Women entrepreneurs thrive thanks to York, Visa Canada partnership

August 4, 2023

By Lindsay MacAdam, communications officer, YFile

Last month, Visa Canada announced the 10 recipients of its 2023 She’s Next Grant Program in partnership with York University, supporting women-owned businesses spanning a wide range of consumer products and services. The program rewards business owners with a $10,000 grant and a four-month mentorship from York’s YSpace ELLA accelerator program.

“We are so excited to be partnering with Visa and their She’s Next program to support women entrepreneurs across the country,” said David Kwok, associate director of entrepreneurship at Innovation York. “By pairing the $10,000 grant with expertise mentorship that is catered to business needs, we are driving tangible impacts with each business we support. This partnership will not only elevate York University’s brand as a premier entrepreneurial hub, but also position YSpace ELLA, our women’s accelerator program, as an exceptional resource for women entrepreneurs.”

ELLA is providing the Visa She’s Next Grant Program recipients with valuable mentorship, access to educational resources and networking opportunities. “We offer a bespoke experience by ensuring each participant sets up objectives and key results, and uses the mentorship to drive those,” said Kwok. “The participant connects with the mentors on a biweekly basis to drive through strategic elements, while working with our team to ensure progress and accountability.”

Out of the thousands of applicants to this year’s Visa She’s Next Grant Program, 10 inspiring entrepreneurs were selected as winners, and here are three of their stories.

Nuria Madrenas

Nuria Madrenas is the founder of Tacit, an online art gallery and consultancy dedicated to amplifying female creatives to the emerging art collector. Madrenas graduated from York with a bachelor of arts in communications in 2016 and worked in public relations and marketing for various fashion and lifestyle brands before her foray into entrepreneurship. As an artist herself, and having worked with many artists on campaigns and events, she recognized a gap in the market between the entry-level art marketplaces and the often intimidating world of high-end art. Tacit occupies that space in between.

“I would always ask [artists], ‘Where do you sell your work?,’ ” she said. “It felt like there was no suitable platform. It was either these entry-level, oversaturated marketplaces, where you’re competing with makers of all kinds, or the intimidating world of blue-chip art that felt out of reach at the time.”

After doing some research, Madrenas discovered a disturbing disparity between women and men in the visual arts: women account for a mere two per cent of all art sold. “So I set out to create this platform that solved the many pain points I found,” she said.

Madrenas started her business back in 2019 with 10 local artists, and has since expanded to upwards of 70 – from Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australia. Beyond the e-commerce site, Tacit also provides art consultancy services for both residential and commercial clients.

This was Madrenas’s third time applying to the Visa She’s Next Grant Program, and her persistence finally paid off with this full-circle moment: “I graduated seven years ago, and now to get that mentorship from my alma mater, it’s really exciting,” she said. “I’ve been on my own throughout this process, and I find that sometimes it’s a bit isolating. I’m excited to get some fresh, new perspectives, and to get support from somebody with B2B experience…. I’ve identified that as an area of focus.”

Natalie Sabri

Natalie Sabri is the founder of The Dough Parlour, which manufactures sweet, fruit-scented play dough made from non-toxic, all-natural, food-grade ingredients. The mother of four has an undergraduate degree in political science, and studied early childhood education before becoming a preschool teacher and eventually opening her own preschool business.

But after spending nearly a decade experimenting with homemade play dough recipes for her children that other parents would always ask about, Sabri decided to pivot into consumer packaged goods. She branded her sweet-smelling play dough around the idea of an old-fashioned ice-cream parlour, where customers choose their own scents, and that has been her main differentiator in the market.

“Everything that goes into our play dough is food grade,” said Sabri, “so if a child puts it in their mouth by mistake, it’s it’s 100 per cent safe.”

Based in Oakville, Ont., the company launched in 2017, and Sabri made an appearance on CBC’s “Dragons’ Den” just four months later, where she happily accepted a business deal from Boston Pizza founder Jim Treliving.

