Violence Against Canada's Indigenous Women

- By chance I found this short documentary that highlights violence and murder against indigenous women in Canada. This video combines our previous and upcoming topics. Thousands of Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered across Canada. After 15-year-old Tina Fontaine's body was found at the bottom of a river, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened a national inquiry into the epidemic. But many families fear they'll never see justice. Manitoba, where more Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered than anywhere else in Canada. After years of failure on the part of police and the government, activists here are taking matters into their own hands. In addition, men are involved in these campaigns, which I believe is really important as we can`t isolate men from these issues as they are not women`s struggles, but community issues.

Why are male condoms and female birth control pills more popular than female condoms and male birth control pills? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XxA-4Jp7AU&t=1s

Female condoms were one of the interesting things I learned about through a public health campaign at Ohio University. However, the female condoms are not popular as much as the male condoms. Why is that? In addition, this question raised many other inquiries for me as to why there are female birth control pills, but I have never heard about male birth control pills. After further research, I found out that there are, indeed, male birth control pills. More importantly, researchers who have developed the male birth control pill say that is effective and has few side effects. However, men have been reluctant to embrace contraceptives. Most men studied at the research and development of male birth control shared that they would not take a male version of the birth control pill, but there are many indications that social morals are changing towards sharing responsibilities of family planning.

Men demonstrated higher level of knowledge and awareness about condom usage, yet it was women who demonstrated more positive attitudes than men towards condom usage. However, women do not insist on condom use for many reasons, including: trusting her partner, fear of abandonment, and coerced consent caused by strong persuasion (Andrade et al., 2015). We realize a power difference in the relation among couples and in the decision making that tends to be dominated by males. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between women who gain knowledge about the importance of condoms and their respective use of condoms. In other words, empowering women through knowledge and providing them with tools to enhance their reproductive health is an important part of empowering women.

The benefit of the female condom is that it allows women to have more control over their safe sex practices. Above other things, the female condom was introduced as a way of empowering women to be in control of their sexual relationships, encouraging full participation in family planning, and actively preventing HIV and sexually transmitted infections/diseases. On the other side, male condoms give the power for the man in the relation and limits the women`s power.

Still, there are some disadvantages to the female condom. The main disadvantages include: a lack of spontaneity, a decrease in sensation, discomfort, a lack of knowledge, technical difficulties, and inconvenience. The disadvantages of the female condom compared to the male condom are the exact same. However, male condoms are more popular and more readily available. There is only one company in the US who produce female condoms and it does not even exist in other countries around the world. Unlike male condoms, which are produced in a by variety of manufacturers and in different colors and types. Additionally, male condoms can be accessed easily from regular stores, however, female condoms require a prescription for purchase even in the US.

Empowering women is to provide women with choices and tools that they can use to protect themselves. There has been lack of investment by the companies to develop female condoms and male birth control pills as we live in patriarchal communities. Access to female condoms would empower women. Access to male birth control pills would allow an equal share in the responsibility of family planning instead of only burdening women with it. 

Imagine a world where the roles are reversed

To dilute a little the severity of the topics that we’ve been discussing for a while, I recommend you watch a funny movie streamed on Netflix: I am not an easy man! 

Briefly, the main character is known for being a disparate womanizer. After an accident, he wakes up in a world patronized by women. Now he's at their mercy. To adapt and subsist in this weird and totally new world where gender roles are reversed, he'll have to learn the new rules of the game.

This movie is a social satire that points out how the status quo isn’t questioned when it works for men. The script covers all the aspects of what it's like to be a woman, how is she seen by men and what is her vocational role in society. In a comic way, it provides a good context on the disparity as to how women are treated differently than men, picturing especially the issues of harassment and how it is conducted towards women. Another great point highlighted by the authors is how terrifying the world would become for men if women would lose their perceived femininity and everything that comes along this sense of beauty. But no more about the movie, I don’t want to spoil its end which honestly was a surprise for me.

Getting back to the real world we have to admit the social setting and roles assigned to both men and women. There is, therefore, no doubt that at some point both men and women are entitled to the big question: why some behavior is set at the core as a model and any deviations are punished through social intimidation? At a larger scale, these norms and attitude are the reasons why so many conflicts are in place. By having singular metrics to measure each and every one, the society discourages the diversity, kills the individuality, and sets the cornerstone for a “robotic” society where all are alike.

So, while talking about gender mainstreaming we have to consider men’s issues as well, their discrimination, their frustrations and the burden they struggle with. I think that education and knowledge is the key to a peaceful mind and honest behavior. All should start in the family without assigning roles for girls and boys separately but by teaching and showing humbleness, compassion, harmony, and respect. With all this in mind, no one would ever question why somebody is supposed to do a certain job and to act accordingly to certain expectations. All will be focused to serve the main goal: equity and justice for everyone!

