By Cynthia Oka
As the 20th anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre approaches, I challenge myself and all of us who identify as feminists and social justice activists to deepen and broaden our analysis of violence against women. While we should continue to honour victims and survivors, let us not forget that physical brutalization is only one of the many faces of violence against women and that its occurrence is contextualized and made possible by much more pervasive conditions of violence against women – particularly indigenous women, women of colour and poor women.
We need to expand our understanding of violence against women to include the naturalized limitations, deprivations and hyper-exploitation characterizing women’s realities – particularly indigenous women, women of colour, and poor women – that deepen their vulnerability to more overt and widely recognized forms of violence against women. The danger with fixating on sensationalized instances of violence against women is that we may extremize it in the public consciousness, i.e. make them seem like outlier experiences, rather than the outcome of systemic and political processes insistently shaping the social position of women as a devalued, commodified and exploited group of human beings in our society. Furthermore, when we focus on individual and isolated incidents of violence against women it becomes easier to externalize blame (either on a few “sick” individuals or men as homogenous group) rather than hold all of us accountable for the ways in which we, as a society, continue to permit and depend on violence against women as a silent, invisible precondition of our access to the comforts of “First World” citizenship. For instance, women – as middle class consumers, as careerists depending on the services of the indentured live-in caregivers, as beneficiaries of pharmaceutical experimentation done on the bodies of Third World women – are also perpetrators of violence against women. People of all genders are complicit in the perpetuation of patriarchy – not just those who seem to logically benefit from it – and therefore are all responsible for its eradication.
Because gender oppression (not only of women, but of all peoples who do not conform to the dominant male/female gender roles and prescribed heterosexuality) is shaped by colonialism, racism and capitalism, all women are not susceptible to the same kinds of violence. This is especially true in respect to state and state-sponsored, i.e. “lawful”, violence which is facilitated by the systemic impoverishment and degradation of populations that have already been marked for disappearance, discipline, exploitation and war. It is incredibly important to remember that contrary to its self-peddled image as protector, the state has proven itself over and over again to be the greatest purveyor of violence against women.
Violence against indigenous women
Violence against women in white-settler states like Canada is inseparable from its historical and present context of ongoing colonization. Although the federal government has issued a formal apology for the institution of residential schools which deliberately attempted to destroy any semblance of indigenous identity, culture and community, it continues to legislate and participate in the victimization of indigenous women. The following situations are illustrative, though definitely not exhaustive, of ongoing assaults on indigenous women’s self-determination and dignity.
1 in 20 Aboriginal children are currently living under the custody of the government, representing 50% of all children in care. And contrary to BC law, only a tiny percentage of these children are actually placed in Aboriginal homes. This means that the practice of child apprehension by the state systemically targets indigenous mothers and disproportionately affects indigenous communities. Much like its residential school predecessor, the child apprehension system removes the responsibility (and therefore, power) to transfer values and life skills out of the hands of the child’s mother and community and invests it in the state. The child apprehension system clearly targets poor women, as middle and upper class women do not face nearly the same extent of barriers to parenting and are able to access private services when they do struggle with it. 42.7% of indigenous women live in poverty, which is double the rate of non-indigenous women, reflecting the ravages of colonization and the toll of displacement as access to their traditional lands, resources and livelihoods continue to be eroded by avaricious state and capital interests. The adoption of legalistic and professionalized language around familial and childhood development norms obscure the fact that this practice is essentially a colonial and classist manifestation of violence of against women whereby the bonds between mother and child, one generation and the next, which are so necessary to community and collective identity, are continually rendered precarious and under assault.
Violent state intervention in the family lives of indigenous women also includes the policing of Indian Status membership through indigenous women’s bodies. Indigenous women have historically and presently had to navigate extremely complicated rules and regulations to maintain or reclaim Indian Status both for themselves and their children. An excellent overview of these laws can be found here.
Indigenous women are also highly over-represented in the incarcerated population; although they account for only 3% of the female population in Canada, they represent 29% of women incarcerated in federal prisons. Poverty, mental illness, addiction and history of prior abuse are significant contributing factors propelling these women into conflict with the law. Provincially, the statistics are even more disturbing. Between 2004-2005, indigenous women accounted for 54% of all female prisoners in Alberta; 83% in Manitoba and the Yukon; 87% in Saskatchewan.
At the same time, racism, sexism and colonial entitlement converge to make indigenous women extremely vulnerable to individual acts of violence (particularly by white men) being committed under the blind eye of the state: since 1980, up to 3000 indigenous women have gone missing or murdered across Canada with 500 of the outstanding cases originating in BC alone. A Manitoba Justice inquiry in the murder case of Helen Betty Osborne recognized, for instance, the stereotyping of indigenous women as “promiscuous” or “sexually available”, which leads to the condoning of their perpetrators’ violent acts.
