| Halifax, Feb. 12, 2007 If It Aint Broke Don’t Fix It Say Delegates at MSVU Education Conference Forty years after the creation of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (on February 16, 1967), Mount St. Vincent University, Canada’s only university with an explicit focus on women, is close to eliminating “women” from its mission statement. This weekend, an international conference on “Educating Women/Women’s Education in the Post-secondary Context,” drew about 100 women to MSVU. A recurring theme of the conference is the ongoing need for a focus on women in higher education. Despite the fact that women students are the majority on campuses across the country, serious problems remain in achieving gender equity in the curriculum and in the ranks of senror faculty and administration. MSVU has not only the highest percentage of women students but also the highest percentage of women faculty and senior administrators in the country. In the Canada Research Chairs program, which has been the criticized for its underappointment of women, MSVU scores 100%, with women holding all four of its Chairs. Thus delegates were dismayed to learn of the current plan to abandon its commitment to women’s education. Two presentations analyzed the demise of hundred of women’s colleges in the US in the 1970s. Donna Lisker, director of a new leadership for women (the Baldwin Scholars) at Duke University, emphasized that “something important was lost” in the transformation and merger of the former women’s college at Duke. At this time, when MSVU is re-examining its mission statement, the delegates offered their “unequivocal support to MSVU to continue with its vision of providing leadership in Canada and the world in defining and delivering forward-looking and inclusive education for women,” reported Christine Overall, organizer of the conference, who holds the prestigious Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies. For further information contact Jane Gordon or Linda Christiansen Ruffman: jane.gordon@msvu.ca or ruffman@smu.ca |
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