Tag: workshops

Blame my naivité but credit our strategic focus on impact

Posted on by Shari Graydon

“I can fix that!”

That’s how naive I was when I started Informed Opinions 13 years ago. A month-long study of The Globe and Mail’s op ed pages had revealed that women’s perspectives made up less than a quarter of those published. And 40% were penned by one columnist with a discouragingly narrow view of humanity.

Writing op eds is a teachable skill. Canadian women are as educated and insightful as men. How hard could it be to bridge the gap?

Indeed, since 2010, thousands of the women we’ve trained have gone on to add value to dozens of influential publications (including the Globe, The Toronto Star, La Presse…) across the country.

As a result, many have positioned themselves as thought leaders in their fields, been recruited to new jobs, and appointed to prestigious panels, boards and the Senate!

But that wasn’t enough. The road to the victory Informed Opinions is seeking – gender parity in public discourse – is paved with serious speed bumps. So we have repeatedly pivoted:

– When we realized how reluctant many women were to accept media interviews or speaking requests, we developed new workshops.

– When we noticed that journalists were still defaulting to the usual white male sources despite the ubiquity of highly qualified, diverse women, we created an experts database to make them easier to find.

– We also partnered with scientists at Simon Fraser University to develop the Gender Gap Tracker to incentivize improvement. It measures and makes public how well (or poorly) news outlets perform in featuring women’s perspectives.

– When we heard from Black, brown, Indigenous, disabled and LGBTQ+ experts how increasingly brutal online abuse had become, we launched our #ToxicHush initiative to draw attention to its silencing impact, especially on under-represented voices.

– And when our data revealed that 60% of the most frequently quoted news sources are politicians – and we discovered that Canada is lagging behind 60 other countries for gender parity in politics – we pivoted again.

Our new Balance of Power campaign reminds Canadians: Representation is fundamental to democracy and many other countries have made achieving gender parity more of a priority.

These strategic shifts have required Informed Opinions to grow from a small project into an organization with full-time staff, an experienced board, and dozens of partners across the country.

They’ve also fuelled measurable impact and helped to attract funding from government, private foundations and individual supporters.

So if you believe, as they do, that women’s amplified voices are essential to solving the persistent social, economic and environmental challenges we face, please consider joining them in donating to Informed Opinions.

A tax receipt, our deep gratitude and increased impact will follow. https://lnkd.in/g_i3AjAf 

When age is a valued credential

Posted on by Shari Graydon

The moment was both painful and telling. As the MC introduced me to the 250 teenagers assembled to engage in a discussion about the importance of media literacy in an image-dominated age, I watched every kid’s eyes glaze-over.

It wasn’t the reference to my two award-winning books for youth, or my ten years as president of Media Action. No, the offending piece of information was my status as a grandmother.

Sam, a source of pure unadulterated joy in the lives of everyone he meets.

I am delighted enough with this designation that the screensaver on my smart phone features a picture of Sam, a more adorable boy than you could possibly imagine. That’s how the MC came to learn of his existence. But by using the relationship as a descriptor during my introduction, she had inadvertently made me irrelevant to the kids in the hall.

I was reminded of this incident last week while participating in another panel convened by the Great Canadian Theatre Company. The occasion was a discussion on women and aging held in advance of a matinee performance of Mary Walsh’s Dancing With Rage. Considering the focus of the panel, and the 75 mostly-over-50 women assembled, my grandmother status might have been relevant. (In this context, the youthfulness of the other panelists – 32 and 27 – was striking.)

Royalties from book sales support Informed Opinions’s work amplifying women’s voices

However, my claim to legitimacy came from having had the wisdom to invite 40 other women of a certain age to contribute to the collection, I Feel Great About My Hands back in 2010. Shortly after the book came out, I was speaking with Marion, a scientist in her 80s. When I told her that the collection’s subtitle was “and other unexpected joys of aging”, there was a pause on her end of the line. And then Marion asked me, not unkindly,

“And what would you know about aging, Shari?”

I felt appropriately humbled. Relatively speaking, a 50-something year-old knows almost nothing about aging. And — having witnessed up close the plethora of health and mobility issues affecting my beloved former in-laws and own cherished parents — it’s not like I don’t appreciate the difference.

At the GCTC last week, I was also humbled by the observations and inspirations elicited from members of the audience, many of whom might have been even better choices for the panel than the three of us who had been invited to speak.

The voices missing in Canadian public discourse are not just those of women, but those of women of diverse ages and experiences, and of wider ranging ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Not to mention those who are living with disabilities, and/or battling unconscious discrimination based on a range of identities, including having entered the “m’am” stage of life.

As members of the audience pointed out, nothing quite prepares you for being rendered invisible at precisely the moment when you really have your act together. Or being spoken to as if you have already entered a state of catatonic dementia.  We laughed about the suggestion that substituting “vintage” for “old” might increase our appeal, but the cost to society of marginalizing an entire generation of people remains a serious one.

Aboriginal communities have many things to teach us, but appreciation for elders – the insights offered by lives lived and lessons learned – is certainly among them.

In my more optimistic moments, I fantasize that the combination of the baby boomers’ demographic bulge and the continuing need for skilled workers will help to transform individual and collective attitudes to grey hair and wrinkles when they come paired with a woman’s face.

The more willing we are to wear our age, and the more visible we remain, engaged in and commenting on the world around us, the easier it will for us to collectively counter the stereotypes perpetuated by a youth-obsessed culture.

Last weekend the GCTC lobby was overflowing with women whose experience and expertise could add enormous value to public discourse. I wish I’d had the forethought to have offered a copy of I Feel Great About My Hands as a door prize. If I’d passed a hat for business cards, I could have followed up with all those present, encouraging them to visit the Resources page on our website, or attend one of our workshops.

Their voices are needed.