Category: Advocacy

Why is it so crucial that we hear from Indigenous women?

Posted on by Shari Graydon

and Amy Ede. In the context of our collaboration to engage and support more Indigenous women and gender diverse people in being heard through the media, the two recently sat down (virtually) to discuss related ideas.

SHARI: I’m embarrassed to admit that when we started Informed Opinions  in 2010, I seriously under-estimated the obstacles to bridging the gender gap in Canadian media. Blinded by my own, relatively benign experience, I thought “if I just show women how under-represented our voices are; teach them how to translate their knowledge into publishable op eds, or become more comfortable and effective in media interviews; and then make it easy for journalists to find them, that will do it.”

I failed to realize how reluctant many women are, especially if they work in sectors where they’re constantly being reminded in subtle or explicit ways that they don’t belong. As a woman who never had kids of my own, I also didn’t appreciate just how challenging it is to make time for unpaid media engagement while holding down a job and raising a family. 

And even though I’ve been getting hate mail since the days when trolls had to address and stamp an actual envelope, my privilege blinded me to how much worse the backlash directed to BIPOC women is, especially when facilitated by toxic social media culture.

AMY: Yes, doxxing (the public broadcasting of personal details about how to find a person offline) is a terrifying form of oppression and the violence in real life and on social media is omnipresent and magnified for Indigenous women. Every interaction presents a choice to face violence or be silent. Real life danger looms large as we know that white men may rape and murder Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirt and LGBTQQIA people with impunity. The cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, including Cindy Gladue and Tina Fontaine, show a justice system that dehumanizes us and robs us of our dignity just as the perpetrators have.

Encouraging us to step up is asking us to engage with systems that have ignored, pressured, manipulated, or exploited us. We have been consulted but our input has not been honoured. In addition, demands for unpaid labour, rationalized by community good or awareness, have exhausted us. We are asked to be experts on Indigenous culture or history, educating journalists, interviewers and consultants about basic things that should have been taught in schools.

I share a great deal of myself through the news media and on social media because I want to be seen and understood in a system that erases, displaces and misrepresents me. I have experienced the hurt and humiliation of opening an article about an Indigenous woman advocate I look up to and being thrown into the horrifying details of her childhood abuse in the opening paragraphs. 

I know that there is always a possibility of harm to myself and others when I lend my voice to a medium I can’t control. The best I can do is equip myself with the tools I need to advocate for strength-based, solution-focused, and trauma-informed communications and go the extra mile to educate others. It’s a privilege that I have the support systems and conviction that I need to do this and that trailblazers like Ellen Gabriel and Pam Palmater have normalized being outspoken.

SHARI: The sobering context you share echoes the perspectives we heard this summer during a roundtable we convened with BIPOC women who are featured in our database of expert sources. White journalists and sources need to better understand how fraught the terrain is for those who don’t enjoy privileges we take for granted. 

At the same time, we remind women with critically valuable insights that if they decline interview opportunities, counting themselves out because they’re not “the best” person, this is as much of a problem as journalists failing to seek their perspectives in the first place. The journalist will simply go to the next available source, who’s likely to be male, and unlikely to be fettered by the self-expectation that he has to know everything. 

That’s why we encourage women to focus on their ability to “add value”. And because they have relevant experience — or they wouldn’t have been contacted in the first place — they can almost always clear that bar. 

“The galactic imagery in this work suggests the infinite knowledge that lives within us. The lived experience of these four women is valid and theirs to share.” – Sarah Ayaqi Whalen-Lunn (she/her) is an Inuk artist based out of Anchorage

AMY: I see Indigenous women on Twitter who are experts on traditional Indigenous governance structures, relational worldviews, and artistic practices posting brilliant statements in the public domain, for free. A decolonized perspective on holding knowledge recognizes that job titles and institutional credentials are irrelevant to the value of a person, their ideas, and the level of respect we show them. We need to change not only how we listen, but who we listen to, facilitating the amplification of these perspectives.

SHARI: The absence of financial compensation for one’s hard-won insights compounds the problems of invisibility. The deck is stacked against those who are already challenged by racist structures and don’t have the time to invest in labour that’s not only risky but unpaid.

Another challenge is that dominant media practices have created the perception that you have to look or sound a certain way to be considered credible. The image of authority that’s been reinforced by news media for centuries is that of a middle-age white male dressed in business attire. And so anyone outside of that frame is more likely to feel undermined before they even open their mouths.

AMY: Some women are resisting constructs of appropriate ways to express themselves and exercising our right to be angry. Black and Indigenous women have led the way in challenging the notion that we need to be polite, approachable, and smile in order to be heard; that we don’t have to create a safe space for others to witness our outrage. When Minister Hadju was on CBC’s Power & Politics in a leather flight jacket, an Indigenous woman leader expressed that this was how she wanted to dress for interviews. We need to dress in ways that make us feel powerful and ourselves.

I was approached to speak on an Ask Women Anything panel in Ottawa back in 2018, when I’d recently departed my position as Director of Communications at the Native Women’s Association of Canada. I wrote speeches and presentations for others but I didn’t see how I had a voice that mattered. 

Participating convinced me that I’m an expert in my own personal experience. The act of voicing my truth legitimizes shared experiences of violence, racism, and erasure and helps others better understand the barriers to the health and wellbeing facing many Indigenous women, Black women, and Women of Colour. 

SHARI:  I’d forgotten that connection! Ask Women Anything is an Ottawa-based grassroots amplification initiative that was created by Informed Opinions’ previous board Chair, Amanda Parriag as a project of Informed Opinions. It became such a powerful platform for voices and perspectives that have been traditionally marginalized that Amanda is now leading it as a stand-alone entity.  

