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Project HERstory |
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ABOUT Why Women's & Gender Studies in high schools? Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Women's & Gender Studies |
In the beginning... The Miss G__ project began in January 2005 as the somewhat naïve dream of two university students at the University of Western Ontario wanting to do something with their lives. And looking to party with famous people.Sarah Ghabrial and Sheetal Rawal were kickin’ around a dorm room, listening to tunes, talking about high school experiences, when it hit them – they had never encountered an introduction to studies of gender (and its intersections with class, race, ability and sexual iden- tity) and its implications in their high school education. Nor did they see women's perspectives and experiences represented or included in the curriculum as anything more substantial than a tokenistic sidebar in a textbook. Sheetal had been taking an introductory Women’s Studies course and Sarah had been sitting in on it. They decided that what they were learning was eye-opening and life-changing and should have a place at the high school level. They began distributing a one-page photocopied demand for an introductory Women's & Gender Studies course in the Ontario Secondary School curriculum. Naming the Project The project was named after a reading from the Women's & Gender Studies course Sheetal was taking. Dilani Mohan came up with it when the sistahs were hanging out in early February 2005 in the Women's Issues Network office at the University of Western Ontario chatting about life, love, and the baby project. Various terrible acronyms were tossed around before Dilani suggested adopting "Miss G__" as a face for the project.Don't Reinvent the Wheel After connecting with Dr. Rebecca Coulter, an academ- ic and community activist, and meeting with professors at Huron University College and Western, The Miss G___ers learned that a lot of work had already been done in the past 30 years of feminist research and activism in the area of education, and that they weren't reinventing the wheel. There was groundwork and research that supported what they had in mind. There were, in fact, precedents. What the Miss G__ project needed to tap into was raising awareness and action around the issue.Networking Networking was key – talking to as many people as possible, from diverse backgrounds: professors, admin- istrators, students, post office employees, union mem- bers, teachers, politicians, ministry officials, curriculum advisers, community workers, and so on. An early goal of the project was to make contacts everywhere – by crashing conferences, going up to musicians after their shows, meeting with activists after speeches, almost anything.Steering Committee By making an impromptu speech at a campus International Women's Day breakfast event in March 2005, Sheetal managed to lure Lara Shkrodoff, a UWO student, to the project, forming a central steering com- mittee that drew on the different knowledges, experi- ences, ideas, and resources of its members. The team began working outward, upward, and downward. And inward they would find as time passed.Grassroots The fact that members of the project have busy lives outside of it was why Lara described the relaxed atti- tude of the project by saying:“It's grassroots baby: you do what you can, when you can.” High school workshops were developed for the Social Justice Now! Conference in London, Ontario in May 2005. The night before the first workshop, a pamphlet was drafted and the logo was drawn up and ironed on to T-shirts.Internet Since many of the project's members are internet nerrrds, the internet (email, blogging, online communi- ties) has been integral to the project in terms of com- munication, connection and research. For example, “googling” was how Miss G__ met Shannon Mills, a teacher in Parry Sound teaching a “Women's Perspectives”course under the interdisciplinary studies curriculum. It was really important for members of the project to create a website so that people could start accessing and spreading information about Miss G__ across the province.Media Coverage Media coverage has been really key in both drumming up support for the project, but especially for expanding the project early on. In July 2005,through email persist- ence, the Toronto Star did a story on Miss G___ that piqued the interest of a lot of people.Chapters Students from different universities and high schools across the province got involved in the summer of 2005, beginning to work on Miss G__ on a local level within their communities. To date, three chapter con- ferences with the purpose of sharing information and directing the project were held in September 2005, January 2006, and August 2006.
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Copyright 2006 The Miss G__ Project