Status of Women - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

Status of Women

Description:

Status of Women s Citizenship and Democratic Politics in Canada Jane Jenson D partement de science politique Universit de Montr al www.cccg.umontreal.ca – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:79
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 20
Provided by: jje45
Learn more at: http://www.oas.org
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Status of Women


1
Status of Womens Citizenship andDemocratic
Politics in CanadaJane JensonDépartement de
science politiqueUniversité de
Montréalwww.cccg.umontreal.caInter-American
Commission of WomenSecond Hemispheric Forum
Womens Full Citizenship for Democracy18-21 July
2012Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
2
outline
  • Citizenship regimes a conceptual approach
  • Canadas citizenship regime a gender-based
    assessment on three dimensions
  • Access
  • Rights
  • Belonging

3
Citizenship regimes
  • Moving beyond T. H. Marshall more than rights
  • Practices of access and the quality of political
    democracy
  • Rights their distribution the quality of
    social and economic democracy
  • Patterns of belonging intercultural relations

4
Practices of access and The quality of political
democracy
5
Access to political democracy
  • BUT
  • Formal rights do not provide equal access to
    elected office in these first-past-the-post
    systems.
  • Canada is only 40 on the Inter-parliamentary
    Unions ranking.
  • Still no critical mass at any level of
    government.
  • Very few practices of quota.
  • Canada had relatively early enfranchisement.
  • 1982 constitutional guarantee Every citizen of
    Canada has the right to vote in an election of
    members of the House of Commons or of a
    legislative assembly and to be qualified for
    membership therein.
  • Women have embraced electoral democracy a
    positive gender gap in voting behaviour exists
    since the 1980s.

6
Democratic politics the numbers
  • Assessment
  • women experience nearly equivalent levels of
    underrepresentation at all three levels of
    government
  • E. Tolley, Do Women Do Better in Municipal
    Politics? Canadian Journal of Political Science,
    44 3, 2011.

female
House of Commons, 2011 25
Provincial legislatures, 2010 25
Municipal politics 24

Federal Cabinet 26
Provincial Cabinets 30
7
Why this under-representation?
  • Less a problem of leaders
  • Cabinets generally over-represent the
    percentage of women in the legislative caucus.
  • Than the result of institutional practices of
    nomination and the turnover patterns
  • success rates of men significantly higher than
    women, as the party draws closer to power OR
    slides into trouble (with the exception of the
    New Democratic Party).
  • The main cause the very decentralised
    institutional arrangements for nominations. This
    is a clear limit set by the electoral system.
  • Coupled with the declining interest of the
    womens movement in electoral politics.

8
But what about all those party leaders and prime
ministers?
  • 3 provincial Premiers 1 Territorial leader 4
    Leaders of the Opposition.
  • BUT, nonetheless
  • The phenomenon of the sacrificial lamb or
    lost-cause candidate has been displaced towards
    the leadership of parties. As leaders, women
    are often set up to fail.
  • The closer to power, the smaller the likelihood
    the party will call on a woman to lead.

9
Rights their distribution the quality of
social AND economic democracy
10
Significant guarantees of civil rights and
anti-discrimination exist
  • Section 15 of the Canadian Constitution
  • (1) Every individual is equal before and under
    the law and has the right to the equal protection
    and equal benefit of the law without
    discrimination and, in particular, without
    discrimination based on race, national or ethnic
    origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or
    physical disability.
  • (2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law,
    program or activity that has as its object the
    amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged
    individuals or groups including those that are
    disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic
    origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or
    physical disability.

11
But in reality, limited capacity to enjoy these
rights
  • Example of a significant democratic deficit
  • control over reproduction a civil right but
    little real access
  • 1988 Supreme Court decision struck down law
    setting conditions on therapeutic abortions.
  • In the name of security of the person.
  • But standoff between federal government (funder)
    and the provincial governments which refuse to
    guarantee this medically necessary service.
  • Result is only 1 in 6 hospitals provide services
    and many regions have no service at all.
  • And this despite public opinion

A 2011 poll
52 say I support the right of women to make choices about their own body
18 personally opposed to abortion BUT recognize the right of individuals to make their own choices.
Only 8 want abortion to be illegal.
12
Despite a right to non-discrimination
  • Due to both retirement incomes and earnings.
  • A 21 gender-based income gap.
  • The Conference Board of Canada The principle of
    equality of opportunity is one of the basic
    tenets of human development. research shows
    that, despite decades of anti-discrimination
    legislation and equal rights provisions there
    is still a significant income gap between men and
    women.

