Lessons about feminist activism can be learned from the women championing the Miss G__ Project to integrate women’s and gender studies into the Ontario secondary education system, says Western graduate Michelle Miller.
Miller (M.Ed. ’07) was among presenters at the Women Making Change conference March 6 at Brescia University College.
Brescia hosted undergraduate and graduate female students from across southwestern Ontario on International Women’s Day to discuss how women were making change in their communities and around the world.
The conference provided a forum for female students to present academic papers on a variety of topics, including redefining the challenge of climate change; grassroots environmental activism; the courage of African women refugees; equity in education; violence against women; and American First Lady Michelle Obama as a catalyst for changing female identities.
Although not an original member of the Western-born Miss G__ Project, Miller lobbied with the group to add women’s and gender studies to the Ontario high school curriculum. Now a University of British Columbia graduate student, Miller has written a book on the project’s progress – and setbacks.
The Miss G__ Project started as a Western student-led initiative in 2005 and has since spread to 11 schools in the province and has hundreds of members. The idea was sparked by Western students Sarah Ghabrial and Sheetal Rawal, who realized they were not introduced to gender studies at their respective high schools. Lara Shkordoff and Dilani Mohan joined the pair to begin collecting teaching resources about women’s and gender studies and to lobby the provincial government to add this to the grades 11 and 12 curriculum. A pilot version of women’s and gender studies program is supposed to be rolled out this academic term, says Miller.
Miller says the original four women who started the project began lobbying the Ministry of Education with a “cute, fun, and flirty” image to keep the feminist project from being perceived as threatening. Although the ‘cute’ girly image garnered much media attention and meetings with ministry officials, it did not result in the widespread implementation of women’s and gender studies high school curriculum as was the goal.
“Playing nice with the ministry made them (organizers) easy to ignore,” says Miller.
The group decided to revisit their approach and no longer play “Miss Nice G__.”
“Young feminist groups have a lot to learn from the Miss G__ Project,” she says.
Miller says feminist activist groups need to be self-reflexive, like the Miss G__ Project, to critically examine strategies that are working towards the group’s mandate and those that need to be revisited, and do this without compromising their message.
Miller also says feminist groups need to speak directly about what their needs are and this should be reinforced by how the group presents itself. She also suggests building coalitions with other feminist groups, and using technology to stay connected with members.
Like the women of the Miss G__ Project who continue to work towards their goal of instituting the women’s and gender studies curriculum, “don’t let it get you down,” says Miller.
For more information visit www.themissgproject.org.
About 100 people attended the conference, which was open to the public. The event was organized by representatives from The Circle Women’s Centre, the Institute for Women in Leadership at Brescia and the Faculty of Education at Western.
“It’s a great opportunity for undergraduate students who wouldn’t ordinarily present their papers,” says Julie Maltby, Communications & Alumnae Relations Officer for Brescia.