According to Catalyst Canada, a nonprofit organization that focuses on expanding opportunities for women and business, Canadian women earn $0.82 to every $1 earned by men. That’s marginally better than the U.S.’s $0.78 for every $1, but sets the gap in Canada at 18 per cent — much higher than in other countries, specifically in Europe.
Next up, Harper dramatically cut the funding of what was Canada’s most important body for promoting gender equity, Status of Women Canada. Status of Women Canada provided advocacy, research and lobbying on behalf of women’s groups. The government closed 12 out of 16 regional offices of SWC and their operating budget was cut by 38%. Changes were imposed to the criteria for funding for the Status of Women Canada’s Women’s Program that essentially barred advocacy and lobbying groups from receiving funding. Many women-run NGOs no longer receive funding because they combine advocacy with other services — like women’s rape crisis centres advocating for an end to violence against women. The icing on the cake? The word equality was removed from the Status of Women Canada mandate.
Here’s a question that no one ever has a good answer for: why are cashiers forced to stand? Who decided people need to stand for 4 hours straight between breaks when they don’t MOVE?
If you find out, let me know so I can punch them.
Good question! It’s actually because cashiers sitting down appears lazy and unproductive to the kinds of customers who would complain about that sort of thing! Americans generally can’t accept when retail people don’t look like their job is excessively hard, so cashiers aren’t allowed to sit. It’s been shown that standing for so long, even on padded rubber mats many cashiers have, has a detrimental effect on the knees.
The American retail atmosphere is very different from most other developed nations. I’ve heard Americans describe grocery cashiers in Europe as “rude” and “lazy” because they get to sit down and they don’t have someone bagging your groceries for you. I’ve seen many Europeans genuinely shocked at how aggressive and in-your-face American retail employees are and even more surprised to learn we’re forced to be that way by our employers. Hired spies called “secret shoppers” are used to assess the quality of service, and at any time if you don’t greet and question every customer, if you don’t constantly have a smile on your face, if you’re sitting down for any reason, you could get fired. It’s a constant system of pomp and circumstance awash in paranoia meant to put us in early graves.
This system is seen as desirable by the people in charge because it ostensibly gets more labour out of people for the same salary and it drives many to quit. It’s much, much cheaper to hire and train new people and use them up than it is to pay the wage of someone who’s been with the company a year or two.
at my job we just got an e-mail from the head that we are now not allowed to lock the door when we’re closed if there are still people in the store, and we are not allowed to tell people we are closed, AND we got a district wide scolding because someone heard a retail worker be excited to go home.
let me repeat they got mad at people who wanted to go home from a place they are only at because they are paid to be there.
no one ever says that Rome needed help from aliens to build their empire
#l laughed for days when i found out that #ancient egyptians used water to reduce friction and move blocks for distances #and that this was literally DEPICTED ON THEIR HIEROGLYPHICS #but ~western archaeologists~ #thought that the pouring of water depicted ~superstitious rituals~ #jfc
As an archeology major, I can vouch for this being absolutely true:
Any time we see something we don’t understand, we mark it down as ritual purposes. It’s actually a catch-all euphemism for “We have absolutely no clue what these people were doing here yet so until we work it out we’ll pretend it was something to do with their religion.”
And yeah, sometimes it is a white people thing. When white people went into Canada the natives introduced them to the delights of maple syrup. The white people asked “Well, how did you ever work out this sap was edible and delicious.”
The native people responded, “Oh, well, Squirrel showed us.”
White people: Hahahaha They’re off on that totem animal spirit guide thing again.
It wasn’t until this century that scientists actually observed squirrels in that area cutting holes in sugar maples, waiting for the sap to crystallize, and eating it.
The native people were actually being literal and the white people thought they were being metaphorical. Sigh.
The October 19 election will be the first to happen under the Harper government’s controversial Fair Elections Act.
Justice David Stinson of the Ontario Superior Court recentlydenied an injunction sought by the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Federation of students, meaning the act will be in full force on October 19.
Please, please, please, even if you’re not Canadian, I’m begging you to pay attention to what is happening in Canada.
Our current Prime Minister has committed election fraud at least three times. He considers missing and murdered indigenous women a non-issue, he’s cutting funding to schools, to social security, he’s shut down parliament because things weren’t going his way, he keeps a stranglehold on scientists so that he can keep denying global warming, he’s taken Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol, and he’s pushed dozens of new laws and amendments to limit freedom of speech and protest.
PLEASE pay attention to Canada. We can’t handle another four years of him, socially financially or internationally. If the international community is paying attention, we might stand a chance.
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