The federal election day is on its way and the one thing on the minds of a bulk of the voting population is: what will this election mean for women? Women’s issues have been quite invisible in the federal campaigning so far and often viewed as a redundant subject. In year 2015, people question whether or not women’s rights have any relevance in today’s society.
The Up for Debate campaign is an alliance of women’s organizations whose mandate is to bring the conversation of women’s issues at a pan-Canadian level and pressure political parties to make commitments for real change. Up for Debate has been active in pressuring the federal candidates to do a national televised debate on women’s issues. The last time this occurred was in 1984. Hence, a discussion of this nature is long overdue.
Women in Canada already have their constitutional rights that guarantee equality between the sexes as fought for in the suffrage movement and documented in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but holding a debate specifically for women’s issues at the national level is important, because everything, political or not, is a feminist issue. Every policy and issue has a gendered perspective, as well as additional issues pertaining to women.
The Up for Debate campaign includes aims to address ending women’s inequality, violence against women, and supporting women’s leadership and organizations.
And for good reason. There are 1,186 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Indigenous women are 3.5 times more likely to experience violence than non-Aboriginal women as they continue to be victims of past and present colonial policies and structural barriers.
Women in the Eastern part of Canada such as PEI still face barriers to accessing reproductive services, even though they have constitutional reproductive rights. According to reports by YWCA Canada, there are 460,000 sexual assaults in Canada every year. Women are consistently underrepresented in leadership positions from Parliament Hill to executive boardrooms.
Women’s issues today cannot be dismissed by arguing that we’ve achieved equality. While in Canada it’s true that we have achieved formal legal equality for women, women still face systematic oppression and inequalities at the social, economic, cultural, political levels and much more.
It’s important to look at women’s issues in achieving equality with men as a distinct electoral topic. This importance, however, should not overshadow the diversity of experiences faced by women of colour, the women of the LGBTQ community, and migrant women. All women need these issues to be addressed, and putting them up for debate is one way this can happen.
Women make up a little more than half the population of Canada, and if the candidates can provide appropriate answers to our questions, it becomes a good incentive for us to vote.
Up for Debate also aims to promote global women’s leadership and equality by questioning the federal candidates about whether their foreign policies include the rights of women.
“Poor foreign policy is creating an environment of unhappiness for women all over the world,” said Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire at Oxfam Canada’s Feministing Foreign Policy event. Up for Debate aims to bring the importance of addressing women’s issues and promoting women’s leadership worldwide as an essential way of solving many issues of global development.
