March 7, 2008, Toronto ON

The coming months are full of exciting developments.

• This spring and summer, we expect much cooperation and coordination of efforts between WGS educators and experts we work with and Education officials in the Ministry of Education. As a community group, we will be fulfilling an advisory role and working closely with the Ministry through the development of this course to ensure that it is the course students need and deserve.
• Next month, The Miss G_ Project, in partnership with the YWCA Toronto and the Centre for Women's Studies in Education at OISE will be co-hosting a summit where students from across Ontario will have the chance to talk directly to Minister Wynne, and share their experiences of the public education system and their ideas for how to improve it.
• We are expecting a formal public announcement from Minister Wynne in the coming months that the Ministry and the province will be moving forward on this initiative to make the curriculum, and thus the school system, more safe and equitable.
• Finally, when all is said and done, we're planning on throwing a really big party.

But, on this International Women's Day, these reasons to be hopeful do not void our reasons to be outraged.

In this country, we still face egregious human rights issues: in this country, there is a national epidemic of sexual and gender-based violence that goes almost unabated; in this country, the murders of too many aboriginal women still await justice in the courts, in this country, feminist organizations and woman-focused service-providers are shockingly and embarrassingly under-funded; in this country there is a disproportionately high poverty rate for women compared with men, especially single mothers, and in particular racialized and immigrant women.

In this province, we can begin to do something about these problems. Waiting for justice in the court system is too late; it is in the education system where we must look for ways of preventing such violence and injustice from ever happening. If students are not given the language, the space, the conceptual tools to begin challenging injustices both globally and in their own lives and classrooms, then the public education system is simply failing. This is exactly what a Women's and Gender Studies course would allow students to do. Rebecca will speak more to this point, but students equipped with WGS knowledge will be able to analyze inequality from race/gender/sexuality/ability/class-conscious perspectives, they will have a knowledge of women's histories in this province, in this country, and globally (something the current curriculum is sorely, and sadly, missing), and they will develop into more informed and responsible citizens, whatever their path after graduation.

This past Valentine's Day, hundreds of individuals called and emailed the Ministry of Education and the Premier's office to remind those in power of their equity policy commitments - commitments that should be honored and exercised, and not exist as mere textual lip service.

Countless Ontarians have raised their voices to support this cause - individuals from all walks of life, organizations from all sectors, elected representatives from all parties - who for the past three years (and some for the past thirty) have been urging the designers of our education system - from the Ministry to school boards - to recognize the critical link between equity and safety. Your voices have been heard, but it doesn't stop here. As citizens, we must all keep working toward gender equity in all spheres. And we must continue to remind the Ministry of Education, as it takes steps to make its policy commitments a reality, that equity and justice must take precedence in public education.

Because pepper spray doesn't solve the problem.

Because guns, jails, and sniffing dogs don't solve the problem.

Because Education does.

Thank you.