Her e-commerce business has been steadily growing ever since, with a recent, unexpected boost from famous moms Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen, who accepted her unsponsored product gifting and decided to share their delight on Instagram. “[Kardashian] called it the best-smelling, cutest play dough she’s ever seen,” said Sabri, “and our business saw $25,000 in sales overnight. That’s why they call them influencers, right?”

The Dough Parlour also has a presence in well-known retailers such as Indigo and Anthropologie, and Sabri hopes to take the business overseas in the coming years with the help of the Visa She’s Next Grant Program and the accompanying YSpace ELLA mentorship.

Coincidentally, Sabri enrolled in the ELLA Ascend program in June, just two weeks before finding out she had been selected as a recipient of the Visa grant. The win will extend the length of her existing mentorship by four months, and she couldn’t be more grateful.

“I have three amazing mentors in the ELLA program,” said Sabri. “They have a wealth of knowledge that they so lovingly give to to us. The mentorship has really helped with structuring my business and directing me to loans and government programs. And even from a therapeutic perspective, having them listen to the daily struggles that [women entrepreneurs] go through and offering support has been so valuable.”

Chantal Bekhor

Born and raised in Montreal, Chantal Bekhor, founder of VG Gourmet Vegetarian Foods, worked as an elementary school teacher for a decade before embarking on her entrepreneurial journey in 2015.

As a consumer of plant-based products for many years, Bekhor saw a gap in the market for a burger made with fresh, gourmet ingredients and without the preservatives and fillers that are all-too common in meat alternatives. She decided to set out to find a partner kitchen to produce her vegan burger recipes, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Today, VG Gourmet has over 13 products available in more than 1,500 grocery stores and restaurants throughout Canada, including Whole Foods and Farm Boy, and she’s hoping to expand to new markets with the help of the the Visa She’s Next Grant.

“I was specifically interested in the mentorship that Visa was offering,” said Bekhor. “I thought this could be a really great opportunity for me to grow personally. I find, as an entrepreneur, it’s a little bit lonely. I’m hoping to learn a lot, and to be able to connect with the other entrepreneurs.”

And even though the program has barely kicked off, Bekhor has already benefited from the supportive community it has provided: “We had an event in Toronto a couple weeks ago,” she said, “and it was so refreshing to talk to other women entrepreneurs. We’ve built a little community after spending only one day together – we clicked.”

About YSpace ELLA

ELLA is the women’s accelerator program offered by YSpace, York University’s entrepreneurship and innovation hub, with funding from the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. The ELLA team consists of experienced professionals with diverse backgrounds in business and entrepreneurship, who provide the tailored support that women entrepreneurs need to be successful.

YSpace works to facilitate and maximize the commercial, economic, and social impacts of research and innovation, and to create a culture of engaged scholarship and experiential learning. To learn more about YSpace and its initiatives, visit yorku.ca/yspace.

York community supports Black inclusion through action

August 2, 2023

York University’s second Annual Report on Black Inclusion is now available to the community. The annual report provides highlights and updates to the community on work and progress relating to York’s Framework on Black Inclusion and Action Plan on Black Inclusion.

The report outlines the progress made on the 81 calls to action under the nine thematic areas in the framework. In addition to renewing York’s commitment to addressing anti-Black racism, the report highlights that many partners across the York community encountered challenges in implementation and calls on the community to be supportive, collaborative and creative in finding solutions to overcome these challenges.

The community has continued to advance the work and supported more than 100 activities that took place across the University in the second year of implementation. Continued support from community members and efforts toward combating anti-Black racism on York’s campuses will be significant in working toward systemic change based on the guiding values in the framework.

“The actions reported in the Annual Report on Black Inclusion are aimed at breaking down the systematic barriers that for too long have affected the Black community on our campuses,” said Interim Vice-President Equity, People and Culture, Alice Pitt. “York continues to be committed to social justice and addressing the impact of anti-Black racism and white supremacy that pervades academia. Transformation of systems and colonial institutions takes time, and the York community is taking up the work to enable such transformation.”

