The end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was the whole new world for woman when she embellished herself into new vistas of the Industrialization and technological developments. For the Canadian Women, there was gambit of new routes on which they could activate their suppressed desires and fulfill all their ambitious propositions. Efforts of the Feminist movement began to bore fruit when women left behind the traditional sectors and entered into the non-traditional sectors like Industries and service sectors. Along with gaining equality and Justice, their life style too changed and the result was for every body to see.
October 18, 1929 was the landmark in the history of women when the Privy Council announced that according to the law, women would be considered as Persons. Since then, Canada celebrates October 18, as Women’s History Month in Canada. Its history goes back to 1867 when the British North America Act (BNA Act) was passed, which used the word persons to denote more than one person and particularly to a male. In 1876, there was a ruling by the British Common Law, which stated, “Women are persons in matters of pains and penalties, but are not persons in matters of rights and privileges. (About. com, Canada Online). When in 1916 Social Activists, Emily Murphy was appointed as the first woman police magistrate in Alberta, her appointment was considered illegal, as she was not person under the BNA Act. In 1917, the Alberta Supreme Court passed the judgment that women were persons, but this ruling was only confined within the province of Alberta but when Emily Murphy went forward to put her name as candidature for the Senate at the federal level of government, Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden refused, as again she was not a person under the BNA Act.
For many years, Feminist groups kept on sending petitions. In 1927, Emily Murphy sent an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada and along with her four most influential Alberta women’s rights activists, also known as the Famous Five, signed a petition to the Senate, seeking answer to the question “Does the word “persons” in Section 24, of The British North America Act, 1867, include female persons? These four persons were Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby (Alberta Centennial, The Famous Five and the Persons Case, online edition), but the Supreme Court rejected their appeal mentioning that persons should be physically fit and qualified and therefore only men are entitled for the post. Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King along with the Famous Five sent an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
At last, on 18th October, 1929, Lord Sankey, Lord Chancellor of the Privy Council, gave its historical judgment “Yes, women are persons … and eligible to be summoned and may become Members of the Senate of Canada. ” (About. com, Persons case). The Privy Council decision also said “that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word “persons” should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not? ” (Status of Women Canada, Last Updated: 2003).
After this, first ever Women Canadian Senator was appointed and the honor went to Cairine Wilson’s who was a candidate of Liberal Party political organization that took precedence with the Liberal Prime Minister. In 1967, the Federal government set up the Royal Commission to study the Women’s position in the society at grass roots level and in 1970 the commission submitted the report whereby it made 167 recommendations to give far more rights to women. Since then number of laws have been formed to give equal rights to women in work place.
In ten provinces of the Canadian Federation, there is a primary jurisdiction which passes laws to check employment and the work place and for ensuring equal rights for all. There are Federal employment laws for the employees working in the designated industries like banking, inter provincial, international transport, in Communications etc. and basic human rights law to bar discrimination based on sex and laws providing maternity /paternal leave rights to women. In 1990, Ontario, the largest province of Canada with number of U.
S. subsidiaries introduced “pay equity” legislation according to which it became mandatory for the public and larger private employers to conduct an analysis of their workplace to find out whether women were being paid fairly or not and any variation have to be adjusted by the increase in pay. (Howard, 2006). In-spite of the number of Laws being framed and the women gaining space in all the social, and economic spheres, still they have to bear the brunt of one or other form of discrimination at work place.
On the International Human Rights Day, 10th December 2006, the Women’s Equality and Human Rights at a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa forcefully advocated their dissatisfaction on the modifications made by the Government, which demoralizes women from getting access to justice, and ignored their rights as workers, caregivers and citizens. (NAWL, 2006) The federal government decided to make 40 percent cut in the privileges given to women in the “Status of Women Canada” and removed the twelve regional Status of Women Canada offices. NAWL, 2006) This act of the government is a sign of ignorance on the part of the government towards the real issues being faced by the women in the work place. On many fronts, women were denied access to justice and last year the federal government also stopped the funding for the national child care program, receded away from its decision to espouse an improved federal pay equity law, removed all the funds for the Court Challenges Program and also reduced number of privileges, which were rights of women.
