Alright, Now What?

With Dr. Lee Airton, Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies in Education at Queen's University. International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia is coming up on May 17.  The UN says that only one out of three countries legally protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Only one out of 10 protect people based on gender identity, and only a handful...

With Sabrina Cruz of Answer in Progress. Disinformation is false information intended to mislead. Misinformation is false information shared without intention of misleading. In this digital world, false information and the conspiracy theories, fake news, and downright lies attached to it seem to spread like wildfire.  A poll found that people in Canada consider the online disinformation epidemic a...

With Dr. Hadiya Roderique, writer of Black on Bay Street and other articles, cultural critic, lawyer, researcher, speaker, and consultant.  Equal Pay Day is symbolic of how far into the next year the average woman works to have earned what the average man earned the previous year. In Canada, women make 88 cents for every dollar men make. But there’s more than one gender pay gap because those who f...

With Nana aba Duncan (Media Girlfriends) and Eternity Martis.  Sometimes, it’s the personal stories that can light a fire. Because in the flurry of activity around the viral Signal for Help, a hand gesture we released that means “I need your help”, we can forget we’re talking about real people.   That’s why we’re releasing the Signal for Help podcast, a mini-series you don’t want to miss. Gender-b...

International Women’s Day as we know it grew out of early 20th century action to promote women’s rights and suffrage . After that, its popularity waned. But feminist activism of the 1960s and UN sponsorship of the day in 1975 revitalized it as an occasion to promote women’s rights around the globe. We need to remember gender justice activism as more than a single movement, as many i...

With Monica Samuel, Founder and Executive Director of Black Women in Motion. Understanding the abuse and discrimination Black women, girls, and gender-diverse people face offers insight on how we can better support their healing journeys. Misogynoir is a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey to describe the distinctive form of anti-black sexism faced by Black women. As limited as race-based data collecti...

With Brianne Miller at Nada. In these rocky economic times, affordable, sustainable food seems elusive. Can you do food business in a way that does good? How are women and equity-seeking people leading the way? Lots of women and equity-seeking people get into entrepreneurship. It makes sense. Those who face barriers to stable, safe employment have to get creative. They often get entrepreneuri...

With Munira Abukar at Stitch Lab T.O. Women are more likely to live in low-income households than men, especially single mothers. Indigenous women, racialized women, women with disabilities, and trans people also face a high risk of poverty. Economic stability is the ultimate goal of the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Investment Readiness Program, funded by the Government of Canada’s Social Innovat...

With journalists Garvia Bailey, Saba Eitizaz, Christina Frangou, and Salimah Shivji. Content note: this episode includes discussion of gender-based violence and sexual assault. It’s 2023 and we’re in Season 5. We start with online harassment and hate faced by women and racialized journalists. We need them to give voice to what’s often left unheard in Canada. This makes the harassment and...

With Jennifer Delisle. An online search pulls up several news stories about women and girls who used the Signal for Help in dangerous situations. The Canadian Women’s Foundation launched the Signal in 2020 in the wake of rising abuse such as intimate partner violence and sexual assault as well as the rising use of video calls. The Signal for Help has gone viral more than once since then. But a sig...

With Corinne Ofstie. Content note: this episode addresses femicide. “December 6, 1989 was a terrible moment that became a transformative movement,” writes Canadian Women’s Foundation President and CEO Paulette Senior in The Toronto Star . “Every year on December 6, we need to revive the momentum anew. Advocates made sure that the 1989 massacre led to stricter firearm laws and new anti-vi...

With Ziyana Kotadia and Karen Campbell. Content note: this episode addresses sexual violence. Too Scared to Learn: Women, Violence, and Education by Jenny Horsman (2013) uncovers how violence negatively impacts a student’s ability to learn. It focusses on women’s literacy, but the broader lesson is clear. None of us can properly learn when we’re scared and targeted. This has huge implications for...

