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‘arm production, farm manage- t, and the rural economy general- : hich have become a focal point young women concerned with :_ economy. I" owever. I have to tell you that ii are a number of compelling ‘LI why there should be a com- front among women â€" and wom- organizations â€" on a number of ,‘nist issues. . of women may have accepted for mselves, there is the new situation . your daughters and granddaughters consider. It is a fact that if you are - n female you have a much greater ._=nce of being poor than if you were -. n male; of making far less money ; less rewarding tasks, and generally _ be under-recognized for whatever J tribution you may make to any onomic enterprise. Opportunities for rewarding and tisfying careers and reasonable in- mes will not be afforded your nughters and granddaughters with- : t some major feminist efforts in that half. Don’t expect men to be fair. It not that we wish to be unfair; it is ply that all of our major institu- ions have developed with a pronounc- .. male bias, including many institu- ons which are dominated by wom- 7, , such as the school, hospital and cial services systems. And unfairness owadays is much more obvious to oung women and more difficult to ccept than at any other time in our 'story, when the role of women was efined in such limited terms. 2) The second reason foracommon eminist front is that the instability of amin life is much more threatening o the security and well-being of c omen than of men. Dependence on , en for security and support can no onger be presumed on at any age, to I e extent that it once could. Family conflict is now more likely 0 mean separations than in the past, v hen people remained together even the case of deep and bitter animosi- -ies, simply out of economic necessity, Separation still carries a much great- r risk of financial and social hardship or the female partner than for the r ale, because of the extent to which ocial conventions and the law favour he male partner and his property i terests, and recent changes in the aw have not really brought all that x uch change yet; 3) While the burden of caring for rid nurturing dependent people of all ages has always fallen to women, for most of our history there has always been some form of extended family to provide support. Increasingly this burden is falling to women who are without social support, who are now in the labour force outside their homes, and who are overwhelmed by the personal demands which are placed on them. Yet the primary sources of sup» port v the social services, and child care services, and family support services, etc. are among the services threatened at a time of government spending restraint There is not a single government in this country which is acting appropriately with respect to the range and amount of social supports now required by wom- en in their historic and conventional roles. 4) The fourth reason for common action by women is that in many situa- tions, being a feminist is simply the right and decent thing to be, especially insofar as they are the only ones in- terested in taking effective action on problems which are uniquely the probâ€" lems of women, e.g. examining ways to cope with the increasing incidence of pregnancy among single teenaged women, or to establish shelters for battered and abused wives, or sup- port centres for victims of rape, or to provide any of the other services re- quired by women and children who are victimized by men. This also involves the whole ques- tion of traditional male dominance over issues which are only the prob- lem of women, and men need to be knocked clear out of the ring if these issues are to be correctly dealt with. because predictably men will do the wrong thing on any one of them. (In a recent sexual assault case in P.E.l. a Supreme Court Judge was quoted in a newspaper report as having said that the woman did not really ex- perience physical harm; she had been kidnapped at knife point, tied to a tree and left alone for an hour, and then repeatedly assaulted all night; but by some oversight had apparently not been physically beaten). So no matter what your feelings may be about the excesses in the women’s movement, sober reflection of the options must make almost every woman a feminist believer deep in her own heart. That should not be bad news for men, except insofar as we are not prepared to extend to women the same respect and con- sideration we show to one another. There can be no real threat to the status of men simply because we accept the equal status of women. Men and women will always bond as couples, will always have infatuations, will fall into love and out of love, will have affairs of the heart, and will always do the foolish things with one another which are dictated by our hormones and by our genes, but this can have nothing whatever to do with support for the feminist movement and for women‘s issues. It is possible to be a feminist and be feminine, to be an activist supporter of women‘s causes and at the same time have a personal attraction to a man. Because we men are individually as in- nocent as everybody else over this situation - none of us willed the male- female situation: it just happened that way. So being a feminist is not a man vs. woman sort of thing 7 it is simpiy a matter of redressing an im- balance in the relationship. With that out of the way i would like to touch on four main themes for the remainder of this presentation. They concern: 1) women and economic development; 2) women and political action: 3) women and bodily integrity: 4) women and poverty. Women and Economic Development Let me illustrate the situation of women in the labour force this way: I served as Deputy Minister and as Ministerial Assistant for twelve years. during which time 1 attended many Interprov'incial and Federal-Provincial Conferences. both in my sector and in related sectors. Despite the fact that Health, Education, and Social Service Systems are largely staffed by women, the extent of participation by women hardly varied at those meetings over those twelve years. The consequence has been that throughout those twelve years we dealt almost exclusively at our meet- ings with issues with which men 7 political men â€" were comfortable and secure: work incentives: manpower training; unemployment insurance issues; Federal-Provincial warfare ofa most frivolous nature: welfare costs; but never â€" not ever â€" the important issues of child care, child protection, appropriate care of the aged, family supports, or any of the major service issues in that field. This has been my experience with male perceptions of issues in a field 13