Women

“The current road towards pandemic recovery needs to consider these at-risk populations. If not, there could be dire long-term consequences for the current generation and ones to come”

Two new studies supported by the Institute for Pandemics – a ��Ƶ institutional strategic initiative – show that the non-pharmaceutical public health measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with increased mental health visits for mothers with young children, young women and adolescent girls.

As governments around the world imposed public health measures to reduce viral transmission, including stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, and school closures, experts raised concerns about the potential lasting impact on the mental health of individuals, especially those belonging to vulnerable and at-risk populations.

In particular, mothers with young children faced obstacles related to parenting and caregiving, while young women and adolescent girls experienced major disruptions to school, social and daily routines.

The new studies – which built on previous research showing the COVID-19 pandemic had a larger impact on the mental health of men compared to women – aimed to examine how these pandemic-related non-pharmaceutical interventions have impacted the mental health of these groups.

“This work raises concerns about how to contain and address this issue,” says Geoffrey Anderson, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) and lead of the pandemic recovery theme at the Institute for Pandemics.

“The current road towards pandemic recovery needs to consider these at-risk populations. If not, there could be dire long-term consequences for the current generation and ones to come.”

The research team also included: John Moin, a former post-doctoral researcher funded by the Institute for Pandemics; Shauna Brail, an associate professor at U of T Mississauga who directs the Institute for Management & Innovation; and Simone Vigod, head of the department of psychiatry at Women’s College Hospital and a professor in the department of psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Both studies compared rates of doctor visits for mental health care in the pre-pandemic period from March 2016 to March 2020 to rates during the pandemic from April 2020 to November 2021.

The first, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) Open, found a rapid increase in doctor visits by mothers of young children for mental health care during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period, with most of the care for mood, anxiety, depressive disorders and alcohol and substance abuse.

In the second study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open, the team found an increase in doctor visits for adolescent girls and women aged 14 to 24 for mental health care largely driven by care for mood, anxiety and depressive disorders. Additionally, there was an increase in hospital visits for eating disorders for adolescent girls and women aged 14 to 19. There was no increase in doctor visits or hospitalizations for boys or young men.

Both studies show that the implementation of public health measures during the pandemic was associated with increased usage of mental health services among mothers of young children, young women and adolescent girls, and point to potential lessons for future public health crises.

“Our research raises concerns about the mental health impacts of public health measures on vulnerable women,” says Anderson. “We need to address these impacts as key part of any effective and equitable pandemic recovery strategy and we need to pay more attention to these consequences in future public health crises”.

"We saw the rapid and ongoing application of non-pharmaceutical interventions as public health measures throughout the pandemic,” says Moin, who was the lead author of both studies. “We also now know that they were associated with abrupt and prolonged changes in the utilization of mental health services. This association should be considered for future public health planning and strategy.”

Renzo Calderon, another post-doctoral fellow funded by the Institute for Pandemics, is leading a team that is further exploring this observed trend.

Despite nearly four years having passed since the beginning of the restrictions, the pandemic continues to alter the landscape of mental health. Hence, the researchers’ focus is not solely on exploring the overarching trends but also on better understanding if there are specific socio-demographic groups of women who were particularly affected.

Preliminary results indicate that the demand for mental health services around specific issues such as eating disorders and substance abuse, especially among young women, has not yet diminished.

Such a targeted approach aims to uncover nuanced insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these problems and lead to more effective interventions.

Search for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls hampered by police apathy: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 14:58:49 +0000

Search for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls hampered by police apathy: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 06/05/2023 - 10:58

Cutline

Participants walk in the Women's Memorial March in Vancouver to remember missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (photo by Liang Sen/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Research & Innovation

Sociology

Truth and Reconciliation

U of T Mississauga

Women

Subheadline

'The problem of Indigenous women being overpoliced and underprotected is all across Canada'

Content warning: the following contains disturbing subject matter.

In Canada, research shows Indigenous women are 400 per cent more likely than other Canadians to go missing. The problem is so pervasive that the Canadian government does not know how many Indigenous women are missing or have been murdered. Estimates suggest that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered between 1956 and 2016.

To identify the barriers faced when searching for missing and murdered friends and family, Jerry Flores, an associate professor of sociology at the ��Ƶ Mississauga, and graduate student Andrea Román Alfaro set out to gather testimony from Indigenous women and Two-Spirit individuals.