The degradation, use and abuse of indigenous women’s bodies and roles in their communities have been an integral component of the Canadian colonial imperative. Apart from the legacies of interpersonal, intracommunal and familial violence imposed by colonial institutions, indigenous women are also unsafe from the (white-settler) state, which has as its foundational logic the political disappearance of indigenous power, identity and self-determination.
Violence against migrant women
Women with citizenship in this country – whether we work or not – can go about our daily business without worrying about our right to occupy the public sphere (even if our unequal participation and influence in that sphere is to be lamented). Meanwhile, undocumented women who have been driven out of their homelands must contend constantly with the threat and reality of detention and deportation. The reasons for displacement also typically originate with state and corporate-sponsored violence, such as in the case of Mexico, where NAFTA-induced land grabs have displaced millions of indigenous peasants and transformed them from independent farmers to urban slum dwellers dependent on maquiladora employment with horrific conditions of labour or migrants risking death, imprisonment or expulsion as undocumented workers in the United States or Canada. One of the large-scale raids conducted by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) in spring 2009 rounded up nine women workers of Lakeside Produce– one of whom was pregnant – and detained them in the Windsor County Jail.
Border rapes are also increasingly being documented along the US-Mexico border, where 10,653 women were detained in 2008 alone. The immense discretionary powers of border officials, heightened by their militarization in the years following 9/11, combined with the utter lack of protection and desperation of the women involved, have understandably resulted in under-reporting of these incidents. While for these reasons there is no conclusive account of border rape victims, advocates counselling some of these women have reported that while some of the rapes have resulted in pregnancies, the women in detention are not permitted to access abortion services. We as residents of Canada should be concerned, firstly because Canada is a member and beneficiary of NAFTA and secondly, because of Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States which prohibits displaced peoples from making a refugee application in Canada if they have passed through the United States.
Furthermore, there is Canada’s unspoken policy of refusing refugee status to Mexican women fleeing violence under the rationale that their lives would not be in danger if they were deported because the Mexican state is able to provide “adequate” protection. As part of this policy, CBSA thugs are known to lurk around Ontario shelters in wait for undocumented women, and at least one woman has been killed since her refugee status application was refused and she was deported back to Mexico.
Immigrant women of colour in general are disproportionately commodified as cheap, flexible labour in the textile, electronic and care-giving industries. My mother is one of these women. She came to Canada as a registered nurse and as a result of Canada’s decertification policy, has worked as a low-waged electronic assembler for the past fourteen years. Two years ago, she underwent carpal tunnel surgery and lost full use of her right hand as a consequence of the intense, repetitive and monotonous labour demanded by her job. She was laid off the following year. At least my mom’s got her citizenship at this point. Unlike her, many Filipina women are forced into indentured labour under the Live-in Caregiver Program, where access to citizenship is conditional upon completion of two years of service as a live-in caregiver. As has been documented by the Philippine Women’s Centre, live-in caregivers are subject to arbitrary treatment by their employers, some working for as low as $2 per hour and are constantly threatened by the prospect of deportation over draconian regulations and circumstances out of their control.
The spectre of deportation is a powerful deterrent for women living and working with precarious status to report experiences of violence, even as that very same precarity makes them more vulnerable than the average female citizen to abuse of all sorts.
Violence against poor women
In the case of BC, it is deeply ironic that the same government responsible for maintaining the highest child poverty rate in the country (18.8% or 156,000 poor children) is also the one entrusting itself with the care of children apprehended from poor homes. The child poverty rate is an indicator of the impoverishment of single mothers in this province, as 9 out of 10 single-parent homes are led by women and these mothers make only 75% of the income of single fathers. The lack of affordable, accessible and quality universal childcare further curtails poor women’s options in accessing education and more secure employment.
Poor women are also severely impacted by the aggressive erosion of (already insufficient) affordable housing as a result of gentrification and evidenced by the soaring levels of homelessness in B.C. – nearly 12,000 in 2007 according to the coroner’s office. The representation of women in the homeless population is likely to be underestimated, however, as homeless women are more likely than men to use alternative forms of shelter, for instance staying at transition houses or with friends (what’s commonly become known as “couch surfing”). These women are much more vulnerable to domestic, sexual and physical abuse, and many suffer from mental illnesses.
The feminization of poverty needs to be recognized as a systemic form of violence against women which stems first and foremost from the devaluation of women’s lives, bodies and labour. Indeed, women continue to be burdened (and stigmatized) with the essential yet unpaid work of care-giving and reproducing society, which also amounts to a massive subsidization of the capitalist labour market.
