SUDBURY - “Is the playing field really level now, as we’re told?” writes bestselling author and award-winning journalist Elizabeth Renzetti, in her 2024 book What She Said: Conversations About Equality.
“Really? When women make up half the population, but take up only 30 per cent of the seats in Canada’s Parliament, and five per cent of CEO offices; when they make a fraction of the salary of male athletes.
“Really? When only one in 10 sexual assault cases reported to police results in a conviction? When domestic violence, which spiked during the pandemic, continues to increase and intensify? When three of the largest mass killings in modern Canadian history were tied to misogyny? When Indigenous women continue to experience violence at shockingly high rates?”
Renzetti is the guest speaker at the Person’s Day Breakfast in Sudbury, an event which is returning after a long hiatus Oct. 18.
Person’s Day marks the day in 1929 when Canada’s highest court of appeal ruled to include women in the legal definition of “persons,” which would lead the way to women’s increased participation in political and public life.
“As I was gathering notes for this book in 2023, my typing fingers became sore,” Renzetti wrote. “My heart became sore.”
Asked in an interview with Sudbury.com why many think women’s rights have been “settled,” when there are still so many disparities, Renzetti said maybe that’s because popular culture has told us that this is the truth.
“We see in popular culture that ‘The Future is Female’ on a t-shirt that a pop star wears, or the Barbie makes more than a billion dollars, and people think ‘Oh I guess everything is hunky-dory now,’” she said.
“It’s not, because in the material world where women live, things are not nearly as close to parity as they should be. And, in fact, women’s rights have been rolling back across the world.”
To see this in action, you only need to look south of the border to the United States, where reproductive rights have been restricted with the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, she said.
Renzetti said this has “had the effect of drastically harming the lives of women across America, many of whom are suffering and some of whom have actually died.”
In Canada, where things seem comparatively good, there is still not universal access to abortion services, with women who live in rural settings finding it much harder to access that kind of care.
“We can't take for granted that what we have now is always going to be this way,” said Renzetti, adding that the Brian Mulroney government “almost succeeded in re-criminalizing” abortion back in 1989.
“So, we have to keep our eye on the ball,” she said.
Also worrying is “medical misogyny,” or the unequal status of women when it comes to health care.
“I cite a report from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada that shows that women's access to life-saving care around heart health lags far behind where it should,” she said.
Heart disease and stroke are the leading cause of premature death in Canadian women, Renzetti writes. But discrepancies in care, and holes in research, mean that the symptoms of heart attacks go unrecognized in half of women who have them.
Women are more likely than men to die in the year after their heart attacks, and they are also more likely to die from strokes.
“Also, medical research still focuses largely on men and the biology of men's bodies, so health research into women's diseases lags far behind,” she said.
While dealing with many serious topics, Renzetti said her book is actually funny in places, as she uses humour (Note: especially read her reflections on menopause, pg. 141).
It also “has a lot of hope in it, because I make a point of talking to people who are making a difference and people who I find inspiring,” she said.
“What She Said: Conversations About Equality” is actually only one of two books Renzetti, a former long-time columnist with the Globe & Mail, released in 2024.
Along with friend and fellow author Kate Hilton, Renzetti released a mystery novel called Bury the Lead, about a big-city journalist who joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country, and finds a community full of secrets and murder.
She said the book sprang out of an idea that came up with one of her pandemic walks with Hilton.
“We knew other people, other writers, who were writing in tandem with each other, and we thought, ‘We both love mysteries. Why don't we do that?” said Renzetti, who is also the author of two previous books, one of fiction and the other non-fiction.
The author said she is pleased to be the guest speaker for the Person’s Day Breakfast, a fundraiser for LEAF, a national charitable organization that works towards ensuring the law guarantees substantive equality for all women, girls, trans and non-binary people.
LEAF “does such amazing work where women butt up against the criminal justice system,” Renzetti said.
Women often “don’t actually get justice” from the criminal justice system and “it's a very dehumanizing experience for them,” she said.
Renzetti also reflects on the fact that it has been less than 100 years since women were legally declared persons.
“Your great-grandma was not a legal person,” she said. “My great-grandma was not a legal person. It’s astonishing to me. So I think we have to remember that great changes get made, but great changes still need to be made.”
LEAF Person’s Day Breakfast takes place at 7:30 a.m. Oct. 18 at Bryston’s on the Park in Copper Cliff. Tickets are $40 and are available at Adoro Olive Oils and Vinegars, Apollo Restaurant and online through Eventbrite.
Renzetti’s book will be available for sale at the event for $30.
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.