Andrea Román Alfaro (supplied image)

Their findings are discussed in an article titled “Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in ‘Canada,'” which was published in the journal Gender & Society.

While several studies have sought to identify why Indigenous Peoples continue to disappear, few have looked at the role of police in violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQ+ people, says Román Alfaro, a sixth-year PhD candidate in sociology.

“The problem of Indigenous women being overpoliced and underprotected is all across Canada,” she says, citing a 2004 Amnesty International report.

For their article, Flores – Román Alfaro’s PhD supervisor and a volunteer with several of Toronto’s Indigenous-led organizations – conducted close to 50 face-to-face interviews.

When COVID-19 restrictions blocked their ability to do more in-person work, Román Alfaro suggested including the 219 personal statements from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to expand their sample of respondents.

“The testimony of the women at the inquiry allowed us to see that in their stories, the narratives are all very similar,” Román Alfaro says. “Then we went looking for what is happening in society that lets this happen.”

Román Alfaro helped code the respondents’ stories to identify common themes. The team soon identified police indifference as a major thread, with 209 of 219 testimonies referring to negative interactions with police in the management of their missing person cases.

The article highlights two major styles of behaviour that the woman said police employed: justifying violence and dismissing violence.

The research found that Canadian police repeatedly use negative labels such as “runaways” along with slurs when responding to reported cases of violence against Indigenous women and girls.

“There’s nothing we can do,” or “it’s inevitable,” people report hearing from police when trying to report an Indigenous woman missing, the article says.

A participant in the 2022 annual Red Dress Day march in Edmonton holds up a sign (photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The testimonies include complaints that loved ones were provided little or no information on their cases and that police gave up quickly in the search for bodies or culprits. In some cases, police suggested a missing person’s report should be done no earlier than two or three months after a disappearance.

Respondents also noted indifferent attitudes, stereotyping and the blaming of poverty, mental health issues and lifestyle choices. Respondents said these responses instilled in them doubt, shame and fear of the police.

Born in Peru, Román Alfaro wasn’t aware of the Indigenous experience in Canada when she was growing up, but says the themes are familiar.

“I had done a lot of work around violence and victims of violence, marginalized groups, state violence and low-income women in Peru – so I came in with that knowledge,” she says. “I didn’t grow up knowing about Indigenous life on Turtle Island, but this situation, of a culture of women being disappeared and murdered, was not foreign to me.”

Flores is now writing a book using the data, which he hopes to publish by the end of the year. Román Alfaro, whose own field of research includes how people respond to and resist violence, says she also wants to delve further into the findings.

“I would like to do more work on how a community heals from this violence,” she says. “Red Dress Day, Orange T-shirt Day – these are ways to keep people remembering this issue and those people who exist in these communities, and how they can reconcile with such a tragedy.”

Román Alfaro says she would like to talk to police about their perceptions of interactions with Indigenous Peoples and find out whether efforts are being made to improve relations.

“The families and friends (of the missing and murdered women) want information, they want to know something is being done, to be involved in the process or to know someone is looking for their loved ones,” Román Alfaro says. “That’s one very big gap in all this: how to deal with the families. They want to know what happened – they need to know what happened.”

Flores and Román Alfaro believe their article’s findings have important implications for future research and policy.

While the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls include demands for decolonial education and training for officers, Román Alfaro says their research has identified a need to look for alternatives to the police for state-provided victim support.

“There is still a lot of work to do from the Truth and Reconciliation recommendations,” Román Alfaro says.

“It’s a long way from saying what the problem is, to doing something about it.”

Startup trains women in rural Costa Rica, 'upcycles' airline seats into leather goods

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 16:29:40 +0000

Startup trains women in rural Costa Rica, 'upcycles' airline seats into leather goods

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/08/2023 - 11:29

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Lynne Corvaglia, who graduated from U of T Scarborough two years ago, models one of her startup company's bags made of leather upcycled from old airline seats (photo courtesy of Wearsos)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Entrepreneurship Week

International Women's Day

Lynne Corvaglia is on a mission to turn thousands of old airline seats into high-end leather products – and create job opportunities for women in rural parts of Costa Rica in the process.

Southwest Airlines replaces the leather seat covers on its planes every four years. To keep thousands of old seats out of landfills, the airline donates the leather to organizations that can transform it into new products.

