Explosive than any Terrorist’s time Bomb: the RCSW, Then and Now

I was on a panel with two presenters who addressed the RCSW’s recommendations on childcare. The commentator, Alexandra Dobrowolsky used my paper to contextualize the other papers. Members of the audience remarked that my paper presented information that was not familiar to them and that they would like to be able to refer students to this material. The implication of these comments and the activity poses a challenge to present my research in a form that makes it accessible to a new generation of students and other readers, including younger instructors, who do not have ready access to readily digestible information about the RCSW. In revising the book mss from which the material has been drawn, I will keep this prospective audience in the front of my mind.The Report of the RCSW has been a landmark public document, ‘the public face of liberal feminism,’ a foundational document in the inception of Women’s Studies and the progenitor for the emergence of Women and Politics as a subfield in the study of Canadian politics. Scholarship about the RCSW has relied heavily over the past 40 years on the reflections of two participants, the Chairman and the Executive Secretary, for accounts of what happened and why. This excessively narrow interpretive frame has entirely disregards all but 10% of the submissions, the Minutes of the meetings of the Commission that were supposed to have been destroyed, audiotapes of the public hearings available since 1995, surveillance by the Security Intelligence branch of the RCMP of some organizations that prepared briefs, and almost all of the materials deposited by the Commission with the Library and Archives of Canada. This paper draws on these primary sources, elaborated in “Primed and Ticking, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970” (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2010) to provide a more complete and nuanced account of this formative contribution to the development of women’s equality in Canada. Based on those findings the paper looks ahead to areas requiring further work in order to realize more of the explosive power of gender analysis in the next half century

Approaching 40: The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada

I was the lead-off speaker, setting the historical context for more recent developments. I have not presented on this topic in some time, and had a host of new information to offer. Graduate students indicated they were familiar with my co-authored book, Still Counting. Professor Maureen O’Neil (Public Administration) added some remembrances of local women who were involved in the Commission’s work in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Former Senator Sheila Finestone spoke to me afterward about the role played by women in Quebec, telling me that she had been at the public hearings held at the YWCA in Montreal in 1968 as President of the Federation of Quebec Women (FFQ). Based on the feedback I received I agreed to participate in a panel at the Canadian Political Science Association meetings to be held in Vancouver June 2008 on the topic “Before NAC (the National Action Committee on the Status of Women). This panel has been accepted. An abstact of that paper follows: Before NAC: Strategies for Interacting with the State During the RCSW Years Lobbying within, outside and alongside the federal state resulted in the creation of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in February 1967. In addition to the Brief and Lobby strategy used by the Committee for the Equality of Women of Canada the previous year, several other models for interacting with the state emerged. Among them were the coordination of women’s groups sponsored by a sympathetic provincial Cabinet Minister in Manitoba, leadership on the part of governmental agencies funded by governments in Alberta and Saskatchewan, extra-parliamentary coordination among lead organizations in the Maritimes, amplification of key messages by state-owned media in the North, and a concerted initiative undertaken by the emerging women’s movement in Quebec. Taken together, these strategies worked effectively to provide comprehensive national coverage of matters of concern to women. The success of this mobilization prepared the way for further development of the women’s movement in English Canada, not the least of which involved preparing the ground for the creation of a peak-level women’s organization that reflected different relations of attachment to the state locally. I wrote an e-mail to one of my colleagues with this conclusion about the conference. “Yes, it was a wonderful event. Linda and I were comparing it to the first Women and Politics panel we cobbled together back in the early 1990s. It's exhilarating hearing so many smart people talking knowledgeably and passionately about new areas of inquiry.” (13 Nov 2007) I conclude the conference was very worthwhile and am pleased that it has spawned another conference paper. A copy of the paper is attached. Presenters have been asked to submit a copy for uploading to the conference website. I have decided not to add endnotes but to add a half dozen of the most important references to the main sources used in the preparation of the paper. These references were not included in the paper as delivered. The completed paper is to be uploaded to the conference website.Gender analysis is settling into comfortable middle age in the forty years since the creation of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. The Royal Commission produced a case study in democratization and social inclusion in spite of the fact that more recent scholarship tends to diminish its achievement as having been limited, and even fatally flawed in terms of its outreach to the full range of women’s diversity. Sources from the archives provide a somewhat different account to the one made familiar by liberal feminists.Academic & Professional Development Fund (A&PDF

Family Communication in a Population at Risk for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Encouraging family communication is an integral component of genetic counseling; therefore, we sought to identify factors impacting communication to family members at risk for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). Participants (N = 383) completed an online survey assessing: 1) demographics (gender, genetic test results, HCM family history, and disease severity); 2) illness representations; 3) family functioning and cohesiveness; 4) coping styles; 5) comprehension of HCM autosomal dominant inheritance; and 6) communication of HCM risk information to at‐risk relatives. Participants were a national sample of individuals with HCM, recruited through the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association. Data from 183 participants were analyzed using a logistic regression analysis, with family communication as a dichotomous dependent variable. We found that female gender and higher comprehension of autosomal dominant inheritance were significant predictors of participants’ communication of HCM risk information to all their siblings and children. Our results suggest that utilizing interventions that promote patient comprehension (e.g., a teaching‐focused model of genetic counseling) are important and may positively impact family communication within families with HCM.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147017/1/jgc40336.pd

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Gateways PLAR Research Project Initial Findings

Funded under a three-year Human Resources Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) contribution agreement, the Gateways project provides enhanced access to degree completion for underserved learners. These learners, mostly women aged 35 and older, look to prior learning assessment and recognition to award credit towards degree completion. Co-team leaders, Dr. Ingrid Crowther and Dr. Jane Arscott, summarize the project and provide examples of successes some of the students have already experienced during the second year of the project.Human Resources Skills Development Canada (HRSDC

Pilot Testing for Feasibility in a Study of Student Retention and Attrition in Online Undergraduate Programs

Prior to undertaking a descriptive study on attrition and retention of students in two online undergraduate health administration and human service programs, a pilot test was conducted to assess the procedures for participant recruitment, usability of the survey questionnaire, and data collection processes.  A retention model provided the conceptual framework for this investigation to identify and organize various factors that influenced students’ decisions to either discontinue or continue their educational programs.  In an attempt to contribute to the body of research in this area and to enrich pedagogical practices, the authors describe the pilot testing processes and feasibility issues explored, and the improvements made to the instrument and methodology before commencing the main research study on attrition and retention