Evidence Network

Gender

Emotions and politics in the wake of the Kavanaugh Crisis

The fallout from the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, riveted people on both sides of the border and provides ample evidence that feelings can become weaponized in politics to uphold (white) male privilege. In his blistering, scripted opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh performed the role of the aggrieved party, […]

Time to end mandatory minimum-sentences for murder

Indigenous women vastly overrepresented among those sentenced to life   What’s wrong with mandatory minimum sentences?  Plenty. Especially when it comes to murder. High profile serial murderers come to mind when Canadians think of murder convictions: Bernardo, Olson, Pickton. Few turn their minds to the 18-year-old Indigenous teen who kills her abusive drug dealer. Such a […]

Politics lacking women candidates

There has been some optimism about the rise of women in politics, including the so-called “revenge” candidacies of women vying for seats in the American midterm elections, running against politicians who have been openly anti-women, anti-pro-choice and anti-feminist. There is now a record number of women running in U.S. House and Senate races, and many […]

Jordan Peterson and the cult of genius

Like it or not, University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson is a cultural sensation. Over the past year and a half, Peterson has gained notoriety through his open hostility toward trans rights and feminism as well as his characterization of universities as tools for indoctrinating students into what he terms “neo-Marxism.” He has throngs of […]

A global uprising against rape case injustices

Tens of thousands of people marched in Spain in April, protesting for three days over a court’s failure to convict five men of the gang rape of an 18-year-old woman during the Pamplona bull-running festival in 2016. The men had offered to walk the teenager to her car, but instead they took her to the […]

The deadly side of toxic masculinity

For many of us, the events on Monday in Toronto introduced a new word into our vocabulary: “incel,” or involuntarily celibate. The 25-year-old Toronto area man accused of killing 10 people after a van plowed into a busy sidewalk apparently self-identified as an “incel.” In a Facebook post, Alek Minassian stated: “The Incel Rebellion has […]

Canada needs a national agency to review all domestic homicides and create an integrated domestic violence safety system

Bill C-75 reforms too little, too late to respond to domestic violence    A woman is killed by her current or former partner every six days in Canada. Indigenous women are killed by their intimate partners at a rate eight times higher. In Peel (Toronto) alone, five women were killed in January 2018 — the […]

Women’s work across every aspect of healthcare is largely invisible

Why it’s critical we use gender transformative approaches for the health workforce in Canada Sometimes an issue can be so pervasive that it is rendered nearly invisible. Take for instance the gender of the health workforce. Women comprise 82 per cent of health workers in Canada, in contrast to 47 per cent in the total labour […]

Pay equity laws alone won’t close the gap

Pay equity legislation is important, but that alone will not close the gap for women. Affordable and accessible child care will   There were a lot of old ghosts haunting the Liberal government when it tabled its budget on February 27. But have these spectres brought change to women’s lives this International Women’s Day? Not […]