AMY: After the panel, Amanda  offered to co-write an op-ed with me for a national publication. The piece we wrote lamenting that “progress” had become a dirty word was published in The Toronto Star, and generated a lot of reader engagement. The next time I felt that I had a perspective that needed to be heard,  I had the confidence and experience to be published on my own. It’s our responsibility not only to speak out, but to encourage and lend capacity and resources to others who are finding their own voice in media.

I’m experienced in advocacy, I’m engaged with my community, and I spend a lot of time learning and writing about Indigenous priorities. Who I am and what I do has made me artful in the communication of difficult truths. I know that my voice can change the conversation and I put in extra work to be heard on my own terms. 

SHARI:  It’s so encouraging to hear that this was your experience. And your recent piece defining Indigenous defenders as “front-line essential workers” was enormously compelling. What kind of response did you get?

AMY: This was a success for me in many ways. I fear backlash from the Indigenous community the most and was shocked not to be called in or called out on something egregious. My tweet about the article received over 100 retweets from accounts including 1492 LandBackLane, so I hope that land and water defenders knew it was a love letter to them and their work and that Indigenous readers knew I wasn’t trying to speak on their behalf. Non-Indigenous readers told me that they felt informed and that was also a goal; to stomp out confusion and build understanding that I hope will turn into support.

SHARI: We’ve seen so many examples of women creating demonstrated impact by sharing experiences and perceptions that were previously under-reported or missing entirely. 

It’s impossible to predict what difference it would make if women were quoted 50% of the time (instead of 30%, as our Gender Gap Tracker is currently showing). But we experimented by taking 100 op eds written by women we’d trained that were published in influential daily newspapers. We created a word cloud to see what issues came up most often. Then we created a comparable word cloud with a random sample of 100 op eds written by men during the same period of time. Finally, we deducted the words that were common to both samples to end up with the issues that only gained prominence when women’s voices were featured. 

It was a heartbreaking exercise. Some words were completely predictable: women, girls, sexual, assault. But many others were not, like food and water, evidence and impact, racism and police! What’s interesting is that we did this experiment in 2016, before the #MeToo movement and #BlackLivesMatter — though interestingly after #IdleNoMore. It’s deeply concerning to think of the issues that are not getting attention because we chronically under-represent the people — women, Indigenous people, people of colour, people living with a disability, LGBTQQIA — who are most affected by them.

AMY: I agree that the more we expand representation in media to include people who identify as Two-Spirit and non-binary, women of diverse faiths, women experiencing incarceration, women who live in rural, remote, and northern areas, working-class women, women experiencing poverty, and women who are street associated, the better we will be able to see the landscape as it is. 

It interests me that evidence and impact are included in the word cloud. Indigenous women are trained to give evidence beyond our lived experiences because we are not believed. With better awareness of our lived experiences and understanding of our priorities, it may be possible to speak without first quantifying how we have been silenced, why our knowledge is valuable,  and why our voices are deserving of respect.

Informed Opinions is actively focused on including voices more representative of the population in the Circle of Experts. We’re seeking Indigenous women and gender diverse people across industries and with professional and personal expertise to join. There’s no limit to the number of rich perspectives needed from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, as well as others with a story to tell.

Shari Graydon is the Catalyst of Informed Opinions, a non-profit working to amplify women and gender diverse individuals’ voices and ensure they have as much influence in public conversations as men’s.

Four Lessons from the Life and Advocacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Posted on by Shari Graydon

One of the wonderful things about truly inspiring people is that their influence outlasts them. The power of their actions and words can continue to change minds and motivate choices well beyond their time among us. It requires no prescience to predict that this will be true of the just-passed Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

Yes, the US Supreme Court has lost a giant of jurisprudence, and now millions of progressive-minded American voters and law-makers are properly outraged by the hypocritical intentions of Mitch McConnell. He has pledged to replace RBG before the upcoming November elections, despite his unwillingness to permit Barack Obama to appoint his own nominee leading up to the 2016 elections. 

How that drama will play out remains to be seen. But regardless, the rest of us can continue to benefit from the many lessons the “Notorious RBG” taught us, both explicitly and by example. Here are just a few…

While attending Columbia law school, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was invited to dinner by the dean along with the seven other female students (out of a class of 500). He asked each of them how they justified taking up a spot that should have rightly gone to a male student. RBG responded that she wanted to understand and be able to support her husband in his legal career. 

A worthy goal, but hardly one that foretold her eventual impact on women’s equality. 

In the early 1960s, however, she traveled to Sweden to do research for a book on the Swedish civil justice system. Attending a trial, she observed that not only was the presiding judge a woman, but she was noticeably pregnant. (In the US at the time, there were virtually no female judges and teachers were taken out of the classroom the minute their pregnancies began to show.)

1. Your visibility as a role model — in media and elsewhere — matters

The encounter caused her to question the roadblocks she had faced in her own career. And it’s worth remarking on what a difference it makes to witness a woman exercising power, publicly demonstrating her intellectual gifts.

When we are denied access to such examples, it’s easy to see the obstacles as inevitable. Physically confronting an alternative reality challenges that willingness to accept an unfair status quo. That’s why at Informed Opinions we regularly encourage women to seek visibility: for the benefits it contributes to others.

RBG also recalled coming across this quote in a Swedish magazine:

“Men and women have one principle role. That is being people.” 

She said that it became foundational to how she approached her litigation work, much of it performed on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Association. One of her cases involved a plaintiff whose wife had died in childbirth. He wanted to be able to quit his job in order to raise his child. But at the time, survivor benefits were not awarded to male parents.  

2. Advocating for broad equality is strategic as well as right

RBG successfully argued this case in front of nine male justices, and in doing so, established a precedent that she built on decades later to help inspire landmark equal pay legislation for women. You can read more about her dissenting opinion in the Lily Ledbetter case here, when she challenged Congress to rectify the error in judgment her colleagues were making.