More than 12,000 seats are being upcycled into bags and accessories through a program dedicated to teaching women in rural Costa Rica leatherworking and business skills.

“There's a lack of access to opportunities here. We want to create a social enterprise that can create a positive impact in the lives of those working with us,” says Corvaglia, the founder of upcycling startup Wearsos who graduated from the ��Ƶ Scarborough’s International Development Studies (IDS) Co-op program two years ago.

“Our strategy is to produce and activate local economies in Costa Rica.”

The seats are being stored in the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), where Corvaglia lives and has helped spearhead the launch of a free workshop series. Hosted at CATIE, Corvaglia says the program is working to act as an incubator by teaching artisans the basic technical skills for leatherworking along with entrepreneurship and personal and professional development. About 60 women have taken the first induction workshop.

“The program at CATIE is meant to be comprehensive. It’s not just about leatherworking. We all want to empower women,” Corvaglia says. “They can learn the skills to start their own businesses and use upcycling as a tool.”

Women artisans in the CATIE workshop program have been learning to strip the leather from airline seats and create high-end goods (photo courtesy of Wearsos)

As a research centre, CATIE isn’t exactly built for the world of retail sales – that’s where Corvaglia’s startup Wearsos comes in. The company is dedicated to upcycling and plans to recruit women from CATIE’s program to become paid artisans. The women will then receive specialized training to make the specific products that Wearsos will eventually sell on its website, with a percentage of the profits going back to the training program.

“We’re trying to provide real jobs with Wearsos. While we can train women, we also need to provide economic stability and create a demand,” Corvaglia says.

Wearsos plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign to fundraise for their first year of production in the next few months. The launch will feature three bags: a belt bag (also known as a fanny pack), a crossbody and a tote. Other products in the works include duffle bags, shoes, clothing, laptop cases and other accessories.

Reducing waste is essential for Wearsos, a portmanteau of “wear” and sostenibilidad, or sustainability in Spanish. The company also plans to incorporate other sustainable materials into its products, such as textiles made from pineapple fibres.

Two of the leather accessories Wearsos plans to sell include a tote bag and a belt bag (photo courtesy of Wearsos)

Startup takes off amid pandemic

It’s taken three years, perseverance and a little serendipity for Wearsos to come together. In 2019, Corvaglia was completing a co-op placement at CATIE while volunteering with a women-run organization that supports entrepreneurs working in tourism. It was then that she witnessed the volatility of the tourism industry.

“These women have many jobs. Maybe their main one is they have a farm or they are tour guides – but they're also sewers and creators,” she says. “But in an economic crisis like the 2008 recession or the pandemic, a lot of these women lost all their jobs.

"We started thinking about how we can create other economic opportunities for people in rural areas. That’s where this whole project really came from.”

Wearsos has created a range of prototype products including shoes, passport holders and laptop sleeves (photo courtesy of Wearsos)

When Southwest Airlines contacted Corvaglia’s co-op adviser, Eliecer Vargas, about their initiative to recycle seats, Corvaglia and her business partner (and now husband) Christian Riquelme began writing proposals to create an upcycling company. They soon found The Hub, an entrepreneurial incubator at U of T Scarborough. Former director Gray Graffam encouraged the pair to enter the incubator’s annual startup competition. Wearsos later won first place and received $5,000 in funding.

The pandemic kept many of Wearsos’s plans and partnerships up in the air for years, but the company is now a registered business in Canada and Costa Rica – and another shipment of seats is on its way to CATIE.

Wearsos’s website includes a mailing list that will notify customers of news and product sales.

“During the pandemic, I was thinking, ‘Is this project even going to happen?’” Corvaglia says. “Now everything is just coming together.”

More awareness needed to improve heart health in women: U of T researcher

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 18:07:24 +0000

More awareness needed to improve heart health in women: U of T researcher

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 02/23/2023 - 13:07

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(iStock)

Rebecca Biason

Topic

Our Community

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Women

Women's Health

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in women – and the mortality rate has been steadily increasing since 2017 in Canada and the United States.

Monica Parry

That’s why Monica Parry, an associate professor at the ��Ƶ’s Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, uses her program of research to raise awareness about women’s heart health.

Much of Parry’s work is aligned with four of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – which includes enabling healthy lives and reducing inequalities – in addition to The Lancet commission’s target of reducing cardiovascular disease in women around the world by 2030.

