Harper's war on women.

We're in a new millennium. The Middle Ages are over.

Men and women are equal before the law. Women have the right to be paid the same as men when they do work of equal value. And when they aren't paid the same, women have the right to use the courts to get pay equity.

Harper says the present system of using the courts for pay equity is "long and costly" and is based on "complaints" and "confrontation" and he wants to "modernize" it by wiping out the right of women to use the courts to get pay equity.

If Harper gets his way, pay equity will be settled at the bargaining table, not in the courts.

But what about women who don't have a union?

Too bad! That happens to be a majority of the 41% of Canadian women who work outside the home.

The Harper plan to cut back on pay equity rights is buried in last Tuesday's budget, in a 10-line clause in Chapter 4 innocuously entitled "Financial Perspectives."

Some "perspective!" Maybe Harper thought no one would notice.

While the rest of the world is preoccupied with the economic crisis ravaging the planet, it seems that Harper has found time to slip in a little neo-con ideology and chop back at pay equity for women.

It has nothing to do with the nation's finances and it has everything to do with Harper's view of women and their place in society.

The tip-off is that the Harper scheme comes in a section called "structural changes." When Harper starts talking about making structural changes to Canadian society, we have a good idea what he's got in mind.

Strange that on the same day Harper's pay equity ploy comes out, south of the border the new president Barack Obama is in the Oval Office signing his first new law. And what is it about? Obama is signing a bill that allows American women more time to sue in the courts for pay equity. The women around him are cheering.

Obama goes one way; Harper goes the other way.

So why is Harper doing this? It may have to do with the big Conservative Party convention held in Winnipeg in mid-November. Delegates passed Resolution 213 which limits pay equity. Harper gave delegates his solemn promise to act promptly on the resolutions that were passed. Promise made; promise kept.

When the new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff endorsed Harper's budget this week, he either never noticed or chose not to notice the part in Chapter 4 about pay equity.

But Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe weren't asleep. They went bananas! So did their women M.P.s.

The Bloc Quebecois made it their lead item in their sub-amendment to the budget. The Conservatives and Liberals beat it down immediately. The New Democrats called for Harper's immediate ouster and replacement by a coalition government that would toss out Harper's scheme to cut back pay equity.

Harper's war isn't over. The fighting has only begun.