C/O Rob Martin
Haven’t heard of the McMaster women’s football team? Let’s change that.
Many McMaster students may be familiar with our incredible men’s football team. They can often be seen practicing outside in the Ron Joyce Stadium, geared up head-to-toe on a bright sunny afternoon. What students may not know is that three times a week, in a field tucked behind the stadium, practices McMaster’s women’s football team in the thick of winter. At first glance, it may not appear so, as one would be mistaken to find any protective equipment other than the thickest hoodies players can find.
For those unaware of the structure of varsity sports at McMaster and across other Ontario universities, here’s the breakdown: the McMaster Marauders are registered for 16 sports in the OUA that compete at provincial levels. Of those, there are 11 sports from McMaster represented at U Sports — the national governing body of university sports in Canada. For reference, McMaster’s men’s football team is represented at the U Sports level.
Unfortunately, although MWF athletes have the same training intensity and time commitment as varsity teams, the team is not recognized under the OUA. This means they are obligated to acquire their own funding and take on the title of a “club team,” grossly underrating the magnitude of effort invested by both players and coaches. Each year, the team is organized by a team of executive members, including the president Sophie Nezan and coach representative Justice Allin.
“We don’t have the opportunities that the men’s football teams do. [Since] we are not recognized by varsity organizations, we are in charge of finding athletes and coaches, ensuring fields are booked for us, the finances, social media promotion and organizing tournaments,” said Nezan.
“We don’t have the opportunities that the men’s football teams do. [Since] we are not recognized by varsity organizations, we are in charge of finding athletes and coaches, ensuring fields are booked for us, the finances, social media promotion and organizing tournaments,”
Sophie Nezan, McMaster Women's Football President
The team is under umbrella of the Ontario Women’s Intercollegiate Football Organization, consisting of 10 universities across Ontario, including McMaster. Each season normally begins in February, when the contact flag football tournaments kick off. There are usually two qualifier tournaments and a championship tournament, which was hosted at the Ron Joyce Stadium this past Saturday.
“Thankfully, OWIFA exists, so we have a lot more opportunities because of them. They cover a huge portion in terms of organizing tournaments, but OWIFA is also an organization made up of athletes from the flag football teams. It’s definitely a lot of pressure,” explained Nezan.
Though the teams are fortunate to be governed by OWIFA, limited budgets still play a significant role in the experience for athletes. For example, players and coaches are forced to hold nighttime practices due to limited field availabilities and often play tournaments in snowy and icy conditions.
For good measure, the players are provided with no protective equipment (other than a limited number of generously donated soft-shell helmets) to play in the otherwise contact-heavy sport. All these factors combined make the players incredibly prone to serious injuries, knocking out several over the course of this season alone.
Despite these difficulties, the MWF team is not a team to be overlooked. Due to a large amount of student interest, McMaster was able to register two teams in this year’s season: Team Marauders and Team McMaster.
Team Marauders finished with an impressive five and one record on March 12 at the qualifying tournament located at Wilfred Laurier, finishing second place overall. Team McMaster earned itself the title of provincial finalists by also finishing second in the March 19 championship tournament at McMaster.
“We would love to eventually be under the OUA and for women’s flag football to be at every university across the province and country. Not only is MWF a sport, but the engagement with other women across Ontario is also one of the best things about it,” explained Nezan.
“We would love to eventually be under the OUA and for women’s flag football to be at every university across the province and country. Not only is MWF a sport, but the engagement with other women across Ontario is also one of the best things about it,”
Sophie Nezan, McMaster Women's Football President
Next steps for MWF include competing in the provincial intercollegiate women’s flag football championships hosted by Team Ontario on April 3, in hopes of progressing to the national championships in Ottawa in May.
With the sport becoming more and more popular, both OWIFA and MWF continue to advocate and fight for equal opportunities for women’s football. The championship tournament was broadcasted live by junior Mustangs TV to promote fan interest and encourage folks to appreciate the overlooked sport.