A few years later, President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law to do just that. Clearly, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had vision, and she played the long game. 

Moreover, even though her dissenting opinion — read aloud in court at a time when that was almost never done — was described as “scathing”, she was known to have very cordial relationships with all of her colleagues.

She and conservative standard bearer, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (who categorically opposed reading the Constitution through a lens that evolved with the times), were, in her own words, “best buddies”.  

Their bond, cultivated over many years, survived many profound differences of opinion on legal and social issues that were publicly negotiated. No doubt a tribute to both individuals, it certainly reflected the sentiment RBG herself expressed in encouraging those who looked up to her:

 3. “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Given the deep political divisions within the US, and the appetite its current President has for fanning partisan flames despite the demonstrable demand of our times for cooperation, this counsel remains especially timely.

Finally, in the context of the work Informed Opinions does, seeking to expand the space for women’s perspectives in Canadian public conversations, I leave you with this final piece of advice from one of the most diminutive but influential rock stars the legal world has ever known:

4. “Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.”

Appreciating all the reasons that women have to avoid putting themselves in the line of fire by speaking their truth in public, this directive is especially relevant. At a recent roundtable Informed Opinions convened with 16 women from diverse backgrounds featured in our database, we were reminded of the virulence of the abuse levelled at Black, Indigenous and women of colour.

With their encouragement and advice, we are now developing a psychological care kit and peer support network to make it easier for women to act on the late great justice’s advice. 

The tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s accomplishments abound and make for inspiring reading. Much of the above context was informed by a conversation featured on the New York Times’ The Daily podcast between Michael Barbero and longtime Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse.

Shari Graydon is the Catalyst of Informed Opinions, a non-profit working to amplify women’s voices and ensure they have as much influence in Canada’s public conversations as men’s.

We train smart women to speak up more often and more effectively.

We make them easier for journalists to find.

And we issue charitable receipts to those who support our equity-focused work. 

Redefining success and failure in academia

Posted on by Maïka Sondarjee

This article was originally published by University Affairs

I’ve failed more often than I’ve succeeded, but you wouldn’t know that from reading my CV.

Last year, I failed to get a postdoctoral grant from the Social Science Humanities and Research Council. Two years in a row, I failed to get a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds de recherche Société et culture du Québec. At the beginning of 2020, I was deeply questioning my value as a scholar.

But then, in the space of just a few months, both Banting and SSHRC awarded me postdoctoral fellowships, and the University of Ottawa hired me in a tenure-track position. You can be sure that these honours are reflected on my public profiles.

My failures, in contrast, remain invisible to the public eye – and even to most of my closest friends. That’s because I only share my successes.

Academic culture dictates that success defines us. Those who fail at grant competitions or publishing are “losers.” So publicly, I give the impression that my hard work has paid off, and most things work out for me.

In academia, we sustain a toxic reward system and we are pressured to compare ourselves with others. And sadly, success is more than just hard work: it is also a matter of privilege, conjuncture and luck.

A huge part of my own success can be attributed to luck. Not all of it, but a lot of it. This is not a call to diminish our accomplishments (especially for women and racialized people!) or to stop working hard. It is a call to relativize success in academia, to criticize this toxic culture, and to change the way we evaluate candidates for jobs and grants.

CV of failures

To remind me of that, I followed the example of Melanie I. Stefan, a lecturer in the school of biomedical sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and wrote my “CV of failures.”

Keeping track of my setbacks helped me to relativize success and failure in this harsh academic world. Personally, it helped me gain perspective not only on my own success, but also on other peoples’ achievements, which I was clearly overestimating in comparison to mine.

I agree with Princeton psychology professor Johannes Haushofer who states in his own CV of failures that academics « are more likely to attribute their own failures to themselves, rather than the fact that the world is stochastic, applications are crapshoots, and selection committees and referees have bad days.” Some applicants can also have a few bad months or write one poor application. This doesn’t mean that they are undeserving scholars.

Listing my failures doesn’t mean that I am unworthy of grants or a tenure-track job. But they give context to my triumphs, reminding me that many unsuccessful applicants deserved to receive funding or appointments, too. Nor are the setbacks injunctions to “work harder, you’ll get it next year.” Sometimes, working hard is not enough.

Privilege, conjuncture and luck

We often disregard the fact that privileges played a major role in our successes. They influenced which graduate school accepted us, what level of material and psychological anxiety we experienced, how much others respected us.

I am a second-generation immigrant from an Indian-Malagasy background. But because I can pass as white, I never had to prove my worth as much as my black and brown colleagues. I was also born in Canada, and I studied at the University of Toronto. This is an undue citizenship advantage in comparison to my cousins in Madagascar.

Even at the worst of times, while living on my meagre $15,000 student funding package, I knew my family would help me if I needed rent money at the end of the month. I also never struggled with mental health. Though my path was challenging as a French-speaking woman from a non-academic background, my privileges contributed to me getting a Banting postdoc as well as a tenure-track job.

As per conjuncture, I was fortunate that the decision-making committees who evaluated my applications in 2020 were apparently interested in women’s empowerment in India and decolonial thinking. As my record of rejections indicates, this was not the case in 2019.

My first thought when I received my rejection letter from FRQSC in 2020 was that I was not good enough. But then again, I was also awarded a Banting fellowship, so I didn’t understand. Reading my CV of failures alongside my successes made me realize that I am not more or less worthy of praise now than before. Sometimes I was offered money and jobs, and sometimes I was not. Sometimes, for the same research project.

We should participate in changing the academic reward system and its culture of comparison. This means we need to be talking about (and sharing on social media!) our failures as well as our successes.

Maïka Sondarjee received a Banting postdoctoral fellowship from the Université de Montréal. She is an assistant professor in the school of international development and global studies at the University of Ottawa. She also co-leads Informed Opinions’ French language initiative, Femmes Expertes.