With Kris Archie, Chief Executive Officer of The Circle on Philanthropy. In Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance , Edgar Villanueva says, “What we can focus on with decolonization is stopping the cycles of abuse and healing ourselves from trauma.” He speaks to how finance, philanthropy, and the ways we “do charity” have been set up to uphold colonialism, syste...

With guest Barbara Perry. White nationalism is on the rise in Canada. What does it have to do with women? Researchers Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens describe far-right extremism as “a loose movement, animated by a racially, ethnically, and sexually defined nationalism.” They go on to explain that it’s “typically framed in terms of White power, and is grounded in xenophobic and exclusionary unders...

With guest Erica Ifill. White nationalism is on the rise in Canada. What does it have to do with women?  White nationalism is a core concept in far-right extremism. And many experts say it’s becoming more mainstream. “ Hate in Canada: A short guide to far-right extremist movements ” (2022) says, “Far-right extremism is a form of ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) – but one...

With guests Robyn Doolittle and Christina Frangou. Equity-seeking journalists including women and racialized reporters investigate some of the most important and hidden stories. Whether writing articles for newspapers or magazines, editing, posting on social media or digital media, or blogging, we need them to give voice to issues otherwise unheard. This makes the harassment and abuse they ex...

We’re in climate crisis – and marginalized women, girls, and gender-diverse people bear the brunt. Young climate justice leaders are ringing the alarm. It’s about time we listen. In a sense, climate change and global warming hurts everyone. But we’re not all equally impacted. Some people have more resources to deal with fallout. Some of us are more or less protected from consequences of growi...

We found that around half of parents and caregivers in Canada believe their children aged 9 to 19 are struggling right now, two years into a global pandemic. But children and young people are a diverse group. We do a disservice when we don’t dig into what different young people face, depending on their unique identities and experiences. “This is not the first crisis faced by Indigenous youth,...

Content note: this episode addresses sexual violence. We’ve all been exposed to rape culture, but girls and non-binary youth experience it differently depending on who they are. We don’t always catch these nuances. We’re not always listening the way we should. With back-to-school season coming up, we need to talk about interventions. How are we going push for an end to sexual violence for all youn...

When we think “economy”, it’s easy to imagine stereotypical things: opening bell, chaotic trading floor, ups and downs of stock graphs. But the economy is made up of people and it’s deeply gendered. There is no economy without women—and we haven’t valued them the way we should. Over half of all female workers are employed in occupations involving the “5 Cs”: caring, clerical, cateri...

Content note: this episode addresses gender-based violence and femicide. On September 22, 2015, Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam were murdered by their former partner in Renfrew County, Ontario. Three lives were taken on one day. And friends, family, and neighbours were left grappling with the pain of it. On June 28, 2022, a jury at the inquest into these women’s deaths recom...

Northern Canada experiences some of the highest rates of violence, poverty, and health concerns and lower access to basic services. Legacies of colonialism and residential schools have eroded local connectedness and sense of identity. Indigenous gender justice leaders in the North know the solutions to these challenges and what women, girls, and gender-diverse people need to reclaim connections to...

Content note: this episode addresses gender-based violence. Anna Maria Tremonti and Eternity Martis are iconic voices in Canadian media. Both of them have shared their stories of facing intimate partner violence and the shame, silencing, and stigma that came with it.  They joined the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Women’s Shelters Canada, and YWCA Canada in a dynamic conversation last week. Thi...

Content note: this episode addresses gender-based violence. “Is #MeToo Over?”, headlines are asking. There’s been a resurgence of victim-blaming narratives in the media and popular culture. Why is this happening? What can we do about it? The deeper story is grounded in our contradictory cultural imagination when it comes to gender-based violence like intimate partner abuse and sexual ass...

The anticipated overturn of Roe v. Wade, a 1973 US Supreme Court decision that established abortion access as a constitutional right, highlights the importance of reproductive justice everywhere. Achieving a gender equal Canada requires true reproductive justice. The ability to make informed choices about your health should be a basic right. In Canada, even with legislative standards and legal pre...