Ground Shifting for Women
Report by OIATH
Author Joanna Shawana is a proud part of the battle aagainst violence, and we at Rain Enterprises are proud to publish and respresent her cause!
Action to end violence against women was created by women for women.The story has been a truly inspiring one.
Women have changed our communities and ourselves in new and liberating ways.
In just over 30 years, women have made stunning progress against gender inequality that is hundreds of thousands of years old. We have reached miraculous goals in awareness and services for women who have experienced violence.
Many of us thought our challenges could be won by now. But there are always new ones to face and new changes to make.
As OAITH reaches 30, feminist shelter advocates want to celebrate our gains and move forward in solidarity with each other and we want to protect our progress against increasing erosion of our grassroots vision.
Shifts for Women and Children
The past year brought a number of changes for women and children.
Some of the funding promised by the Ontario government has started to flow to community services that support women. Some systems are now starting to receive basic training on how to better respond to women and children--legal aid, housing, judges and health profession.
There has been some improvement to shelter and second stage agency funding. And small changes have been made to improve Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program.
At the same time, steps by the Ministry of Community and Social Services to cut off access to the special dietary allowance has left many women desperate to find healthy food for their children and themselves.
Neither the provincial nor federal governments have any overall strategies for ending the entrenched poverty and oppression that affects women and children in marginalized communities.
Although child welfare authorities now recognize some of the flaws of the current system in addressing child exposure to woman abuse, in 2003 fully 24% of women in abusive relationships were charged by child welfare with “failure to protect”.
By now, women know that the long-awaited national day care program, one that would have helped so many women, will likely be scrapped by the new federal government.
Federal and provincial social housing plans, already moving slow, are now up in the air. Fears that social programs may again be at the mercy of the very Ontario politicians
who cut them in 1995 are not unreasonable.
Shifts for Women’s Services
Women’s services--from shelters to rape crisis centres to women’s neighbourhood centres have seen many changes over the years, especially at the whim of social policy.
Shelters have seen a number of key shifts: from early gains in core funding to the cuts in 1995, from grassroots organizing to institutional practices, from public disbelief to a measure of community awareness and from exclusion to a growing integrated, feminist anti-racist/anti-oppression understanding of violence against women.
While there have been many positive changes for the women’s anti-violence movement, there are emerging new challenges to overcome. Many women’s advocates are now questioning the “gender mainstreaming” of violence against women, shifts to gender neutrality, and focus on psychological models of response. Funding continues to be inadequate, and government more focussed on service systems than on equality rights.
New energy is rising and new activist voices are calling for a renewed focus beyond our struggles for more and better services, to our goal of preventing and ending violence against all women and their children.
We have not yet won our equality. Until we do, violence against women will go on. ~
SJAC worked with the Board on policy development within OAITH, for example to develop draft policy positions on coordination, funding for VAW work in gender neutral agencies and government relations.
OAITH also worked with other equality-seeking groups on joint efforts.
For example, we participated in the Hands Murdered women remembered: Women hold signs with the names of 231 women and children murdered in Ontario since 1995, and listen to Linda Ense speak on behalf of the Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA). Linda is also Executive Director of the Native Women’s Centre in Hamilton.
Working with Carrol Anne Sceviour from Ontario Federation of Labour, as we have
Action a focus of OAITH social justice work Without social change work, our efforts to end violence against women cannot succeed. OAITH is committed to taking social change action and to encouraging all OAITH member shelters to participate locally, provincially and federally on all social policy issues that affect women and children.
This year, despite our small resources, we have broadened our action in this area.
Walking their talk: Members of the OAITH Social Justice and Action Committee hold our new ban-The Lobby Committee ner at the OAITH organized November 28 Walk the Talk rally in front of Queen’s Park Legislature.
The ‘new’ Social Justice and Action Committee (SJAC) will make our role more clear to members, government and the public at large. We hope that the change will be more inviting for women in the network who want to do social change work but don’t want to be a “lobbyist” as defined in public circles.
Change Work Has Many Faces
This year, social justice and action work covered a lot of ground.
done in the past, OAITH Board and Committee members created a poster marking this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Nov. 25th.
The OFL generously paid for printing of 10,000 copies of the poster.
Posters were distributed at the October AGM and throughout Ontario unions, as well as through requests. It is now available on our website at www.oaith.ca.
Off! campaign to press the Province to end the clawback of the federal Child Tax Benefit Supplement (CTBS) for children on social assistance programs. Many shelters in the OAITH network took part by ordering campaign postcards and endorsing this ongoing campaign online.
Walk the Talk
November also saw us joining with sister provincial anti-violence networks to plan a meeting of women’s activists to discuss and evaluate the Domestic Violence Action Plan and public policy directions on violence against women.
We hope this year, Premier McGuinty will honour his pre-election promise to stop the clawback of support from the poorest children in Ontario.
OAITH also supported and promoted the Walk,Wheel, Ride for Dignity organized to rally at Queen’s Park for a raise in OW and ODSP rates.We are a member of Campaign 2000 and have been active in bringing women’s issues of poverty and violence to
the campaign.
OAITH was anThe meeting took place on the first day of the Finding Common Ground provincial conference and over 60 women from rape crisis centres, shelters, francophone and community based women’s groups attended.
Organizers included OAITH, the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes and the Ontario Women’s Justice Network (METRAC).
endorsing member of the No Religious Arbitration Coalition and supported the work of the coalition to end the legal effect of religious arbitration decisions.
November WWPM
Woman Abuse Prevention Month was busy, as usual.Women issued a press release from the gathering urging the Province to support organizing efforts of women’s policy net-works with funding and recognition.
The meeting was titled Walk the Talk in solidarity with an OAITH-organized rally at Queen’s Park of the same name, designed to remember 23 1 Ontario women and children murdered since 1995 and to have advocate voices “open” the conference.'
We are so impressed with and grateful for the crowd that came to the rally from OAITH shelters, students, labour representatives, provincial women’s coalitions, and the community at large, despite teeming rain.
Brief reports of both the activist meeting and the rally are on the OAITH website, along with the press release issued by the activist group.
provided for the lucky participants chosen to attend, the Minister’s treatment of women pleading for healthy food for their children had to be the lowest point. One violence survivor who was present at the conference later characterized the Minister’s response as “losing common ground”.~
OAITH contributes to public policy and training efforts
Joanna Shawana author of "Voice of An Eagle" stands behind these beliefs everyday!
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