CELEBRATE INSPIRING WOMEN cont.
From top to bottom: Elder Mae Louise Campbell is the co-founder of the Clan Mothers Healing Village. PHOTO BY RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Barb Gamey, Payworks co-founder. PHOTO BY RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Margo Goodhand, former Winnipeg Free Press Editor. PHOTO BY JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
It would be easy to assume that viewing women as unequal is an outdated notion that influence or time could overcome. But sentiments of inequality exist in modern day North America too. A quick scan of popular podcasts reveal instances of men telling young women that rights are granted and upheld by men alone. And men can revoke them at will. Thankfully, this is not a common opinion. But even if a germ of this sentiment continues and grows into a movement, women’s rights could wither. Superiority of sex should be an outdated notion. We have been battling it for far too long. Consider Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women — set in the late 1800s. Jo March, the protagonist, has a simple, yet poignant explanation of women’s rights.* March politely instructs a group of male intellectuals with: “I find it poor logic to say that because women are good, women should vote. Men do not vote because they are good; they vote because they are male, and women should vote… because we are human beings and citizens of this country.” Women’s rights are human rights. And we shouldn’t have to continue to fight for them. Manitobans have the ability to vote, to educate ourselves, to run businesses, to go into politics, to choose to be parents, to editorialize and to dream of a future unfettered by overt prejudice. We have the responsibility, however, to fight on behalf of those around the world who remain in the gully of inappropriate dominance that leads to a negation of basic rights.
* www.quotes.net/myquote/55404
20 CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
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