In early June, 2007, I was one of seven Saskatchewan women who made their way to Boston to record the vocal tracks for an ecofeminist recording project, My Heart Is Moved. In all, 85 women from ten different bio-regions of North America – many of whom had never before met – gathered to sing songs based on the Earth Charter, a global peoples’ document on sustainable living.

On September 25, 2006, Prime Minister Steven Harper’s government announced a cut of $5 million to the budget for Status of Women Canada (SWC), the agency responsible for follow-up on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

I want to start by honouring those women who have lived the experience about which I presume to speak.

Women are the fastest-growing prison population world-wide. This is not accidental. Canada has been one of the first countries to be impacted by the now-globalized capitalist laws and policies that facilitate the desire for cash and products. These policies are destroying our social-safety nets - from social and health services to economic and education standards and availability. As we have recognized very concretely by the change of our mission, these laws and policies are increasingly coming into conflict with peoples’ lives.

Over the past century, International Women’s Day has evolved from radical protests for women’s political, economic and social rights to a day for celebrating women’s achievements. In Canada, nowadays, it is not unusual for organizations to cheer prominent women who have reached the heights of success in such areas as sports, volunteerism and business. Has International Women’s Day become merely a time to reflect on how far (some) women have come?

Twenty-five years ago Canada signed the most comprehensive human-rights treaty on women’s rights, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This was an enormous accomplishment for women around the globe who had worked for many decades to establish a human-rights treaty that specifically addressed the persistent and systemic discrimination against women.

Beginning in the fifteenth-century silver exploitation of Potosi, and continuing to today, women have been involved in intricate and often invisible ways in the Bolivian mining sector. Dawn Paley reports from Bolivia.

So, 15 years on, what can we say about the École Polytechnique massacre, and the level of male violence against women? The threat of misogynist violence continues to colour the lives of most women. As the sharp edges of anger and shock over the massacre are dulled by time and new horrors, we risk forgetting that misogyny kills, and that it is both endemic and epidemic to Canadian society.

Poverty is the women’s biggest challenge, and even their tough resourcefulness cannot overcome the impossibilities this condition creates in their lives. Yet the women, many of whom are racialized immigrants, have insistent dreams of better and more independent lives. Managing rising levels of stress and ill health, Toronto’s low-income women try to make the impossible possible.

There appears to be a grotesque hypocrisy between the government trying to de-list progressive feminist, environmental and animal rights groups while permitting so-called charities that have a right-wing, patriarchal and economistic ideology to engage in highly political activities. It’s time for the Canada Revenue Agency to keep up with the times and to provide a progressive, balanced, and fair voice in its implementation of Canada’s charity laws.

We must vigorously fight off the chill drifting up from the U.S. and affirm that abortions must be legal, safe and accessible. With women’s rights under attack globally, if we don’t stay vigilant and vocal, we risk sleepwalking into a world without choice.