Justice for _ _ _ _ _

Posted on by Sherlyn Assam

When these deaths are followed by hashtags instead of convictions, I often wonder when the murderers will tire of being fuelled by hate. When our peers and our friends and our families and their cops and their government will shout loud enough to be heard over 400 years of white noise.

I should not know George Floyd’s name. I should not know Breonna Taylor’s. I should not know Ahmaud Arbery’s. I should not know Sandra Bland’s. I should not know Philando Castille’s. I should not know Eric Garner’s. I should not know Michael Brown’s. I should not know Trayvon Martin’s. The list goes on.

When black people pass each other in the halls, on the street, in cars, we often exchange a nod or a small smile. Even if we do not know each other by name, we know each other by collective experience. We are nodding to this, greeting one of our own in a place we have not been welcomed, and smiling because we are still out here, against the odds.

The odds were not in George Floyd’s favour – or any of my fallen brothers and sisters, whether I know their names or not. There should not be a hashtag, should not be injustice, should not be murder, should not be a combination of hatred and power.

And yet, there is. And where racism is, corpses follow.

While I wade in the sorrow of knowing George Floyd is not the first and will not be the last, I am still kicking to stay afloat. We will not be crushed by the pressure of institutions made to obliterate us. In fact, we will break the knee of the system, of the perpetrators.

I should not know George Floyd’s name, but now that I do, I will not forget it. I refuse for him to be swept aside as they count on our routines to distract us from the atrocity. Their error is failing to realize we are living in this atrocity.

Showing up on social media, the streets, in offices, and the courts is not an event we RSVP to. We are living it. We can breathe. And with every last breath, we will fight.

Justice for George Floyd. Justice for us.

If you’re moved to support necessary change, consider the following:

Additional content on related issues we’ve found illuminating include:

Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Jericho Brown interviewed on CBC Radio’s Writers & Company

My Black ancestors fled America for freedom. I left Canada to find a home. An essay by Dr. Debra Thompson in The Globe and Mail

Sherlyn Assam is Informed Opinions’ Media Engagement Coordinator and a graduate student in the Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership program at Carleton University. 

Tell your mentors how much you appreciate their impact while you can

Posted on by Shari Graydon

Meg moved quickly behind me to close the door to her office not wanting her staff to overhear. 

I had showed up in advance of the MediaWatch board meeting in 1990 to let her know that even though I’d only joined the board six months previously, I would be resigning at this, my second meeting. 

When pressed, I confessed my disappointment that some of the other members didn’t seem that engaged. At my first meeting, we’d gone around the table to share what we’d been up to on behalf of the then 10-year-old feminist organization advocating to improve how women were represented in media. More than half of my new colleagues had nothing to say. 

Wrapped in my new-convert-to-the-cause fervour, I was appalled. What I saw as both a privilege and pressing responsibility, they seemed to view as a governance obligation to be executed three times a year in exchange for take-out pizza and — if they lived elsewhere — economy class travel to Toronto. 

Meg, who’s ballet-master-posture and long patrician face made her seem even taller than the six feet she’d inherited, was also new to her job as Executive Director. She’d taken on the role when the board had moved the organization’s office from Vancouver to Canada’s media centre to better influence the business practices of advertisers, broadcasters and news organizations. 

Eric House, David Gardner and Meg Hogarth in a performance of The Cherry Orchard at Hart House in Toronto, 1977

An actor, former president of the Canadian performers’ union, and one-time provincial NDP candidate, Meg modelled what was, for me, an inspiring marriage of activism and art, pragmatism and persuasion. She was bright and energetic, confident and fun. 

And she managed to convince me in short order that the conclusion I was drawing to quit the board was entirely wrong; instead of jumping ship, she advised, I should be at its helm. The term of the current president was up and given the leadership I’d already shown — writing op eds, giving public talks and media interviews — she was certain others would be happy to cede the floor to me. (This is one source of the quip I often make in talks: there are no glass ceilings in under-funded women’s organizations.)

That conversation with Meg, which took place 30 years ago, changed the course of my life. Although I’ve done many other things during and after my ten years as chair of that board, three decades later, I remain integrally involved in advocacy work related to the persistent under-representation of women in media. 

MediaWatch has morphed into Informed Opinions, and I continue to build on research we did together… share stories about interviews I gave during those years… fuel my commitment with the recognition that while women’s equality has seen extraordinary gains in many arenas, we are still being interviewed, quoted and featured less than a third of the time. 

During the period of our collaboration, Meg was generous in passing speaking opportunities and media interviews to me. She would coach me on the phone, offering feedback and sharing ideas that made me a more interesting source and more effective advocate. 

Her own commitment to the cause was best illustrated by a meeting she secured with Ted Rogers, founder of the Rogers media empire. As funding cuts in the 1990s began to erode MediaWatch’s ability to deliver programming, conduct research and lobby media, she sought an audience with the empire builder, whom she’d briefly dated many decades before. Even though they hadn’t been in touch for years, and he had no evident history of sharing company profits with women’s organizations, he ran a media empire, and he agreed to see her.

I don’t recall any details of the meeting, only the optics of the encounter as she described them: both of them in their sixties, but Meg dressed in her rag-tag bohemian non-profit aesthetic, having arrived by bike at Rogers’ well-appointed corporate headquarters to meet the business-suited billionaire. 

I believe the audience was both perfunctory and fruitless, but I loved her for having had the humility to request it, the strength of character to show up as herself, and the sense of humour necessary to turn the incident into a good story.

Meg Hogarth died last month at 84. Her passing was marked with an obit in The Globe and Mail, which failed to include a photograph. Given her work helping to make women more visible, this was a cruel irony.

