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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UNCSW 54: March 4

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Commission on the Status of Women, international women's day, United Nations

This post is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 9 , Part 10
I am lagging lagging lagging behind, but luckily for me, I have been live tweeting, which means that not only can interested readers follow along in point form (search #csw54 at twitter.com) but I can go back and refresh my memory from the tweets!

March 4th (Thursday) seemed to hold a Rural women’s theme. I began the day at a session highlighting the work of the Salesian Sisters in rural South America. The Sister’s panel was made up of women who had accessed their services in Ecuador and Guatemala. The women talked about the circumstances that they had come to the Sisters from.

Sex, Lies and Chocolate: Realities of Reproductive Health in BC

Tags

reproductive health, Reproductive Rights, women

Sponsored by UBC Medical Students for Choice:

Thursday Feb 7th, 2008
MSAC (corner of 12th and Heather)
7-9 p.m.
7-8 Silent auction, cash wine bat and appys
8-8:30 Guest Barb Hestrin, Senior Administrator
8:30-9 Q&A, Winner of silent auction announced

All are welcome

Proceeds go to UBC Med Student for Choice events such as guest speakers, travel, conferences for students

Celebration of Morgentaler Decision

Tags

Morgentaler, Reproductive Rights

Before and Beyond

Come celebrate the 20th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision
that finally gave Canadian women true reproductive choice!

Monday, January 28, 2008, 6-10pm

SFU Harbour Centre, 515 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Featuring: Reception, cash bar, speaker’s panel, and new documentary film
“Henry”

Here is a poster with details:
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/Morgentaler-Jan-28-08-flyer.pdf

For more info, contact jharthur@shaw.ca

See you at the event!

Ottawa Senators (and their wives) Support Pro-Life Charity…

I have a huge problem with so-called ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’. It’s less what they’re promoting than the fact that they’re terribly deceptive. Young women who are experiencing a ‘crisis’ pregnancy need real counselling regarding their options and that’s what many of them expect from a place that says it deals with ‘Crisis pregnancies’… but in fact these organizations are pro-life and often very manipulative.

So, it also bothers me when an organization like the Ottawa Senator’s wives organization, called Better Halves, raises money from unsuspecting hockey fans and then gives that money to a crisis pregnancy centre. Given the fact that the money donated is being matched by the Ottawa Senator’s foundation as well, I find this even more problematic. Heather Mallick explains on Rabble.ca

The Better Halves are giving a third of the proceeds of this year’s $50,000 Christmas Tree raffle to First Place Pregnancy Centre, an Ottawa anti-abortion group run by Pentecostal Christians.

Planned Parenthood told me it frequently talks to women who went to these apparently welcoming places for counselling on the three options — abortion, adoption and parenting. The group says women report feeling badly treated.

A Crisis Pregnancy Centre just opened up near where I live and everyday that I drive by it I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. I hate thinking of the young women who get ambushed there. But it is worse that just that. These organizations are often not just anti-abortion, they are anti-birth control…. as Heather Mallick finds out….

I had an initially cheerful phone interview with Sens Foundation president Dave Ready, who said the Better Halves, when asked to choose three charities, chose:
• First Place.• Kids Help Phone.• Harmony House (a women’s shelter).

First Place was “in line with our mandate,” he said. “We did due diligence and checked that it’s a charity.”

“You went to the website?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you check on the links?”

“No.”

We went through the First Place site links together. There’s a standard disclaimer but First Place hopes we’ll find them “helpful.” I told Ready that some of the news headlines appeared to be libellous, particularly the ones linking corporations that make birth control drugs to the Jewish Holocaust and one drug itself to Nazi death camps. Others were grotesque: “One baby in 30 left alive after medical abortion” turns out to be an absurd, unsubstantiated anonymous “news story” in a British entertainment magazine.

You’re also guided to a donation page for the American Life League, a hardline group based outside Washington. There’s a shop, admittedly very funny, that sells “Abortion is mean” T-shirts for two-year-olds.

They offer booklets explaining that abortion is wrong even in the case of incest. They tell members to scare away raped children outside abortion clinics. They call RU-486 “the anti-human pesticide.” They offer sample letters to the editor to send to outlets that employ, I imagine, columnists like me. One begins: “Planned Parenthood is not ‘a good guy.’”

