Here's Wishing You an Angry International Women's Day

Canada is an anti-female dystopia, Sarah Palin is the ultimate feminist, and even Princess Di can't save us now.

The National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin writes that while she honours those pioneering feminists who won equal rights for women back in the day, she decries the modern strain of feminism that demands women never give up employment opportunities in order to have children. “We have become the harried Econowives of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” she writes, “or, increasingly, econo single mothers. At the same time, fewer women are having children, some by choice, but more by failure to find a mate, or to mate in time.” Egads, dystopia!

If you ever wondered how the Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick celebrates International Women’s Day, it’s by staring at pictures of women she admires. One of them is Princess Diana, a near-saint who spent her days "comforting the ill and frightened," but then she got "married to a man who despised her, and his actions led to her death.” Um, someone better tell the Paris police. It’s that kind of talk that allows ignorant folk to brand feminism as an excuse to blame men for everything.

The Montreal Gazette’s Elizabeth Payne reports that not only is wage inequality between men and women increasing in Canada, but that the drive to educate more women is actually exacerbating the problem. “Highly educated women, for example, face a more severe drop in earning power when they have children,” she writes. “Which means as more women achieve more degrees, as they are now, the earnings penalty for having children will grow, which will increase the wage gap between men and women.” Two steps forward …

The Post’s Barbara Kay lauds Sarah Palin, the “small-town huntin’, fishin’ God-fearin,’ abortion-hatin’ mom of five [who] showed that a woman can break through any glass ceiling she wants without the imprimatur of the feminist politburo.” Like Kheriddin, Kay believes feminism has been hijacked by liberal forces, and that’s why Palin’s conservative-feminist candidacy was so galling to “the Sisterhood.” An alternate reading would be that many feminists were dismayed that one of the most prominent women in the history of U.S. politics was also one of the dimmest.