Meg had arguably a greater impact on the course of my life and the advocacy I’m still doing than almost anybody. I told her that the last time I saw her in 2016… confessed that I was more invigorated by what had become my life’s work than I ever could have imagined… thanked her for closing the door behind me back in 1990 and painting a leadership vision that I hadn’t previously aspired to assume. 

I don’t know how much of what I said was understood. By then her communication abilities were limited by the impact of both Parkinson’s and several strokes. I regret not having made a point to tell her sooner. That’s why I’m telling you. 

Without Meg Hogarth, executive director of MediaWatch, no Shari Graydon, catalyst of Informed Opinions. Indeed, no Informed Opinions. 

The next donation I make to the organization’s future will be in her honour.

How to Cope with the Coronavirus Shutdown

Posted on by Shari Graydon

Is it possible to eat your weight in popcorn? 

I appear to be trying. 

The pandemic lock-down has also given me permission to double my chocolate intake, consume cookies at breakfast and microwave chunks of cheese on a plate so I can scrape the stuff into my mouth with a fork. The grapes have become mere garnish, and I don’t even try to find a 5 pm Zoom date to pretend I’m not drinking alone. 

I’m not proud of this behaviour, and the fact that I have the luxury of doing it without being criticized or even interrupted at any hour of the day or night is not lost on me. I know others are negotiating divorces over lesser offences committed in too-close quarters. And some are contributing to the tragically skyrocketing calls to women’s shelters.

Reading others’ coronavirus coping mechanisms inspires or depresses me, depending on how ambitious they are and where I am on the popcorn/chocolate/cheese self-loathing cycle. But in case you’re in need of new ideas, here’s what I — and some of Informed Ops’ experts — have found helpful:

Phone calls: I’m old enough to have spent the first part of my career unencumbered by email’s demands. And yet like almost everyone else, I’ve allowed online communication to supersede the phone. Now, however, exhausted by the cognitive dissonance of virtual Zoom meetings (the video tricks your brain into believing you’re with others, but your body knows better and the impact is wearing), I often dial a contact or friend without (gasp!) emailing them to secure an appointment first. 

The intimacy of voice-only calls made while wandering around my apartment, sitting on the couch or lying on the floor feels both liberating and deeply human. 

Performance metrics: At my first non-service-industry job post-university I had to keep a time-sheet, recording my hours against the clients on whose behalf I was securing media exposure. Although I left the job after three years, three decades later, I’m still logging my hours. 

At Informed Opinions, the resulting data is complemented by other measures. These include both productivity metrics — how many workshops we deliver, women we train, experts we recruit to our online database — and evidence of impact — how many op eds they publish, interview requests they receive, and journalists we engage.  

Pandemic fears have increased some of these metrics but seriously eroded others. And when every day feels the same, and there’s no clear end in sight, being able to note even small accomplishments helps boost my mood. This means I now keep a manual spreadsheet to track the days I complete my self-imposed routine of pushups, lunges, supported shoulder stands and a dozen other stretch and strength exercises. And I check my Fitbit data more than ever. Where before I paid attention primarily to my step count, now I’ve become manic about minutes of activity and number of hours I’m moving. (On balance, given my consumption confessions above, I think this qualifies as a healthy tech addiction.)

Romantic comedies: Movies I previously turned my nose up at because of their predictability (plucky heroine! deal-breaking secret! happy ending!) I now seek out precisely because the characters’ arcs are so familiar and a satisfying resolution is guaranteed to arrive within two hours (as opposed to, say, 18 months).

Last weekend alone I watched both Maid in Manhattan and The Wedding Planner. I did find the retro Cinderella story vibe of the former and the excessive consumption ethos of the latter grating, but I also loved the warm embrace of the hotel staff sisterhood and geriatric scrabble players who had Lopez’s back in the two films. 

Also, and not incidentally, because I’m currently watching Ozark with my partner long-distance, the rom-coms provide a necessary break from the thrumming undertone of threatened — and sometimes graphically realized — violence in the much more sophisticated and satisfying-in-other-ways programming.  

Writing: Despite having ample time to complete a still unfinished funding application, I have repeatedly stepped away from my computer to mop my kitchen floor, watch origami videos and make massive vats (yes, plural) of my favourite pasta sauce. 

But writing that gives me an opportunity to express how I feel? That I make time for. Last week I discovered that Toronto-based poet Dwayne Morgan was offering an online session that night for a $10 contribution. Tough call: finish tallying my 2019 receipts so I could finally submit my tax return, or hang out with Dwayne? His gentle prompts helped me translate a little of my own sadness into something that might be relatable to others.

Many of the experts profiled in our database are being called upon to share their insights on Covid-related issues, and a number have offered their own coping advice:

More women’s voices shaping Canada’s public conversations

Posted on by Shari Graydon

In the 10 years since Informed Opinions began training women across sectors and fields to share their insights and analysis with the media, we’ve delivered almost 250 workshops to more than 3500 participants. More than half of those sessions have focused on a five-step process designed to support subject matter experts in translating their knowledge on important issues into timely, accessible and engaging opinion pieces. 

Although we’re not able to reliably keep track of all outcomes, we do know that more than 1000 op-eds written by our “grads” have been published across a wide range of Canadian print and online news platforms. (The term “op ed” is a throwback to print newspapers when the opinion page in most papers appeared opposite the editorial page. For decades, opinion pages have provided an opportunity for members of the community with knowledge about a particular issue to submit argumentative pieces for publication.)

Curious to see if our training impact was translating into moving the needle in an aggregate way, last November, Informed Opinions’ board chair, Nobina Robinson, and advisory committee member, June Webber undertook a month-long content analysis study of the online comment hubs of three daily newspapers. (These typically feature more content than their print counterparts, because space is not at such a premium. Recognizing that more and more people are now consuming their news online, we chose to focus there, rather than the more restricted print.)

