Epress.am News from Armenia
December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. Typically on this day each year, there is a lot of remembrance. Action is another matter.
Fears are that this trend may continue, if not increase, now that governments are flagging austerity at every level. That would be dangerous because research and experience show that violence against women rises during tough economic times.
This day coincides with the sad anniversary of the deaths of 14 women who were tragically killed at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique because of their gender.
That day, on a cold late December afternoon in 1989, a young man named Marc Lepine lashed out with a semi-automatic rifle.
As soon as he entered a classroom, he separated the women from the men, lined the women along the wall, and then killed them one by one. In addition to killing 14 female engineering students, he injured eight other women, and also four men who tried to stop him. Then, he killed himself.
This tragic event has come to be known as the Montreal Massacre.
A police investigation later revealed that Lepine was on a mission. In his pocket, they found a list of 15 other female targets in various professions.
In his eyes, they were all guilty of the same thing. They were all women who chose non-traditional careers and dared to be leaders in their fields, reports the Red River Valley Echo.
The observance of that terrible day is, regrettably, an opportunity to keep ongoing violence against women on the public policy agenda, reports The Toronto Star.
Political representatives countywide wear the symbolic rose button or white ribbon to show their support, but they don’t often announce significant public funding or action to mirror the anger and angst of the vigils or the everyday reality of violence in the lives of women and girls.
During a recession, the fear is that violence against women will rise while meaningful action on the issue will fall. That worry is well-placed.
The media have already reported increasing calls by women to crisis lines and police. Catholic Family Services in Canada’s Durham region (in the province of Ontario) reported a 24 per cent increase in referrals for domestic violence in the last three months of 2008. The Canadian Mental Health Association in London, Ontario, reported a rise in domestic violence in the spring of 2009. Brockville reported a 100 per cent increase in domestic violence calls to police during that period.
In the spring of 2009, stories about a stunning increase in calls to shelters in Calgary, where the recession hit hard, were reported in newspapers across Canada — a 200 per cent increase in one year; a 300 per cent increase in the month before the stories ran.
Each year, the women’s shelter association gathers the names of women and children murdered in situations where an intimate partner is either charged or commits suicide. In 2008 and 2009, the total was 16 for each year. In 2010 (up to the present) it is 21.
Admittedly, the numbers are not scientific and cannot be decisively linked to the recession, but they are troubling. Still more troubling, however, is the possibility that governments will overlook the need to increase support for women rather than to freeze or lower to meet the demands of austerity.
For Dec. 6 to be truly meaningful, it must be observed not just with remembering women, but with promising not to forget them when governments divvy up the tax dollars paid by women and men for the programs and equality measures needed to stop violence against women.