“Globally, one woman still dies every 16 minutes of heart disease and many factors affecting women’s risk of heart disease are often gender-based,” says Parry.

“It is imperative we address the gaps in research and care for women with cardiovascular disease.”

Women are more likely to be caregivers, Parry adds, and this can contribute to them delaying seeking care for symptoms or focusing on themselves. Research has also shown that symptoms of heart disease in women manifest differently than in men and may be mistaken for other health conditions.

“Many women are simply unaware of their risk factors or symptoms, and this is further complicated by the fact that most guidelines for heart health and previous clinical trials have been focused on men and men’s anatomy,” says Parry.

In recognition of heart month and the goal to increase awareness about cardiovascular disease in women, writer Rebecca Biason recently spoke to Parry about how she plans to address gaps in the care and management of women’s heart health – and her efforts to empower women to help them manage their disease.

How does gender affect the risk of heart disease in women?

Women have non-traditional risk factors for heart disease – some of these are societal and based on gender and some are biological. Diseases associated with an increased risk of negative heart health such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension affect women differently as do other life events such as pregnancy, where the risks from preeclampsia and eclampsia can heighten a woman’s risk of developing chronic heart conditions later in life.

Societally, however, women are often positioned in roles of caregiving or are in lower economic status positions, and that can add to their stress level, further increasing their risk factors. Some of my current research is examining the role of unpaid caregivers and their mental health in Canada, 54 per cent of whom are women. In addition to wanting to gather more data about women who are of diverse ethnic backgrounds, I am also interested in learning more about the intersection of risks, especially for conditions like Takotsubo syndrome, which is a heart condition that can be caused by stress.

How does your work aim to improve cardiovascular health in women?

Self-management of symptoms – especially if women can distinguish them from other chronic conditions – can be lifesaving. With support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and an AMS Healthcare Fellowship, I have been working to develop and pilot a web-based app that uses a progressive algorithm and chatbot called “Holly” to screen women for heart-related symptoms. We know women often delay seeking treatment for their symptoms and that can be further complicated if they are unaware of whether their symptoms are related to their cardiovascular condition or not.

Holly asks women a series of questions about their last heart event, which is stored as an event profile. On subsequent logins, Holly asks women for a heart check, a series of questions to determine if they are experiencing acute cardiac symptoms and assigns them a risk profile: green (no risk) yellow (some risk) or red (severe risk), based on their answers. A user is then encouraged to seek further health assessment by her primary care provider or call 911 and go to the ER depending on her risk profile.

Working with our patient partners, we have also uncovered the need to create new body maps as part of the app to help women locate and identify their pain when identifying their symptoms for Holly. Most body maps are based on the male anatomy and in women we found that heart-related pain and discomfort can be found in regions that include the legs, such as in Kounis syndrome, an acute coronary syndrome associated with allergies and hypersensitivity reactions.

Holly also offers a library of resources for women to gain greater knowledge about their condition – another finding that arose as a result of our collaboration with patient partners. Many of the women in our focus groups indicated they wanted to have access to peer-reviewed and well-sourced materials about specific aspects of their heart condition.

How might education of future health-care providers help advance women’s heart health?

Awareness and education are key, both for women and for health-care providers. As a nurse practitioner who has worked on the cardiac unit, I have seen first-hand how women recover more poorly or have slower rates of recovery after cardiac surgery. In our education program at Bloomberg Nursing, we are incorporating a focus on symptoms of heart disease in women. I am a co-investigator with the CIHR-funded CANadian Consortium of Clinical Trial TRAINing platform that aims to enhance national clinical research capability and quality into clinical research education and good clinical practice, and also a co-principal investigator with the CIHR-funded training program titled “Maximize Your Research on Obesity and Diabetes” (myROaD), a national training platform aimed to train the next generation of researchers in obesity, diabetes and cardiometabolic health. Both training programs focus on the intersections of sex, gender, race and ethnicity.

My PhD students at Bloomberg Nursing are all focused on addressing aspects of heart disease in women – from young South Asian women with low physical activity and increased heart health risk to understanding the intersections of race and gender in Black Canadian women who have had a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy. Through their work we will continue to bring a diverse perspective and awareness to cardiovascular disease in women and move this research into the future.

