Re: Feminism gone too far in Canada (Comment, Feb. 4)
The most charitable construction I can put on the piece by Erin Cardone is that she was asked for something that would ruffle some feathers.
The piece contains so many inaccuracies and quarter-truths it’s hard to know where to go with it.
What shred of evidence would show that a larger workforce makes the cost of living go up? And what part of feminism could possibly be making women overburdened and unhappy: campaigns for workplace equality and opening up of opportunities in all fields, equal responsibility at home, a national child-care program, freedom from harassment and gendered violence, an end to poverty and exploitation, addressing racist poverty and violence directed particularly at indigenous women and minority women, programs for women with disabilities?
In fact, men only get sole custody of their children 10 per cent of the time because the vast majority of men don’t ask for it. When they do ask, they mostly get it.
Since when does feminism have the power to prevent women from being housewives or to discriminate against those who are? What keeps most women in the paid workforce isn’t the fear of feminist discrimination, but the reality, under our current economic system controlled by corporate capitalism, of financial hardship.
Maybe her boss thought getting a woman to trash feminism for International Women’s Day would be clever. It just seems pathetic. At least, if she wanted to do a hatchet job, she should have made sure the facts were straight.
Deborah Yaffe
Saanich
