If women's rights became Charter rights in 1981, then why does gender inequality persist in our country?
There is a difference between equal legal rights and living in an equitable world.
Equal legal rights enshrine certain words, statements, beliefs and practices into legally abiding documents that persons, systems & otherwise are meant to follow. It is essential for both equal rights and an equitable reality to exist - because just changing the laws is the bare minimum doesn't actually change our society and culture.
Both law and reality must reflect one another for there to be genuine equity in Canada, and they don't. Period.
To demonstrate this, let's take a look through time and see how Canada is doing in terms of gender equity. We are going to firmly keep this conversation in the present tense tho because the timeline offered is incomplete & ongoing, reflecting how much work we still need to do before women, girls, 2-spirit, trans and gender-fluid folks can live equitable & thriving lives.
This timeline is hard to look at. It is incremental, deadly slow, and dripping in patriarchy, white "feminism", white supremacy, neoliberalism, and strategic contradictions that subsume progress in the face of repetitive and ongoing violence.
This timeline also signifies important headway in human rights & gender equity in Canada, often led by Black, Indigenous, trans, disabled and queer intersectional feminists through time. The problem is this headway is being made in a world physically, economically and socially constructed by white male supremacy.
It's important to remember that people in power (power includes having your rights and freedoms upheld) rarely (if ever) share their power willingly.
Women gaining equal rights has been incremental by design, because if we're fighting for pieces of our rights or rights that are not intersectional* then those in power continue to retain their power.
“Sure, as a cis-white woman, I’ve had the legal right to exist as a “person” since 1929, access information on contraception since 1969, and not be raped by my husband since 1983.
Heck, even my equality has apparently been ensured by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, since 1981.
What I have not been ensured is the capacity to walk home safely at night, freedom from the oppressive and violent male gaze, pay equity in a world made by and for white men, and perpetual ability to access my sexual, health, legal, & reproductive rights, the ability to engage safely in sex work, or any work I choose is best for me, or the right to be heard, believed and vindicated when I disrupt these inequitable issues. I became a survivor of gender-based violence long after the law stated I wouldn’t.
Does this sound more like your experience of gender “equity” in Canada? You are not alone.”
The gender equality movement is based on the understanding that all genders—regardless of similarities and differences—are equal.
Changing our laws is the first step in ensuring equal rights, but it is far from the last step. Until our society is as safe for all genders as it is for wealthy, straight, white cis-men, then the movement is incomplete.
We are incrementally creating headway by offering breadcrumb policy changes to bring all genders to the societal starting point that white cis-men have - but despite hundreds of years of feminist movements, we didn't really see changes in legislation until 1929 in Canada (and these changes were not inclusive of all women).
It's 2023, and women and gender-diverse folks are still harassed as servers, underpaid in comparison to men, unsafe walking home alone, and are blamed for being sexually assaulted. And this doesn't even include the horrific genocide of Indigenous women, girls and 2spirit folks, the deeply embedded misogynoir in our society, and the coordinated attack on Trans folks across our country.
The United Nations recently stated that gender equity in our world is still 300 years away - which is fundamentally unacceptable.
And this is taking centuries of work with the government merely responsively offering apologies, inquiries communities already know the answers to, and after-the-fact strategies. What of broad systemic re-structuring of economic, social, and physical systems developed from the minds & dreams of folks who are not white, cis-male, & able-bodied?
The United Nations recently stated that gender equity is still 300 years away. Unacceptable.
We need collective community-led action, today, tomorrow and yesterday cause 300 years is only going to get farther away.
"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." - audre lorde
