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UBC sexual assault scandal

Title: UBC ‘abandoned’ women who reported sexual assaults: Grad student finally expelled after a year and half of complaints, fifth estate discovers

Source: CBC News

Link

Date published: 11.20.2016

Highlighted quotes from source:

-The University of British Columbia took more than a year and a half to act against a grad student despite mounting complaints of harassment or sexual assault by at least six women on campus, an investigation bythe fifth estate reveals.

The women allege Dmitry Mordvinov, a 28-year old PhD student in the history department, committed a wide range of offensive acts  against them from inappropriate touching to sexual assault, starting at least as far back as the spring of 2013. The university quietly expelled him last week.

 

-UBC declined to talk to the fifth estate about the details of the case or the criticisms raised by the women, citing privacy concerns. But in an email statement to the fifth estate, UBC spokesperson Leslie Dickson said, “We take serious assault seriously and welcome a constructive dialogue on how our administrative  processes … can be made clearer and more responsive.””

“Even after Mordvinov’s expulsion this month, many of the women feel betrayed by the university they called home.

“If the university isn’t going to take care of this or isn’t going to try and offer a safe space for people to learn in, then … by doing that you’re making it really easy for predators,” said one of them.

Cameron Diaz on aging

“Cameron Diaz celebrates ageing with makeup-free selfie”

24 Hours Vancouver (March 31, 2016)

In the shot, the 43-year-old poses with the book in front of her as she smiles at the camera, with her blonde hair hanging loosely around her face.

While Cameron has clear skin, the lack of beauty products does show the actress’ crows feet at the corners of her eyes, but she is more than happy to age, and has revealed the five secrets to living the happiest, healthiest life possible on her website.

Cameron’s latest book follows her hugely successful 2013 release, The Body Book, and she recently admitted she has no plans to return to acting in the near future as she is enjoying her anti-ageing and lifestyle research.

Julianne Hough on dieting

“Julianne Hough on diet: ‘I would just go crazy’”

24 Hours Vancouver (March 30, 2016)

Dancer and actress Julianne Hough has found food happiness after relaxing her approach to dieting.

The former Dancing with the Stars professional has always been in tip top shape thanks to her performance background, but her discipline did force her to be super strict when it came to food, and now she is a bit older, Julianne has decided to go a little easier on herself.

“In the past, I used to be so strict, and because I was strict, I used to fall off (her diet) really easily, and once I fell off, I would just go crazy,” she told People magazine. “[I] was being very strict and disciplined, all or nothing.”

The 27-year-old no longer feels the need to monitor her food intake as closely, and admits she feels so much better since she made the change.

Julianne, who is engaged to ice hockey player Brooks Laich, still enjoys dancing and exercising, and goes to CorePower yoga twice a week, as well as taking regular hikes with her dogs.

“I like to keep myself pretty occupied, and I feel like if I’m doing the same thing over and over again I get pretty bored,” she said. “So I try to mix it up. After I work out I actually feel the best. When you sweat, I feel like you glow more. I also feel good when my fiance says I look good first thing in the morning with no make-up. It has to do with him too!””

Man-buns and pro-athletes

“Why your man-bun could make you a pro athlete”

Vancity Buzz (March 30, 2016)

Man-bun men of Vancouver – we finally understand your pain. All thanks to a new video by Jack Greystone about his struggle to maintain his own man-bun-tastic hairstyle.

“Would you say I’m a professional athlete kind of? Yeah I think I would,” says the Canadian hair icon on YouTube.

So – apart from his newfound popularity – what keeps him going on this quest for greatness?

“Just as the fight becomes almost unbearable, I think about the first women who wore pants,” says Greystone.

“And I find the strength the keep fighting like they did, for the day when people stopped calling them lady pants – and just started calling them… pants.”

Bill C-3

“Bill C-3 is sexist, racist, and fatally flawed”

Canadian Dimension (April 25, 2010)

Bill C-3 was introduced by the Conservatives on March 11, 2010, ostensibly to “fix” the sex discrimination in the status registration provisions of the Indian Act pursuant to the BC Court of Appeal decision in the November 2009 McIvor case, which held that the status provisions of the Indian Act violate the equality guarantees of the Charter. Bill C-3 passed second reading on March 29, and is currently before the Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. If it is passed, Canada will continue to discriminate against Aboriginal women in legislation.

