industrialized countries and ranks countries according to a scale which assess standard of living, level of education, personal security, political security and other factors. According to this 1994 UN report, Canada ranks first among industrialized countries. That is that Canada is the best place in the world to live. I want to believe that with all my heart, but that is not exactly true if you are a woman. In the same UN report, the same data is analyzed identifying disparities within groups. When the disparity between women and men is analyzed, Canada falls from first to ninth in rank. As such, Canada is not the best place in the world for women to benefit from progress in social and human development.

In September of this year the Fourth World Conference on Women will be held in Beijing, China. The conference document called Platform for Action proposes recommendations for action up to the year 2000. These world conferences were continued after the United Nations Decade for Women, which was held from 1976 until 1985. Although these conferences deal with international conventions, which appear very distant from our daily lives: Beijing can seem far from New Brunswick, the issues raised are relevant to New Brunswick women. The ten critical areas of concern to be discussed at the Beijing Conference are: persistent and growing burden of poverty, violence against women, inequality in women's access to the definition of economic policy, inequality between women and men in the sharing of power and decision making at all levels.

The Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women have studied the Beijing Conference document and have proposed some changes. I want to bring to your attention some excellent suggestions concerning poverty. To enable women to overcome poverty, we must develop gender sensitive national and international economic policies and target policies to poor women. In plainer language, governments must recognize that women's poverty is an economic problem which is only increasing as long as we ignore it. There is a trend to bury the women's question, to address issues generally without mentioning women or men. Some people would have us believe that progress in these issues would be easier if we didn't mention the "w" word, women. Women have tried that and it didn't work! For hundreds of years the status of women was not a concern for governments in society. That is not the way to affect change.

As we saw with the UN Report on Canada as a place to live, when we pool the data we can easily disguise disparities. Even if we pretend that women's status is equal to men, it does not make it so. We can not hope to reduce child poverty if we try to separate it from the poverty of women. Very often it is single parent families that those children live with. We can not reform our social programs in a manner that is fair if we do not recognize that women and men depend on these programs in very different ways.

I am sure that you will benefit from the speakers here today. The program demonstrates that the women's movement is trans-cultural and international, in that it includes all women. I hope that you will take the time to have fun and raise your glass to women. Since we are in for a long haul, you have to take time to enjoy yourselves and celebrate the work we are doing and the accomplishments that have been made. And remember the words of Nellie Clung, a Canadian feminist from the turn of the century: "Disturbers are never popular. Nobody ever loved an alarm clock in action, no matter how grateful they may have been for its services afterwards". Thank you very much and have a good day.

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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University