International Women's Day

Since March 1911, the global community has paused on March 8 to celebrate inspiring and courageous women, take stock of the status of women in all spheres of society, identify policies and strategies to achieve gender equality and justice at the intersections of gender, race, class, disabilities, and sexual orientation.

We will examine persistent gender gaps and collective actions needed to #BreakTheBias and effect sustainable change.

The Pandemics: Black Feminist Insights into Health Justice

Anti-Black racism, including misogynoir, is a pre-existing condition through which we need to understand the realities of health for Black people in Canada. While recognizing that “public health has historically been an extension of policing for Black people that has positioned us as suspicious and nefarious in our actions and movements” (Bain, Dryden, Walcott, 2020), continued commitment to colour-blindness is a deliberate choice that avoids engaging with anti-Black racism (and its intersections) in healthcare systems. These systems require substantive disruption in which we engage in co-creating health justice. Social justice activism requires a commitment “to produce knowledge for intervention, disruption, transformation and ultimately liberation” (Bailey and People, 2017).

Explore and reflect on the guidance provided by Black feminists, queer activists and scholars and what they teach us about transformative health interventions. Social justice must include a commitment and plan for health and wellness. 

Why are we still fighting for change? Lack of progress on issues of inequity and racism in academia

Post-secondary institutions continue to be invoked as spaces of possibilities - possibilities of change and a re-imagining of society, particularly for social justice and equity issues. However, academic spaces continue to be rightfully critiqued for upholding and enabling inequalities (Ahmed, 2012; Monture, 2010; Smith, 2016). persistent inequality is evident in the gendered and racialized discrimination in hiring, tenure, promotion and pays within universities (Barrett and Barrett, 2011; Fotaki, 2013; Henry et al., 2017; Marbley et al., 2011; Gutierrez et al., 2012).

These discriminatory practices led Mohawk scholar Patricia Monture (2010) to label universities as violent spaces that require urgent transformation. In the context of the ongoing issues of inequity with the academy, I will discuss how the historical and structural factors hinder the meaningful transformation of systemic inequality and racism. 

Women’s Charter Equality at the Supreme Court of Canada: Surprising Losses or Anticipated Failures?

Jennifer Koshan and Jonnette Watson Hamilton examine the failure of the Supreme Court of Canada to recognize sex discrimination against women under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms until 2018, with only two successful claims to date.

We explore how this failure exists despite the mobilization of women’s and other equality-seeking groups to ensure that the Charter’s equality rights would be worded and interpreted to result in transformative change, despite women’s continuing lack of equality in Canada, despite the promise of the Court’s firsts 15 decision in 1989, and despite women’s early successes in human rights sex discrimination claims. Women have also lost almost every other case where they relied on other grounds of discrimination, and we critique the lack of intersectional analyses in the Court’s judgments despite opportunities to consider how sex intersects with other grounds in (re)producing women’s inequalities.

We conclude by offering thoughts on the uncertain future of women’s Section 15 claims.

Professors Jennifer Koshan and Jonnette Watson Hamilton have co-authored "Women’s Charter Equality at the Supreme Court of Canada: Surprising Losses or Anticipated Failures?" for the forthcoming book Surprising Constitution, edited by Professor Howard Kislowicz, Kerri Froc and Dick Moon.