“These aren’t just women playing football; these are football players. Let’s get that out of the way right now,” stated London Junior Mustangs TV on OWIFA athletes.
“These aren’t just women playing football; these are football players. Let’s get that out of the way right now,”
London Junior Mustangs TV
It’s become quite evident that any room for growth in the world of football belongs to women’s football. With over 50 players playing competitively at McMaster alone, it’s hard to find a reason not to invest in the sport and create more opportunities for women across the country. It is unclear when the sport can gain varsity recognition, but, until then, it’s safe to say that the OUA is missing out.
By Ember, Contributor
Recently, there’s been a lot of push for individual initiatives to combat climate change. This can be considered admirable and noble – but they hardly scratch the surface of the problem. These initiatives tend to overlook industries as the largest contributors to climate change, the Global North’s role in plastic pollution and they place misdirected blame on disabled people.
In a scientific paper that outlines that the Pacific Ocean is rapidly accumulating plastic, Laurent Lebreton et al. states the following findings.
“Over three-quarters of the [Great Pacific Garbage Patch] mass was carried by debris larger than five cm and at least 46 per cent was comprised of fishing nets. Microplastics accounted for eight per cent of the total mass but 94 per cent of the estimated 1.8 (1.1–3.6) trillion pieces floating in the area,” they say.
Almost half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s mass is abandoned gear from industry fishing. Another 20 per cent of the mass is thought to be remnants from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In comparison, Seth Borenstein, a journalist, noted the extremely small proportion of plastic waste made up of plastic straws.
“Straws on average weigh so little – about one sixty-seventh of an ounce or .42 grams – that all those billions of straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly nine million tons of plastic waste that yearly hits the waters,” Borenstein said.
Banning plastic straws seems pretty asinine when you consider a few different factors. It’s interesting how alternatives like the new Starbucks lids were created to replace the use of plastic straws, but they have been found to contain an equivalent amount or more plastic than what a plastic straw contains. Christian Britschgi, an associate editor at Reason, described the miniscule impact of the Starbucks nitro lids.
“Right now, Starbucks patrons are topping most of their cold drinks with either 3.23 grams or 3.55 grams of plastic product, depending on whether they pair their lid with a small or large straw. The new nitro lids meanwhile weigh either 3.55 or 4.11 grams, depending again on lid size,” said Britschgi.
Point blank, this “solution” is performative – it is a cheap tactic spearheaded by a corporation to make the common folk feel like they’re making a difference in regards to climate change when it really amounts to nothing.
Then why not use paper straws or reusable straws? Well, because these options are awful. Often times, banning plastic straws does not take into account how alternative straw materials can be detrimental to disabled people.
“Biodegradable [straw] options often fall apart too quickly or are easy for people with limited jaw control to bite through. Silicone straws are often not flexible – one of the most important features for people with mobility challenges. Reusable straws need to be washed, which not all people with disabilities can do easily. And metal straws, which conduct heat and cold in addition to being hard and inflexible, can pose a safety risk,” said Godoy.
Another thing to keep in mind is that biodegradable straws can also be made of soy – a common allergen – and because it isn’t food, corporations aren’t required to disclose ingredients on the packaging.
Putting the responsibility on disabled people to survive in public without plastic straws because you don’t believe stores should offer straws is venomous.
It’s not that disabled people don’t care about the environment – we absolutely do. But instead of demonizing us for existing, shouldn’t able-bodied people help create an accessible, environmentally friendly alternative to plastic straws?
Currently, I am a student studying earth and environmental science, and I’m aiming to get a minor in sustainability. I am also disabled and I realize that climate change is larger than any one of us.
