Wednesday night I had the honour of attending the Women of Excellence Awards held at the Seaside Centre. It was a fun and inspiring event. I have now been at events honouring women in three provinces, Prince Edward Island, Alberta and B.C., both as a guest and as a journalist. These events are good for morale. They remind women of our accomplishments and the price paid by women who have gone before so that we can now have this type of recognition.
Still, there is something missing. We need a special celebration for all the unsung women who will probably never be revered with a special event and who would feel eminently embarrassed if they were. I applaud women who make significant contributions to our community through their personal and professional lives. However, I have often wished that women would create a new way of paying tribute to each other that doesn't actually follow a certain tried and true method that has worked well for male business leaders and public figures for, well, for centuries. On Monday, I participated in a money management workshop for women and between the laughter and the sharing of information that took place, I can see in retrospect that each and every one of those women is, in fact, an unsung heroine. They have overcome odds, and kept on going. They have faced many life challenges and still have their sense of humour and they are a fundamental part of the backbone of Canada. We do not praise them enough.
My unsung heroines are the young single moms who through sheer force of character manage not only to raise their children, but finish high school at the same time. Right now, she may be working as a cashier or a waitress and far too exhausted at the end of a day to think of volunteering, but she puts food on the table every day, buys her children the clothes and shoes they need and manages to get to every parent/teacher interview even if it means she misses those hours on her pay cheque. I want a community celebration for all the women who have been damaged through abuse, but through momentous courage, overcome the odds and are able to teach their own children about healthy relationships and healthy love.
Women's salaries are still not on par with those of their male equivalents, and women are still over represented in the service industries, yet they are also the ones who tend to head single parent families. There are thousands of these women who have never seen a welfare cheque. My unsung heroines are the women who are grandparents, but who for whatever reason are also raising their grandchildren, so they are parents all over again. They are also caregivers for their elderly parents as well. It's a growing phenomenon, this sandwich generation and they are women who indeed deserve to be honoured simply for making it through a lifetime of hardship and not throwing up their hands and giving in when they realize they aren't going to get any respite from work, worry and caring for everyone but themselves.
Women should be honoured for what we consider above and beyond. I also think we need to honour women for roles and achievements that are considered every day survival. Sometimes just to survive, women face almost insurmountable odds and they deserve our respect and our pride in them. To the women who will continue to form the backbone of our society whether we see them or not, whether we know their names or not and whether we write speeches in their honour or not, I raise my glass, my coffee cup and bow my head in your honour, my unsung heroines.