13
Approach to social care is a major gap in the
Canadian citizenship regime
  • Child care
  • The labour force participation rate of mothers
    with children under 6 had more than doubled since
    1976.
  • 2 of every 3 mothers with children under age 3
    are employed.
  • 70 of those with children aged 3 to 5 are
    employed.
  • In international comparisons, Canada has fallen
    farther and farther behind most other affluent
    countries, ranking according to UNICEFs 10
    benchmarks at the very bottom.
  • Childcare Resource and Research Unit.
  • 2009. Early Childhood Education and
  • Care in Canada 2008. Toronto.
  • Quebec is an exception
  • For women, limited access to ECEC means
  • Part-time work
  • Informal care, and worries about quality
  • High-cost care, and inability to pay.

Globe Mail 4 July 2012
Today's modern parent Daycare poor, with little to save
14
Social care for the vulnerable elderly is a
gendered story
  • The good story rising life expectancy and
    closing gap between women and men (as men catch
    up).
  • But all these years are not problem-free.

  Women Men
Life-expectancy 82.0 76.9
Years of good health 70.8 68.3
15
Canadian public policy for social care
  • Relies heavily on informal care provided by
    family and friends to meet the needs of seniors
    living with health vulnerabilities, often spouse
    or other family members.
  • The policy focus is on providing incentives for
    those caring informally more than to increase
    formal services, whether in the public or
    voluntary sector.
  • Threats to womens well-being carers as well as
    those needing care are multiple.
  • Women are taking on new and extra work, even when
    they are elderly themselves, providing nursing
    and other care to their elderly spouse.
  • Daughters and daughters-in-law are often juggling
    paid work and elder care, sometimes with child
    care responsibilities as well.
  • Absence of respite services as well as inadequate
    supplies of home care and services is taking a
    toll on many womens health and well-being as
    well as their current earnings and future income.

16
The belonging dimension of the Canadian
citizenship regime. Intercultural relations
17
Aboriginal women. Doubly disadvantaged
  • Indian Act, which grants status, incarnated
    patriarchy.
  • Long-standing discrimination on the basis of
  • gender loss of status due to out marriage
  • (women) and a break in the patrilineal
  • succession (their children).
  • Aboriginal women marrying out became white.
  • Provision finally overturned by court decision in
    1985, after intervention of the United Nations
    Human Rights Committee finding Canada in
    violation of the International Covenant on
    Political and Civil Rights.
  • After 1985, /- 100,000 reclaimed community
    rights.
  • Nonetheless, could not fully overturn the
    patriarchy encouraged
  • by the Indian Act and its century of effects.

18
  • Marginalisation continues in Aboriginal
    communities poverty, inadequate housing,
    tainted water, ill-health, suicide, etc.
  • In particular, there is an on-going crisis of the
    missing women and violence in general
  • Self-reported violent victimisation among
    Aboriginal women was almost three times higher
    than the rate of violence reported by
    non-Aboriginal women.
  • March 2012 Native Womens Association of Canada
    (NWAC) and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for
    International Action (FAFIA) at the
    Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,
    calling for a national inquiry into the
    disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women
    and girls in Canada by the Government of Canada.

19
Reasonable accommodation an on-going debate
among women
  • Concerns about how to recognise cultural
    difference in societies committed
    simultaneously to gender equality and
    multicultural values.
  • Courts have established principle of reasonable
    accommodation.
  • But issues remain, for feminists and the broader
    society
  • 2003 religious arbitration in Ontario
  • 2007-08 Bouchard-Taylor Commission
  • in Quebec
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com