Female Afghan MP Expelled From Parliament

Peter Mackay in a National Post interview on Saturday:

A: What ever form of democracy they have -- and it comes in many packages and permutations -- the Afghan people are not going to go back to what they had. Women feel more empowered, I dare say, than they ever have in the history of that country. I met female members of parliament -- five years ago they couldn't vote, now they're sitting in a democratically elected institution where they have decision- making power.

Tuesday's Independent:

The most outspoken female MP in Afghanistan has been expelled from parliament after saying proceedings had descended to a level "worse than a zoo". The views of Malalai Joya, in a television interview, outraged fellow parliamentarians, who immediately voted to suspend her from the house for the rest of her five-year term. Some even demanded that she should be brought before a court for defamation and stripped of the right to stand again as a candidate.

This was not the first time that 28-year-old Ms Joya, a fervent advocate of women's rights, has angered male MPs with her criticisms. Some have thrown water bottles at her while she spoke in debates and others have threatened her with rape. She has also survived assassination attempts and has to regularly change her address after receiving death threats from Islamist groups.

Ms Joya's suspension yesterday came after a tape of her interview with Tolo TV, an independent station which has faced official wrath over some of its investigative reports, was shown to MPs. Describing what was happening in parliament, she had said: "A stable or a zoo is better, at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk. This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo."
[...]
Most of Ms Joya's campaigning has been about women's rights, which have been severely eroded after initial gains made with the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Women activists, including the highest-ranking official dealing with female empowerment, Safia Amajan, have been murdered.

Ms Joya said: "Talking about women's rights in Afghanistan is a joke. There really have not been any fundamental changes, the Taliban were driven off by the Americans and the British but then they were allowed to be replaced by warlords who also simply cannot see women as equals."

I should have subtitled this post, Mackay and His Rose-Coloured Glasses.

Related:
Wiki profile of Malalai Joya
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
PBS: Afghanistan Unveiled:

Although the new Afghan government includes two women in ministerial posts, the ministers of public health and women’s affairs, only two women were nominated to serve on the country’s first post-Taliban loya jirga, or grand council. In 2003, a coalition of Afghan and Afghan American women drafted an Afghan Women’s Bill of Rights, demanding mandatory education for girls, equal representation in the loya jirga, criminalization of sexual harassment and domestic violence and the right to marry and divorce according to Islamic law. The bill was later presented to President Hamid Karzai, but despite assurance from leaders that it would be included in the constitution, it was not. Even the loya jirga’s conference began with the chairman proclaiming to women: “God has not given you equal rights because under his decision, two women are counted as equal to one man.”

In January 2004, the loya jirga ratified a constitution that included an equal rights clause referencing gender — something not included in the United States' constitution— proclaiming that all Afghan citizens, men and women, "have equal rights and duties before the law." However, this clause is open to interpretation and could be used to undermine women’s rights, as “the law” includes religious law. The Taliban’s treatment of women, for example, would have been permissible following its definition of the law. As many women registered to vote in Afghanistan’s first national presidential election under the new government, the country’s future—and their future—remains unclear.

Severe Neglect: Women's Rights in Canada

Following on the heels of International Women's Day on Thursday (which I wrote about here - read the accompanying comments as well), I found 3 news stories today that illustrate just how much still needs to be done for women in Canada.

The first:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Canada needs to improve social services for its aboriginal population, particularly native women who face persistent and marked inequalities, a United Nations panel said on Friday.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found there was a "lack of substantial progress" in addressing discrimination against native communities within the officially multicultural country.
[...]
Stressing that native women make up "a disproportionate number of victims of violent death, rape and domestic violence," it recommended Ottawa improve services, including shelters and counseling, for victims of gender-based violence.

And, here's the predictable response from the Conservative government which, btw, scrapped the Kelowna Accord:

"For 13 years the Liberals paid lip service to aboriginals ... this (report reflects) an accumulation of years and years of blatant disregard for aboriginal issues," said Deirdra McCracken, a spokeswoman for Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.