Ready gets more and more quiet as we track this. Soon he is desperate to get off the phone. He will not let me talk to a Better Half, who might well explain that she hadn’t known that First Place is financed by the Bethel Pentecostal Church in Ottawa and its mission — declared on the Bethel website but nowhere on the First Place site — is not just anti-abortion but anti-birth control.

Powerful Poetry Slam about Reproductive Choice!

Wow. I must just say wow. This is such a powerful rant by a woman about choice and reproduction. It’s by Sonya ‘The Drama’ Boom Renee and was performed at the 2006 International World Poetry Slam Finals. It’s called ‘What We Deserve’. Watch it and be moved by her words!

Via Feministing…

Powerful Poetry Slam about Reproductive Choice!

Wow. I must just say wow. This is such a powerful rant by a woman about choice and reproduction. It’s by Sonya ‘The Drama’ Boom Renee and was performed at the 2006 International World Poetry Slam Finals. It’s called ‘What We Deserve’. Watch it and be moved by her words!

Via Feministing…

The Last Frontier of Rank Discrimination

Hello Ladies (and Gentlemen who support us),

I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m not a regular blogger for the magazine (just a temp really) but I’m one of the co-founders of Willa (The Women in Legislative Leadership Association). I’m a business student at Simon Fraser University, entering my fourth year. I’m planning to major in International Business and probably Marketing, Finance or both.

I’ve been in Taipei on exchange for the past four months and I’m heading to Europe to visit family and do a short internship, in about a week. So, I’ve been busy, as I’m sure you all have been. Just wanted to pop in and support Amanda and her team’s stellar work on this blog and the magazine.

I have a quote from a great article I think you all should read if you get a chance. Thanks to Ayesha Laher, who sent me the article regarding our recent discussions of the last appointment which sealed the UBC Executives (President and VPs of Everything) as all-male.

From: The Last Frontier of Rank Discrimination (The Province July 7th 2007)

There are still five times more men in Parliament than women.

Women working full-time make 71 cents for every $1 men earn. Two-thirds still work in pink ghettos of traditional “women’s work” such as health care, clerical and administrative jobs. Little more than a third of all managers are women.

Women are poor in disproportionate numbers with 38 per cent of single mothers living below the poverty line compared to only 17 per cent of single fathers.

Women are more likely to be victims of violence than men. One in every 10 Canadian women reports having been stalked in the past 10 years.

Women are many more times more likely to be forced, enticed or trafficked into prostitution and, once there, many times more likely to be charged, even though the Criminal Code offense of communicating for the purposes of prostitution was aimed at punishing the buyers and not just the sellers.

If any racial or ethnic minority had been subjected to anything near the discrimination women have suffered and continue to be subjected to, Canada would be an international pariah.

Abortions Hard to Get…

The Mercury News has an interesting article about the difficulties of getting an abortion in Canada. Although abortion is no longer a criminal offense, it is however a labourious undertaking, and one fraught with frustration and complication at every turn.

It’s just as difficult to access abortion services at Canadian hospitals, researcher Jessica Shaw learned as she called all 718 facilities across the country, posing as a pregnant woman.

Instead of helpful information or referrals, she was hung up on, laughed at, told no one would talk to her, given misleading information or greeted by a long silence on the other end of the phone line.

In one hospital, Shaw was referred to the psychiatric ward.

“I can only imagine what it does to a woman when this is their first contact person,” she said yesterday at the 29th annual Guelph Sexuality Conference, hosted by the University of Guelph.

Shaw did her polling of hospitals for a report recently released by Canadians For Choice, a charitable organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights.

Instead of focusing on clinics, Shaw chose to concentrate on hospitals — the entry point into the health-care system for many women.

When a woman wants to have an abortion in Canada, it’s not as easy as one might think, she said

Wow! What a harrowing experience for a woman who is already distressed.

From her calls last year, Shaw found 15.9 per cent of Canadian hospitals provide accessible abortion services — a drop from 17.8 per cent in 2003. She found wait times could be as long as six weeks, and said abortion services across the country were poorly dispersed.

“A woman in northern Manitoba may have to travel 20 hours to get an abortion. . . . There is a lack of access for rural women and certainly northern women,” Shaw said.
One of the barriers is the expense of travelling to the nearest location offering an abortion, she said.