However, it’s important to note that often disabled people are the ones being accused of holding the environmental movement back, while corporations are conveniently cropped out of the frame. The big picture of climate change and environmental collapse is large enough for all of us to fit inside – so please don’t forget that industries play a large part, too.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
By: Nicolas Belliveau
The news in November 2018 that Doug Ford and his provincial government were ceasing the project to build a French-language university in Toronto and eliminating the position of the provincial commissioner for French language affairs was met with backlash.
However, situations like these aren’t novel. French education and culture have been the target of marginalization for hundreds of years. Ford adds to this long list of discriminatory acts, as his decision to cut services and protections to Franco-Ontarians has underlying anti-francophone sentiment and is a violation of minority language rights in Canada.
But why should we care about this? After all, with just over 620,000 people, the French-speaking community in Ontario makes up just 4.5 per cent of its total population.
Growing up French-Canadian in Ontario, practicing and maintaining the language my ancestors tirelessly fought to preserve has proven difficult. Additionally, the limited number of French secondary schools meant that I had to enroll at an English secondary school — adding to the challenge of keeping my mother tongue.
However, Francophones are still Canada’s largest minority with Ontario home to the most populous French-speaking community outside of Quebec. But most importantly, the French language is a right that is protected by the Constitution and language laws.
This didn’t come easily. Throughout all of Canada’s history, francophones have fought for the right to French education and with Ford’s new agenda, the battle appears to be ongoing.
Merely a century ago, the provincial government passed and enforced Regulation 17 throughout Ontario, which restricted the teachings in French beyond grade 2 and limited French teachings to one hour per day in primary schools. After 15 years of enforcement and prohibiting a whole generation from learning French, the law was finally repealed in 1927.
By ending the project for the development of a French university, Ford is reopening a door into the past that most French-Canadians thought was over. The ideology that once disregarded Franco-Ontarians’ identity and equality is now resurfacing, under the new disguise of Ford’s policies.
And what is Ford’s reasoning behind these radical changes? Although Ford has yet to comment on the matter, government officials have cited the province’s $15 billion deficit as being the motivation for these cost-cutting actions.
However, the cost for the French Language Services Commissioner and the university tally up to a total of just $15 million per year. And as of now, Ford’s government has yet to meet the targeted amount of savings, leaving experts to question whether a thorough program review was carried out.
When looking at these realities, it is hard to believe the government’s narrative of the provincial deficit being the sole incentive for premier Ford’s changes, and not worry about an anti-francophone sentiment underlying Ford’s fiscal agenda.
What’s more unsettling is that Ford’s new policy changes cuts into Canada’s Constitution and the protections and rights of French-Canadians.
The functions of a language commissioner prove to be essential in promoting and protecting a language. Not only do they monitor the government for any infringements upon minority language rights, the French language commissioner acts as a liaison between the provincial government and Franco-Ontarians.
By getting rid of the French Language Services Commissioner, Ford is destabilizing the rights and protections of minority francophones and undermining the institutions that promote one of the ‘supposed’ official languages of this country.
I acknowledge that Ontario is already home to three bilingual universities and that the francophone minorities account for just 4.5 per cent of Ontario’s population. Additionally, I acknowledged that the Ford government has created the position of senior policy adviser on francophone affairs following the elimination of the French Language Services Commissioner.
The realities of the mistreatment of francophones throughout history along with the benefits of the French services and protections that Ford is eliminating would make it illogical for one to not consider this as anti-francophone sentiment. To be idle while the government carelessly partakes in these divisive political tactics is a disservice to our ancestors and to all minorities.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
Eugenie Bouchard asked to twirl by a male reporter, an entire university team suspended due to allegations of sexual assault and FIFA subjecting female athletes to a literally inferior playing field. It is apparent that women are not treated equally as men in sport. But The Silhouette wanted to find out, does this systemic discrimination manifest at McMaster?
***
***
“Well I’ve been around for 28 years and it’s never occurred to me until this second that male teams have been more successful than female teams at McMaster, and I can’t actually come up with a reason [...] they could have a half day retreat to think about [gender disparity] for the staff and coaches to sit down and say, ‘we seem to have this discrepancy, and what is it, and can we do something to address it?’”
