Equal Rights Amendment is getting a Second Push

"Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name -- the Women's Equality Amendment -- and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session." - Washington Post

According to the article, the ERA was first proposed in 1923.... it's unbelievable the amount of time common sense takes. I mean really, how could it have failed to be approved? Who says no to equal rights? What do the nay-sayers believe equal rights are, that they would say "absolutely not!"?
Then again, what does passing the Bill accomplish? Is it just words that say women and men are equal? Could that really be contested legally--will the Bill affect the legal system, the hiring process, the payment of salaries..?

Read the full article at the Washington Post.

This follows so closely on the heels of a parallel struggle in Canada to preserve the function of the Status of Women Department. I've got a preliminary page up with a brief timeline following the dismantling of the agency by the Harper Government since September 2006. The article is incomplete, however the resources are excellent.

NB Gov thinks raising taxes will stop mass exodus...

The Liberal Government of New Brunswick announced their $6.6-billion budget Monday, projecting a surplus of $37 million for 2007-08 (A CBC article called this a "small surplus". Is it? I have no idea what provincial-sized bank-accounts should look like, but it doesn't seem small).

The point of the budget is: New Brunswick is poor and spending more money than it takes in. This is due to fledgling natural resources/economy, and a mass exodus of workers and talent.

Premier Shawn Graham revealed that personal taxes and corporate income taxes (CIT) will be raised. Also, the New Brunswick Liquor Corp, always a big revenue generator for the government, has been ordered to boost its net income by $13 million. You hear that? The government will be stripping an extra percentage off your hourly $7.50, AND will be asking you to chip in some more money when you buy beer. You WILL pay for every last drop of pavement on the highway.

Effective Jan. 1, 2007, the province's personal income tax rates will be increased in order to generate an additional $50 million in revenue annually. The new rates will be 10.12 per cent on the first income bracket, 15.48 per cent on the second, 16.80 per cent on the third and 17.95 per cent on the fourth bracket.

For a one-earner family of two with taxable income of $40,000, this represents an increase of $42 in New Brunswick personal income taxes for 2007 compared to 2006.

2003-2006 rates were : 9.68% on first $33,450; 14.82% on $33,450 to $66,902; 16.52% on $66,902 to $108,768; 17.84% over $108,768.

Let's be clear: I'm NOT against taxes. I am for them. I live in privatized Alberta, where, for example, a public library card costs $12 (plus all your future fines). The community should take care of everyone through a pooling of resources. However, to ask an already impoverished community to pay even more out of their half-empty pockets doesn't seem fair. And to target them through leisure purchases!? There must be some other way to balance the budget. How much federal money do we get? There must be over-spending in an area related to special events/travel expenses and other frivolities. How much do we spend on landscaping provincial buildings?

Further, I don't see how raising taxes in a province with so little income and work is going to attract people.

A recent study by the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies reported that Alberta alone had drawn nearly 13,000 Atlantic Canadians away in the year ending July 1, 2006. Mr. Graham has promised to reverse the exodus and has set a target of attracting 5,000 immigrants a year by 2015.
Yeah, good luck with that.

Rebel Daughter Doris Anderson Dies/ Baudrillard becomes the static he desires.

This Canadian feminist powerhouse (Editor, novelist, journalist, activist, chairperson) passed away in Toronto this week.

As editor of Chatelaine, Anderson combined typical women’s magazine fare with well-written, hard-hitting investigative pieces on abortion, birth control, discriminatory divorce laws and the wage gap.

Among some of the journalists she hired to write these pieces were June Callwood, Christina McCall (later Newman) Michele Landsberg, Barbara Frum, Sylvia Fraser, anf future governor-general Adrienne Clarckson.

One of her first editorials was an appeal for more women in Parliament -- there were only two female MPs in 1958 . She devoted many pages over the years to pushing for a Royal Commission on the Status of Women (she eventually chaired the SoW Council), and to exposing Canada's systemic social problems such as child abuse, racism, and the plight of our First Nations peoples. Some readers felt that she was turning "a nice wholesome Canadian magazine into a feminist rag." However, circulation, which was 480,000 when she became editor, had increased by the late 1960s to 1.8 million readers, the equivalent of one out of every three women in Canada (!!!)

Anderson eventually quit because they refused to hire her as Editor of Macleans, or to raise her salary of $23,000 to match that of the male Maclean's editor, who had less circulation and was paid $59,000.

While Chair of the Status of Women, Anderson contested the wording of Trudeau’s newly written Constitution. The fall-out from this led to her resignation, but finally, following an ad hoc conference on the subject, the wording was changed to: “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons”.

