It starts with a feeling of doom in the pit of his stomach! He looks in the mirror and sees he is covered in hives! During breakfast, he begins to sweat and shake! He has had these symptoms before. It can only mean one thing. It is “that time of the month” — the eighth! He enters his office and notices that his staff, mostly women, look a little overwhelmed. They look at him as if to say, “Well, what did you expect? It is that time of the month!”

A few minutes later, his email system crashes and his staff, mostly women, are nowhere to be found. As he prepares for the legislature, he wonders why he ever took on this job anyway; question period will be painful today (just like cramps), and the opposition parties, the Liberals and the NDP, will be throwing the questions fast and furiously.

It is the eighth of the month, and Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is once again facing a feminism fit!

If the women of St. John’s, Newfoundland have their way, this very well could be the scene in the legislature on a monthly basis. Feminism fits was the brainchild of well known activist and Officer of the Order of Canada, Nancy Riche. Riche, who was part of the International Women’s Day Committee in St. John’s this past March, came up with this form of political protest. Her idea was to find a way to give women in this province a voice and to facilitate a process whereby women, who did not have the time to join a committee or come to a meeting, could have an impact on the political process.

“Women are busy, very busy,” Riche says. “The double day has turned into the triple day plus. With women in the province working 850,000 hours of unpaid work each year, they don’t have a lot of time. Yet, they want their voices heard. How to do it in the least amount of time?”

And so feminism fits was born!

Each month, women are asked to suggest an issue that is affecting their lives or the lives of women they know. These can be related to violence against women, women’s economic inequality, affordable child care, pay equity — the list is endless. The feminism fits committee will pick the issue. A short background paper and a sample letter will be prepared and sent out to the large listserve of eager women. They will be encouraged to use this information to email the Premier and the Minister for the Status of Women, on the eighth of each month.

Since International Women’s Day is March 8, the committee thought it was “fitting” that this date be used every month.

The goal is to have hundreds of women across the province write to the Premier and to send these emails on the same day. One or two letters a day are easy to delete; receiving hundreds of them makes it a lot harder.

The need for feminism fits comes from the devastation that women in this province are facing as the newly elected Tory government of Danny Williams embarks on its style of fiscal management. In April, this government brought down its first budget.

According to labour activist, writer and member of the “fits” committee, Lana Payne, “the budget laid out a fiscal plan that included eliminating 4,000 public sector jobs, and massive restructuring in the areas of education and health. We know that many women in our province will be much worse off as a result of the government’s budget. Instead of eliminating barriers for women and other disadvantaged groups, this budget sends a clear message to women: expect less from government and government services and do not depend on government as a place of employment. In addition, the 2004 budget has told women to prepare themselves for more upheaval in the school system and in health care. Women already shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden when it comes to picking up the slack when governments downgrade or cut public services. It is women who end up doing this work for free.”

Newfoundland and Labradoreans are still reeling from recent back-to-work legislation that put an end to their 27 day old strike. Under the threat of termination, public service workers were forced to accept concessions and a wage freeze for the next two years.

There are many in the province who believe that this strike was a deliberate attempt by the government to deflect criticism from this devastating budget. But what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador reflects a larger conservative wave that continues to sweep the nation. Women’s Centres in B.C. have lost their funding from the provincial government and many have closed. Thousands of women who relied on the support provided by these centres now have nowhere to go. Workers in that province were legislated back to work, this time with a 15 per cent cut to wages. Ontario went through an extremely turbulent time under the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governments when funding for second stage housing for abused women was cut, thousands of co-op housing units were cancelled and 11 hospitals in Toronto alone were closed.

Clearly, giving women a voice in these times is crucial. The feminism fits committee hopes that this idea will spread across the nation. The women of Newfoundland and Labrador would love to see all politicians who think they can balance budgets on the backs of women while allowing corporations to get away with paying virtually no taxes, get that sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs when they look at the calendar and realize that it’s the eighth of the month.

To learn more, please go to feminism fits.