Antigone Launches Feminist Social Networking Site on International Women’s Day!

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Blog for IWD, canadian, change., feminist, movement, social networking, women

This post is part of Blog for International Women’s Day

Hi Friends!

Happy International Women’s Day!
My name is Amanda Reaume and I am the Executive Director of The Antigone Foundation. We believe it’s time for Canada’s feminists and women’s organizations to work together to leverage the power of social networking to connect around common causes and concerns across the country, both online and in person.

That is why we are launching Antigone Connect , an online site working to engage women’s organizations and feminists across the country to work collaboratively for women’s rights and equality in Canada and around the world.

Our Goal:

We are hoping to create a powerful online network that will be able to help lead the Canadian women’s movement forward in the coming years. As we approach Canada’s 150th Anniversary, we are all aware that there is a great deal more to be done in Canada to ensure women’s equality. More women in politics and managerial positions, accessible child care, changes to the Indian Act, equal pay, and equal pensions are just a few of the things that the Royal Commission on the Status of Women identified as necessary for equality nearly fifty years ago. They have still not been fully realized and this is going to take cooperation and coordination to accomplish.

Canadian Women’s History

This past fall, Antigone Magazine put together an issue about Canadian Women’s History and we spoke to Marilou McPhedran. She talked about how women organized around constitutional issues in the 1980s to ensure that women were included within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As McPhedran mentions, they did this without even a fax machine. With phone trees, letters to MPs and a lot of conviction, these women changed our country. We can too. Many of us now have access to e-mail, the internet, social networking, maybe even Blackberries and Smartphones. Some also have well paying jobs and contacts with women and men in power who support work for women’s equality. We owe it to our foremothers to leverage all the technologies and privileges that we have to connect and make sure that their legacies are not forgotten.

Your Help

But this network is not going to happen overnight. We need your help in the days and weeks ahead to expand it and bring to the table the voices of women from all backgrounds, from groups that might not readily identify as feminists, or those who might have difficulties accessing the internet, and the voices of women and men that are allies to the work that we do. We need you to tell people about it. To e-mail your contacts about it. To post it on Facebook or Twitter. To contact your friends who might have worked for feminist causes in the past but who have gone off in other directions. To help the technically unsavvy negotiate the technology! We need to come together to create this network across Canada.

Canadian Women’s Future!

Inspired by the next issue of our magazine (to be released in March 2010) entitled The Future of Feminism, we will be offering individuals and organizations opportunities to write about their visions for Canadian feminism. In blog entries, on Antigone Connect forums, on Dreams for Women postcards, and by leading online chats, we invite people to contribute to imagining the future of feminism. Email us at antigonemagazine at hotmail.com if you are interested in helping out.

Join Us

We launched this campaign this week and we are moved and excited by the response so far. It would be great to see you at Antigone Connect.

Thanks in advance for giving this a few minutes of your time, and for sharing this message with anyone you know who would like the women of Canada to unite together to transform our country.

Thank you!

Amanda Reaume and the Antigone Team

Executive Director, The Antigone Foundation
www.antigonefoundation.wordpress.com
Author and blogger, Some Leaders Are Born Women
www.someleadersarebornwomen.wordpress.com

photo credit: wikimedia commons

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The Charter and Womens’ Rights

Yesterday marked the end of a three part series in the Globe and Mail on The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its impact on Canadian Life. In particular, the Globe highligted ‘important’ cases where the Charter’s influence on society was shaped. Of the three prominent lawyers commentating, 2 cite the Morgentaler case as a major stepping stone in the evolution of the Charter as a powerful tool in contesting the ‘tyranny of the majority.’ The Morgentaler case gave Canadian women the right to choose, a right often taken for granted. The Morgentaler case is highly political and the fact that two out of three of these ‘men’ highlight it (although for different reasons) is heartening. But, one has not. So, what gives?

The article goes on to explain the recent weakening of the charter in Canadian politics:

Whether the Charter will look as robust in another 25 years is open to debate. Gusts of discontent from the ideological right have increasingly driven senior courts to take cover. In addition, the costs of litigation have sent the price of a Charter challenge soaring out of reach for ordinary litigants and many public-interest groups.