Lloyd Axworthy, who cancelled the first conference that had been planned to discuss the wording, appointed Lucie Pepin, one of the women on the CACSW board who had voted against holding the conference, as Ms. Anderson's successor. [why not get gwendolyn landolt?]

Anderson then become head of the National Action Committee, a coalition of 700 women’s rights organizations. She remained passionate about women’s involvement in parliament, and was a vocal advocate of Proportional representation.
She also wrote four novels: Two Women, Rough Layout, Affairs of State, The Unfinished Revolution

Quote:
“Every time Lloyd Axworthy opens his mouth, one hundred more women become feminists”

--
DIED TODAY:
Jean Baudrillard



A widely-read French Philosopher and cultural critic. He coined the terms simulacra and hyper-real to describe Western society's mediated reality through technology. I attended a packed lecture he delivered at York University in 2003. I thought I would be all clever and focus on his french delivery, ignoring the subtitles that flashed behind him on screen (weird--most conferences have head-phones and live translators).
Maybe this was his idea of a joke, but he began his french lecture, and the subtitles started too late, then had to speed up to catch up. the words were whizzing by, and a general twitter waved through the crowd as we contemplated our highly mediated and hyperreal moment with the Man himself.

Some quotes:

"The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real."

"Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society."

My New Approach to Dealing with Assholes

MisGuide to Mothering
Lampooned by Michelle Lovegrove Thomson

Here is an excerpt from a letter to the editor* printed in Fredericton's "Daily Gleaner" on Dec 28, 2006, equanimously titled
"Feels not all persons are created equal".

I have extrapolated five phrases in which the writer explains the facts and realities of womanliness, manliness, and mothering. Readers may re-arrange the letters or words of each section to create a new but equally entertaining phrase. Alternately, you may want to cut the quotes into fortune-cookie sized strips, and keep them in your wallet in case you ever need to fill an awkward silence with an even more awkward silence.


1. "It is incorrect to say that men and women are 'equal' ".

i.e. Loquacious man-tits are made into warts, ho!


2. "A man cannot look after a baby as well as a woman can."

i.e. A fart-boy (aka Sal) cannot, won't, see: a man can be a woman.


3. "Women should not compete with men, because men cannot be mothers."


4. "Only women who cannot be mothers, or those who have already performed the duties of motherhood, should work away from home."


5. "While machines and computers have made it possible for women to compete with men, it defies nature's plan."

--
* This was a letter from a mathematics professor at the University of New Brunswick, a prominent community-member with always harrowingly awful politics. I'm not printing his name here, though perhaps I could seeing as he always signs his letters (he has no problem with defaming himself, why should I hesitate?).

[This was originally a submission for the "Activity Book" issue of Kiss Machine. Read my rejected piece here for free!]

Women not quitting their jobs to breed like they used to

Statscan has just released a study showing that currently, men and women are equally likely to quit their jobs. This, of course, is in direct conflict with the common lore that a businesses should avoid hiring a newly married woman because she will just take leave or quit in a couple of years to have babies.

Worth Repeating: (CBC reports)

A Statistics Canada employment study suggests that women are no more likely to leave their jobs than their male counterparts, challenging the traditional view that women are more likely to quit because of family obligations.
The study, released Friday, says the notion that women are more likely to be absent or quit their jobs has been used to justify the pay inequity between the sexes.

But the federal agency says that while more women than men quit their jobs in the 1980s, levels evened off in the 1990s.
Statistics Canada analyst Xuelin Zhang says that today differences between the sexes are insignificant. The study also found that in terms of paid sick leave, women on average took one day more each year than men.

"Taken together, these results imply that, in Canada, the current gender differences in quits and absenteeism are not significant factors to explain certain gender differences in labour market outcomes, such as the wage gap between men and women," the study says.

For example, the study found that 5.5 per cent of men quit their jobs in 1984 as compared with seven per cent of women. In contrast, 7.7 per cent of women left their jobs in 2002, just slightly above the 7.6 per cent of men.

Zhang says outdated ideas about women's absenteeism may have been used to hold back women workers, creating a career gap between the sexes.

"One explanation for these differences is that women are more likely to quit, more likely to be absent and to take more days of absence than men, and since quits and absences are costly to employers … a cost-minimizing employer would hesitate to hire, train or promote female workers, and would also pay them lower wages," the study says.

The study also noted that 4.2 per cent of women took temporary leaves for pregnancy and maternity in 2002, creating a significant gap in temporary leaves between men and women aged 25 to 34.

--

See Full StatsCan report

saddest face ever sold (well, traded)

Today every street corner in Edmonton had pictures of Ryan's sad sad face (newspaper boxes).
Well, my brief love affair with the Oilers is officially over.