Missing Women free essay sample

Missing Women BY shenool 2 There is a huge number of missing women in Canada, and an extremely large number of these women are Aboriginal. Why do Aboriginal women seem more vulnerable? The majority of these missing Aboriginal women were living on the streets, living in poverty and working in the sex trade industry before their disappearances. Why were all of these women in the same situation? I believe that the Conflict Theory explains the hardships, the abuse and the discrimination that each of these women faced before they went missing. The Conflict Theory states that society is marked by power struggles over scarce resources; inequities result in conflict; social change is inevitable. Since the theft of Aboriginal land and destruction of traditional ways of life, many First Nations people live in extreme poverty that has lasted for generations. This removal of First Nations people from their land caused great hardships and a breakdown in their traditional systems causing a great deal of dysfunction within their own communities. These dysfunctions lead to physical abuse and substances abuse. The Conflict Theory also states that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by society and its economic structure. For the Aboriginal people economic factors served as the initial catalyst for change within Aboriginal societies. Aboriginal people were first directed away from hunting into the economic order of the fur trade society. Gradually, more and more of them became removed from the land and went into settlements with a welfare economy. These changes to Aboriginal lifestyle distorted their traditional way of life. Again causing more hardships and poverty. Inequality; the dominance of groups of people over other groups of people; oppression and exploitation, it is probably the biggest obstacle that Aboriginal people faced after the introduction of residential schools for Aboriginal children. Children were removed from their families and homes at a young age, some to return eight to 10 years later, some never to return. The ability to speak Aboriginal languages and the motivation to do so were severely undermined. Aboriginal students were taught to devalue everything Aboriginal and value anything Euro-Canadian. The damage done by residential schools is evident today as Aboriginal people, long deprived of parenting skills, struggle with family responsibilities. The victimization of Aboriginal women accelerated with the breakdown of Aboriginal cultural values and the abuse suffered by Aboriginal children in the schools contributed to family breakdown. This began a cycle of abuse in Aboriginal communities, with women and children being the primary victims. Aboriginal women and their children suffer tremendously as victims in contemporary Canadian society. They are the victims of racism, of sexism and of inconceivable levels of domestic violence as well as incomprehensible crimes like murder. The tragedy of missing Aboriginal women runs deep into the history of Aboriginal dispossession and discrimination; its not Just about missing Aboriginal women; its health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of Aboriginal women becoming victims. issues for women. Canada has failed to provide adequate assistance to women and irls living in poverty. There is a huge link between poverty, lack of adequate housing, and violence especially for abuses suffered by Aboriginal women and girls. Poverty and economic dependence, combined with racism and indifference from legal authorities, make Aboriginal women easy prey for violent men, and violence is difficult for them to escape. Women in Canada who are living in poverty, and who have only inadequate social assistance incomes to rely on, as is the case for many Aboriginal women, are at high risk of violence and are less able to escape from it. Canadas failure to fulfil the social and economic rights of the most disadvantaged groups of women is a direct cause of violations of their rights to security. The violations of the social and economic rights of Aboriginal women cannot be separated from the violations of their civil and political rights. Poverty rates for Aboriginal women are extremely high. In addition, all of the other indicators of equality and well-being, educational attainment, health status, income level, housing adequacy, participation in paid work, and rates of child apprehension reveal an ntrenched pattern of inequality and dismal conditions of life for Aboriginal women. In Canada, a large number of Aboriginal women are in street prostitution. They experience very high levels of violence. Aboriginal women and girls are coerced into street prostitution by their impoverished conditions, and by early experiences of violence and sexual abuse both in their own communities, and in the broader society, which also makes them easy targets for heinous crimes. Well-designed strategies are needed to support Aboriginal women and girls so that they can exit prostitution. Conditions for Aboriginal women and girls will not change until strategic and co- ordinated policies are put in place by the Government of Canada, working in co- operation with provincial and territorial governments, to address and reverse the specific disadvantages of Aboriginal women and girls. In short, Canada has not taken responsibility for identifying and correcting this problem. It has not acknowledged the social and economic disadvantages of Aboriginal women and girls that are a main cause of their vulnerability to violence, or taken any steps to address the failure to fulfill their social and economic rights.