JUST WRITE!
No gender bias. Period.
By Tracey Coveart/The Scugog Standard

It’s 2012 and I’m hoping this is the year Canadians will sprout a pair of testicles.
_Another festive season has come and gone; another year when our abundant goodwill prevented us from celebrating Christmas (a holiday that has largely been stripped of its religious symbolism) because some people find the root word of our festive lexicon offensive. An Ottawa-area school replaced its annual Christmas concert with a February crafts night/non-denominational winter concert, while the rest of us decorated ‘holiday’ trees.
_As Canadians, we pride ourselves on our forbearance. It is a hallmark of this great country. But why do we tolerate - accept, accommodate, embrace - every way of life but our own?
_‘Christmas bashing’ is not new in our learning institutions. I was discouraged from saying ‘Merry Christmas’ when my children were in elementary school. But there is a more insidious move afoot in our public education system - gender discrimination in the guise of ‘religious tolerance’ - and it infuriates and horrifies me.
_In this country, we do not openly or legally discriminate against women. Thanks to the tireless work of the suffragettes, we of the female gender are no longer considered ‘lesser beings.’
_Equality in this country was a hard-earned freedom. Social activist/politician/author Nellie McClung (1873-1951) and other feminists fought for privileges that women today take for granted: the right to vote, the right to run for public office, and marital and property rights. Thanks to The Famous Five - Nellie, Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy and Louise McKinney, who in 1927 successfully petitioned the government to clarify the term ‘Persons’ in Section 24 of the British North America Act 1867 - women are no longer disenfranchised. These women and the articulate, educated, forceful females who followed made sure that we are entitled to an education, to a life outside the traditional family structure and to equal pay for work of equal value. We are permitted - encouraged - to do everything a man does, often with greater success. We walk beside our male counterparts, not three paces behind.
_In this country, we do not throw gasoline in the face of little girls as they make their way to school. We do not imprison women for being the victim of rape. We do not stone wives to death for driving a car or venturing out in public without a male escort. And yet, I fear that Canadian women may be taking a dangerous step backward - or rather having a dangerous step backward imposed upon us.
_Tempers flared last year when it came to light that Toronto’s Valley Park Middle School - in direct contravention of the Ontario Education Act, which bans religious services during school hours - is designating cafeteria space every Friday afternoon for traditional Islamic prayer for 300 to 400 students. Other religious groups - including Hindus and Muslims - protested that people of the Islamic faith were receiving preferential treatment.
_Putting aside the argument of whether organized prayer belongs in school, what few news stories failed to mention was the fact that during these ritual prayer sessions, girls were forced to pray behind boys for the purposes of ‘modesty’ and menstruating girls - considered ‘unclean’ and thus banned from participating - sat upright at the back, ‘excused’ from prayer.
_In a July 27 article in Macleans, Emma Teitel wrote, “People are angry and I understand why: ... religious accommodation shouldn’t accommodate sexism, and tolerance should never tolerate intolerance.”
_Bravo Ms. Teitel. But what is the Toronto District School Board thinking? Not only is this a blatant invasion of privacy (‘Hello. My name is Tracey and I have my period’), since when did girls become second-class citizens in our schools?
_The TDSB argued that, “freedom of religion in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms supersedes the Education Act. As a public school board, we have a responsibility and an obligation to accommodate faith needs.”
_The needs of all faiths? Including those that segregate and discriminate against young women who may or may not be sporting a tampon?
_I once had a boss who told me that “Women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.” Do we really want to go down that road again?