Leadership in Focus: Shelagh Day

By Elisa Birnbaum
November 2, 2009

This month in our Leadership in Focus series, we feature Shelagh Day, a passionate advocate who has dedicated her life's work to promoting women's human rights in Canada. Her experience is vast, including posts as director of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and founding president of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). She currently holds the dual roles of director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre and co-chair of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA). Her tireless efforts have resulted in numerous accolades, the most recent being the highly esteemed Governor General's Persons Award.

CharityVillage: What do you see as the main challenges facing the nonprofit sector today?

Shelagh Day: In one way or another, since I moved out of academia in early 70s, and with some interruptions, I've been in the nonprofit sector. I think one of the main challenges today is that government has withdrawn support from the sector so dramatically, particularly over the last decade. I think that's a really hard thing and an error on the part of government. Because having a lively nonprofit sector and a lively civil society in which people can participate, feeling they have a way of influencing government between elections is an extraordinarily important thing. I think when we diminish that, we take away from the liveliness and strength of our democracy.

I think that's a really big challenge for all the nonprofits I work and am associated with. In fact, we are in a period of almost government suspicion of nonprofits rather than one where nonprofits are seen as actually helping in the formulation of policy and driving forward a really functioning, flourishing democracy. Governments have a sense that NGOs are hostile in some way or just don't want to deal with their demands, and that's very unfortunate. I'm sorry that this is the moment that we're in, but I think it will change because I think we can move past this. It's part of the global neo-liberal era that we're in that wants to diminish the size of government and pull away from NGOs, essentially turning to the markets and bowing to consumerism. I don't think it's doing very well and I think lots of people see this as not enough and not a way to build society that's very functional. So I think we're going to turn back. If we want to do something about our environment and about poverty in Canada and the world, we will have to turn back and be more serious about collective values.

CV: Do you think being a leader in the nonprofit sector differs from other sectors?

SD: I think if you're in the nonprofit sector, though not everyone, you're in a much more political position - small "p" political - where you're always trying to watch and push policy-making and government and society at large in particular directions. Those nonprofits express values in that way and say who they are and what they're committed to and where they're trying to move us toward. I think it's perhaps less true for the nonprofits that are in direct service work and don't feel they have as much of an advocacy role. But many of the nonprofits that do service work, because of the groups they are serving, have a sense of dedication to advocacy too, and the sense they have a responsibility to speak about the experiences of the particular group they're serving. So there's a political edge to all of that. I think that's different from heading a corporation that produces rubber tires. I think nonprofits have a different atmosphere, a different kind of organizational, institutional environment to work in. So it takes something different in terms of vision and organizational skill.

CV: Canada has taken many strides in the field of women's equality and human rights. Yet, many challenges remain. How do you think women are faring today?

SD: I think we have made strides over the last 30 years, important ones. For example, we made a huge leap forward in family law in Canada when we recognized that at the time of relationship breakdown there needed to be an equitable distribution of property. For women, that just made a huge difference in terms of who they are in a relationship with a man, and what they can expect for themselves and their children if there is a relationship breakdown. From the equality perspective, it's just been an enormous stride forward, though that doesn't mean there aren't still lots of problems in family law.

I think we've also made a huge move forward in our articulation of rights, in human rights legislation, the constitution and in our signing onto human rights treaties; we've made clear legal commitments. Those are very important and instructive because they send a message to women, men, and government, who've essentially agreed to them, that this is what we're striving for, this is what goals are. So, it's a good thing we've made them, written them down, saying this is what we believe in. But from my perspective, the problem is we're not living up to those commitments. And we've got a long way to go, in my view, before we get there. One of the things I'm most concerned about is that I think, in the same period of time, we've actually gone backward. Part of what's happened over the last decade and a half in Canada is that we've eroded social programs; we've taken money out of the social safety net.

For example, we've terribly eroded social assistance in the country. So, whereas 15 years ago people were actually entitled to receive welfare if they had no other source of income, now they're not and the provinces have narrowed who's eligible for social assistance. And a lot of people who need it can't get it anymore. In addition, the rates for social assistance are so inadequate that people who do receive it don't have enough money to pay their rent and eat. That's the bottom of the social safety net. When we erode that, we put the most vulnerable people, many of them women, at a terrible disadvantage in this society. So instead of helping out when people are at their most vulnerable, we're now leaving a lot of people with no help, or very inadequate help.

One of the things that's very important to me is that a very significant number of people who at any one time are receiving social assistance, are single mothers. They're trying to look after kids and the rates of social assistance are so inadequate that they're unable to look after themselves and their children properly. In a society that says we're committed to equality for women - and one of the things we think about when we say that is women should be able to choose their relationships with men and leave them if they're violent or abusive - we've got a big problem in my view if, at the same time, what we say is if you leave an abusive partner, what we give you is poverty.

"We've eroded the social programs that are incredibly important for women. And that makes us a country that's going backward, not forward."

Here's another example: over the same 15 years, we've terribly eroded civil legal aid; legal aid is in crisis across the country and people who need lawyers and legal advice and representation, like women in family law disputes, can't get adequate help. We've eroded the social programs that are incredibly important for women. And that makes us a country that's going backward, not forward. The connection between women and social programs is just so tight. Look at the advances women made and the high rate of labour participation in the last 50 years. One of the reasons women are able to do that is because we've shifted some of the caregiving from the shoulders of women to the shoulders of the state.