York University remains a signatory to the Scarborough Charter and is committed to promoting intersectional Black flourishing, fostering inclusive excellence, enabling mutuality and ensuring accountability. In addition, the recently launched Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy connects to plans across the University, including the Framework on Black Inclusion.

For a detailed review of the actions undertaken across the University community, visit: Annual Report on Black Inclusion.

York researchers publish study on cannabis-related acute care

July 28, 2023

By Alexander Huls, deputy editor, YFile

A new paper by York University researchers, titled “Disparities in cannabis-related emergency department visits across depressed and non-depressed individuals and the impact of recreational cannabis policy in Ontario, Canada,” was published in the journal Psychological Medicine, and considers the prevalence of cannabis use among people with depression, the possible resulting risk of cannabis-related emergency department (ED) visits and whether legalization may lead to more adverse events.

With $295,000 in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the study is the first of its kind to examine cannabis-related acute care rates and disparities in people with depression versus people without depression. Its aim was to better understand exactly how significant rates of ED visits were, then use subsequent findings to consider how those rates have been impacted since the legalization of marijuana in Canada in 2018 with the federal Cannabis Act.

“Hospital services represent one of the largest sources of public spending. We wanted to understand whether there are any ways to do cannabis legalization in a way that can help reduce some of these expenditures and adverse health events,” says Antony Chum, assistant professor in the Faculty of Health and Canadian Research Chair, of the desired outcome.

The study examined three time periods: the pre-legalization period, from October 2015 to 2018; phase one of legalization, from October 2018 to February 2020; and phase two, from March 2020 onwards.

The first stage of the study, indeed, found that people with depression in Ontario have a four times higher risk of cannabis-related acute care. But the research team discovered something unexpected in the data since 2018.

“Probably the biggest surprise is that recreational cannabis legalization wasn’t associated with a subsequent increase in ED visits in this depressed group,” says Chungah Kim, postdoctoral researcher at the School of Kinesiology and Health Science.

“It’s not to say that this group are not at risk, or additional risk, compared with general population,” adds Chum. “But when cannabis became more available through legalization, we didn’t see a subsequent increase.”

Chum, Kim, and the rest of the team hope the study helps raise awareness around the risks of mental health and excessive cannabis use, as well as promotes potential policy considerations and adjustments.

“The biggest takeaway is that the study highlights the importance of integrating mental health support with screening in the context of cannabis legalization. I think that policy-makers should consider initiatives, for example, that promote integration of mental-health services for cannabis use screening in primary care. This can help identify people with depression who might be at risk for cannabis-related adverse events, and provide appropriate support and intervention programs,” says Chum.

Lassonde dean earns honorary doctorate for dedication to accessible education

July 26, 2023

York University Lassonde School of Engineering Dean Jane Goodyer received an honorary doctor of technology degree from her alma mater, Coventry University in the United Kingdom, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to engineering education and her dedication to promoting women in engineering.

“I am deeply honoured,” said Goodyer. “While it was very challenging for me, as a first-generation learner who faced many personal struggles, to first earn my BEng (Hons.) in production engineering and to return to complete a PhD, my education has completely changed my life. The doors it opened have driven me to make education more accessible for other women and underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).”

Dean Jane Goodyer receiving honorary degree — Jane Goodyer receiving her honorary degree

The honorary doctorate marked an occasion to celebrate not just Goodyer’s dedication to making education more accessible at York, but over the course of her career, such as her 12 years at Massey University, New Zealand, in various leadership roles, including head of the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology. While in New Zealand she also launched engineering outreach programs for girls across the country, as well as a Degree Apprenticeship pilot program and a fully work-integrated Digital Technologies degree program that is a uniquely flexible, cost-effective alternative to traditional university study, allowing learners to be fully employed and gain a qualification without going into debt.

