At the start of this year Canada had five female Premiers, but now because of a few old white men the country only has three. Alberta’s Alison Redford joins Newfoundland’s Kathy Dunderdale on the list of female Premiers forced out not because voters rejected them, but because their respective caucuses
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The Scott Ross: From Canada’s Five Female Premiers To Three
At the start of this year Canada had five female Premiers, but now because of a few old white men the country only has three. Alberta’s Alison Redford joins Newfoundland’s Kathy Dunderdale on the list of female Premiers forced out not because voters rejected them, but because their respective caucuses
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Parliament’s Sham Report on Missing, Murdered Aboriginal Women Trashed
by: Obert Madondo Many had hoped the Special Parliamentary Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women would move Canada closer to addressing the perennial issue of more than 600 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls. The committee’s final report, delivered in parliament last week, turned out to be another government-sponsored sham. Most
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Human rights justice blocked for Aboriginal women in Canada
by: Canadian Human Rights Commission | Press Release OTTAWA, March 4, 2014 – Fear of retaliation is among the top reasons why Aboriginal women in Canada won’t come forward when they experience discrimination, the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) says in its Annual Report, tabled in Parliament today. The report presents key findings
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Eight Measures Against University of Ottawa’s Burgeoning Rape Culture
by: Obert Madondo A student member of the University of Ottawa’s board of governors says the university’s response to recent report sexual violence against women is not enough. Anaïs Elboujdaini, a political science student who spearheads the Independent Initiative Against Rape Culture, proposes eight measures against rape culture on campus and
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: International Women’s Day 2014: College and university women express solidarity with Anne-Marie Roy
by: Obert Madondo Via: Rabble.ca March 8, 2014 International Women’s Day We stand with Anne-Marie Roy. We’ve been there too. As women who have held elected positions at our college or university students’ union, we write in solidarity with Anne-Marie Roy, the President of the Student Federation of the University of
Continue readingPample the Moose: Silencing or Strategic Manoeuvring? Professor Strong-Boag, International Women’s Day and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
For the past three days, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with a series of re-posts and re-tweets related to Professor Veronica Strong-Boag’s blogpost about International Women’s Day (IWD) for the (still-to-be-opened) Canadian Museum for Human Rights. According to the detailed report on ActiveHistory.ca, containing Strong-Boag’s post and
Continue readingPample the Moose: Silencing or Strategic Manoeuvring? Professor Strong-Boag, International Women’s Day and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights
For the past three days, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with a series of re-posts and re-tweets related to Professor Veronica Strong-Boag’s blogpost about International Women’s Day (IWD) for the (still-to-be-opened) Canadian Museum of Human Rights. According to the detailed report on ActiveHistory.ca, containing Strong-Boag’s post and
Continue readingPample the Moose: Silencing or Strategic Manoeuvring? Professor Strong-Boag, International Women’s Day and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
For the past three days, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with a series of re-posts and re-tweets related to Professor Veronica Strong-Boag’s blogpost about International Women’s Day (IWD) for the (still-to-be-opened) Canadian Museum for Human Rights. According to the detailed report on ActiveHistory.ca, containing Strong-Boag’s post and commentary about the story, she had been commissioned by the Museum to write a post about IWD for their collective blog. When she submitted the blogpost, it was initially approved, and then withdrawn when the communications department expressed concern over her comment on the current Conservative government. As a result, historians from coast to coast have been decrying the “censorship” and “silencing” of Strong-Boag by the museum (and speculating that the current federal government might have had a hand in this).
Shortly after the ActiveHistory piece was published, Franca Iacovetta, professor of Canadian history at the University of Toronto, and the current president of the International Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, published a condemnation of “the effort to silence Canada’s leading women’s historian” on the Berks website. Since that time, PressProgress has added their voice into the mix, commenting on the irony of a human rights museum censoring a commissioned blog. Both of these pieces have also received extensive coverage on Facebook and Twitter.
I have a somewhat different take on these events from many of my historian colleagues, and would posit a working theory. I suspect that Prof. Strong-Boag might have known full well (or at least strongly suspected) that her blogpost for International Women’s Day, which only includes one reference to Canadian governments past or present and does so to highlight the “anti-woman record” of “Canada’s Conservative government”, was never going to be approved by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The museum has been mired in controversies and funding crises for years – even before it has opened to the public. The people who commissioned the post probably were hoping for a broad overview of the history of International Women’s Day, or perhaps a post that included some discussion of how Canada’s governments (past and present) have dealt with women’s issues. This is not what they received, and someone probably balked at the fact that the sole reference in the post to Canada’s governments was a partisan attack on the current Conservative administration. An offer to add more detail to support the assessment of the current government as “anti-woman” was probably even less welcomed.