So you have social programs that are good and strong and provide things like public healthcare, good public education, child care, long-term care; that makes a huge difference in women's liberty when we make that kind of shift. But when we start to pull that back, we're eroding the foundational conditions that make equality for women. That's the concern I have right now, in terms of values of society at large, what government sees as their role, where they're putting resources. They're not putting on what some people call a gender lens; they're not looking at the impact of these things on women as a group in society.

CV: What achievement are you most proud of in your work promoting equality?

SD: I'm proud of the fact that during the period that I've been working, women and a lot of other people in the country have really thought hard about what equality means. We have been one of the leaders in the world in the last 40 years in thinking about that. We're fighting against a very old definition that you get equality by just treating everybody the same. That's the old Aristotle version, but we're figuring out it doesn't work, especially for women, because you don't have equality for women by treating them as if they were men. You have to start from where women are. We're not in the same position as men in the society; things are different in our life patterns. Equality must have to do with real conditions in women's lives, not just with words or with what laws say, but with what is actually happening.

We've called it substantive equality versus formal equality because it has to do with the real substance of women's lives, whether they really can leave their husbands and still have something to eat. It's those real things we're talking about, where we want to focus. Then we have to figure what we have to do in order to put a woman in an equivalent position to a man in terms of real conditions. There's been such a flourishing of writing and thinking and arguing and lobbying and advocacy about this; it's been a time of real creativity. I think it's really important that everybody sees this is not an artificial thing. This is not a bunch of words on a piece of paper, this is about real people's lives.

And I'm really proud of being a part of it. It's been a big movement and there are many ways people have contributed to that in Canada. And we're still in it. It's been a very lively, argumentative, intellectual but very real kind of activism in that way. It's been happening in Canada since the beginning of human rights legislation in the early 70s, with a big marker being when equality rights were put into our constitution and all of the things that that fostered.

CV: Can you briefly discuss your current affiliations and activities?

SD: I'm the chair of the human rights committee for the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), a national alliance with close to 70 member organizations. One of the things I've been doing over the last decade has been working with FAFIA to make submissions to international treaty bodies. It's been a very interesting and important piece of work because Canada is part of a global community and we've signed onto human rights treaties that say a whole lot of things about the rights of people in Canada and rights of women in particular. We get reviewed by the UN and it's important for us to be a participant in that review. Canada, in its reports, says, "Here's how we think we're doing" and the NGOs then say, "Well here's the real story, here's how it is on the ground."

I'm also director of a small nonprofit organization based in BC that's called the Poverty and Human Rights Centre. We do a lot of research and writing and public education on questions of poverty as a human rights violation. We're very engaged in talking to people, showing people how poverty isn't just a social policy failure or an individual failure, it's a question of rights, of entitlement. Canada, for example, has signed onto the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, which says everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living that includes food, shelter and clothing. So it's important for people to have the sense that Canada said not to live in poverty is a right for every human being.

CV: Do you feel organizations are doing enough to foster young leaders?

SD: I think it's really important for young people to be engaged in all of the things I'm talking about, of course. One of the things I worry about is that we've put so much pressure on young people to feel they just have to succeed in the market, and we've put them in a position where, by the time they get out of university, they have such a debt load. We're not giving them the kind of freedom to participate that I think is really essential. And I worry about whether or not everything that happens to young people up to the age of 25 is conservatizing, simply because they have to worry about money in a kind of way that makes them look at the next step in front of them without raising their eyes higher to look at a longer future, to think where their society is going. There are many talented young people out there and I'd like to unleash them if I could. I worry about how constrained they feel. Sometimes people have to decide that they're not going to make the kind of money they could if they did something else; they have to make choices. I think we're putting pressure on young people so they feel maybe that's not a reasonable choice or a choice that's safe. Well, it may not be safe; it may be risky but we do get faced with those choices in life.

CV: Do you have any mentors who have inspired you over the years?

More about Shelagh Day... First nonprofit job: Women’s Action Group at the University of British Columbia Education: Masters Degree in Literature from Harvard University

SD: I don't think of a particular person as a mentor for all time, but as examples of what human beings do in particular circumstances that I think of as a kind of public courage. I think leadership has a lot to do with being willing to run against the wind. To feel like, in your own society, you can have clear eyes and you can sometimes say things that cut across assumptions that society is constructed on. There are organizations and individuals who have done that and I always find it inspiring.

One example comes from the last 30 years and women's organizations. Women in Canada invented women's shelters. Individual women decided, without great resources of their own, that there were women in trouble that they had to shelter, protect, hide. They essentially created an underground railroad. Society was so clear at the time that this was the private sphere and that we didn't interfere; it was something between a man and a woman. Women were essentially on their own. But there were women who were strong enough to say, "No, I don't go with that. I'm going to protect this woman because I can see she's being abused and battered in this relationship and if I have to hide her in my own house or if I have to hide her somewhere else, I'll do that." I think it takes courage to say I'm going to go against the grain because I can see something happening in my society that isn't right and it needs to be corrected. Those are the things, the examples, that really help me, that give me inspiration.

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.

Next week: The truth about nonprofit internships.

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