This issue has a long history. Since the 1800s the racist, sexist Indian Act defined “status” Indians, thus identifying those who could (and at one time, must) live on reserves and who were subject to the Indian Act, and eligible for the meager programs made available by the federal government. The Indian Act defined an Indian as “a male Indian, the wife of a male Indian or the child of a male Indian” as per the practices of colonial patriarchy. Thus, Indian women who married “out” were stripped of their status and could not confer it to their children, while Indian men who married “out” or “in” gave their status and band membership to their wives and children and thus to their grandchildren.

Arguing the equality guarantee of section 15 of the Charter, Sharon McIvor challenged the continuing sex discrimination that gives preferred Indian status to men who married “out” as compared to women who married “out”, and to descendants of male Indians as compared to those descended from female Indians. McIvor won in the B.C. Supreme Court and in the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2007 and 2009. As a result, the federal government has to, once more, amend the Indian Act.

But Bill C-3 is not the solution. It would continue to discriminate by conferring a weaker form of “status” on reinstatees. Although the Conservatives say that it will provide access to Indian status to 45,000 descendants of previously ineligible Aboriginal women, it will not give them equal status. Descendants of reinstated women will still have less ability to transmit their status than the descendants of men. The legislated inability of one Indian parent to transmit status, known as the second generation cut-off, will apply to these women’s descendants one generation earlier than to male lineage descendants.

In addition, Bill C-3 will leave out some Aboriginal women and their descendants for no other reason than sex discrimination. For example, grandchildren who trace their Aboriginal descent through the maternal line will continue to be denied status if they were born prior to September 4, 1951 while grandchildren who trace their Aboriginal descent through the male line will not. Bill C-3 continues to exclude grandchildren descended from status Indian women who co-parented with non-status men in common law unions. Grandchildren of status Indian fathers who co-parented with non-Indian women are not excluded from registration status.

Gender disparities on city councils

“Report shows glaring lack of female voices on Canadian city councils”

The Globe and Mail (June 11, 2015)

A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ranked the country’s 25 largest cities based on their female-friendliness. The report looked at factors such as economic security and education. But the political statistics were perhaps the most telling of the balance of power: Where are the female voices on the country’s city councils?

St John’s, for example, has no women on council. In Hamilton, women make up only 20 per cent of elected officials. Victoria – which, incidentally, took first place in the rankings – is the only city where female city councilors outnumber their male peers.

In a country fueled by the economies of its cities, a shortage of female politicians – and a lack of overall diversity – on city councils is troubling, especially considering the influence of municipal policy in residents’ lives, and the key decisions councils make about fiscal priorities, including child care and affordable housing. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of qualified candidates: Across the country, urban-dwelling Canadian women have more education than men.

Cities with male-dominated sectors, such as tech or oil and gas, fell at the bottom of the rankings because of gaps in employment and pay. Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo took last place, with Edmonton and Calgary following closely behind at the bottom of the pack. In Alberta, for instance, the report points out that men hold 88 per cent of the construction jobs, and 76 per cent of oil and gas jobs.

Edmonton has had among the highest wages in the country, but also one of the biggest gender gaps; there, full-time female workers earn $16,000 less than men.

At the same time, the report applauded some grassroots movements to level out the urban gender playing field, including Edmonton food servers who protested being asked to wear miniskirts on the job, and a group in Quebec City that helps hearing-impaired women get access to perinatal care.

When it comes to senior city managers, the gender gap is smaller – in the top cities, women make up more than one-third of senior managers. Still, the municipal buck stops at council.

Jian Ghomeshi’s lawyer profile

“The Fixer”

Toronto Life

To the media’s dismay, her client is nowhere in sight. Ever since Ghomeshi pleaded not guilty to seven counts of sexual assault and one of choking, Henein has put a gag on his dulcet public tones. As one of the most respected and feared criminal lawyers in the country, she has become not only his voice but his last best hope against the possibility of a life sentence in prison.

For the lead role in this drama, no casting director could have made a better match. In looks, age and background, Ghomeshi and Henein share eerie similarities, and, within legal circles, her star power is at least equal to his. But while Ghomeshi’s on-air charm may have carried him to the loftiest reaches of the CBC only to be exposed as a sham—an artful mask concealing an alleged mean streak—Henein seems to have gone out of her way to cultivate a forbidding persona. Even one of her most grateful clients, former attorney general Michael Bryant, has described her as someone who “seemed to channel Hannibal Lecter,” and another, one-time minor league hockey coach Dave Frost, dubbed her “my shark.”

