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

Fund the Child?

And not the system?

A controversial article in today’s Globe and Mail highlights a cornucopia of interesting statistics around Canada’s childcare systems. The author’s argument revolves around the way Canada’s proposed childcare system could potentially keep some families/single-mothers below the poverty line–instead of providing the ‘relief’ of child-support.

The author is quite clearly not an advocate of universal daycare–and is also clearly opposed to Bill C-330, a New Democrat private member’s bill. This bill, if passed, would force any future money given to provinces to be used towards Federal funded daycare. However, the bill’s survival is unlikely given it will probably not have completed three readings before the next election.

What I find curious is the analogy this author makes between the Canadian experience with universal daycare, and the American, as she insinuates ‘failure.’ I am not well-read on the particulars of the American experience, but given the vast differences in how our countries collect taxes and distribute them, I would think the analogy is somewhat unfair. Canada’s provinces have vastly differing revenue collecting capacities from their state counterparts, and to disregard (as this author does) this inequality is to ignore a crucial ‘argument’ for Universal daycare.

The author does, however, highlight some alarming statistics:

One would think that if parents saw the offer of heavily subsidized daycare as the poverty-alleviating solution it is purported to be, Canada’s poor mothers would be beating a path to its door. Clearly, they are not. Each parent is so unique in their life circumstances that although daycare may be a solution for one, it may be the defeat of another. That parents are in the best position to determine this should be the basis for all child-care policy in this country and should be a guaranteed right for all parents. To not do so is tantamount to promoting a monoculture.

Indeed, it was truly liberal U.S. feminists such as Anna Quindlen and Barbara Ehrenreich who saw their country’s “welfare reform” for what it really was — workfare — and correctly predicted that many lives would be the worse for it.

While Canada’s daycare policies are not yet workfare, poor mothers do receive a massive and disproportionate amount of state benefits only if they fit themselves and their children into the market economy. Toronto will pay the full $18,000 daycare fee if a mother goes out and earns the same. Will it pay $36,000 if she has two children? If we follow Sweden’s lead, it will. It was reported that a mother in that country along with her truck-driver husband requested a small subsidy to lift them above the poverty line while they looked after their own children. City officials said no, offering two $20,000-a-year daycare spots instead.

The author concludes her argument with the suggestion that perhaps universal daycare is not the only solution.

The sight of two eloquent witnesses, a Christian minister from Ontario and a home-schooling mother of five from Alberta, arguing for diversity, choice and inclusiveness while never once criticizing daycare or a family’s right to choose it was something to behold, especially when compared to the intransigence of the federal parties still supporting this bill.

Perhaps we need a 21st century update of a classic liberal doctrine. “The greatest choice for the greatest number” should be our country’s new mantra. Family policy would be a wonderful place to start

Indeed “choice” is crucial, but how such choices should be worked through our complex and multi-tiered federal money transfers is an outstanding question. Perhaps ‘universal’ is the place to start. Only after something has been established can that thing be changed. I think it best women advocate for something rather than nothing. Imperfect as ‘universal’ may be, let’s not imitate the parliamentary process–childcare is an urgent reality, in some form or another…

Fund the Child?

And not the system?

A controversial article in today’s Globe and Mail highlights a cornucopia of interesting statistics around Canada’s childcare systems. The author’s argument revolves around the way Canada’s proposed childcare system could potentially keep some families/single-mothers below the poverty line–instead of providing the ‘relief’ of child-support.

The author is quite clearly not an advocate of universal daycare–and is also clearly opposed to Bill C-330, a New Democrat private member’s bill. This bill, if passed, would force any future money given to provinces to be used towards Federal funded daycare. However, the bill’s survival is unlikely given it will probably not have completed three readings before the next election.

What I find curious is the analogy this author makes between the Canadian experience with universal daycare, and the American, as she insinuates ‘failure.’ I am not well-read on the particulars of the American experience, but given the vast differences in how our countries collect taxes and distribute them, I would think the analogy is somewhat unfair. Canada’s provinces have vastly differing revenue collecting capacities from their state counterparts, and to disregard (as this author does) this inequality is to ignore a crucial ‘argument’ for Universal daycare.

The author does, however, highlight some alarming statistics:

One would think that if parents saw the offer of heavily subsidized daycare as the poverty-alleviating solution it is purported to be, Canada’s poor mothers would be beating a path to its door. Clearly, they are not. Each parent is so unique in their life circumstances that although daycare may be a solution for one, it may be the defeat of another. That parents are in the best position to determine this should be the basis for all child-care policy in this country and should be a guaranteed right for all parents. To not do so is tantamount to promoting a monoculture.

Indeed, it was truly liberal U.S. feminists such as Anna Quindlen and Barbara Ehrenreich who saw their country’s “welfare reform” for what it really was — workfare — and correctly predicted that many lives would be the worse for it.

While Canada’s daycare policies are not yet workfare, poor mothers do receive a massive and disproportionate amount of state benefits only if they fit themselves and their children into the market economy. Toronto will pay the full $18,000 daycare fee if a mother goes out and earns the same. Will it pay $36,000 if she has two children? If we follow Sweden’s lead, it will. It was reported that a mother in that country along with her truck-driver husband requested a small subsidy to lift them above the poverty line while they looked after their own children. City officials said no, offering two $20,000-a-year daycare spots instead.

The author concludes her argument with the suggestion that perhaps universal daycare is not the only solution.

The sight of two eloquent witnesses, a Christian minister from Ontario and a home-schooling mother of five from Alberta, arguing for diversity, choice and inclusiveness while never once criticizing daycare or a family’s right to choose it was something to behold, especially when compared to the intransigence of the federal parties still supporting this bill.