The coding efforts captured the author, gender, topic, title and affiliation of every opinion piece by both regular columnists and op ed contributors at The Globe and Mail, The Ottawa Citizen and The Toronto Star for the entire month. 

The results — when compared with similar research we did in Spring of 2010 and February-March of 2013 — show that we are, indeed, making progress. Here’s what we found:

Over the past ten years, all three papers improved the representation of female contributors to their opinion sections, increasing commentary by women by at least eight per cent, and as much as 16%. And some of the women published in each paper are, indeed, women who’ve participated in our training and/or who are featured in our database. 

The data on female columnists (staff or freelance writers who are given a regular platform by the news outlet) revealed a more complicated picture. During the month of November, 57% of the published commentaries in the Toronto Star written by regular contributors were penned by women, up from an already impressive 40% in 2013. In contrast, the percentage of female columnists at both the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail declined in the same period. From a high of 43% in 2013, the Citizen dropped to 12%.  Meanwhile, female columnists in the Globe dropped from 39% seven years ago to 24% last fall.

We reached out to the comment section editors of all three papers to share our findings, gain a better understanding of the editors’ goals, and explore what, if anything, we might be able to do to support a more equitable representation of perspectives.  

Scott Colby at the Toronto Star responded immediately, offering candid feedback on his process and priorities. Looking at the print version of his paper, he says, makes clear how well the Star is doing in featuring women’s perspectives. Columnists’ bylines are accompanied by thumbnail photos, making it easy to see the gender breakdown. But, he says, he still receives many, many more op ed submissions from men than women, and — given the diversity of Toronto’s population — he’s especially focused on making sure the op eds he publishes reflect the voices of people of colour.  

Although Colby sometimes commissions opinion pieces, he says he often finds it especially difficult to recruit female contributors able and willing to comment on Canadian politics, international affairs and financial issues.

Like Colby, Ottawa Citizen comment page editor, Christina  Spencer, receives many more unsolicited op ed submissions from men than women, but says that when she’s able to commission pieces — seeking commentary on an emerging issue or breaking story — the women she approaches are as likely to say yes as their male counterparts. But Spencer acknowledges that as part of the Post Media chain of papers, The Citizen inherits many of its columnists from The National Post, the vast majority of whom are male. 

Although we didn’t receive a response to our query from the Globe, the reduction in female voices on the columnist side may be partly a function of the recent retirement of Margaret Wente, who previously wrote three times a week. (In our 2010 research, her views made up 40% of the female perspective published on the paper’s comment pages.)

The splintering of news audiences means that legacy news media exert less sway over public discourse today than they did a decade ago. However, comment pages and online hubs remain influential. Politicians and policy-makers pay attention to the ideas shared and positions advocated, and broadcast journalists seeking authoritative guests able to provide context for and analysis on timely issues also turn to opinion spaces.   

We have argued elsewhere for the importance of ensuring that such spaces — and news coverage more broadly — provide a diversity of perspectives more generally, and better reflect women’s perspectives in particular. It’s encouraging to see the progress reflected in this most recent research.

The upside of getting outside (of your comfort zone)

Posted on by Shari Graydon

I’m embarrassed to confess how long it’s taken me to wake up to this revelation.

I ask women every day to step out of their comfort zones and speak up about things they know to be important — to share their insights, challenge ignorance, and make change. But recently it occurred to me that I have been unwilling to step outside my own comfort zone. 

I speak up all the time in my advocacy work. But I’ve been doing that for 30 years; it’s easy for me. What’s not easy for me is asking other people to help fund that work. And so mostly I haven’t. 

Since founding Informed Opinions ten years ago, I’ve asked three established feminist philanthropists for contributions to our work, and been so gratified by their support.  And as Christmas approaches every year, we’ve pulled together an email or two inviting people on our contacts list to make us part of their end-of-the-year giving plans. Many have, and we so value their donations. 

But these efforts have always made me enormously uncomfortable. As a result, I’ve focused almost all of my revenue-generating efforts on developing, promoting and delivering our programming. 

Over the past decade, we’ve essentially leveraged the few government and foundation grants we’ve received to build a social enterprise. We’ve cultivated relationships with universities and non-profits, and created a suite of practical workshops that help executives, scholars and advocates draw attention to the issues they know and care about. In the process, we’ve generated close to a million dollars in fee-for-service revenues. Those funds have been crucial to the impact we’ve had. They’ve supported our online resources and the ongoing expansion and promotion of our database of experts. I’m enormously proud of that. 

But the diligent members of my board have done the math that I’ve been avoiding. They’ve pointed out that just because Samantha and I are willing to work long hours for considerably less than market value because we “love the work and are committed to the mission” (and yes, I DO appreciate that this is one of the many ways women keep ourselves small and undervalued), doesn’t mean that doing so is a defensible position or recipe for sustainability. 

So this year I am focusing my attention on leveraging both our demonstrated impact and the unique cultural moment we’re in. I am actively seeking the resources necessary to scale up our work and deliver on our promise. 

I’m often in rooms full of smart, knowledgeable and articulate women. Invariably some of them express reluctance about having a public voice, knowing that it may open them up to criticism. I understand that. But here’s what I ask them:

“Do you believe the work you do is important? That it’s getting the attention it deserves? That it’s worthy of support?”

And then I remind them that if, despite their knowledge and commitment, they’re not willing to speak up, perhaps no one will. And all the research, insight and brilliance in the world is only valuable when it’s shared.

Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg have made the world stand up and take notice of the causes they champion as teenagers. And as a result of speaking up, they’ve been shot in the head or publicly condemned by the President of the United States. But that hasn’t stopped them. 

Founder of the Op Ed Project, Katie Orenstein, also acknowledges that speaking up has consequences. But she points out that the alternative is to be inconsequential. Failing to capitalize on the potential we have to make a difference is likely to keep us on the wrong end of the consequential-inconsequential continuum. 

