Presentations highlight challenges facing women

Page 1

The Business and Professional Women's Club (BPW) strives "to improve the social and economic status of working women, encourage women to pursue political office and lobby all levels of government to effect positive change."

When the Saskatoon chapter of the BPW held its International Women's Day celebration March 2, it needed a keynote speaker who epitomized its mandate. They found the person they were looking for in Saskatoon provincial court judge Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond.

Turpel-Lafond is the first treaty Indian appointed as a judge in Saskatchewan and is one of Saskatchewan's most highly educated judges. She holds a master of laws from Cambridge and a doctorate in law from Harvard.

Women are universally under-represented in positions of power, saidTurpel-Lafond. "Women make up about 52 per cent of the population, yet for most of the history-of Canada at least-women have been given an inferior status," she said.

"Women didn't win the right to vote until 1920. Of course for First Nation women, it was 1960," she said. "First Nation women were not even able to run for a position on band council under the Indian Act until 1960."

It is important to recognize the distinction between rights and reality, she said. "Although we have achieved, in some ways, legal equality, actual equality is still way off. Old stereotypes die hard," she said.

Those stereotypes are even more deeply entrenched for Aboriginal women.

While most women face the metaphorical glass ceiling, "for Aboriginal women, sometimes there is what we call the buckskin ceiling as well as the glass ceiling. So you might just get through one and reach the other," she said.

"There are very few women in positions of leadership inside the Aboriginal community that are very supported," she said, adding that it is time that those barriers are overcome.

Turpel-Lafond is a walking example of a successful stereotype fighter. A member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, she has already achieved what few women of any nationality have. Time magazine named her one of the top 100 global leaders in 1994. In 1999, the same publication listed her as one of the top 20 Canadian leaders for the next millennium.

In addition to being a judge, Turpel-Lafond is also a wife and mother. She said she chose to have a family as well as a career but not everyone feels free to decide.

"We are still bombarded with images and values which reinforce the idea that the best place for a woman is at home with the children," she said.

"It is important that women make real choices, not just choices that are foisted upon them.

"There's a lot of work that has to be done yet-in the political world, in the academic world, in the corporate world," she said. "Women are not yet represented equally in the boardrooms of this province or Canada. We have made great strides but I don't think we should fool ourselves. There are many prevailing attitudes at work in our society, which impede real equality.

"I urge you to resist the stereotypes we are talking about in your homes, in your workplaces. Anywhere there is a certain myth that women are not good enough ... we should really challenge it," she said.

Turpel-Lafond admires other strong leaders like Leanne Bellegarde Daniels, Saskatchewan Indian and Gaming Authority's senior vice president of corporate and legal affairs, who also spoke at the celebration.

Bellegarde Daniels is a member of the Kawacatoose First Nation. She worked with the government on the treaty land entitlement agreement and served as chair of the Saskatoon Board of Police Commissioners. She was named one of Saskatchewan's top 10 women of influence by SaskBusiness magazine and has received numerous other awards. In 2003, Bellegarde Daniels earned BPW's Athena Award, presented each year to individuals who strive to achieve the highest levels of professional accomplishment, who devote time and energy to their community, and who open paths for oters to follow. She displays the award in her office, not out of pride, but as a concrete example of what all women can achieve.

"I don't do things to get awards," she said. "I don't do things to make headlines. I don't do things to inspire or empower women. I do things because that is the way I was raised-to do right things, to care about my community, to care about my people."

Bellegarde Daniels said that, as a woman, it is often difficult to be heard, even in her own office. "As one of the less senior and educated Indian women in Indian corporations, I have learnt a whole lot about the role of empowerment of women and have struggled regularly with making sure my voice was heard. Not just because it's a woman's voice but because it's an educated and experienced voice," she said.