At 50, she looks a decade younger, a vision in black chic perched on $1,500 leopard-patterned Louis Vuitton pumps. They turn out to be just one pair from a collection so notorious that Ontario’s former chief justice Warren Winkler once ribbed her, “So are you going to buy a car or a new pair of shoes?” Even with the benefit of those four-inch heels, Henein seems tinier than she did in the courtroom, her hourglass figure whittled away by twice-weekly weight training sessions, her boyish bob and kohl-rimmed eyes lending her the air of a gamine. A diamond-encrusted serpent ring is her only jewellery, slithering up one ornately manicured finger, each opaline nail inscribed with a delicate black deco design. Despite the obvious time and attention she has devoted to that artful presentation, she waves off questions about her designer wardrobe. Male lawyers, she protests, never get queried about their clothes. “If I dress this way, it’s because it amuses me,” she shrugs.

While most legal firms opt for the reassuring patina of wood panelling and landscapes, Henein’s stark private office features a giant photo of a voodoo doctor named Baron Samedi strutting gleefully through a New Orleans cemetery in top hat and skull mask. Every object in these spare quarters has been edited by the same exacting eye that she brings to each case—all part of a controversial exercise in building her own edgy legal brand.

Success strategies for women in academia

“Women academics: Five strategies for success”

University Affairs (November 24, 2008)

Establish your geographic flexibility

  • The secret to success in the academic job hunt is relocation, relocation, relocation.

Women, particularly those coming late to academe as a career change, are often limited by their geographic circumstances. Their lives and families are established, and moving for work is often not an option. Yet many women considering academic careers do not realize how much this puts them at a disadvantage.

Find an academic mentor

  • Follow the lead of academics who have been there before.

Strong academic mentors are often key collaborators in the journey through doctoral studies and the academic job search.

In order to find the right mentor, ask yourself what type of guidance and support you need most. For example, do you want assistance learning how to research, and publish from that research? Do you need help navigating the structural processes needed to complete your doctorate? Seek out academics who seem well poised to help you in these areas.

Statistics of women in academia

“Knowledge Centre: Women in Academia”

Catalyst (July 9, 2015)

Men Professors Earn More Than Women Professors on Average
In 2013, in Canada, women full-time permanent university professors earned an average of $89,670 a year.

  • This is 87.8% of what men professors earned

Visible minority faculty made up about 17% of university teachers, slightly higher than their representation in the overall labor force

  • Visible minorities overall earned about 90% of what professors as a whole earned
  • Latin American professors, however, earned less than 70% of what the professorate as a whole earned and black professors earned just over 75% of what the professorate as a whole earned

UBC gives female professors 2% raise

“UBC gives all female tenure-stream faculty a 2 per cent raise”

The Globe and Mail (February 3, 2013)

The University of British Columbia is striking a blow at gender inequity in professors’ pay, promising all tenure-stream female faculty a 2 per cent pay hike by the end of the month – a rare approach expected to cost the school about $2-million this year.

The total cost of the initiative should prove much higher as the pay increase is retroactive to July 1, 2010. It comes as a result of a series of internal equity studies that found female professors of all ranks were paid $3,000 less on average, a discrepancy that could only be explained by gender after accounting for other factors.

The studies by the University’s Equity Office pegged the overall difference in average pay between genders at more than $14,000. But half that differential comes from the fact that while women make up 38 per cent of associate and assistant professors at UBC, they account for only 21 per cent of better-paid full professors. The fact there are more men in higher-paying faculties, such as Commerce, also contributes to the discrepancy.

After accounting for these and other factors, UBC decided on the 2 per cent hike to close the remaining $3,000 average gap. In an agreement with the UBC Faculty Association, they chose to compensate every woman professor – even those with salaries at the high end of the scale. As a result, the measure will close the average gap in pay, but may not fix each individual shortfall, Dr. Kuske said.

“You could have very high-performing women faculty and male faculty that you could compare, and even though that high-performer would be getting above-the-line, maybe she’s even performing better [than her male counterparts],” Dr. Kuske said. “Below-the-line takes care of some things, but it doesn’t really address the way discrimination can come in.”