Last week, the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) became the latest victim -- on the heels of the Law Reform Commission, the Court Challenges program and other advocacy groups for minorities -- of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's ideologically driven funding cuts…..

If women, feminist women, have fallen silent, it is not because a handful of worthy organizations fighting for their rights is now being denied federal funding. It is because of widespread complacency, a sense that the battles have been won, that women no longer need special advocacy. It is because feminist ideas -- if not the still-radioactive label -- have become mainstream. Harper may be exploiting that complacency, but he didn't create it.

In the 34 years since NAWL was formed, it has made noticeable progress -- reforms to laws concerning custody, rape, workplace harassment and access to abortion. Most political parties today ardently court women candidates. Any politician who utters a sexist remark faces career suicide. (Even well-known political consultant Warren Kinsella got into trouble recently for joking that a woman MPP would "rather be home baking cookies.")

Beneath this reassuring surface, however, there are contradictory statistics and important nuances -- in short, the kind of research findings that were NAWL's specialty. Women still make 73 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Women are still routinely killed, raped and assaulted. Only 20 per cent of federal politicians are women; corporate boardrooms remain as male-dominated as ever. The list is too familiar: The acute poverty of many aboriginal women, the shortage of child care despite the Harper government's token $100-a-month baby bonus, subtle but real obstacles to ambitious young women intent on non-traditional careers, continued resistance to pay equity.

Conservatives say there is nothing stopping aggrieved groups from raising money privately -- and they have a point. Most environmental groups operate as private charities; in fact, some believe that to take money from government would compromise their work. Fifty per cent of the population is female and not all women are poor. Indeed, NAWL counts many lawyers among its ranks. It might be liberating to be free of this strained dependency on a government that loathes everything it stands for.

It isn't that easy, says NAWL board member Pamela Cross. "Women of this country are the poor people of this country," she says. Many are already overcommitted and exhausted. It isn't realistic to imagine replacing NAWL's $300,000 annual funding (and four staff) through bake sales and quilt raffles. As for the success of green fund-raisers: "Environmentalists have more favour with the public than we do."

Which is exactly the problem. Bloc Québécois MP Nicole Demers, her party's women's critic, expressed "deep anger that defending the rights of women has become 'obsolete'." This potent myth has allowed government to cut funding to unfriendly organizations (including the respected Child Care Advocacy group) with relative impunity. The Tories have also changed the funding criteria at the Status of Women bureau to favour "concrete," short-lived projects over grants to organizations devoted to profound change.

This shouldn't surprise anyone, least of all feminists. Harper only blinks if he fears political damage -- as he has on the environment and in his overtures to Quebec. (Even then, his course corrections tend to be more rhetorical than real.) He is convinced the groups he is targeting are irrelevant, out of touch with mainstream Canada. It doesn't help that much of NAWL's work is low-profile, academic and only quietly useful to politicians and equality-seeking groups. (Nor is his the first government to attack these groups. It was the Liberals who eliminated funding for the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.)…