Coupled with the slow starvation of legal-aid programs and the recent demise of the federal Court Challenges Program, which financed test cases and legal interventions, the future looks bleak for Charter challengers.

“We are stuck with this Charter that looks wonderful on paper, but it’s just that — paper — unless people have the ability to enforce their rights,” said Bruce Ryder, a law professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. “Only those who drive a Cadillac get to use the Charter highway.”

Amid these grim prospects, the courts are sure to face more sensitive and politically volatile issues — including topics such as terrorism, reproductive technology, euthanasia, cloning and sophisticated electronic intrusions into privacy. The Supreme Court’s landmark 2005 Chaoulli ruling, which said that patients can seek private care if their needs are not met in a timely fashion, is also bound to spawn more cases attempting to map out the boundaries of medicare.

On another front, modifications to the appointment process for Supreme Court of Canada judges have raised serious questions about who will decide these cases. If the ideological views of judicial nominees become a dominant consideration for future governments, the Supreme Court could end up resembling its U.S. counterpart, where liberal and conservative factions are entrenched and predictable.”

Oh dear. Given all the charter has achieved for women this seems troubling to me. I don’t think that judges hold too much political clout in view of the charter; in fact, I see the Charter as the necessary antidote to the ‘supreme clout’ of the ‘prima inter pares’ (ha! equals indeed, tell that one to Steven Harper) prime minister. So what to do about all this?

The Charter is an essential tool for those marginalized in a majoritarian society. Its increasing ‘distance’ from those it was created to serve is alarming–to say the least.

The Charter and Womens’ Rights

Yesterday marked the end of a three part series in the Globe and Mail on The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its impact on Canadian Life. In particular, the Globe highligted ‘important’ cases where the Charter’s influence on society was shaped. Of the three prominent lawyers commentating, 2 cite the Morgentaler case as a major stepping stone in the evolution of the Charter as a powerful tool in contesting the ‘tyranny of the majority.’ The Morgentaler case gave Canadian women the right to choose, a right often taken for granted. The Morgentaler case is highly political and the fact that two out of three of these ‘men’ highlight it (although for different reasons) is heartening. But, one has not. So, what gives?

The article goes on to explain the recent weakening of the charter in Canadian politics:

Whether the Charter will look as robust in another 25 years is open to debate. Gusts of discontent from the ideological right have increasingly driven senior courts to take cover. In addition, the costs of litigation have sent the price of a Charter challenge soaring out of reach for ordinary litigants and many public-interest groups.

Coupled with the slow starvation of legal-aid programs and the recent demise of the federal Court Challenges Program, which financed test cases and legal interventions, the future looks bleak for Charter challengers.

“We are stuck with this Charter that looks wonderful on paper, but it’s just that — paper — unless people have the ability to enforce their rights,” said Bruce Ryder, a law professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. “Only those who drive a Cadillac get to use the Charter highway.”

Amid these grim prospects, the courts are sure to face more sensitive and politically volatile issues — including topics such as terrorism, reproductive technology, euthanasia, cloning and sophisticated electronic intrusions into privacy. The Supreme Court’s landmark 2005 Chaoulli ruling, which said that patients can seek private care if their needs are not met in a timely fashion, is also bound to spawn more cases attempting to map out the boundaries of medicare.

On another front, modifications to the appointment process for Supreme Court of Canada judges have raised serious questions about who will decide these cases. If the ideological views of judicial nominees become a dominant consideration for future governments, the Supreme Court could end up resembling its U.S. counterpart, where liberal and conservative factions are entrenched and predictable.”

Oh dear. Given all the charter has achieved for women this seems troubling to me. I don’t think that judges hold too much political clout in view of the charter; in fact, I see the Charter as the necessary antidote to the ‘supreme clout’ of the ‘prima inter pares’ (ha! equals indeed, tell that one to Steven Harper) prime minister. So what to do about all this?

The Charter is an essential tool for those marginalized in a majoritarian society. Its increasing ‘distance’ from those it was created to serve is alarming–to say the least.