Girls, to the kitchen. Gays, back to the closet

>by Linda McQuaig
October 16, 2006

When it comes to equality for women, Stephen Harper is all for it — as long as the women are in Afghanistan.

Last May, the Prime Minister told Parliament that ensuring equality rights for women was one of the key reasons Canada is waging war in Afghanistan.

Certainly Harper's claims of championing the rights of burqa-clad women have helped him sell that unpopular war to Canadians.

But when there's no war to peddle, Harper doesn't give a piffle about women's equality. Indeed, he seems downright opposed to it.

In a recent move that got relatively little attention, the Harper government actually removed the word “equality” from the list of goals of Status of Women Canada, ending decades of advocacy for equality on the part of that federal agency.

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