Women’s Worlds 2011

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2011, aboriginal, favourite memory, international, Ka Na Kanichihk, ottawa, women, women's worlds

Women’s Worlds 2011 has blasted through barriers and has broken new ground over the last four days that it has taken place in Ottawa. I have had the privilege to be a part of it as a participant, a presenter and as the BC Network Leader for the non-profit participation part of the conference. It has been an incredible journey that has brought me to Montreal (for Women’s World Network Leaders Training) to Whitehorse (for the BC/Yukon Regional meeting) and finally to Ottawa for the conference.

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“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

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Dreams for women, YWLP

These postcards were sent by the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch, or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to us.

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.”

Tags

Dreams for women, YWLP

These postcards were sent by the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch, or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to us.

“We must be the change we wish to see.”

Tags

Dreams for women, YWLP

These postcards were sent by the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch, or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to us.

“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”

Tags

Dreams for women, young women leaders, YWLP

These postcards were sent by the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch, or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to us.

“History is herstory too.”

Tags

Dreams for women, Young Women Leaders Program, YWLP

These postcards were sent by the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

Help support Antigone Magazine and the Dreams for Women project by purchasing our 2011 Calendar in collaboration with Women’s Worlds.

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.”

Tags

Dreams for women, young women leaders, YWLP

We’ve recently discovered a batch of postcards from The Young Women Leaders Program from the University of Central Florida that should have been posted during our “Young Women Leaders – What are your dreams for women?” run during the summer. We hope you enjoy these postcards over the next few weeks!

The Young Women Leaders Program is a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program. YWLP originated at the University of Virginia, and UCF launched the program in the Orlando community. YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls.

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Help support Antigone Magazine and the Dreams for Women project by purchasing our 2011 Calendar in collaboration with Women’s Worlds.

The Preliminary UNCSW 54 Post-Mortem

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Commission on the Status of Women, United Nations

This is the final part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9
I will probably write more than just one post-mortem on the 54th Commission of the Status of Women for me. I’m writing while staying up too late in Calgary, waiting impatiently to be home with my kids, and have stayed up to that point that I’m scared that if I go to sleep that I will miss my plane.

I didn’t actually get to see Senator Clinton. I had referred to her in my tweets, facebook and blog as “Hillary” and some other tweeple sent out a message to people blogging and tweeting the CSW asking that we refer to the Senator by her proper title. The Feminist communication on this is that when people refer to male politicians they do so by either the proper title and last name, or simply last name.

I suppose referring to a public or professional official by their first name kind of implies a familiarity that isn’t seen as respectful as the title-last-name thing. I’m not that picky about much. I usually refer to people by name because I’m never totally sure of their proper titles (unless it’s an easy one like “president” or “minister”) and I’m usually too lazy to google.

All of that, however, is secondary to the fact that I didn’t actually get to see her address the United Nations on the last day of the CSW. I did wait for over two hours in a line where I was shouted at by UN security personnel. I started livetweeting that after one of the security guards yelled viciously at a woman who looked over seventy. She had approached the guard because she wasn’t sure which line she should have been in.

Antigone Launches Feminist Social Networking Site on International Women’s Day!

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Blog for IWD, canadian, change., feminist, movement, social networking, women

This post is part of Blog for International Women’s Day

Hi Friends!

Happy International Women’s Day!
My name is Amanda Reaume and I am the Executive Director of The Antigone Foundation. We believe it’s time for Canada’s feminists and women’s organizations to work together to leverage the power of social networking to connect around common causes and concerns across the country, both online and in person.

That is why we are launching Antigone Connect , an online site working to engage women’s organizations and feminists across the country to work collaboratively for women’s rights and equality in Canada and around the world.

Our Goal:

We are hoping to create a powerful online network that will be able to help lead the Canadian women’s movement forward in the coming years. As we approach Canada’s 150th Anniversary, we are all aware that there is a great deal more to be done in Canada to ensure women’s equality. More women in politics and managerial positions, accessible child care, changes to the Indian Act, equal pay, and equal pensions are just a few of the things that the Royal Commission on the Status of Women identified as necessary for equality nearly fifty years ago. They have still not been fully realized and this is going to take cooperation and coordination to accomplish.

Canadian Women’s History

This past fall, Antigone Magazine put together an issue about Canadian Women’s History and we spoke to Marilou McPhedran. She talked about how women organized around constitutional issues in the 1980s to ensure that women were included within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As McPhedran mentions, they did this without even a fax machine. With phone trees, letters to MPs and a lot of conviction, these women changed our country. We can too. Many of us now have access to e-mail, the internet, social networking, maybe even Blackberries and Smartphones. Some also have well paying jobs and contacts with women and men in power who support work for women’s equality. We owe it to our foremothers to leverage all the technologies and privileges that we have to connect and make sure that their legacies are not forgotten.

Your Help

But this network is not going to happen overnight. We need your help in the days and weeks ahead to expand it and bring to the table the voices of women from all backgrounds, from groups that might not readily identify as feminists, or those who might have difficulties accessing the internet, and the voices of women and men that are allies to the work that we do. We need you to tell people about it. To e-mail your contacts about it. To post it on Facebook or Twitter. To contact your friends who might have worked for feminist causes in the past but who have gone off in other directions. To help the technically unsavvy negotiate the technology! We need to come together to create this network across Canada.

Canadian Women’s Future!

Inspired by the next issue of our magazine (to be released in March 2010) entitled The Future of Feminism, we will be offering individuals and organizations opportunities to write about their visions for Canadian feminism. In blog entries, on Antigone Connect forums, on Dreams for Women postcards, and by leading online chats, we invite people to contribute to imagining the future of feminism. Email us at antigonemagazine at hotmail.com if you are interested in helping out.

Join Us

We launched this campaign this week and we are moved and excited by the response so far. It would be great to see you at Antigone Connect.

Thanks in advance for giving this a few minutes of your time, and for sharing this message with anyone you know who would like the women of Canada to unite together to transform our country.

Thank you!

Amanda Reaume and the Antigone Team

Executive Director, The Antigone Foundation
www.antigonefoundation.wordpress.com
Author and blogger, Some Leaders Are Born Women
www.someleadersarebornwomen.wordpress.com

photo credit: wikimedia commons

UNCSW 54: March 4

Tags

Commission on the Status of Women, international women's day, United Nations

This post is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 9 , Part 10
I am lagging lagging lagging behind, but luckily for me, I have been live tweeting, which means that not only can interested readers follow along in point form (search #csw54 at twitter.com) but I can go back and refresh my memory from the tweets!

March 4th (Thursday) seemed to hold a Rural women’s theme. I began the day at a session highlighting the work of the Salesian Sisters in rural South America. The Sister’s panel was made up of women who had accessed their services in Ecuador and Guatemala. The women talked about the circumstances that they had come to the Sisters from.