Violence against women living in the South
Corporate theft of land, destruction of natural resources, conversion of the subsistence commons to mass export production fields, dumping of toxic waste, nuclear testing, special economic (aka sweatshop) zones, patenting of local organic material, unethical pharmaceutical testing, privatization of basic necessities of life (such as water), the withholding of access to life-saving medication…
These are all systemic violent processes affecting people living in the South. Women are disproportionately affected as they are most likely to be hyper-exploited as cheap labour in manufacturing factories, while having to shoulder in addition the “external costs” of privatization (i.e. disappearance of essential services, such as health care) in their communities. Many women end up being forced to migrate – both through legal and illegal channels – to other countries in order to work and send money home to their families. I come from Indonesia, where around 400,000 people are registered as migrant workers annually, 70% of them women. The desperate circumstances of these women place them in much greater risk of being trafficked and/or forced into sex work in order to buy their liberty back.
Population control initiatives that parallel the “greening” movement in North America also target the reproductive choices of women of colour in the South as the root cause of environmental destruction (i.e. overpopulation combined with scarce resources). This is not to say of course that women should not be availed of the full range of choices in respect to their reproductive capacity, including birth control, but it is another to completely distort reality and demonize precisely those who are the most victimized by environmental degradation. Militarization, industrialization, the extreme mal-distribution of political power and economic resources between North and South that is the consequence of colonialism…these are the endemic and destructive processes that need to be stopped and reversed.
Militarization, in its various faces as invasion, occupation, nuclear testing, etc. is also a form of violence against women. Women are affected not only as combatants and unintended civilian casualties, but as members of their communities with the responsibility to patch life up, sustain it, and keep it going under the direst circumstances. Contrary to the “women’s liberation” rhetoric peddled out by opportunistic politicians in favour of bringing and keeping troops in Afghanistan, for instance, youngest member of the Afghan parliament, Malalai Joya demands the withdrawal of both Canadian and American troops which have brought about “night raids, torture, and aerial bombardment” killing hundreds of Afghani civilians.
As geographically removed as the women may be from us, their struggles are intimately intertwined with ours. The government we petition to provide us with protection is very often the same one from whom they need protection.
They may not be named, but they will not be forgotten.
As a survivor of physical and sexual violence, a woman of colour, an immigrant, and a low-income single mother, I have come to see myself as a responsible agent in understanding the roots and complex realities constituting “violence against women” - to understand as fully as possible the historical, social, economic, cultural and political processes through which I was victimized, and how other women who are positioned differently from me have come to be victimized. I am responsible, not in the sense of being culpable, but in the sense that I retain and reclaim my ability to respond, and to choose to respond in ways that enhance mine and others’ self-determination. My story and identity today are as much the product of a conscious struggle for liberation as it is of victimization.
There are many more women who because of their oppressive contexts are made much more vulnerable to sexual and physical violence. Disabled women are 150% more likely to experience sexual abuse than so-called able-bodied women. As a result of their dependency on family members and professionals, their agency to protect themselves or get away from their abusers is seriously compromised. Moreover, the construction of disabled women as “non-sexual” and “incompetent” makes it more likely that they will not access the necessary sex education to make self-determined choices and will not be believed even if they do report incidents of gendered violence. Abuse (and trauma from abuse) can also lead to disability, introducing a vicious cycle that deepens women’s vulnerability to victimization. Earlier this year, for instance, I worked with a woman who was so severely brutalized by her husband that she lost her ability to speak.
The convergence of sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism also make transgendered women another extremely vulnerable group. As of November 14, 2009, the number of transgender-related deaths globally has reached 101, more than doubling the count for 2008 (47) and disproportionately affecting transgendered women of colour. Click here to see their names.
A gathering storm
The brutalization and murder of women should rightly inspire horror, outrage and grief. Yet as we remember the victims of the Polytechnique massacre, let us also search out the stories and lives buried deep below the radar of public consciousness; let us honour also the ones we were not supposed to see – much less, grieve.
We will not eradicate violence against women without dismantling the oppressive colonial and capitalist systems that necessitate it. We must widen and deepen our vision to include and re-centre the normalized conditions of violence under which indigenous women, women of colour, disabled women, queer and transgendered women, poor women, and women in the South are fighting to survive, for these conditions are also the building blocks of our entitlement to comfort, “security”, a consumerist way of life and state protection. One of the first things we can do is to participate in making visible the lives and realities we are compelled daily to forget, and the deaths we are not supposed to grieve.
Let us have the confidence to believe in and work towards a liberated future.