Here’s where I think the story gets interesting. By being “censored”, Strong-Boag has ensured that her message gets diffused to a much wider readership than the original blogpost itself likely would have been. It is a fairly standard social movement tactic to try to create a situation (a “grievance” to use the social movement scholarly jargon) that will lend itself to media exposure, with the movement able to cast itself as the aggrieved party. This helps to generate broader-based support for the movement, which is crucial to resource mobilization. I very strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who have commented and re-posted this story have never before read the blog of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and would not have seen the post had it simply been posted there. I had to scroll back to August 2013 to find a post on the CMHR blog that had a comment on it. It also isn’t a blog with a rich history of guest postings – only six names of guest bloggers appear on their contributors roll. The ActiveHistory.ca website, on the other hand, has a widespread readership among Canadian historians and engenders a lot of commentary. The Berks is the main conference on women’s history in North America. Far from being silenced, the decision by the CMHR to remove the post as written from their site has meant that Strong-Boag got a series of major platforms to attack the Harper government’s record on women’s rights, and along the way to damage the CMHR’s reputation and cast suspicion (possibly warranted, although this is unproven) of a sinister federal hand behind the removal of the blogpost. Meanwhile, there is no post for International Women’s Day on the CMHR blog.
To be perfectly clear, I don’t disagree with Strong-Boag’s stance on the Harper government’s policy record. But nor am I surprised that the museum would have shied away from her post. Strong-Boag engaged in a direct partisan attack. A paragraph discussing past-and-present Canadian governments’ decidedly mixed record on women’s issues (perhaps including Trudeau-era restrictions on the National Action Committee on the Status of Women’s lobbying efforts that were linked to their government funding, or the successive failures of a series of federal governments to make any meaningful progress on the childcare agenda) might possibly have made it past the communications officers at the CMHR. At the very least, it would have been harder for a communications officer to defend the removal of a blogpost that presented a more balanced critique of the less-than-stellar record of Canada’s federal governments (Liberal and Conservative) on women’s issues that placed the current claw-backs in their historical context. But to me, the section on the current government in the post as currently written reads as an isolated (if deserved) swipe at the government of the day and explicitly partisan.
If this was a deliberate strategic move on Strong-Boag’s part, it has worked beautifully, so kudos to her for getting her message disseminated. Far more people have read her account of IWD than likely would have ever seen it on the CMHR blog. I just find it a little bit disingenuous to speak of silencing and censorship in what appears to me to be a case of a museum trying not to appear to be overtly partisan in its public communications. Even if it could have been claimed that this was a “guest post”, the museum would have been held accountable in the media, and with their various funders, for the content that appeared.
UPDATE (March 9, 3:10 PM): The story is now on the CBC website, with additional commentary from Strong-Boag, and a reply from the museum’s blog editor.
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world
March is Women’s History month (in the US). This is a series of posts about women who have made an impression on me. Anne Frank never had the chance to become a woman. But what she wrote as a young lady brought history to life. Her book did what textbooks
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: IWD 2014: The “girl effect” reduces inequality, but Canada can’t coast on that much longer
Every year when International Women’s Day rolls by, I can’t help but reflect on power, how it’s shared, and how women use the power they have. This year, I am struck by women’s power to reduce inequality, and not just to help ourselves. Women are key to reducing income inequality.
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Invisible
March is Women’s History Month (in the US) I’m posting about women who are important and/or who have inspired me. One of the insidious and vicious consequences of the Canadian government’s colonial history and crimes against humanity in its treatment of Aboriginal peoples is an inherited racism that seems insurmountable
Continue readingcentre of the universe: “Here the melting-pot stands open, if you’re willing to get bleached first.”
March is Women’s History Month (in the US). I am doing a series of posts about women who have inspired me. I remember exactly where and when I first encountered this woman. It was 1977, and I was at Granny’s house watching Sesame Street. I lived in “northern” Saskatchewan, right
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Our only goal …the western shore
March is women’s history month (in the US). I’m making a series of posts about women I think are pretty important. It may be your mum, or your grandmother, or your great-grandmother, but for about half of our country’s population, they left everything they had behind in a land which
Continue readingcentre of the universe: “The writer of originality …is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels”
March is women’s history month (in the US). I’m talking about some of the women who have inspired me. Today’s woman is Simone de Beauvoir. She was a French philosopher, social theorist, political activist, and writer. Although her works in social theory and philosophy are striking, important, and accessible works,
Continue readingcentre of the universe: “Being sorry isn’t nearly enough…”
March is women’s history month (in the US). I’m talking about some of the women who’ve inspired me. Here’s an interesting thing that happens when we talk about such-and-such history month. We usually look at all the awesome, wonderful things people belonging to such-and-such group have done. But that’s not
Continue readingcentre of the universe: The Analytical Engine
March is women’s history month. I am talking about some of the women who have inspired me. Today’s awesome woman is Ada Lovelace. You may know her as Lord Byron’s only legitimate heir. She referred to herself as an analyst and metaphysician. She worked on the development of the world’s
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Excuse my dust
March is women’s history month. I’d like to talk about some of the women who have inspired me. Today’s woman is Dorothy Parker. She was a critic and satirist, a poet, a short story writer, and a brilliant woman working in an “old boys’ club”. Her wit was sharp and
Continue readingMelissa Fong: You know what I find really astounding?
That we still find childbirth amazing and incredible: Woman Gives Birth on New York City Street It’s pretty cool. Read story hereFiled under: Happy rant, No Rant-Just Interesting Tagged: babies, […]
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Reasons for the Declining Rate of Abortions in the US
Reasons For The Lowered Abortion Rate Available birth control Lessened stigma on birth control More education about birth control More comprehensive sex education than the past Things That Barely (If At All) Lowered Abortion Rates: Pro-Life harassment and violence Sidewalk protesting Restricting abortions Banning abortions Things That Will Continue To
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