Informalization and the Gig Economy

Informalization is an important topic in recent years as the global economy and marketplace changes. Whitson (2010) and Pearson (2007) are among the researchers considering the gendered impacts of informalization. In the news, informalization (which comes in several forms) may be discussed in different terms, such as the growing “gig economy”, “contract work”, or even “freelancing”. Although, these terms seem to be used exclusively for traditionally developed countries such as the United States. There is the expectation that this type of work arrangement allows flexibility. Workers can pursue any opportunity that comes along to make a larger income. They aren’t tied down to a formal job in a particular location. This sector of the job market is growing. There is a large debate on the benefits and dangers of our changing market, as discussed by NPR’s special series, “The Rise of the Contract Workers.” Many questions arise, such as; is this really a voluntary arrangement for workers, is this the inevitable trajectory of business policies, and what does this mean for less developed countries that haven’t reached the level of formality in work that countries like the US have achieved (though we may be in the process of losing it)? These questions cannot be answered in this blog post, but they are worth considering.

According to NPR correspondent Noguchi (2018), under the current unemployment law of the US, contract and freelance workers are ineligible for most “rights and benefits of traditional employees”. In addition, most US workers will fit that category within a decade. Contract workers have recently sued for employee rights, as they may work similarly to employees in schedule and expectations. David Weil, a former Labor Department administrator explained that businesses can avoid obligations by misclassifying employees as independent contractors. So, what rights do contract workers have? Not many, it appears. They are not protected by many federal labor laws, such as minimum wage, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, and most anti-discrimination laws. The lack of rights is sometimes quite apparent. Noguchi interviewed Mr. Dudzinski, a contractor for pharmaceutical companies that worked in his position for the past five years. He explained that he does the same work as employees, and only wears a different colored badge. As a contract worker, he has no room for negotiation to become “employed” and receive benefits such as employer retirement contributions.

As another example, BBC Newsnight posted a video this past week on the gig economy in the UK. Despite the attractive narrative of freedom in work, major issues continue to develop.

It’s worth noting that unlike in the US, UK citizens have access to universal healthcare not connected with work, perhaps making the arrangement a bit more reasonable. As the video explains, however, businesses oriented around profit will gravitate towards the cheapest hiring option. Today, that tends to be contract workers or the “self-employed”. It’s evident that if informal workers are not protected by law, they will not have access to an array of rights and benefits. A further consideration is how countries will address (likely) loss in taxes.

Disidentification

Radcliffe’s (2016) argument in Dilemmas of Difference that categories used in Ecuadorian development projects such as “indigenes women” are rooted in colonial legacies and ideas reminded me of an essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, written in 1981 by Audre Lorde, American black feminist writer. Referring to (American) conventional white feminists as the master, to their academic/activist circle that she criticizes for not recognizing differences among women as the master’s house and to their hegemonic feminist discourses as “the master’s tools,” Lorde (1981) argues that it is almost impossible to “dismantle” the hegemonic white feminism as long as we fight against it within its framework applying their ideas and epistemology. Although she is primarily concerned with issues in American (white) feminist academic circle in this essay, if she is right that master’s tools “may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (p99), I think that we cannot transform the subaltern realities of whoever any development projects are aimed at unless we reject the development discourses and categories that are rooted in colonial legacies as well.

At the same time, this discussion also reminded me of the concept of “disidentification” introduced by Munoz (1999) in Disidentification as a way for us to negotiate oppressing hegemonic systems. While academic/activist conversations on gender and sexuality as well as race and ethnicity have been conventionally based on strategies of “identification” through which the oppressed opt to assimilate within dominant ideology and/or “counter-identification” through which they try to completely break it down, according to him, disidentification is a political practice to highjack essentialized (or naturalized) identity discourses/categories by interpreting and performing them in ways their “authors” do not mean. In doing so, we can de-essentialize/denaturalize those discourses and categories. Disidentification is not about merging with dominant ideology, neither is it aimed to completely abandon it or make it non- existent; rather, it is both as he states that “disidentification is a strategy that works and against dominant ideology” (p11). Munoz (1999, p31) claims that

Disidentification is about recycling and rethinking encoded meaning. The process of disidentification scrambles and reconstructs the encoded message of a cultural text in a fashion that both exposes the encoded message’s universalizing and exclusionary machinations and recircuits its workings to account for, include, and empower minority identities and identifications. Thus, disidentification is a step further than cracking open the code of the majority; it proceeds to use this code as raw material for representing a disempowered politics or positionality that has been rendered unthinkable by the dominant culture. 

We have learned that categories and discourses of people in the South that development discourses rely on have problematically colonial origins. As Lorde (1981) would argue, it won’t probably challenge against the structure to uncritically adopt them. However, we have probably noticed that it is often difficult to completely reject hegemonic categories. Then, Munoz’s (1999) concept of disidentification may be useful as a strategic approach in development as well as it does not aim to reject those categories. Rather than adopting or rejecting colonial discourses, we might be able to create a new reality by disidentification, by “re-writing” definitions of them by applying or performing them in different ways from hegemonic ways.

What do you think?

Gender is Peformative

I am sorry for not having shared this much earlier when we were talking about gender as a social construct, but I hope that this video may help you understand that gender is socially constructed a little more! (Or it may confuse you much more.)

Who is a man?

Seriously??

Now I'm confused!!