The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) Womyn’s Centre, along with the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) are hosting events on campus to celebrate International Womyn’s Week on March 6-10.
According to the event’s Facebook page, the events will focus on demonstrating the experiences and resistance of women from all over the world.
International Womyn’s Week has been happening at Carleton for over four years, said Sydney Schneider, the programming co-ordinator at CUSA’s Womyn’s Centre.
“This week encompasses a lot of voices,” Schneider said, “It’s really important that we look at the issues we’re facing here in Canada, but what we’ve tried to do at the Womyn’s Centre this year is broaden that—really focus on the international piece.”
Schneider said International Womyn’s Week is important because it brings awareness to the struggles that women still face today.
“Feminism has really broadened itself to include all women, whether that’s women of colour, queer women, women with disabilities, mental health struggles, they’re all encompassed in modern feminism,” Schneider said. “It’s really important that we continue these discussions because the fight isn’t over, and the fight is ever evolving.”
Schneider said current events, like the election of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, will have an impact on this year’s events because of how much the feminist discussion has grown since.
Samiha Rayeda, the volunteer, outreach, and programming co-ordinator for OPIRG at Carleton, said the first event of the week on March 6 had a healthy turn-out.
The event, titled The Womyn’s Resistance Showcase, featured photos and biographies of activist women from all over the world who are fighting colonialism in their countries.
Some of the women showcased at the event include Leah Lakschmi, a Toronto-based author, Madhu Kinnar, a transgender woman in electoral politics in India, and Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the founder of Muslim Girl.
Rayeda said the discussion around feminism has shifted as of late.
“We’re talking about feminism not only as an empowering movement, but as a resistance movement, and I think that’s key this year,” she said.
Other events include a panel discussion on decolonizing Western feminism, and a film screening. The week will end with a talk by Emma Sulkowicz on March 10 about the nature of sexual violence in relation to art-making.
During her final year as a student at Columbia University, Sulkowicz began carrying a mattress around campus as a part of a piece of performance art called “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight).”
Sulkowicz told multiple media outlets that she would stop carrying the mattress only when the student who sexually assaulted her in her dorm room in 2012 was expelled, or left the university. Following an investigation by the university, the student was found not responsible. According to an article in New York Magazine, Sulkowicz filed a police report with the New York Police Department in 2014, but then decided not to pursue the case further.
Sulkowicz carried the mattress from September 2014 until her graduation in May 2015.
– Photo by Aaron Hemens