Last fall, I asked Barbara Grantham, then President of the Vancouver Hospital Foundation and now incoming CEO of Care Canada and a member of Informed Opinions’ advisory committee member, for fundraising advice. Among her many insights was this:

“Philanthropy is an opportunity for people to be their best selves.”

Even though my own giving capacity is limited, I understand that. When I donate to a food bank or woman’s shelter, I feel an expanded sense of my own humanity. And now I’m working to embrace the capacity Informed Opinions has to offer others a similar experience.

We’re collaborating with a wonderful team of women at capitalW, an initiative launched last year by Kathryn Babcock. When I first met Kathryn to explore whether or not we might work together to raise funds for Informed Opinions, almost the first sentence out of her mouth was: 

“I’m fascinated by money.”

I was genuinely shocked by this admission. I’ve been an advocate for 30 years, saw her as a sister in the trenches, and was still deep into my denial of the centrality of resources to make change happen. I’d spent years taking pride in my relentless focus on the work, not the infrastructure; I regularly told others I wasn’t looking to build an empire, I just wanted to make change. And that meant, in my naive and unquestioning mind, not thinking about money. So to hear a fierce feminist flat-out confess to being preoccupied by it was startling.

But Kathryn’s sophisticated analysis of the flow of money in a capitalistic society and vision of how we should be leveraging the untapped potential of women’s consumer spending for equality challenged me to think differently about my own relationship with money. Within moments of meeting her, I found myself saying, “What can I do to help you?”

So six months later, Informed Opinions has embarked on a concerted campaign to scale up the critically important and potentially far-reaching work we’re doing. I’m still often deeply uncomfortable speaking the words, “Would you consider making a contribution…” But in doing so, I feel a new connection to the women who email us every week or so to say something like:

“A journalist called wanting me to comment on national TV and I was going to say ‘no, I’m not the best person’, but I heard your voice in my head and so I said yes.  I did the interview — without throwing up! — and I’ve had great feedback. Thank you so much!”

If you’re already donating to Informed Opinions, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you’re not, but want to know more about the impact we’ve had, what we’re aiming to do next, and how you or your organization or network can help, click here.

Running to catch the light — and creating the “Transformational 20s”

Posted on by Shari Graydon

Is patience still a virtue? 

When teaching kids, or walking behind those forced by age or disability to slow down, absolutely. But as Australia burns, and bellicose men on either side of the world threaten war, I feel with greater urgency than ever that change can’t happen quickly enough.

My partner would tell you that patience has never been my virtue. If the “walk” sign appears when I’m half a block away from the intersection, I will break into a sprint — even if I’m carting fragile eggs and an unwieldy watermelon.

Broken eggs aside, impatience has its virtues. 

The women who fought to ensure that the rest of us get to vote, take maternity leave, and be paid commensurate with our equally qualified male colleagues, were not a patient bunch. Meaningful change of any kind requires that people who are dissatisfied enough with the status quo not put off agitating today for what they think should have been available yesterday.

Impatience gets sh*t done. It’s the very air that activists and the ambitious of all kinds breathe.   

A few years ago I came across a persuasive op ed published in The Globe and Mail about the controversy around foreign workers. The byline identified its author, Catherine Connelly, as a prof at McMaster University. I had recently delivered an op ed writing workshop on the Hamilton campus, and at first thought she must have attended. But she hadn’t. I reached out anyway to compliment her on her thoughtful media intervention. 

“Great op ed,” I wrote. 

“Great lecture,” she replied.

Although Catherine hadn’t participated in my workshop, she had attended a public talk I gave at the university on the same trip. She told me that my talk had inspired her to translate the research she was doing into a newspaper commentary. She was too impatient to wait for the next workshop, so she wrote and pitched her op ed without additional support. Its publication in The Globe then helped her secure additional research funding.

I founded Informed Opinions ten years ago, believing that the way to bridge the gender gap in Canadian public discourse was to ensure enough expert women had the tools and motivation to write commentary and say “yes” to media interviews. 

In those 10 years, we’ve delivered media engagement training and support to more than 3,000 extremely knowledgeable women from across disciplines, sectors and the country. We’ve built a database to make them easier for journalists to find. And when that didn’t move the needle as fast as we’d hoped, we built an online digital analytics accountability tool — the Gender Gap Tracker — in the hopes of incentivizing a change in behaviour. 

As a result, a significant number of the women we’ve supported have amplified their voices and raised their profiles through public discourse. Many have also increased their impact and experienced expanded professional opportunities.

But the progress overall remains incremental, and I’m more impatient than ever. Every morning when I walk up one side of the Rideau Canal and down the other, I chant the following affirmation:

“You easily attract all the funding, resources, talent and buy-in necessary to successfully bridge the gender gap in Canadian public discourse by 2025.”  

Increasing women’s share of written commentary, feature interviews and cited quotations from 28% (what it is now) to 50% in five years might sound laughably optimistic, but we believe it’s both essential and achievable. 

Corporations and governments alike have invested in all kinds of efforts aimed at advancing equality for women. Most of those efforts have been met with systemic resistance. But in the media realm, some journalists — both in Canada and elsewhere — are already achieving gender parity in the sources they quote. And the answer to who and how is simple: what gets measured gets done. 

And here’s why that matters beyond the media: the Gender Gap Tracker allows us to measure the gains made in public discourse in real time. And they can be leveraged to increase women’s participation, leadership opportunities and profile elsewhere. Amplifying the voices and visibility of qualified women with expertise across disciplines makes it easier for all women to see themselves as leaders, easier for political parties and conference programmers and executive recruiters to identify potential candidates, and more difficult for organizations of all kinds to claim that women capable of serving in any of those capacities don’t exist.

