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WOMEN'S MARCH 2000 REVIVES MOVEMENT IN ATLANTIC CANADA
RedFem Report, February 2000, by Barb Moore, Grand Pré, Nova Scotia
(This article is from the Feb. 15-29/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
ATLANTIC CANADA is witnessing an important revival of the women's movement, as events are planned for the World Women's March 2000, which kicks off next month. In Prince Edward Island, the Women's Network has been holding meetings for months to prepare for the March. The first organizational meeting in Halifax for the march brought together about 100 women. In the Nova Scotia university town of Wolfville, students, faculty, community activists, and trade unionists have committed themselves to reactivate the women's movement. Each of these groups is determined to press for global action on the issues of women's poverty and violence against women.
Federal and provincial cutbacks in the 1990's severely hurt the women's movement throughout Canada by attacking the few funded programmes available to help women's groups carry out organizational activities.
Such programmes were nearly eliminated, or at least cut to the bone, in Atlantic Canada, where unemployment rates are still far higher than the rest of the country. Women here have fought to survive on a daily basis to feed their families and themselves. Violence against women in their homes, on the streets and on campuses, has escalated even when the public has constantly been made aware of this epidemic problem.
In such hard times, women find it difficult to dedicate time and energy to the women's movement, even though that movement is needed more than ever to press demands for equality and social justice which would greatly improve their lives. Women's organizations have struggled to survive, but in many cases, burnout from impossible workloads, class and racial divisions, and the lack of inclusion of younger women into established groups, have left the movement in dire need of renewal. A perceived lack of interest in Atlantic Canada from national women's organizations has also impeded progress in the last few years.
On Jan. 26, Paulette Sadoway from the Canadian Labour Congress, Mary DeWolfe, executive director for the Chrysalis House women's shelter, and Pauline Raven, organizer for the Wake Up Call on Poverty, spoke to a large audience at Acadia University in Wolfville.
Sadoway spoke about plans for the Women's March, which was initiated by the Federation des Femmes de Québec, and which the CLC is actively supporting. On March 8th, as events are held around the world, more details will be announced about actions leading up to October 15, when women will march on the IMF and World Bank offices in Washington, DC, continuing on to the United Nations in New York on October 17, where global women will present petitions to eradicate poverty and violence against women.
DeWolfe outlined the growing severity of violence in our local communities, comparing the situation with global struggles of women. Raven attacked provincial and federal politicians for ignoring the growing poverty faced by women and their children in Nova Scotia. An author of the recent Nova Scotia Report Card on Child Poverty, Raven quoted the report's findings that 24% of children in the province are living in dire poverty.
She pointed out that on Nov. 24, 1999, while anti-poverty groups were decrying that Ottawa had abandoned its ten-year promise to end child poverty in Canada, "Jean Chretien, instead of addressing this problem and responding to groups across Canada, instead chose to begin a new attack on Quebec, which Quebecers did not want, nor even his own cabinet ministers. He preferred to create a red herring and deflect the poverty problem because he has no answers to give to the misery he is continuing to create."
It was particularly encouraging to see the interest from the student women's centre at Acadia, as younger women pledged to reach out to the broader community to include them in International Women's Day activities next month. Organizational committees were formed to plan World March events, and for the first time in ages that older veterans of the women's movement could remember, hope of a renewed commitment to this vital struggle is being revived, thanks to the vision of Quebec feminists.
(RedFem Report is a regular column by members of the Central Women's Commission of the Communist Party of Canada.)
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