You see, immigrants face plenty of different struggles when coming to a new country. Things like learning a new language and finding employment can be extremely daunting tasks, just to name a couple. So when you think of young women who are immigrants or refugees, do you think they are concerned with feminism? Think about it, young women immigrants probably aren’t going to be worried about getting equal pay as men when they don’t even have a job to begin with! It’s understandable, when some of these women who immigrate from countries where they’re not even allowed to vote aren’t interested in advocating equal opportunity when they’re just interested in opportunity, period (Ladha, 2001, p. 140).
After young women spend enough time in Canada and are less worried about having simple opportunities there are a few things that can be done to help them become more aware of the Feminist perspective, and one of them is to educate them. If new immigrants knew women experience more adversely the results of cutbacks to social benefits (Mullaly, 2007, p. 242) among other things, I think they would be more interested in supporting Feminism. Once this is done there is hope that maybe they can become advocators themselves and educate new immigrants in the future, thus creating a cycle of awareness amongst new immigrants that was lacking previously. None of this should be confused with the idea that feminists would be shoving their ideas and beliefs down anyones throat, just simply educating. Obviously new immigrants (or anyone for that matter) are entitled to their own opinion and of course they can either reject or accept the feminist perspective. Just knowing that people are educated on these issues and that they will continue to persist unless something is done, is often times good enough.
References:
Ladha, A. (2001). "Immigrant young women as feminists?". Inanna Publications and Education Inc, 139-141.
Mullaly, B. (2007). The New Structural Social Work (3rd ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada.
-Yodit D
Great post Yodit!
ReplyDeleteI agree; I think most people in society (women and men) would be more willing to support feminism if there was more information avaliable about what it actually is. Also, I liked how you pointed out that immigrant women have more important concerns than whether or not they identify as feminist. If your basic needs are not met (like food and shelter) you aren't going to be concerned about less urgant things, like politics.
-Julianna
Good post Yodit!
ReplyDeleteWomen in other countries, like you said, have barely any rights and freedoms, so coming to Canada where women are able to do a lot more than they once were in their homeland is such a blessing. There most likely is little to no knowledge of feminisim and that is understandable. With more education on the matter, there may be more immigrant and refugee feminist in the future!
Jenn S
I like your post. I think we as canadians can forget that some cultures just aren't interested in the concerns of feminism when they immigrate. I think though, that after immigrant women spend some time here, some of them will experience a culture clash. We see this happening when we hear of stories like Mohammad Shafia, who murdered his first wife and their 3 daughters in an "honour killing".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061842/Mohammad-Shafia-murdered-daughter-honour-killing-said-hed-again.html
So I think that while it may not be a primary concern when they arrive in Canada, they may find their previous culture clashing with the Canadian cultural landscape. I think there are a lot of good consequences of this, but there are a few sad ones also.
Thanks for this post. :)
Bambi
This was a very enlightening post, Yodit. I never thought of it this way. I always thought "of course women are going to want equal rights as men regardless of whether or not they are immigrants or were born in Canada." But its true, they are probably just happy getting any sort of opportunities and aren't really concerned on whether or not they get paid the same as men.
ReplyDeleteThat last comment was from me.
ReplyDelete- Michal
@Bambi Wow, thank you for bringing this up because it was something that I had totally disregarded while writing this entry. That story is a really horrific example of culture clash and makes a point that perspectives such as the feminist one should sometimes be introduced to certain groups of immigrants gradually rather than thrown in their face because it could be something totally new for them. Thank you so much for adding this :)
ReplyDelete- Yodit