We’re impatient to realize the future we’ve been envisioning and working towards for ten years. And we’ve developed smart, strategic plans to get there.

In the meantime, people are musing aloud about what the next ten years should be labelled. Here at Informed Opinions, merely one week in, we’ve already decided, designating them:

The Transformational 20s.

This is not wishful thinking on our part, it’s intentional action. We live in starkly sobering times. From the growing recognition of our terrifying environmental vulnerability, to revenge-driven threats of war, to the aftermath of the #MeToo movement… We are reminded in every news cycle of the democratic necessity of including diverse women’s voices in decision-making of all kinds.

Impatience is not just desirable, it’s demanded.  That’s why we are running as fast as we can to catch the light — both actually, at the intersection, to move forward, and metaphorically, in the world, before darkness descends. 

Here’s how you can help us:

  1. Book a workshop or keynote. We’ve documented in detail how impactful the former are, but if you’re impatient, and can convene a larger group, the latter are great for the impatient. We can usually accommodate 10 or 20 in a training session, but we can motivate action in 100 or 1000 people with a keynote. 
  2. Share your insights where they can make a difference. That stuff you know that most people don’t? That has implications for the health or safety or prosperity of others? Find a way to amplify your voice and increase the audience able to make use of your knowledge. The Learning Hub section of our website has lots of free resources aimed at helping you. 
  3. Encourage journalists and news organizations near you to track the gender ratio of their sources to better reflect the realities of the 50% of the population they’re currently under-serving (and to broader their own audience!). Our website features a free, downloadable spreadsheet to make it easy for them to do so.
  4. Donate to Informed Opinions to jumpstart the Transformational 20s. Help us keep our database free to both expert women and the journalists looking to feature them.

Democracy needs women; snowplowing policy proves it

Posted on by Shari Graydon

Can snowplowing be sexist?

Even if you live in Ottawa, a city that removes snow from its downtown core with military precision, you’ve probably never asked yourself that. Until I read Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women – Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, it had never occurred to me to pose the question either.

But it matters that the answer is yes. And this is just one of a thousand reasons that our democracy needs to elect sufficient numbers of women to erase our chronic under-representation in the halls of power.

When you grow up in a world dominated by male decision-makers, the default assumption is that’s the way it is. And many of the stories we tell ourselves – “men are bigger risk takers”, “men have more confidence”, “it’s easier for men to raise money” – reinforce our willingness to accept that status quo.

But many other countries – some of them with much younger democracies and much less advanced economies – do better.  Despite significant gains women have made in every realm, Canada ranks a shocking 61st worldwide in terms of women’s political representation. And our failure to draw on women’s talents and insights has huge implications for every aspect of our lives.

We intuitively grasp how ridiculous it would be if parents were largely left out of policy decisions that affected families… If people living with disabilities had little to no voice when it came to making cities and technology accessible. And yet even though it’s 2019, women still occupy only 27% of the seats in our federal parliament. That’s indefensible.

Women’s voices in the news media are similarly under-represented, so over the past ten years, Informed Opinions has trained women all over the country to translate their knowledge and experience across many fields and sectors into news commentary. We motivate and support women in helping the broader public understand issues important to our lives. More than a thousand of them have done so.

In an effort to understand what stories are missing when women’s voices are absent, we created a word cloud from 100 published op eds penned by women we’d trained. By removing words that also commonly appeared in op eds written by men, we were able to identify which topics and concerns get significantly less attention if women aren’t consulted.

Some of the issues on the list are heartbreakingly predictable. Even before the #MeToo movement, the words “sexual” and “assault”, “violence” and “female” were prominent. But many other words point to essential survival matters for all human beings, such as “food” and “water”, “evidence” and “safety”, “disease” and “treatment”.

We also recently launched an online digital tool that measures in real time the percentage of women and men being quoted in influential news media. Our Gender Gap Tracker makes clear that men’s voices in public discourse dominate by more than two to one. It also tells us that 60% of the people quoted most often are politicians. That’s why it’s so important when party leaders appoint gender-balanced cabinets. Our equitable representation in one arena helps to eliminate our absence in the other.

When Rachel Notley became leader of the Alberta NDP, she told her team: “Don’t even think about bringing me a slate of candidates that’s not gender balanced.”* That needs to be every leader’s default. And between now and the next election, Informed Opinions will be collaborating with organizations working to get more women into politics to encourage all political parties to adopt this gender equity principle. Because it’s fundamental to representation.

As for the sexism of snow-plowing, here’s the deal:

The order of priority in which streets are plowed can have significant consequences for women’s lives. Not only that, but those consequences can end up costing taxpayers in health care costs.

The short story is that clearing pedestrian and public transit routes first, as opposed to main arteries, results in fewer accidents and hospital visits, most of them involving women. Because while most men travel alone, many women travel encumbered by shopping bags, strollers or older relatives. Women also generally walk further than men, in part because they tend to be poorer.

You can read Invisible Women yourself to identify the myriad other reasons. These include the fact that male-biased voice recognition software endangers women’s lives and male-biased performance evaluations stunt our careers. Elected officials aren’t the only people responsible for fixing those problems, but because their contracts are up for renewal every four years, it’s easier to ensure gender parity in their ranks.

So, this federal election, if you’re not running for office yourself, support a woman who is, whose values and priorities you share. Knock on doors for her, donate to her campaign, or invite your neighbours to meet and support her, too.

Snow removal is a mere drip off the pointy end of a massive icicle of policy gaps, and so much more needs to be done to make Canada genuinely democratic, and as fair, healthy and prosperous as it can be. 

*Rachel Notley spoke about this in Kate Graham’s fabulous “No Second Chances” podcast. Every one of the 12 episodes offers context, inspiration and enlightenment about the critical importance of women in politics.