Is it just me or do we seem to be going backwards on the evolutionary ladder? Maybe not as a species, but as a society. We sure seem to be sliding back to the primordial pool. If we use the way women are being treated today (as opposed to about fifteen years ago) as a bellwether, you can see how what I'm talking about.

I'm sure you're wondering where I can possibly get off saying things like that, especially living as I do in Canada, where we have social programs a lot people only dream about and a standard of living better then half the world.

It's all relative, you know. Since the 1970's, women have been gradually gaining rights that had been denied them by law since men started treating them like chattel and trade goods thousands of years ago. They managed to begin being treated like equal partners in a marriage instead of the property of the husband. They managed to gain legal control over what happened with their bodies. They started to make advances in the work force through the availability of accessible daycare.

All this coincided with Western governments' willingness to invest in the social safety net starting in the 1960's. In Canada we followed the Western European example of the Welfare State and sewed up a pretty tight safety net. It wasn't until 1980, when Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister, that things began to unravel slightly, but even he wasn't much for tampering with it. It was the Liberal government of Jean Chretian that began the dismantling of programming by cutting funding to all the social programs in search of the all mighty balanced budget.

The mantra of business ("balanced budget, balanced budget") was the death knell of social spending. Funding for daycare, hospitals, job training, life skills, and provincial disability and welfare programs was either frozen or cut. While this may seem not to directly affect women in all cases, single women with children are still the people most likely to draw upon the system for help.

If there is no daycare and a woman doesn't have parents she can leave her children with, how does she hold down a job? She has to be on welfare and try to raise her child with some dignity. Unfortunately, just when the Liberals started to try and make up for their cruelty, they lost the next election in Canada.

I've written extensively on how the Conservative Party of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has, in a year, turned back the clock on social programs in other places, so I'll just cite an example: A new daycare program that works based on tax credits. It's only helpful to those who have a taxable income and doesn't create any new spaces. In other words, people who can afford to pay for daycare out of their income are getting reimbursed, while those who can't afford it in the first place are out of luck.