2015 was a year of progress on gender equality and women’s rights in Canada.
Inclusive Leadership
We voted for the #countrywewant and elected a record number of women in the federal election (#elxn42), ending the year with a gender-equal parliament and a feminist Prime Minister. While many tried to discredit this overdue move toward gender parity in government as affirmative action without merit, the women appointed as ministers are more than qualified.
There is a diversity of gender in our world! Diversity as in many, many more than two. Gender as in how one self-defines as perhaps a woman, man, both, neither or something else entirely, and as distinctly different from sex or sexuality.
Gender diversity is amazing! There are a zillion sorts of identities, expressions, bodies, voices, preferences, styles, and haircuts. Like many amazing things, gender diversity can also be confusing, especially for folks who maybe realized a little more recently than others that there are these zillion sorts. People often have some burning questions in the early days, like:
SWOVA recently had a visit from an engaging and dynamic woman from Australia named Ellen Poyner. Ellen works to create and deliver healthy relationships programs in Southern Australia and is touring North America to investigate programs related to her work. When she asked me what I was most proud of in SWOVA’s Respectful Relationships program, the first thing that came to mind is team work. We have always worked in teams. Many people have worked with us for short periods or long periods providing dynamic team collaborations. As we all know there is lots of work to be done to prevent gender-based violence and we are stronger when we feel supported and are able to spark off each other.
In my yearbook, I wrote about my teacher, Ms. Jones. She taught me to be just who I am and to not hide the things I’m good at. In her class, we made T-shirts about being grateful. She said when she saw me in my shirt, standing proud and tall, it inspired her to want to get everybody to be proud of who they are.
She came up with an idea to do a workshop called “As We Are”, which I got to participate in. It was a great experience. In the workshop, we started by looking at T-shirts with bad messages about women. For example, one said “Allergic to Algebra.” That offended me because I really like math. It upset me to see a girl wearing that and thinking she’s not allowed to be good at math because it’s “for boys.”
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