FTLComm - Tisdale - April 11, 2000

It seems that every day we are marvelling at the remarkable progress we can observe in our world. How technology and day to day economics seem to almost flare past us in an unending blur of compounding confusion. So if things are changing, why does it seem that for more then half the population things are the same, frozen in place, bolted to the fabric of society. What is different for the little grade one girl heading off for school this morning (above) and this little six year old on the right (this picture was taken in 1952) or for her eight year old cousin below right (also taken in 1952)? Canadian women were able to vote little by little during and after World War I. Somewhere along the way the law got around to making them official "persons". This little girl educated herself raised three sons and is working on her second university degree yet, she will have to work until she is sixty-five to qualify for a pension because of the years she took off work to have her babies. The only major change in her life, than her mother's, was that she was able to control her fertility through the development of birth control contraceptives, but other than that, she and other women like her, across this country earn less, much less then men doing the same work. The little girl about to cross the street can expect no more as she will have a chance to enter professions and careers of her choice, but if she leaves work to have a baby she will be penialised, her chances of promotion reduced and her earnings downgraded. The research results released last week about women in Canada is enormously unsettling. 19% of all Canadian

women, that's one in every five women in the country are living in poverty. Here we are living in a land of plenty with a living standard far above much of the world and yet at least three million Canadians do not earn enough money to pay income tax, own property, have a reasonable place to live and can support their children. The recent brochure sent out by the provincial government telling us how wonderful the budget is and how it is going to cost all of us less in income tax, uses as its example, several kinds of income earners and the young married couple are shown and the example has the husband earning one quarter more then his smiling spouse. Government, we the people, all are accepting simple inequality and taking for granted that women should simple accept and get less in life. The results of this foolishness affects us and generations to come. Knowing that if she takes time off work to have children she will be penialised, many women are delaying this event until they have reached a point in their lives where their career is secure, or they have established some income base to permit the event to occu,r without serious negative effects. The result is a declining birth rate, parents less involved with their children and reduced fertility. None of these things are good. Not only is the young woman who has a child at the appropriate time in her life to do so, hit with income penalties, but once the child is born, day care is still treated as though it were a luxury and children are placed often in situations much

less then desirable. For the young woman who has a child, she must balance being a mother, a spouse, a housekeeper and in the work place, she must compete to prove that she can do the work. Women in our society work more, longer and harder, then ever before and are rewarded less for their efforts. The birth control pill has become a curse rather then a blessing for the social affects it has brought and we still know that women receive less attention to their medical needs then men, especially when we consider the issues related to gender specific illnesses and conditions. While these conditions are troublesome there is a far darker side to being less than equal. The little girl you see on the right does not have a mother. Her mother seen in the picture below right was a hard working women looking after this little girl and her two older sisters. She earned a marginal living as a waitress, her husband was an abuser who beat his wife and his children and she was able to get him out of her household and though he threatened to do more harm to her, including end her life, she received no assistance from the police, despite restraining orders and calls for help. When the divorce papers were given him and the process finalised, he came over to the house shot and killed this little girl's mother, then committed suicide on the front lawn. The real pitiful thing about this story is that it is not in the least bit unique. It is common, so common that everyone you know can tell a similar story, just as tragic and just as

brutal and senseless. Being subjected to abuse of one kind or another is as common as low wages. It is a fact of life for women in all walks of life and an everyday thing from coast to coast to coast. The simple fact that the average woman is just over half the size of the average man reduces all interaction to its primal nature. Women are harassed, abused and taken advantage of and it seems to be considered a part of being a woman. To make matters even worse, common beliefs among all members of society is that this is not only the way things should be, but it is even enshrined in law. In almost all of this continent there are laws that regulate what a woman can wear for clothing, even feeding a baby in public can bring complaints. The balance is skewed so that women are often treated as objects, less then living beings and we as a society accept the situation and do little if anything about it. As a high school principal and later as a counsellor, I was struck with the disproportionate number of problems girls experience then did high school boys. Issues of self esteem, dealing with abuse, eating disorders, sexual harassment, rape, peer pressure, alcohol abuse, family conflict, the list seemed endless. I once asked one of the most noted psychologists in North America if he had any insight as to what we as school counsellors should do with the overwhelming numbers of young women having trouble, he was genuinely troubled by my question and his reply even more troubling: "I don't know, if anyone comes up with even the smallest suggestion as to what to do, it would be a major breakthrough, like curing the common cold." As I looked at that little girl about to cross the street this morning I wonder about her life, and I am confident that for her there is little chance of things getting better. The focus of our world and its obsession with profit and its disregard for what is really important is only likely to intensify and in most cases she can expect less out of life. Sincerely Timothy W. Shire

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