Andrea Grant, a counsellor at the Calgary Sexual Health Centre who attended yesterday’s session, said many of the women who come to Alberta for an abortion are from the Maritimes, where even fewer hospitals offer the procedure.

For example, no hospitals in Prince Edward Island perform abortions.
Beatrice du Prey, Grant’s colleague, said travel is a deterrent for women, especially if they’re teenagers.

Anti-choice organizations and judgmental gatekeepers at hospitals are another barrier for women, Shaw said.

In one instance, she called a British Columbia hospital and was told if she had an abortion and later decided to have a baby, her cervix would have to be sewn shut and she’d be confined to bed rest for nine months so the baby wouldn’t fall out.
Among other myths she heard from anti-choice organizations was that an abortion would draw her into an abusive relationship because she would subconsciously feel she deserves punishment. She was also told abortions cause drug and alcohol addictions.

A lack of funding, insufficient facilities and a lack of training are not helping to improve access to abortion services, Shaw said.

Shaw said she’ll deliver a report card to every hospital based on her report. Canadians For Choice will redo the report every three years and put together a supplementary clinic report.

The organization will put together a national directory of providers

Canadians for Choice sounds like a cool organization – the work that they are doing is very important and I would love to see that directory – a great resource for women! I’m glad that someone is taking hospitals to task for their dismal treatment of women seeking abortions. Perhaps the hospitals given failing grades will be shamed into improvement!

Abortions Hard to Get…

The Mercury News has an interesting article about the difficulties of getting an abortion in Canada. Although abortion is no longer a criminal offense, it is however a labourious undertaking, and one fraught with frustration and complication at every turn.

It’s just as difficult to access abortion services at Canadian hospitals, researcher Jessica Shaw learned as she called all 718 facilities across the country, posing as a pregnant woman.

Instead of helpful information or referrals, she was hung up on, laughed at, told no one would talk to her, given misleading information or greeted by a long silence on the other end of the phone line.

In one hospital, Shaw was referred to the psychiatric ward.

“I can only imagine what it does to a woman when this is their first contact person,” she said yesterday at the 29th annual Guelph Sexuality Conference, hosted by the University of Guelph.

Shaw did her polling of hospitals for a report recently released by Canadians For Choice, a charitable organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights.

Instead of focusing on clinics, Shaw chose to concentrate on hospitals — the entry point into the health-care system for many women.

When a woman wants to have an abortion in Canada, it’s not as easy as one might think, she said

Wow! What a harrowing experience for a woman who is already distressed.

From her calls last year, Shaw found 15.9 per cent of Canadian hospitals provide accessible abortion services — a drop from 17.8 per cent in 2003. She found wait times could be as long as six weeks, and said abortion services across the country were poorly dispersed.

“A woman in northern Manitoba may have to travel 20 hours to get an abortion. . . . There is a lack of access for rural women and certainly northern women,” Shaw said.
One of the barriers is the expense of travelling to the nearest location offering an abortion, she said.

Andrea Grant, a counsellor at the Calgary Sexual Health Centre who attended yesterday’s session, said many of the women who come to Alberta for an abortion are from the Maritimes, where even fewer hospitals offer the procedure.

For example, no hospitals in Prince Edward Island perform abortions.
Beatrice du Prey, Grant’s colleague, said travel is a deterrent for women, especially if they’re teenagers.

Anti-choice organizations and judgmental gatekeepers at hospitals are another barrier for women, Shaw said.

In one instance, she called a British Columbia hospital and was told if she had an abortion and later decided to have a baby, her cervix would have to be sewn shut and she’d be confined to bed rest for nine months so the baby wouldn’t fall out.
Among other myths she heard from anti-choice organizations was that an abortion would draw her into an abusive relationship because she would subconsciously feel she deserves punishment. She was also told abortions cause drug and alcohol addictions.

A lack of funding, insufficient facilities and a lack of training are not helping to improve access to abortion services, Shaw said.

Shaw said she’ll deliver a report card to every hospital based on her report. Canadians For Choice will redo the report every three years and put together a supplementary clinic report.

The organization will put together a national directory of providers

Canadians for Choice sounds like a cool organization – the work that they are doing is very important and I would love to see that directory – a great resource for women! I’m glad that someone is taking hospitals to task for their dismal treatment of women seeking abortions. Perhaps the hospitals given failing grades will be shamed into improvement!