The annual conference of REAL Women of Saskatchewan took place in Saskatoon on April 20. Conference participants heard talks by two distinguished women.
Chantal Divine, wife of provincial Premier Grant Divine, said that the principles of REAL Women were very close to her heart because this organization “is the voice of thousands of women who believe in family values. The family is besieged by a multitude of destructive influences. Father is on night shift, mother is on day shift, and the children shift for themselves.”
UNDERMINING THE FAMILY
She spoke out against school sex education and universal day care, saying that they undermine the family. She conceded that many women have to work, but she still maintained that many of those who promote universal day care are deliberately trying to weaken family values and increase dependence on the state. The priority she has tried to maintain in her own home, she said, is “God first, family second, and business third.”
SUPREMACISTS
Judy Anderson, national president of REAL Women, declared that, “female supremacists’ have taken over government, education, and even the churches.
They have a collectivist agenda identical to that of the NDP, she maintained. They deny the work of motherhood, for example, by promoting universal, state-supported day care.
She challenged her audience to turn feminist language around, whenever possible, to promote their own beliefs. REAL Women have often been accused of being ‘homophobic’; they can easily the opposition to them of being ‘home-phobic’.
Affirmative action in Canada, she asserted, means institutionalized racism and sexism. It is based on a male model of achievement and aims at the elimination of the traditional family. REAL Women reject the belief that men and women are exactly alike (androgyny).
RADICALIZED
“Morgantaler radicalized me,” Mrs. Anderson said. She became involved in the REAL Women when he opened an abortion ‘clinic’ in her Toronto neighbourhood. She regards abortion as a great put-down of women. “When [women] stop being caring and protective, when they forget who and what they are to the extent of killing their own children, they lose their true identity. Now that there is no federal law concerning abortion,” she pointed out, “there is an opportunity for provincial government to step in and pass positive measures of their own.”
