Feminism now and then By Courtney Hurley “Does anybody remember that it was not only legal but also very, very good business practice to not grant credit to women?” asked Leslie R. Wolfe, the keynote speaker at the Women’s Rights on the Political Agenda Conference which took place Oct. 19 at the University of Ottawa.
“What I love most about talking to college students in the U.S. is that they look at me like I’m insane when I say that,” said Wolfe. “Now that’s your victory.” In her address Wolfe, the president of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., shared the story of the centre’s success with the conference so that this success can be replicated, she said. One of the themes at the conference was that young women today don’t view feminism as relevant. “Young women in Canada don’t think feminism is necessary because they don’t see the problems around them and they just see feminism as a thing of the past,” said Milena Gioia, a member of the Ottawa Rebelles feminist network and student at the U of O.
The conference was organized by Agnes Whitfield, the joint chair in women’s studies at Carleton and the University of Ottawa, to enhance the link between researchers, women’s international organizations and women parliamentarians. Whitfield said the purpose of strengthening this link was to develop strategies to attract public attention to women’s rights and to make research on women’s issues policy relevant. In her speech Wolfe compared women’s studies at the time the centre started to a struggling newborn.
“It was almost in intensive care,” said Wolfe. Wolfe said that although one of the keys to the centre’s success is evolution, the mission of the centre has always been the same: “to promote women’s human rights through enlightened public policy.”
The ideas of policy relevance and turning research into action were also discussed at the conference by Carleton professors Brettel Dawson and Diana Majury, Whitfield said. “Women’s organizations and women researchers need to think about the issue of translating research so that it becomes relevant and understandable, not just for people in society, but also for young women as well, so they know what rights they still have to fight for,” Whitfield explained. Whitfield said the challenge of connecting with young women is something that has to be fought for, pointing to the fact that Canada has fallen in the Global Gender Gap Index from 14th place in 2006 to 31st in 2008.