Academic Women is here to provide support for academic women at Simon Fraser University, and advance their interests. Our objective is to offer a collegial network for promoting women’s leadership, career development, advancement and recognition, and for raising awareness for the specific challenges that women face in the academic workplace.

Current board members:

• Ouldooz Baghban Karimi (President)
• Ronda Arab (Secretary)
• Angelica Lim (Treasurer)
• Susan Erikson (Member at Large)
• Thecla Schiphorst (Member at Large)
  

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Please check our Community Communication Code, and if you would like to join the Academic Women mailing list, please follow one of the following options to join:

• Go to SFU MailList Manager, navigate to the "Find Maillist" page (here) and search for Academic-Women. Once you find the maillist, you can request to be added to the list.
• Email aw-board@sfu.ca and ask to be added to the mail list.

April 8, 2021

STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF TRANS CHILDREN’S RIGHT

TO SELF-DETERMINATION

A constellation of interest groups with an investment in conservative, hetero-patriarchal gender politics appears determined to prevent trans kids from receiving acceptance and support, even if it kills some of these children. In spite of the clear and positive impact social acceptance and access to appropriate healthcare has on mental health outcomes for transgender kids and young people, a movement to oppose such programs and services is on the rise. In the U.S. several states have introduced legislation to deny these benefits to them. The Conservative government of the United Kingdom has introduced legislation to prevent doctors from providing transgender kids with affirming healthcare. A group similarly seeking to deny supportive care for trans kids is scheduled to hold a public rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, this Saturday April 10. This action, and the larger movement to deny respect, support, and care to trans and gender nonconforming kids, is a serious threat to trans kids’ well-being and we must oppose it as strongly as possible.           

Gender nonconforming kids have long been subject to bullying and coercive gender socialization; until recently, some of them were forced to endure government-funded treatment designed to cure their gender nonconformity. Known as conversion therapy, it typically involves instructing parents – as well as other adult authority figures – to subject children to constant surveillance and correction, and to withdraw love and affection and replace it with punishment as a means to compel one’s child to conform to “normal” gender codes of dress, manner, and behaviour. Such treatment has devastating and long-lasting consequences for children who experience it. Experts in the field of child psychology and psychiatry, including, for example the American Academy of Pediatrics, denounce such practices and call for gender affirming care. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30224363/

An ever-expanding body of research shows that family support, social acceptance, and access to supportive healthcare produce the best outcomes for transgender kids. Trans kids remain a highly contested population, however. Capitalizing on parent’s, caregivers’ and educators’ uncertainty about how to respond to gender diverse, gender non-confirming, and transgender kids, anti-trans critics are fomenting a moral panic by characterizing the acceptance and support of these children as a social and political threat to society. Anti-trans authors of newspaper articles, opinion pieces and government legislation promulgate the myth that doctors are ‘turning children transgender,’ which harms children and will require expensive medical procedures to reverse. These claims are false, and deeply harmful.

Renewed attacks on transgender children by conservative forces require organizing and energy to combat, and as we gladly take up this work and invite you to join us in it, we also note that it draws us away from the unfinished business of social justice for all trans kids, not just those who have supportive families, access to wealth and privilege, and comfort with a binary identity. Barriers to accessing affirming healthcare include poverty, lack of health insurance, lack of family support, geographic inaccessibility, binary nonconformity, mental health issues/trauma, and coming to understand or being enabled to understand oneself as trans too late to redirect puberty. As it stands, the vulnerability related to racialization and poverty that many trans kids experience receives little attention in scholarly literature, in resources for transgender kids and their families, or in mainstream or LGBT media stories about trans kids.

As an organization committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and to the advancement of evidence-based research, Academic Women stands in solidarity with trans children, teens, adults, and their families, and opposes the politics of fear and scaremongering “anti-gender ideologists” promote. Many members of our organization are queer and/or trans people and lesbian women who have endured and resisted these types of organizations in the past, and we are proud to do so again. We call on the broader SFU community to join us in opposing those who call for the repression of gender diversity and the suppression of trans life in our society.

We are pleased to present our report on equity, diversity, and inclusion at SFU.

Click on the cover page below to read and/or download a copy. Questions? Comments? Email us at echenier [at] sfu.ca

In 2019 we undertook a comprehensive study at Simon Fraser University on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion (our report will be out July 2020). One of the things that emerged from that study is that women, in general, are asked to take on a disproportionate amount of service work. And they accept because they also have a hard time saying no. This particulalarly true of Indigenous, Black, and women of colour who provide essential support to marginalized students, and who are constantly called upon to serve on various committees. To support women in resisting the constant pressure to work more than our fair share, we held a workshop and out of that workshop came this video, which we called "Reclaiming My Time." We could have called it "Lean Out."

Interestingly, the whole idea of encouraging women to say "no" to requests for us to do more than is reasonable and fair caused a kind of backlash among some members. Speaking for myself, I think this speaks to just how deeply embedded our role as 'helpers' is in our gendered identities. What do you think?

-Elise Chenier

What is the experience of female faculty in pandemic times? We asked female faculty at SFU, and here is what they said: