Funding Feminism

The National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) announced yesterday that it was "...being forced to close its office, lay off its staff, and cease major consultations and advocacy on women's legal issues as an outcome of the Harper government's devastating changes to the mandate of Status of Women Canada." NAWL is encouraging people to write letters and are fundraising to re-open in 2008.

The cuts to Status of Women Canada have prevented women's organizations from accessing funds for advocacy or research. Effectively, we're to continue helping "deserving, victimized women" (i.e. serve the patriarchy) and not change the system to make it equal for all (i.e smash the patriarchy).

Funding feminism is such a complex web. Many people say that the government should not be funding those who work against it, yet the government has abandoned all pretense of working for women. By taking up the banner, we are at risk of allowing the government to continue to ignore us, but we can do nothing less than fight for change. By asking for money to do that work, we get caught up in a system that is designed to keep us from making change. And some organizations do remove themselves from the system, trying to exist through funding directly from women, which leads to instability and burnout and all the problems that any one of us who has ever wondering where the rent is going to come from can relate to - because the women who need change most are the women who have the least.

Now we have lost another voice for change, another ally in the struggle. And I would shout "No More!" but I know that this is not the reality. The dark night is long and hard and painful, and it's not going to end tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. But it is going to end. It has to end. Wil sha.