Harper's Women's Rights Agenda Knocks Canada to 25th Place

Stephen Harper's views on women's rights are based on neoconservative ideology, and as Dr. Donna L. Lillian says: Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking ..."

And we've recently learned that Canada has fallen from 7th place in the World Economic Forum gender gap index in 2004, to 25th place in 2009.

These numbers are real and alarming. We can make broad statements about the Conservative attitudes, but this validates what everyone has been saying.

We are dropping back instead of moving forward. And what will this mean to our daughters and granddaughters?

Women's status in Canada has eroded over the past five years, despite Ottawa's "unduly rosy picture of achievements in this country," say labour and women's groups. "Women in Canada have lost ground in many areas," Barbara Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said in a statement as the report was released in Ottawa on Monday.

"So we decided to write our own report, and it provides a reality check on what the government is saying." The CLC, along with the Canadian Teachers' Federation, the Feminist Alliance for International Action and others, will present the report to the United Nations' World Conference on Women in New York next month. It takes issue with the federal government's report to the UN on women's equality.

The March meeting is expected to outline progress made since the last large-scale UN-sponsored conference on women 15 years ago. "Canada no longer compares favourably against other nations in assessments of gender equality and the gender gap," the report says.

This is unacceptable.