Perhaps we need a 21st century update of a classic liberal doctrine. “The greatest choice for the greatest number” should be our country’s new mantra. Family policy would be a wonderful place to start

Indeed “choice” is crucial, but how such choices should be worked through our complex and multi-tiered federal money transfers is an outstanding question. Perhaps ‘universal’ is the place to start. Only after something has been established can that thing be changed. I think it best women advocate for something rather than nothing. Imperfect as ‘universal’ may be, let’s not imitate the parliamentary process–childcare is an urgent reality, in some form or another…

Happy Mother’s Day… now let’s actually do something to help women, huh?

Lana Payne in the St. John’s Telegram writes a piece in time for mother’s day in which she talks about how what’s most important on Mother’s Day is to treat mothers equally within society and the workforce:

In fact, the current debate around finding ways to keep workers working longer misses a few very key points, but that’s likely because the opinion shapers and decision makers have not consulted women. But then, what else is new? What they’d find if they did, generally speaking, is that women’s work is not only undervalued, but women are not getting a chance to reach their potential — to the detriment of the economy.

That’s because for too many women, the barriers to the labour market, to obtaining good jobs and breaking the glass ceiling are still plentiful. The fact that there are few supports — child care, for example — to support women in employment is another contributing factor. Women could be contributing a lot more to the country’s bottom line — to the nation’s gross national product (GDP) — if only they had the opportunity.

We still have about 20 per cent of women who work part-time because of family and child-care responsibilities. In other words, too many women still have no access to affordable, high-quality child care or other caregiving supports. Another 23 per cent, according to a recent study by Statistics Canada, worked part-time in 2006 because they couldn’t get full-time work, and yet every day we are inundated with complaints from employers that they can’t find workers, and so we need to keep people working longer or the economy will collapse. Not only are many women underemployed, but they comprise a fair number of the more than one million unemployed Canadians who are looking for work.

Child care. Child care. Child care. How many times do people have to talk about child care before the government actually does something about it that actually helps low income women? My niece was born the other day… perhaps her grandchildren might have affordable universal child care available to them? Or her great grandchildren?

Welcome!!

Our issue this Spring is entitled ‘Caution: Women at Work’. In conjunction with the launch of our second issue we have added web content in order to expand the debate and engage young women in conversations about the issues we raise. We welcome you here to our blog and hope that you will return many more times!

Next week, we will begin posting on news stories and women’s or feminist issues on a daily basis in order to continue the debate and to encourage the engagement of women in politics. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the extra content that we have added here and the opportunity to discuss issues that we brought up in our current issue.

So the question that we were trying to answer in putting together this edition is – what is the state of women’s work life? What are the challenges that are most important when talking about women and work? We’ve answered that question by pinpointing day care and pay equity as two major problems that concern women but there are many more – which I will feature over the next month every Tuesday and Thursday (my designated posting days)… so tune in!

In the meantime… we offer you… Stephen Colbert… wearing a bra.

(Correction to the issue!!! Antigone feels terrible that it forgot four very important people in its Staff/Contributors Section. A big thanks to Kristen Myres and Xenia Menzies – WILLA’s wonderful presidents without whom this magazine could not exist! Also, thank you to Caitlin Dunn for editing help and Joanna Chiu for help with distribution!)

Welcome!!

Our issue this Spring is entitled ‘Caution: Women at Work’. In conjunction with the launch of our second issue we have added web content in order to expand the debate and engage young women in conversations about the issues we raise. We welcome you here to our blog and hope that you will return many more times!

Next week, we will begin posting on news stories and women’s or feminist issues on a daily basis in order to continue the debate and to encourage the engagement of women in politics. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the extra content that we have added here and the opportunity to discuss issues that we brought up in our current issue.

So the question that we were trying to answer in putting together this edition is – what is the state of women’s work life? What are the challenges that are most important when talking about women and work? We’ve answered that question by pinpointing day care and pay equity as two major problems that concern women but there are many more – which I will feature over the next month every Tuesday and Thursday (my designated posting days)… so tune in!

In the meantime… we offer you… Stephen Colbert… wearing a bra.

(Correction to the issue!!! Antigone feels terrible that it forgot four very important people in its Staff/Contributors Section. A big thanks to Kristen Myres and Xenia Menzies – WILLA’s wonderful presidents without whom this magazine could not exist! Also, thank you to Caitlin Dunn for editing help and Joanna Chiu for help with distribution!)

Child Care

Child care has been a huge issue on my personal agenda this year. I became interested in the topic one day last semester; I was sitting in an English Lit class in which we were discussing the roles of women in myth. I had never spoken up in the class before (it was still early in the term) and I found my hand shooting up and asking…

Who’s looking after the kids?

I knew it wasn’t the men, they had been off fighting a war for almost a decade so I assumed it would be the women’s job. Well then I thought… so nothing has been changed since ancient times, the burden of care is still squarely on women. So… can we get a little help? Check out the writings of Deborah Rutman more information on “the burden of care”.

I don’t know if I want to have kids but I do know that if I did, I would want to also keep myself happpy and if at the time of kids I still want a career… I better have some freakin’ support looking after them. In Canada, there is NO effective child care policy, it doesn’t matter what time frame you look at or what political party you analyze. There has been no real answer to this is a very important part of the social policy puzzle. As the cliche goes, children are our future, they need to be educated and cared for because I am working my butt off to make some positive changes in this world and I want to make sure that when I retire, there are competent individuals that can take over my workload.

In my article I briefly discussed the child care crises at UBC. I will continue to post relevant information from this institution and the nation on this blog. To hear some great child care rhetoric check out the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development and to catch a look at the work of child care advocates check out:

http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/childcare/

http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/

Thanks for checking out our magazine and for caring about “women’s issues”, we are going to do great things with this so stay posted.