- Philip White, Professor of Kinesiology, researcher on the sociology of sport.
***
“There’s no comparable women’s team to men’s football so it does throws the comparison a little bit out of whack, if you take football out of the equation it’s fairly balanced, in some sports, the AFA numbers are more heavily weighted to female teams. Football set aside it’s a fairly balanced picture.”
- Gordon Arbeau, Direction, Public & Community Relations, McMaster
***
***
“How do you try to balance things out with football? It’s an issue throughout sports, the gender equity issue… We try and fund women’s sport a little bit better than men’s sport, absent football. But we have limited resources. The next sport if we were to bring out a varsity sport would probably be women’s hockey”
- Glen Grunwald, Director of Athletics and Recreation, McMaster
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
There is a noticeable gap in the percentage of women that make up the McMaster Student Representative Assembly.
Only 34.3 percent of the SRA is female and none of the executives on the Board of Directors are women.
These results put McMaster eighth amongst nine major research universities in Ontario compared in terms of representation of men and women on student governing bodies.
In the last SRA election, almost all the female students who ran won their seats, so the absence seems to be from a lack of female students putting their names forward rather than students being unwilling to elect women.
The gender gap has led some to question whether targeted strategies to create a more diverse student government should be considered.
Although McMaster consistently ranks among Ontario’s best universities, McMaster is the second worst when it comes to gender equity in student government.
Of the 35 students and elected executives on the SRA, only 12 are women. Furthermore, of the six SRA standing committees elected by the SRA, only one has a female commissioner.
The Student Representative Assembly is the MSU’s legislative body and it plays an integral role in creating MSU policy and running services on campus. The MSU has a budget of over $13 million dollars.
The lack of female representatives is most apparent in the highest-ranking positions of student government. There are currently no women amongst the President and Vice Presidents.
This trend has been fairly consistent throughout McMaster’s history. The MSU President has always been male, with only four exceptions. One recent exception, Siobhan Stewart served as president from 2011-2012.
“It’s important to have the voices of many not just women, but different communities and different perspectives” said Stewart. “It’s not just an issue within the MSU it’s an issue within society.”
The Vice Presidents have also been predominantly male.
Of the 33 Vice-Presidents over the past 11 years, only ten have been women. Moreover, women have been significantly underrepresented in the VP-finance position (no women elected in 11 year) and VP-administration (only two women in eleven years).
Although the gender imbalance might have been a product of a predominantly male student body in the past, this is no longer a possible explanation, because female students now outnumber men in most faculties, and overall at an undergraduate level at McMaster.
The majority of the women elected as vice-presidents have served under the education portfolio. However, even in this sub-field women have been underrepresented compared to men.
This trend is evidence of the way socialization affects people’s choices.
“You may choose an area where you think there will be less dissonance between who you are and what people think of that role, it may be that people think that people may be more likely to see me as suitable candidate for the education portfolio rather than the finance portfolio, so it may be that ‘rational’ choices about what’s the place where your profile will have less disassociation with the position you’re aiming for,” said Professor Caroline Andrew, the director of the Institute on Governance at the University of Ottawa, and an expert on women and inclusivity in local governance.
The gender gap at universities might not only be a product of social norms; it may also contribute to the lack of women in leadership positions in society more broadly.
High ranking governance positions can lead to other important opportunities. For instance, last year’s MSU president David Campbell now studies at Harvard’s school of government.
“Deciding to run even at a municipal level, or provincial or federal, takes an act of deciding that you would be better than other people at doing this,” said Andrew.
“And I think that’s still, in terms of socialization for a lot of women, that’s a hard leap to make.”
In total, 80 percent of the female candidates who ran for SRA in the last election received seats.
