Women in Canada are not faring as well as many of us would like to think.  A refreshingly blunt report by the Feminist Alliance should set alarm bells ringing in all our ears.  In just five short years, we've tumbled from 7th to 25th in the World Economic Forum's global index of gender equality.   That's a shocking indictment for a country that wants to make maternal health the focus of upcoming G8 discussions.

What to do?  From a federal perspective, Canada needs to reverse a series of program decisions that have hampered our efforts to help women achieve the promise we made when we embedded gender equality in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  It's one thing to say we have rights (which we do); it's quite another to ensure we have the ability to exercise them.  Cutting funding for think tanks and advocacy, eliminating support for early childhood education, scrapping assistance for pay equity claimants in the public service, refusing to analyse potential program impacts from a gender perspective, failing to accelerate initiatives designed to address aboriginal education and violence realities – all these (and more) add up to neglect if not negligence in a modern democracy.

The Alliance called its report a Reality Check … a Canadian Civil Society Response.  Thank goodness there's still a civil society in this country that takes the time to set the record straight.  I hope all of you will take the time to read the report.  Then please do urge policy-makers to take stock of the disastrous results their short-sighted program decisions are delivering.

I suspect this is not the only report which will show us far down the list when compared with other nations, or indeed our showing just a few years ago. The status of our woman may just be “the canary in the coal mine” when it comes to our (and others) democratic rights and freedoms as interpreted by (our?) government!

One person said to me today that while we have made great strides when it comes to womens issues in Canada, it's not the time to remove women's equality from the lexicon just yet, "we have not adjusted, we are not ready" she said I guess these numbers show just that.

One of the first things Harper did when he came into office was shutter 18 offices for Status of Women Canada, and remove the word 'equality' from the manadate of the office.  That should have been a pretty clear message to us all what his intentions would be, and I guess, from this recent Feminist Alliance report, he's made 'progress'.  Congratulations, Stephen, at the rate you are going in only a few more years we can be the bottom of the barrel.

Harper and his gov should focus less on on 'Owning the Podium' and more on international rankings that affect how Canadians live and flourish from day-to-day.  From a 7th to 25th ranking in just 5 years -- essentially the time Harper has been in power -- should act as a wake up call. 

Is this how Harper plans to win the 'ever elusive' female vote?