(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

international women's day

Women’s March takes to Red Deer’s downtown streets

Mar 7, 2020 | 4:22 PM

Around 100 people braved the snow and cold Saturday morning for the second annual Red Deer Women’s March.

The event falls one day ahead of International Women’s Day.

“We really want to ignite conversations about how systems have failed girls, women and non-binary communities,” said co-organizer Sadia Khan. “Our message is that this march is for the community. We want everyone to support this march, and we want men to come out to support the women in their lives.”

One of Khan’s co-organizers, Tessa Murphy, believes what holds society back from greater gender equality is an unwillingness to give up power.

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“Power is in the hands of generally cis-gendered white men, and giving up that power is really challenging when there’s a power imbalance such as there has been for arguably thousands of years,” she said. “It doesn’t shift overnight, it doesn’t shift in 10 years or in a lifetime potentially, so this (march) is carrying on the work people have done before us for hundreds of years.”

Also a co-organizer, Dieulita Datus is an immigrant from Haiti who came to Canada 13 years ago.

“I want to be represented as a black woman, as a Haitian, as an immigrant, and I want to make sure my voice is heard, but to also stand in solidarity with my other sisters,” she said.

On her expectations of equality upon arriving in Canada, Datus admits she had mixed assumptions.

“I knew that coming where I come from in Haiti that there would be more rights available here, that I’d have more freedom to speak out as a single person, and also for queer people to be themselves,” she said. “But in terms of representation of what I look like and who I am, I found that to be the biggest barrier and that sometimes some of us are left behind.”

She added that in 13 years, not much, if anything, has changed.

NDP MLA for Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood, Janis Irwin, also attended the march in Red Deer.

“There are a lot of incredible activists here in Red Deer who are doing great work, and we know we’ve got a lot of work to do to uplift and support women,” stated Irwin, who is the Critic for Women and LGBTQ Issues.

“We have a government right now that is actively undermining women’s rights, whether that’s not supporting universal affordable childcare, or attacks on predominantly female professions like nursing and teachers, the list goes on. We at the NDP and activists here are standing against that; it’s important and it matters.”

The first International Women’s Day was recognized in the early 1900s, while the International Women’s March came to life in January 2017.

A Statistics Canada report from 2018 shows despite improvement over 40 years, women still earn less than men on average.

Between 1976 and 2015, the report says, women’s average income increased from $16,100 to $35,000. Men’s income trended downward between 1976 and 1995 from $48,400 to $42,400, but rebounded to $51,400 by 2015.