U of T scientists to be highlighted at International Day of Women and Girls in Science event

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 20:24:39 +0000

U of T scientists to be highlighted at International Day of Women and Girls in Science event

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/10/2023 - 15:24

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Hadeel Mohammad, left, and Omnia Elebyary, right, will be joined by Heba Roble and Mohaddeseh Abdolhosseini – all U of T researchers – at Global Conversations: Women and Girls in Science at the Aga Khan Museum (photos by Dewey Chang)

Tabassum Siddiqui

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Dentistry

Graduate Students

Women

Four ��Ƶ scientists – all Muslim women – will discuss their career paths and groundbreaking research during a panel at the Aga Khan Museum this weekend to mark the eighth annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

The panelists include: Mohaddeseh Abdolhosseini, a PhD student in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering; Omnia Elebyary, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Dentistry; Hadeel Mohammad, a PhD candidate in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering; and Heba Roble, a first-year master’s student in the health services research program in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

The Feb. 11 event is presented in partnership with Massey College and the Canadian Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

U of T News spoke with Elebyary, who is researching oral biomarkers that can predict the risk of adverse outcomes in bone-marrow transplant recipients, and Mohammad, whose research examines the intersection of wireless communication and electromagnetics, about their experiences as women in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine).

What made you interested in studying science?

Elebyary: For me, it was mainly curiosity. I was a practising dentist back home in Egypt after graduating from university there. Though I was able to help patients in the clinic, through doing research I can help many more people on a wider scale. I wanted to do something that could benefit patients – especially cancer patients, as I’ve diagnosed a lot of cancer patients during my clinics, and I want to help them more by finding things that could potentially improve their treatment outcomes.

Mohammad: My interest in science started at a very young age because I was inspired by my father, who was a teacher. I started to appreciate science and wanted to know the answers to questions about ourselves. Even the area of research that I’m working on right now – I’m always interested in the unanswered questions and trying to find answers to the specific issues within my field.

Have you faced challenges in being a woman in your field?

Mohammad: As we move forward in the higher education system, from bachelor’s to master’s to PhD, you can see that the number of women in STEMM degrees decreases. You can certainly feel isolated. When I attend seminars or talks, there are fewer female students. There can be pressure to prove yourself – as a minority in the field, you want your voice to be heard. At the same time, I’ve had some great support from supervisors who send opportunities my way and are always looking to empower women in STEMM – so that has been really helpful.

Elebyary: I think the STEMM field is very challenging in itself, regardless of whether you’re a woman or a man. I think there’s often this notion that women are emotional and empathetic, and so maybe you deal differently with the frustrations that come with science – but I’m always showing that being emotional actually fuels me toward doing better in science because I’m very connected to the cause that I’m working toward. But certainly, it comes with a lot of struggle to prove that you can handle everything that comes with academia. Fortunately, we do have a lot of examples of great, achieving women who have done amazing things here at U of T and elsewhere – seeing their example or having them present in front of you is inspiring.

What’s your advice for young women who might be considering studying STEMM?

Mohammad: We’re so often afraid of failing, so I would say that instead of giving in to that fear, you just have to try. I always try to remember that when one door closes, somewhere another one opens – and that is applicable to different aspects of life. It’s only through persistence that you can reach for something rewarding. So just keep trying – and remember there are lots of different opportunities in the field of science.

Elebyary: Part of being successful is asking a lot of questions – and really listening to what people have to say. A lot of the things I’ve done I once thought were impossible. But when you ask a lot of people, a lot of small doors open for you – leading to even bigger doors; you just never know where they will lead. So, I’ve always been keen on asking those questions and learning from other people’s experiences.

Why is it important to celebrate women in STEMM through the International Day of Women and Girls in Science?

Mohammad: It raises awareness and reminds people that even though we have gone through a lot of advancements in our world, women still do face some challenges in the field. For women in the field, it’s a chance to reflect on all we have done; and for the younger generation, it’s a source of encouragement and makes them excited to know more about the contributions of women.

Elebyary: It's important to have this type of initiative to open doors for women so they feel like they can be represented in the field. I know that it can be intimidating to enter a field where you feel you’re a minority. But when you see Muslim women being represented at an event like this one at the Aga Khan Museum, you might just get inspired. That’s partly how I became interested in science myself – I attended a conference once where I saw another visibly Muslim woman present an amazing talk. It made me realize, “Maybe I can do it.” So, one of my main goals is to show that women – especially BIPOC women – can be represented in these spaces.