This seems to indicate the lack of female representatives is not due to students being unwilling to vote for female students, but rather, a lack of women being willing to put their name on the ballot due to systemic barriers.
One way to address these systemic barriers is by creating an ad-hoc group of SRA members. And yet, currently the SRA doesn’t have any such group.
“The SRA is elected by the students, for the students. By virtue of the election process, the SRA is representative of the student body. The creation of ad-hoc groups is completely governed by the will of the assembly,” said Mike Cheung, Speaker of the SRA.
Zaynab Al-waadh and Lindsay Robinson are McMaster student researchers involved in the recently published Women and Diversity EXCLerator Report.
They see McMaster’s underrepresentation of female student leaders in the most visible positions as symptomatic of a lack of women leaders in other sectors in Hamilton.
“When you constantly see the same kind of person, the same kind of people holding the top positions in clubs or student groups… you have the assumption that’s the kind of person that is a leader,” said Al-waadh, who is in her fourth year of her Bachelor of Social Work.
They say strategies to specifically engage women should be considered at McMaster.
“Gender quotas can be a good idea if representation is really low,” said Robinson, a fourth year Political Science and Labour Studies student. But she says these tools should be implemented cautiously.
“At the same time I don’t think we should have token females only representing female interest.”
Without a culture of inclusivity, gender quotas can be divisive.
“The SRA has discussed having seats for marginalized groups… and we always end up shooting [those ideas] down,” said Naomi Pullen, a former SRA member and the current Deputy Returning Officer of MSU Elections.
The elections department is interested in increased promotional strategies.
“We are working with the advocacy street team and looking at how we advertise our elections,” said Pullen. “We are really just starting to talk about it right now.”
She notes that women are fully represented among part-time managers, which are non-elected positions.
“It’s not the women aren’t interested in being part of student leadership positions, but there seems to be something about the election process that’s prohibitive,” she said.
Andrew said that peer-to-peer encouragement might be the best way to engage women.
“I think you could have some of the people who are part of the student representatives and some of the women who are on them to maybe directly try to seek out likely candidates, and to say ‘I think you’d be good at this, have you ever thought about it?’”
This strategy could be particularly effective for engaging diverse students from other underrepresented perspectives.
“I think the MSU should take a more proactive stance in perhaps holding information sessions, or reaching out to different groups... because no one really knows how to be on the SRA. It’s very ambiguous—you have to be really involved in the student union to know,” said Al-waadh.
“They can tell people, ‘by the way it’s important that if you’re a woman, or you’re this, or you’re that, we want you.’”
Given that this imbalance is not unique to McMaster, the Ontario University Student Alliance might be equally interested in systemic solutions.
“OUSA has to report to the SRA every so often, and I haven’t heard of them doing anything like this,” said Pullen. “Even OUSA leadership is male heavy.”
It is up to the current student leaders to take initiative not only at McMaster, but at all universities in Ontario to ensure the next generation of student government accurately reflects the student body.
Ana Qarri
Staff Reporter
Last March, many of my Facebook friends changed their profile pictures to red equal signs, showing their support for marriage equality in the United States.
A while later, the Supreme Court ruled Section 3 of Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Section 3 didn’t allow the extension of full federal rights to same-sex couples whose marriage was recognized in their state, essentially invalidating same-sex marriages federally.
The hype that was created by the Human Rights Campaign – a group “working for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equal rights” to promote marriage equality - significantly died down after this decision, so much that I rarely see any posts about marriage equality on my newsfeed anymore. They only come up when same-sex marriage gets legalized somewhere.
It comes as no surprise that more people will show their support for a cause when all it requires of them is a profile picture change, and leaves me wondering whether any of my friends who jumped on the equal sign bandwagon have ever really spent more than 10 seconds thinking about same-sex marriage and human rights in the US.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the sentiment. I love knowing that so many of my friends who themselves identify as heterosexual think that cheap online viagra it’s only logical to extend full rights to LGBTQ+ people.