There is no doubt that previous governments - Conservative and Liberal - severely neglected the plight of aboriginal people in our country however, the Liberals under Paul Martin had finally pledged to commit to change and were supported in Kelowna by First Nations leaders when the Kelowna accord was agreed to. The tories threw that away and decided to come up with their own plan. Where is it?

Secondly:

The Alberta Council of Women's Shelters says more and more abused women are being turned away in the province, a trend being called the dark side of the economic boom.

According to the council, more than 13,000 women and children used shelters in 2006, but another 14,000 had to be turned away because the shelters were full — a 16 per cent increase over the year before.

Meanwhile, Alberta's shelters received nearly 100,000 crisis calls in 2006, a nearly 50 per cent increase over the last two years.
[...]
Also, Alberta has one of the lowest rates of social assistance in Canada, putting abused women at a further disadvantage, she said.

This really isn't new at all. Alberta has always had a lack of shelter spaces for abused women. The Klein government admitted last year that it had made no plans for dealing with another oil boom. As a result, the new (Conservative) Stelmach government is responsible for playing catch up and, trust me, the situation for women here isn't going to change any time soon because the tory governments here have always had only one priority: making money. Spending money on social programs doesn't fit with that agenda.

Thanks to oil revenues, Alberta has a $7 billion surplus. The last I heard a single person on social assistance was alloted $401/month to live on. Rental housing is extremely expensive and the social services infrastructure has always been lacking. Those who can't "make it" in the boom are simply tossed aside. It's survival of the richest - always has been here and always will be.

Thirdly, and directly related to the first two stories:

OTTAWA–Politicians and advocacy groups lined up on International Women's Day to blast Conservative cabinet minister Bev Oda for cuts and mandate changes at Status of Women Canada.

Oda's constituency office in Bowmanville was occupied for several hours yesterday by members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada protesting the moves.

A day earlier, Oda had announced a $5 million increase in grants the agency distributes for women's projects. The money amounts to a redirection of a $5 million cut to Status of Women's administrative budget last September, resulting in the closing of 12 of 16 regional offices on April 1.

The government has also changed the criteria for what projects receive funding. Advocacy and research projects will no longer be eligible for grants, in favour of groups providing direct services to women.

And perhaps most controversially, the word equality has been removed from literature related to the agency.
[...]
Paulette Senior, chief executive officer of YWCA Canada, said her organization has been doing both service delivery and research/advocacy work for decades. She pointed to the organization's major study on women's shelters, conducted with the help of Status of Women funding, as an example of how research can help make services more effective.

The third phase of that study, on how to implement the findings, will likely not be funded under the new guidelines.

"All these things are inextricably linked," Senior said in an interview. "How do we know the services we're providing are effective if we don't do any research?"

Exactly. Women in need are being undermined by the very federal minister charged with looking after our interests. There is nothing more illustrative of that fact than the scrubbing of the word "equality" from the government's website - as if the idea of equality is nothing but a quaint relic from the past that has no relevance to the situations women find themselves in today in this country. Of all of the proverbial slaps in the face to women in this country, that one stung and bled while women were sent the message that the abuse of our rights will continue under this tory regime. Why is the equality of women such a threat to these Conservatives? Perhaps the answer is to be found in their very moniker: conservative.

There is no doubt that societal and governmental policy changes take time. There is absolutely no excuse however for the fact that women's rights have not progressed more swiftly in our country. We are a wealthy country with progressive social values overall - no matter how much the regressive conservatives among us would prefer to reverse that fact - yet we cannot even provide the most basic security, prosperity and equality rights to over half of our population. And I don't even need to mention how that impacts the children of this country as well. That's been well-documented.

Why are we stil being held back from achieving our full potential in society? And why are so many people - male and female - afraid to allow that to happen?

And last, but certainly not least, what can we do about it?