Undercurrent-Issue-Fall-Winter-2014-3

Canada’s Changing Priorities (2006-2014) and What They Mean ForThe Promotion of Gender Equality in DevelopmentBy: Rebecca TiessenINTRODUCTION" In 2010, as part of the Muskoka Initiative, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced thatCanada is committed to tackling high maternal and child mortality rates with increased funding for amaternal and child health initiative. In 2013, Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird announced that theCanadian government would “fight the scourge of child, early and forced marriage” in line with thegovernment’s priority of “protecting the rights of all girls and helping them fulfil their potential” (Baird,2013). In light of these important priorities and an international reputation of Canada’s commitment toaddress equality between women and men, what have been Canada’s achievements in the promotion ofgender equality? In this paper, I argue that in spite of the identification of important issues surroundingwomen’s health and children’s rights, the Harper Conservatives have failed to make gender equality theirgoal, and have instead cast women and girl children as objects of foreign policy discourse. In so doing,we are witnessing: 1. the instrumentalization of women and girls for foreign policy goals; 2. genderessentialism in which women and girl children are exclusively relegated to the status of vulnerablegroups in need of charitable efforts; and 3. a re-framing of Canada’s role in the world, not as animportant development donor but as a charitable state bent on saving ‘vulnerable’ people. In this paper, Idocument the erosion of gender equality between 2006 and 2014 under the Harper Conservationsbeginning with the erasure of the language of gender equality and the adoption of the terminology ofequality between women and men. Other important events that have signalled an instrumentalist andcharitable approach to development including the highlighting of women’s rights as a rationale fordefense spending in Afghanistan (Swiss, 2012), the framing of the maternal health initiative (Carrier andTiessen, 2013) and the 2013 commitments to protecting girl children from early and forced marriage." The promotion of gender equality has been a priority in Canadian foreign aid dating back to the1960s when then-CIDA 1 project evaluators took note of the importance of diverse gender roles incommunities and the relationship between successful projects and involvement of men and women inthe project design and implementation. Canada’s formal commitments to address gender equality beganwith several initiatives that culminated in the development of the Women in Development (WID) andGender Equity Division in 1994, and a revised and expanded 1984 WID Policy to include the concept ofgender equity, effectively creating the 1995 Policy on Women in Development and Gender Equity (DFATD2013). Several years later, CIDA developed the 1999 Policy on Gender Equality (GE), which explicitlyarticulated its support for the achievement of equality between women and men to ensure sustainabledevelopment in the 21st century (DFATD 2013). In the GE Policy, gender equality was treated as acrosscutting theme and an integral part of all CIDA policies, programs and projects (DFATD 2013). Inresponse to an evaluation of CIDA’s gender work, an Action Plan on Gender Equality 2010-2013 wascreated to guide the Agency in planning, implementation and reporting on gender equality (GE) results.The Action Plan provided opportunities for more and improved gender training for government officials,improved implementation and reporting strategies as well as development education to share results ofgender equality programming with Canadians. In addition, a framework and plan of action for thepromotion of Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) was introduced by Status of Women Canada to furthereducate many government officials on issues of gender equality and other intersecting identity factorswhich contribute to inequality and participation in decision-making (such as class, religion, race, etc).The GBA+ was introduced as an analytical tool for the federal government in advancing gender equality!"B9"AL!F?"*+)"M%9%2&%9"B9*)49%N39%'"D)$)'3-O)9*"#5)9P7"QMBD#R"0%;"O)45)2"0&*+"*+)"D)-%4*O)9*"3S"