Religion

Libertarianism inspires neo-liberal cuts to essential programs  

Women suffer as a result of drastic funding cuts to Status of Women offices, perpetuating a pattern of subjugation 

by Michael Nenonen  

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In September 2006, the federal Conservatives announced that in the next two years they would cut $5 million dollars from the federal department of the Status of Women, a department that has an annual budget of only $13 million. In November 2006, the Conservatives said that they were going to close 12 of the 16 Status of Women offices by April 1 2007. According to the Conservatives, the department is “inefficient” because instead of focusing on delivering services directly to women, the Status of Women provides significant advocacy and lobbying on women’s behalf. The government’s spokespersons fail to mention that the department also does a great deal of research into gender inequity in Canada, and that this research, which will be sorely affected by the cuts, reveals facts about Canada that the Conservatives would rather remain hidden. These facts demonstrate that Canadian women desperately need the advocacy the Status of Women provides.

For all the talk about equal opportunity in Canada, Canadian women are far more vulnerable to poverty than their male counterparts. According to Dr Karen Hadley, author of “And We Still Ain't Satisfied: Gender Inequality in Canada: A Status Report for 2001,” women’s incomes are only 61% that of men’s. For women between ages 45 and 64, the figure is 51%, for women of colour, it’s 43%, and for aboriginal women it’s 37%. Twenty-nine percent of men, but only 11% of women, are in the top 20% of Canadian earners, while 20% of Canadian women live in poverty.

Besides the many miseries poverty creates for women, it also makes it very difficult to acquire the resources they need to address their problems on a political level. Poverty drastically limits the amount of time available to women for political activism, and it prevents them from acquiring the education, connections, and money required for successful lobbying.

The negative effects of income disparity are compounded by a level of violence that can justifiably be described as gender terrorism. The University of Victoria’s Sexual Assault Center reports that one in four Canadian women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. A woman is raped every 17 minutes in Canada, and 62% of these attacks result in physical injury. Only one in ten sexual assaults will ever be reported to the police. According to a 1993 Statistics Canada study, of all the Canadian women who have ever been married, 29% have experienced violence in a current or previous marriage. Forty-three percent of wife assaults result in medical attention. According to the BC Institute Against Family Violence, half of all spousal assault victims suffer injury. Eighty-eight percent of these injuries are borne by women, and only 12% by men. A study released by the institute in 1994 indicated that in the Lower Mainland between 1984 and 1992 women were murdered by intimate partners over twice as often as men were.

This terrorism is emotionally debilitating and socially alienating. Women who are traumatized by violence, or who live in fear of being attacked, find it very hard to advance their economic and political interests, particularly when the funding is drained for such things as women’s centers. The recent murders of Indo-Canadian women in the Lower Mainland tragically demonstrates the need for these centres, which have fared so poorly under the government of Harper’s political soul-mate, Gordon Campbell.

Beyond the attacks specifically directed at women’s services and organizations, the erosion of our social service infrastructure has devastating consequences for women. As income assistance rates are cut and eligibility criteria are tightened, as tuitions rise and employment programs vanish, as health care services are reduced and home care services disappear, as child care becomes more inaccessible and as services for the developmentally disabled and psychiatrically ill are slashed, women are driven back into their homes and forced to pick up the system’s slack. Because women are the traditional caregivers in our society, they’re expected to make sacrifices for their families that men all too often forego. Women are finding themselves in the unenviable position of having to once again become society’s social safety net, at the expense of not only their most basic economic interests but also their health and physical safety. Without an adequate social safety net, women often find it impossible to escape exploitive and abusive domestic situations. For women facing systemic discrimination, such as aboriginal women, women of color, and immigrant women, the difficulty is all that much greater.

When it comes to our social infrastructure, governments like those of Stephen Harper, Gordon Campbell, and Sam Sullivan are guided by the tenets of neo-Liberalism, which is really just another expression of libertarianism. Tommy Douglas summed up the basic problem with libertarian philosophy when he joked, “It’s every man for himself, said the elephant as he danced among the chickens.” In our society, men are the elephants: men’s physical size and economic clout, coupled with the demands pregnancy places upon women, have long given men the ability to subjugate women and to prevent them from advancing their collective welfare. Without government support in the form of money for social services, research, and advocacy, women simply can’t escape the domestic tyrannies that so many are living under. By stripping women of power, the elimination of these supports actually encourages such tyrannies. Ethically speaking, libertarianism and liberation are diametrically opposed. Libertarianism certainly does promote a form of liberty, but it’s the liberty enjoyed by a master in relation to his slaves. Though this is a sordid liberty, it’s obviously the kind our neo-Liberal leaders prefer.

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