Joe’s Basketball Diaries Episode 6: Women in Sports

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 21:21:16 +0000

Joe’s Basketball Diaries Episode 6: Women in Sports Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/01/2023 - 16:21

Topic

Our Community

Joe's Basketball Diaries

Diversity and Inclusion

Equity

Joseph Wong

Sports

Undergraduate Students

Varsity Blues

Women

The pressure female athletes, coaches and journalists face in sport – and society at large – is explored in the season finale of Joe’s Basketball Diaries, hosted by Joseph Wong, the ��Ƶ’s vice-president, international.

Guests highlight the systemic and structural nature of sexism and racism in sports, and the importance of representation – particularly in leadership.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” says Tamara Tatham, a two-time Olympian who is the head coach of U of T’s women’s Varsity Blues basketball team.

Women athletes, especially those who are racialized, face expectations of failure and their successes are treated as anomalies, adds Hannah Flores, a U of T undergraduate student.

Other topics discussed include sexist double standards in sports, scrutiny of women’s bodies and behaviour, and the many ways these inequities are compounded for racialized and LGBTQ+ athletes.

This episode features:

Hannah Flores, spoken word artist and U of T undergraduate student
Savanna Hamilton, sideline reporter, Toronto Raptors and Sportsnet
Amreen Kadwa, founder and executive director of Hijabi Ballers
Nicole Kaniki, U of T’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion in research and innovation
Tamara Tatham, two-time Olympian and head coach of the U of T women’s Varsity Blues basketball team

Watch Joe's BasketBall Diaries Ep. 6

Experts from around the world to attend Persian-language symposium on women and Iran's future

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 19:07:45 +0000

Experts from around the world to attend Persian-language symposium on women and Iran's future

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/13/2023 - 14:07

Cutline

(Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Innis College

Iran

Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations

Women

Experts from across the globe are preparing to discuss the ongoing women’s movement in Iran at Women, Life, Liberty: Iran’s Democratic Future, a Persian-language seminar organized by researchers at the ��Ƶ.

The academic symposium, billed as the first of its kind, takes place Saturday and looks retrospectively at the history of the women's movement in Iran and the prospects for the country’s future.

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

The event was organized by U of T’s Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies and its director, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi. A professor of history and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tavakoli-Targhi has devoted countless hours to bringing this symposium to fruition.

“We are the leading institute of Iranian studies in North America [and] we have had weekly events and seminars and discussions on various aspects of Iranian civilization, history and culture,” Tavakoli-Targhi says. “We also felt obligated that we should, rather than sit back and watch what is happening, begin to foster an academic conversation about the transition to this future democratic era.”

The symposium comes amid the recent intensification of the women's movement and uprising in Iran. Protests and civil unrest flared following the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16, 2022.

“Iran had a revolution in 1979, promising freedom and liberty but delivering the Islamic regime,” Tavakoli-Targhi says. “The question is: how can we, through our own participation, writing, thinking and discussing the movement, begin to foster this democratic ethos.”

A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini on in Istanbul on Sept. 20, 2022 (photo by Oza Kose/AFP/Getty Images)

Panelists at the symposium will range from human rights lawyers such as Mehrangiz Kar, an internationally renowned writer who covered the 1979 revolution, to prominent figures within the Iranian Canadian community such as Ali Ehsassi, a Toronto-area MP, to professors such as Nazila Ghanea at the University of Oxford, who is also the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

“We decided on a panel that is highly diverse, representing Iranian scholars and Iranian lawyers who are Iranian Jews, Iranian Baháʼís, Iranians from different religious denominations,” Tavakoli-Targhi says. “That diversity of the panels is a really distinctive feature of this seminar.”

While the symposium will be entirely in Persian, Tavakoli-Targhi says English speakers can keep an eye out for his weekly seminars and discussion groups. Future symposiums may tackle topics such as intellectual freedom and autonomy of universities from state intervention.

Those wishing to participate in Women, Life, Liberty: Iran’s Democratic Future can attend via Zoom or in-person at Innis Town Hall from 10:15 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“In a sense, we are both looking back at the history and also the horizon of expectations for a democratic and pluralistic Iran,” Tavakoli-Targhi says. “And from that point of view, I think the symposium is rather unique.”