According to the National Association for the Women and Law, “Access to justice is now denied to women on many fronts. In the last year, the federal government abolished the funding for the national child care program, decided not to adopt an improved federal pay equity law, eliminated all funds for the Court Challenge Program, the goal of equality from the mandate of the Women’s Program at Status of Women Canada, and prohibited the use of federal funds to engage in advocacy at any level of government, lobbying and most research.
Other policy decisions have also contributed to denying women’s access to equality and their rights. Among these are the cuts to literacy programs, the lack of support for women and men who are homeless, the refusal to respect the Kyoto Protocol, the decisions to renege on the Kelowna as well as Canada’s obstruction of the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People”. (NAWL, 2006)
On the grass roots level also, women is earning less than men, indicating that Canada is ranked 38th in the world in the wage gap ratio. Less privileged women and Aboriginals earns far less with their income ranging between $13,300 to $16,621. In-spite of the fact that 70 per cent of mothers are working, Canada still does not have adequate programs for the welfare of children. According to the Toronto Community Foundation, more than 10,000 children are still waiting to come under the welfare schemes only in Toronto. (NAWL, 2006)
From the historical context also, laws which were framed and which are now being made to protect women, like laws on contraception and abortion, sexual assault, obscenity laws on medical practice and the provision of a wide range of health services, have been quite effective but indirectly have resulted in the increase in inequality of women in the arena of health care and services. Prof. Rebecca Cook of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Associate says that, “These laws were originally introduced with protective language, but they evolved in a climate of moral condemnation.
They appeared in the Criminal Code section ‘Crimes against Morality’. It may be argued, therefore, that these laws were not maintained to protect women but to control morality. And more over these may cause negative effect on the health status of women. ” (Capen, Last updated: 2005) Though the wage gap has been narrowed to the considerable degree since 1992 yet women working, part time and full time, earned less wage as compared to their male counterparts. In 1997 only, women employing full time were getting 73 per cent less than what the men were getting (Department of Justice Canada, 2002).
According to Evelyn Murphy, an economist, “Getting even: Why women don’t get paid even than men and what to do about it. ”(Cornish, 2006) This is a common perception that in the years to come, women are going to earn between $700,000 to $2 million less than males. The wage gap leads to repercussions in the society. Less wages result in smaller savings, smaller pensions and smaller social security benefits. There are number of reasons for the discrimination in Wage gap.
The traditional work, which for centuries was the perquisite of woman, is now highly under valued in the economy and more and more of them are working in service related industries, which is also not considered as highly paid. For example, the year 2001 witnessed 70 percent of the women working in teaching, nursing and other related health occupations or other related occupations. More and more women are also working as part time employees, which is also the main reason for the wage gap. Due to their household preoccupations, they cannot take up full time jobs.
The lower earnings also constitutes maximum amount of Canada’s poor. With their lower wages, they cannot save for their old age. More and more poverty among women means more and more cost on health care. Since 1980’s, the economy of Canada also saw more and more creation of contract work involving flexible working hours and shifting towards smaller units or engaging in self employed activities and this shift caused far serious consequences on pay equity legislation, as it affected women working in federally regulated private sectors. 36. per cent are self-employed jobs in Canada and more than 44 per cent of self-employed are earning less than $20,000 a year (Department of Justice Canada, 2002). In the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China in 1995 and initiatives takes by them in 2000 and 2005, Canada had endorsed upon maximum number of international human rights treaties making mandatory for the Canadian government to submit their report on a periodic basis to the United Nations of their efforts to execute the acts for assuring equal rights to women.