However, what I don’t love as much is knowing that the fight to strike down one section of DOMA and the larger fight for marriage equality has overshadowed so many other aspects of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in Canada, the US and internationally.
Campaigns for marriage equality in the US have taken up disproportionate amounts of media coverage compared to other issues that queer people face. The reality is that a signed bill doesn’t make our societies inclusive and accepting, which is what we should be aiming for.
Violence against queer and trans individuals continues at high rates. Up to 40 per cent of homeless Canadians are self-identified as LGBTQ+. High numbers of mental health issues, addiction and attempted suicides are also consistent problems in the community that are often related to their struggles as a queer or trans* (or both) person.
Not only does marriage equality not magically fix the existing social constructs and prejudices surrounding the queer community, but it also takes away from attempts to focus on intersectionality within the “Gay” rights movement.
Shockingly, 70 per cent of all anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes target Queer People of Colour. And in 2012 alone, there were 256 recorded murders of trans* individuals. When Bill C-279 (which included gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination) was up for debate this year, it got nowhere near as much coverage as the strike of DOMA’s section did.
People argue that while marriage equality isn’t the ultimate solution, it is a step forward. While I agree, I think focusing all our efforts on a single issue that is definitely not the largest shared struggle of queer people is taking away from the potential of the movement.
Marriage equality has become sensationalized in Western media, its achievement being made to seem like the final frontier of gay rights. The reality is that a lot of us are far from done, and some of us have just started to find each other.
So while we’re changing our profile pictures and liking photos of middle- and upper-class same-sex couples getting married in City Halls, it’s important to remember who we’re forgetting.
By Edward Lovo
There is a view of education that requires challenging. It's rather natural to be anxious about the prospects of one's choice of study. One worries about what career path one will take after completing a liberal arts degree, for example. However, the view of education that ought to be challenged sees education solely as a means to these prospects; in other words, education is an investment.
Living in a (more or less) democratic society, education is more than just an investment; more than what many regard as a privilege rather than a right. Education is a social good that is integral to the ideals of a democratic society. Two such ideals are political equality, and open and fair discussion.
Democracy, in the first place, implies that all citizens come together to reach a decision on questions that concern them all. Accordingly, the second of the democratic ideals, open and fair discussion, expresses each citizen's right to the opportunity to articulate their views and supporting reasons, and to listen to an array of other viewpoints on matters of public concern.
Political equality requires that all citizens are equal participants in decision-making. Political equality is a robust conception that goes beyond the empty formality of filling out a ballot. Open and fair discussion presupposes a substantive equality between citizens.
Thomas Christiano, a democratic theorist, gives the following example by way of illustration: “Consider a citizen who has a vote and is not forbidden to say something in the process of deliberation. But suppose that because of poverty, lack of education, and lack of organization this citizen is unable to understand the issues involved in the decision-making or have a clear idea of what [their] interests are or how to articulate them to others. Such a citizen is not the political equal of the citizen who is wealthy, well educated, whose interests and points of view are supported by organization, and who is able to understand issues as well as clarify and articulate [their] interests...most of us would believe that [this society] does not live up to the democratic ideals of political equality and participation in rational social deliberation.”
So, political equality does not end with the uneducated worker being able to cast a vote in the same way the educated employer for whom he works is able to cast a vote. This is merely equality on paper and not equality in our substantive relations with one another.
Education, as well, ought not to be restricted to a select few, such as to those who can afford it, as this exacerbates the inequality between the classes. Limited accessibility reflects in society an inequality in power among classes that privileges an educated elite not only in the process of deliberation but also in the fulfillment of political roles.
Education, then, is fundamental to a democratic society, which promotes political equality among its citizens. It serves as a grand equalizer of its citizens, and a society that limits its accessibility is not living up to its ideal of political equality. Upon these considerations, one should see that education is not an investment in a democratic society - it's a right.
