Equity Matters

Oct 4

Women’s Status in Higher Education: Equity Matters

Elizabeth J. Allan, University of Maine
Guest contributor

he excerpt below is the Executive Summary of the ASHE’s Higher Education Report: Volume 37, Number 1, Women’s Status in Higher Education: Equity Matters, by Elizabeth J. Allan. It is from the Wiley Online Library.

Significant gains have been made in women’s access to and representation in higher education. Although they are important, focus on these improvements provides only a partial picture of gender equity and inequity. Taken alone, enrollment data tend to eclipse other factors that shape women’s...

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Sep 29

Education Matters: Confronting Homophobia and Transphobia in Schools

Brian Burtch, Simon Fraser University
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

Our awareness of homophobia and transphobia in high schools has been heightened by a growing body of research and media commentary that is beginning to take seriously the dynamics of exclusion and resistance experienced by LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirited, and questioning) students. As Rebecca Haskell and I wrote in our book,...

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Sep 28

Disability research, digital innovations and online activism

Filippo Trevisan, University of Glasgow
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

In 1980, disability scholar and activist Vic Finkelstein hypothesized a not too distant future in which “impaired persons will […] no longer be oppressed by disabling social conventions and disabling environments but will be absorbed in the mainstream of social interactions.” In his view, technological development was to be an important enabler of social change, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in particular were to be central...

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Sep 20

Differences Matter: Innovations and people with disabilities

Gregor Wolbring, University of Calgary
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

Innovation, according to Wikipedia, “generally refers to the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.”  Many of these innovations in scientific and technological products as well as novel ideas and theoretical concepts have implications for people with disabilities.

Today, we are witnessing extraordinary innovations in scientific and...

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Sep 15

Diversity Should Power Science Research and Innovation

Scott E. Page, University of Michigan and Santa Fe Institute
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

Scientific inquiry proceeds most fruitfully when sufficient funding is spread across a complexity of disciplines to a diversity of researchers.

Whether put forth by Vannevar Bush, one of the godfathers of the military-industrial complex, or Richard C. Atkinson, the long-...

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Sep 12

Difference Matters: Diversity, Complexity and Innovation

Scott E. Page, University of Michigan
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

Most people believe that innovation requires smarter people, better ideas. That premise, though intuitive, omits what may be the most powerful but least understood force for innovation: Diversity.

Diversity usually calls to mind differences in race, gender, ethnicity, physical capabilities, and sexual orientation – social or political differences that at first glance have little to do with innovation. Yet the key to innovation, in...

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Aug 25

Able People, Disabling World: Unequal Access to Water

Verlyn Leopatra, Jacqueline Noga and Emily Hutcheon, University of Calgary
Guest contributors

This entry is part of a collaborative series on disabilities between the Federation’s Equity Issues Portfolio and the Canadian Disability Studies Association/ Association Canadienne des Études sur l’Incapacité.

At the Ignite Change Now! Global Youth Assembly 2011, hosted by the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights in Edmonton in July, some 500 youth explored the connections between water and an array of national and global issues.

We presented a workshop, “Able...

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Aug 23

For Aboriginal people education is the ‘new buffalo’

Malinda S. Smith, Canadian Federation for Humanities and social sciences 
Vice-president, Equity Issues

This entry is part of the Equity Issues Portfolio’s series on Indigenizing the academy and Indigenous education.

We laud ourselves for supporting education of children in Afghanistan, while First Nations children get 60 to 80 per cent of government education investment received by non-Aboriginal children here.

Canada is celebrated for its contributions to human rights: a beacon of hope for immigrants, a safe haven for refugees, a country of...

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Aug 18

Disabilities, Aging and Sibling support: Tending a precious resource

Bonnie Lashewicz, University of Calgary
Guest contributor

This entry is part of a collaborative series on disabilities between the Federation’s Equity Issues Portfolio and the Canadian Disability Studies Association/ Association Canadienne des Études sur l’Incapacité

People with disabilities, like Canadians in general, are living increasingly long lives. This sub-set of our aging population has specialized needs given that when the effects of age are superimposed on pre-existing disability, age related physical changes are more likely to occur and to occur earlier and with greater intensity. Although the arbitrariness of numbers is open to debate,...

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