Serving on G7’s Gender Equality Advisory Council is an honour

It seems as if, ready or not, I am to serve on this fascinating new project introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has called together a group of 19 persons from 12 countries, 18 women and one Canadian man, to prepare advice for the G7 leaders on gender equality in today’s world.

Its called the Gender Equality Advisory Council. No pay, but six months of interactions with heroic women from around the world.

Now, in 2018, the idea of radical equality has come round again with new force and urgency. Heavens, in Beijing at the United Nations Conference on Women way back in 1995, I heard the cry “Look at the World Through Women’s Eyes.”

The seven leaders of the democracies (Italy, France, Germany, the UK , the US, Japan and Canada) come to Charlevoix, Quebec June 8 and 9 for their annual meeting. Since Canada is host this year, it sets the agenda. Mr. Trudeau, who as a feminist makes me look pallid, wants to increase gender commitment from his colleagues in the G7 under four headings: economics and employment, violence and conflict, sexual matters, and climate justice.

So, some of the 19 who came to New York last week to attend the 62nd annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN, met up to begin work. They are, every one, accomplished, brave and well-known. No feminist says “no” to our prime minister when called on these days. We all see the opportunity in this moment in time to give the progress of women, and therefore of humanity, a push.

I have to tell you there are two Nobel Laureates in the group (Liberia and Pakistan), one managing director of the IMF, one Canadian ambassador to France, one famous feminist economist who created the term “gender based budgeting,” one head of OXFAM Uganda, one head of the YWCA of Canada, and a Dane who is head of the NGO “Women Deliver’ There is also Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation in Seattle, which has 1,500 employees and access to $40 billion.

Then there is me. Don’t tell me you don’t notice a certain gap. I don’t have a smartphone, I have no staff and my printer is very tired.

But I do have two major strengths.

One is the support of my community. There’s been an outpouring of enthusiasm and congratulations to greet my appointment in Peterborough and the Kawarthas. I have received 250 messages of encouragement, fully 40 per cent from men. (of course, having three sons helps that proportion.) We won’t get too far without the engagement of men. I laughed when Alex Neve, executive director of Amnesty International, wrote, “Watch out, world,” and had all the staff, anglophone and francophone, sign it.

So, after I get the autographs of my sister committee members, I will get to work with them. We need to be bold and produce a strong statement for the leaders to consider and, we hope, adopt. It needs to be fact-laden, pithy and short. I remember Prime Minister Jean Chretien saying to his staff: “This is a very complex issue: I don’t want more than one page on it!”

We will seek some accountability. If it can’t be measured it won’t happen.

The second strength I have is where I come from.

This area is resource-rich with brains, commitment, good will and a profound desire to make a better world. I am consulting with Al and Linda Slavin, Julia Anderson and Prof Haroon-Akram Lodhi, with Green Up, and with Kaitlyn Ittermann of Sustainable Peterborough.

I chose the Working Group Gender and Climate Justice. Already, activists and scholars from Peterborough are in touch. If I look bad for Peterborough on the world stage, it won’t be the faulty of my consultors.

I plan to keep readers informed of this adventure all the way.