Symposium participants and other community members are encouraged to consider a donation to the Iranian Studies Student Scholarship Fund.

U of T and RBC launch scholarships to bolster inclusive excellence in technology fields

mattimar — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 17:56:46 +0000

U of T and RBC launch scholarships to bolster inclusive excellence in technology fields

mattimar Wed, 06/08/2022 - 13:56

Cutline

(Photo by Unsplash)

Topic

Research & Innovation

Startups

Technology

Women

The ��Ƶ and RBC are launching a scholarship to support women and other equity-deserving groups, including Black and Indigenous students, in the emerging technology sector.

The RBC Scholarships for Diversity and Innovation in Technology will be selected based on academic achievement and innovative accomplishment. Six eligible third-year undergraduate students enrolled full-time at U of T will be supported with a scholarship valued at $15,000 annually over a two-year period.

“RBC was an early champion of the innovation ecosystem at the ��Ƶ and these awards are another example of how industry and academia can work together to create a culture of inclusive excellence,” said Leah Cowen, vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

Martin Wildberger, RBC’s executive vce-president, technology and operations, said the financial institution views diversity and inclusion as an engine for innovation and is committed to removing biases and barriers. “This renewed partnership with the ��Ƶ will help support diverse talent and help create a more equitable future for the next generation of technologists,” he said.

The scholarship joins a growing network of U of T supports to advance inclusive excellence in the innovation, research and entrepreneurship realms. They include the Black Research Network, Indigenous Research Network and the Black Founders Network.

'There’s definitely a romance about it': How letterpress printing made an impression on women writers

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 20 May 2022 20:39:59 +0000

'There’s definitely a romance about it': How letterpress printing made an impression on women writers

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/20/2022 - 16:39

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In her new book, Claire Battershill looks at the history of women and the letterpress from the 1920s to the 21st century (photo courtesy of Claire Battershill via Simon Fraser University)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Arts & Science

Gender

History

Women

When Claire Battershill took part in the printing fellowship program at Massey College in 2009, she discovered its cast iron printing presses were far more than simply relics of a bygone era.

For many women writers and printers – from Virginia Woolf to Anaïs Nin – letterpress printing embodied a liberating spirit, as well as the freedom of artistic control that still draws and inspires artists and writers today.

“There’s definitely a romance about it,” says Battershill, an assistant professor cross-appointed to the department of English, in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and the Faculty of Information. Her book, Women and Letterpress Printing 1920–2020: Gendered Impressions, will be released in July. It explores the relationship between gender and literary letterpress printing from the early 20th century to the beginning of the 21st, as well as the ongoing presence – and even revival – of the letterpress in the age of iPhones, email and 3D printers.

Letterpress printing involves taking blocks of text or images and placing them on a raised surface, similar to a rubber stamp. Ink is applied to the raised surface and then paper is pressed directly against it to transfer the text or image.

Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century, letterpress printing was the standard form for printing for hundreds of years, though it remained in wide use for books well into the 20th century, when more modern printing methods took over for books and newspapers.

“It was a pretty labour-intensive process,” says Battershill, adding that the two steps of typesetting and then printing would take countless hours. “I saw how slow it was and how hard it was to do,” she says speaking from her own letterpress experience. “As an amateur printer, it would take me at least two days of work to typeset and print a small run of a single poem.”

Battershill is fascinated by women writers who used letterpress printing to take full control of both their writing and the production of their work – including Woolf (1882-1941), who along with her husband Leonard, founded The Hogarth Press in 1917.

“Woolf said, ‘The editors told me to write what they liked. And I said, no, I'll publish myself and write what I like,’” says Battershill.

Nin (1903-1977), the French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist and writer of short stories and erotica, created Gemor Press in New York in 1942 in response to the Second World War disrupting the distribution of her books by large publishing companies.

“She came to the conclusion that it allowed her to think more precisely about what she called ‘the essential words,’” says Battershill.

The surrealist writer, poet and political activist Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) was a self-taught printer who wrote a memoir about the experience of running her own printing house called These Were the Hours: Memories of My Hours Press, Reanville and Paris, 1928-1931.

Battershill was intrigued by how letterpress printing compelled writers to stop and reflect on their poetry and prose, in addition to giving them full artistic control.

“A lot of writers comment that it really slows you down,” says Battershill. “It focuses you on one letter at a time. So, this idea of breaking language down into tiny little units seems to change the way they think about the words they're writing.”