The most important among these initiatives was the report of United Nations convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was submitted by Canada in January 2003. (Cote, 2006) All these efforts are becoming null and void as along with inequality in wages, sexual discrimination is also going on un-endlessly. In 2005, only one member out of five members of Parliament is woman. The Government statistics also show that women are in very few in numbers, as if they are non- existent and for them these jobs are considered as non-traditional. Hulme, 2006) Maria Charles and David Grusky go further stating that gender imbalance “is best regarded, as an organic feature of modern economics and according to Gillian Creese, Gender discrimination is “an important feature of contemporary labor markets. ” (Hulme, 2006) It is stated that there are two main factors defining the absence of women from the trades and industrial occupations. The first factor is the historically preconceived notion that these occupations are themselves gendered, which means these works are beyond the domination of women. These occupations have been labeled as men’s work and are masculine.
The nature of the work does not allow fairer sex to show their skills in these endeavors, as they are popularly not suitable for women. Even Cynthia Cockburn says, “Work is designated male or female by “ascribing a series of polarized characteristics, complementary paired values, to the ‘masculine’ and the’ feminine”. (Hulme, 2006) These gender-related occupations are enshrined in the socio and cultural fabric of society. Though feminists advocate that gender is immaterial when one enters the work place but this factor cannot be ruled out that that majority of women themselves hesitate to join these occupations.
For e. g. from 900 mechanics/technicians working and registered with the Canadian Union Postal workers, only one is woman. Less than 40 women are registered under The Canadian Auto Workers and are working in three big automobile manufacturers etc. (Hulme, 2006). Now, when we have entered into an era marked by every day technological development in every sphere of our social, economic, cultural and other spheres, more and more avenues are constantly being opened for women, therefore in this scenario the question of sex discrimination should not arise at all.
If we really have to uproot the discriminatory attitude of the government, non-government and corporate bodies, the need of the hour is to remove the word sexism only from the legal system. The feminist movement has always been raising the issue to give due rewards to women and consider both the paid and unpaid work as work, to provide day care, maternity and paternity benefits, pension system and benefits to house wives in case of divorce. The feminist theories in the centuries past, have been have been advocating the same views through their own perspectives.
Liberal feminism has always been trying for equality with the political and legal reforms. (Hooks, 1984) These feminists emphasize that the interactions between the men and women as the first stage to turn the society into equitable place. They think that all women can assert themselves to achieve equality, including their reproductive and abortion rights, sexual harassment, voting and education. On the other hand the radical feminists feels that the capitalists as sexist hierarchy is responsible for women’s oppression.
They think that women can only get freedom when this sole oppressive and dominant system will be abolished and says that these are the males dominating attitude which is responsible for oppression and inequality and considers the Capitalism as the hindrance to uproot the inequalities as well as oppression and sees no alternative except the total change in system. (Allice, 1990, Canada encyclopedia). The socialists’ feminists relate the women’s oppression to the Marxism ideas on exploitation, oppression and labor.
Feminists who are the advocators of Socialists ideas consider that women are subjugated because of their only unequal status in the various arena of the social structure. They consider Prostitution, work on the domestic front, institution of marriage are the sole means by which women are exploited in the patriarchal system They visualized the oppression of women as the component of the larger part of Capitalist society. (Barbara, 1976, WIN Magazine, Canada encyclopedia).
Ecofeminism links ecology with feminism. They see the domination of women as stemming from the same ideologies that bring about the domination of the environment. Patriarchal systems, where men own and control the land, are seen as responsible for the oppression of women and destruction of the natural environment. The control of men over women’s bodies is one of the still burning issues, which time and again is being suppressed but is opening its ugly head again and again. 990 saw the tragic tale when a young man shot 14 women to death at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, stating, “You are all feminists! “(Eichler & Lavigne, Accessed 2007). This reaction stirred women as well as men all over Canada and there were rallies all around to curb all forms of crime against women. With the feminist movements on the rise, women now are watching the world with the eyes of women and openly advocate their feelings even regarding the issue what makes woman.
The media world is filled with the voice of women. To breathe in fresh air, to have an independent identity of own is a prerequisite of any living beings on this Earth. The same echoed by Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912), “Any dependence, any thing which destroys the complete selfhood of the individual, is in the line of slavery. (McElroy, The Roots of Individualist Feminism in 19th-Century America). If this is true the question arises then why women should be devoid of their rights and Independent thoughts and actions?
