Is
the underfunding of male issues rampant discrimination or is it just a
matter of men not thinking it is required or not knowing it exists?
Based on some of the titles shown my guess is the audience for reading
these documents is minuscule and the trustees of the grant money are not
very particular to whom they give funding. Clement needs to start
looking at his budget as we are going to enter into an era of austerity
in the not-too-distant future.MJM
FEMINISTS HAVE ACQUIRED ANOTHER ACCESS TO TAXPAYER’S MONEY
Feminists
howled with rage in September 2006, when the Conservative government
cut their advocacy and research funding, doled out to them for over 30
years by the Women’s Program at status of Women Canada. However, REAL
Women has discovered that feminist research is still thriving in Canada
on the taxpayer’s dollar. Barrels full of money are being handed to
feminists by Industry Canada, under its Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council (SSHRC) formed in 1977 to fund “levels of research
excellence in Canada”. SSHRC website states it “encourages the deepest
levels of inquiry”. It funds many fields such as anthropology,
literature, religion, history, early childhood education, human rights,
family planning, family law, language, women’s studies, and gender
studies. The SSHRC has an annual budget of $659 million (up from $93
million in 1995). It is administered by federal government bureaucrats
together with representatives from several universities across Canada. SSHRC has given grants for many, many feminist research and gender
studies, over the years. For example, since 1998 SSHRC has funded 1,494
research projects in the area of gender issues and 1,792 on women’s
issues.
As
an example, the feminist organization Canadian Research Institute for
the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) which had been funded by the Status of
Women for 24 straight years was given a $1 million grant in January 2010
from SSHRC for a “Fem North Net research project”. Despite this huge
grant, CRIAW craftily appeared before the House of Commons Status of
Women Committee on May 26, 2010 moaning its loss of funding from the
Status of Women. Sunera Thobani (former president of the feminist
umbrella group, The National Action Committee on the Status of Women)
received $57,035.00 between 2003 and 2006 from SSHRC to study
“television representations of women in the war on terrorism”.
Feminist
professor Angela Campbell of McGill University received $70,000 from
SSHRC between 2006–2009 to interview the “wives” of polygamous Winston
Blackmore at Bountiful B.C. She testified at the polygamy challenge now
being heard before the B.C. Supreme Court, that these women led happy,
healthy lives, and that polygamy should be decriminalized. In
cross-examination, however, Professor Campbell admitted that she had
done little fact-checking on the women’s stories, nor inquired whether
they had been instructed by their “husband” Blackmore to do the
interviews. Some research.
Centre
for Feminist Research at York University, Toronto, received $145,742 to
study “Women’s Human Rights, Macroeconomics, and Policy Choices”. This
centre also received a grant of $401,537 for a project called “Women,
equality, and fiscal equality: gender analysis of taxes, benefits, and
budgets”. Recipient of this grant, Kathleen Lahey, professor at Queen’s
University, spoke before the House of Commons Budget Finance Committee
last fall basing her arguments on this research paper. REAL Women also
appeared before the same finance committee but with a brief that was
written without financial aid by the government.
The
thousands of other grants include: Implementing the feminist vision:
case studies of four feminist organizations; Queer conceptions:
re-shaping cultural meanings and experiences of reproduction and
sexuality in Canada; Lesbian families challenging the public school
system; Queer women on the net; Motivations and emotions of women in
pole-dancing classes; An intergenerational study of Montreal queer and
feminist performance artists; Transmasculine parenting experiences;
Multi-scalar forms of feminist organizing; The politics of body hair...
gender and religious identities in Middle Eastern salons; and an
analysis of Vancouver’s strip-tease industry 1945-1975.
A serious in-depth review of funding for “women’s” and “gender” issues at SSHRC is long overdue.
Please
write to Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and your MP, to request SSHRC stop funding these absurd feminist
studies.
Their addresses are as follows:
Your M.P.House of Commons, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6
- Hon Tony Clement Rt Hon Stephen Harper
Minister of Industry Prime Minister
235 Queen Street 80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0H5 Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Fax 613-992-0302 Fax 613-941-6900
Since 1998 SSHRC has funded 1,494 research projects in the area of gender issues and 1,792 on women’s issues.
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