Anaïs Nin operating a letterpress at her Gemor
Press in New York in the 1940s.

Would Battershill ever want to publish a book of her own using letterpress printing?

“Yes, I would, though I shied away from doing it in the past, partly because, as a writer, I find it painful to imagine spending so much time with my own work,” she says.

Battershill’s book also explores why the letterpress still holds so much charm, and how its role has shifted over time, moving from the dominant commercial printing technology to the preferred tool for fine artists, writers and poets.

She believes using a letterpress is part of a resurgence of hand-based arts such as knitting or calligraphy.

“We don't have to do these things manually, but there is a hobby community that connects around hand practice and handwork,” she says. “In a similar way, contemporary letterpress communities are at the intersection of fine art, literature and crafting.”

As well, Battershill comments on the continued appeal of letterpress for women and activists – reflecting the ability to print and spread a message in a genuine and uncensored way. She notes that several Black Lives Matter posters were created through letterpress printing.

And letterpress continues to be a conduit for artistic expression.

In her book, Battershill mentions Ladies of Letterpress, an international trade organization for letterpress printers and print enthusiasts that promotes the craft of letterpress printing and encourages the voice and vision of women printers.

She also highlights the work of Norwegian artist and graphic designer, Ane Thon Knutsen, whose art comes from her personal letterpress studio.

“Her work is letterpress interpretations of Virginia Woolf,” says Battershill. “She creates room-sized installations of her stories where she'll print one or two words per page, and then you walk through the room. It's like you're walking through the story.”

Battershill hopes readers of her forthcoming book with enjoy taking a stroll through history and be inspired to make something of their own, in their own way.

“The printing press can seem like an antiquarian technology that belongs to an earlier time, but there’s something in the contemporary world we can learn from these older technologies,” she says.

With new documentary, U of T alumna – and former Olympian – explores how women are defined in sport

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 09 May 2022 15:32:21 +0000

With new documentary, U of T alumna – and former Olympian – explores how women are defined in sport

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 05/09/2022 - 11:32

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A still shot from Category: Woman, a documentary by Phyllis Ellis, a Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education alumna, filmmaker and former Olympian.

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Film

Sport

Women

Phyllis Ellis sees a lot of similarities between making a film and succeeding in sport.

“The hours and hours and hours of preparation. The sort of monomaniacal focus. The idea that you can never give up. Fighting to the finish … There’s a total commitment, and also a lot of learning that happens from both successes and failures,” says Ellis, an alumna of the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education.

Ellis represented Canada in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she played for the Canadian field hockey team, before embarking on a career of filmmaking, acting and producing. Her latest work – Category: Woman – recently screened at the 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. It focuses on four athletes from the Global South who were forced out of competition by regulations that deem women with naturally high androgen levels to have a performance advantage. The International Amateur Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) ruled that in order to compete, these female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies.

The regulations came at the heels of Caster Semenya bursting onto the world stage in 2009. The South African runner’s results were overshadowed by doubt and her personal medical records leaked to international media.

Phyllis Ellis playing for Team Canada during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles (photo courtesy of Ellis)

Ellis says she was drawn to the story after meeting some of the athletes and Payoshni Mitra, an activist who has been advocating on their behalf.

“The policing of women's bodies in sport is an ongoing issue that continues under the guise of fair play,” says Ellis. “I hope viewers of our documentary will walk away from the movie with an understanding that inclusion, prevention of harm, nondiscrimination and primacy of bodily autonomy is what a level playing field actually is.”

Ellis says her experience as an Olympian came in handy when she decided to devote herself to making documentaries.

“As a filmmaker, I have always been drawn to social and political issues that centre on the experiences of women,” says Ellis, whose feature documentary Toxic Beauty was nominated for the 2021 International Emmys and won best direction and best writing at the Canadian Screen Awards (CSA).

“But I always thought I’d come back to sport in my work in film.”

She adds that her experience as an athlete and an Olympian was a formative one.

“Being an athlete and representing Canada was a wonderful experience in more ways than not. I learned a lot and although I didn't know it at the time, I have carried the good and the tough times forward and I'm thankful for that.”

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'There’s definitely a romance about it': How letterpress printing made an impression on women writers

With new documentary, U of T alumna – and former Olympian – explores how women are defined in sport