Goodyer continues this work at Lassonde with initiatives like the k2i (kindergarten to industry) academy, engaging youth and Kindergaten to Grade 12 educators in hands-on, free STEM programs. Since 2020, k2i has reached 6,000-plus individuals in 175,000-plus hours of engagement and generated more than $5 million in funding. In Fall 2023, Goodyer will also be introducing the Degree Apprenticeship pilot program at York, the first of its kind in Canada.

In her role as Lassonde’s chief academic and administrative officer, Goodyer also leads an inclusive community of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs towards achieving Lassonde’s strategic academic goals. Goodyer is driven to make education more accessible, advancing women and other underrepresented groups in engineering.

“I’m passionate about collaborating with others to dismantle barriers and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable future in which every aspiring engineer is empowered to thrive,” said Goodyer.

Lassonde research advancing astronaut training

July 26, 2023

To help inform more inclusive astronaut training, Professor Michael Jenkin from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering is gearing up for a project, “The Influence of Partial Gravity on the Perception of Self-Motion: Sex Differences (SMUG-PS),” which specifically focuses on women and their changes in perception of self-motion when exposed to partial gravity.

In space, unusual environments such as zero and partial gravity can significantly alter human perception of self-motion, leading to challenges with self-orientation and visual processing. Effective astronaut training is critical to ensuring survival and mission success. However, current training measures are based on heavily skewed data from human performance studies that concentrate on a very specific group of people.

Professor Jenkin floating in aircraft during parabolic flight — Professor Michael Jenkin floating in aircraft during parabolic flight

“People who are trained to go to space fit a very narrow superman type; they’re fit, young, healthy … and usually men,” says Jenkin. “Back in the day, most astronauts were men recruited from the military, but in the present day we want to send all kinds of people to space. We won’t be able to do this if training measures are only developed for a very specific group.”

Most research to date focuses on human responses to zero gravity; however, understanding the effects of partial gravity is becoming increasingly important for developing training methods to prepare astronauts for space missions involving the surface of the moon, Mars or other planets.

SMUG-PS is built on a previously conducted study, “The Influence of Partial Gravity on the Perception of Self-Motion (SMUG-P),” which focused solely on men. “We want to see if women respond differently to partial gravity than men,” says Jenkin. “If they do, we’ll need to change the way we’re training astronauts.”

Female study participants will undergo a series of repeated tests to measure their perceived distance of self-motion while aboard a thrilling, parabolic flight that ascends in a steep, curved pattern to simulate partial gravity conditions. Each test will be performed at various segments of the flight, including before and after, to develop a model of multi-cue integration processes.

Throughout the duration of the study, participants will wear a head-mounted display that simulates a virtual-reality environment, mimicking a long corridor. Participants will be asked to estimate their distance from an indicated target and will then experience a simulated forward motion towards it. When they believe they have reached the target, they are required to press a button. It is expected that this process will be easier said than done, as the partial gravity environment established by the parabolic flight will influence their perception of self-motion.

Results obtained from SMUG-PS will allow for a better understanding of how women process visual information in partial gravity conditions, to address issues in space and on earth. “By extending experiments to women, we can identify changes that need to be made to astronaut training measures to maximize mission success,” says Jenkin. Combined results from SMUG-P and SMUG-PS will also be used to inform the development of training and countermeasures to prepare astronauts for environments governed by partial gravity, thereby improving mission success as well as astronaut health and safety. Ultimately, these projects will be used to produce the first sex-balanced partial gravity perception of self-motion dataset.

In addition, these projects will establish crucial information that can advance global understanding of medical conditions affecting human perception of self-motion. “If we can understand how people respond to altered perception of their environments, we can provide stronger cues, like modifying the lighting or visual appearance of objects in someone’s home,” he says.

SMUG-PS will bring meaningful partnerships to Lassonde, through the collaborative efforts of Professor Robert Allison from Lassonde’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Professor Laurence Harris from York University’s Department of Psychology, as well as Nils-Alexander Bury and Professor Rainer Herpers from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

New book examines feminist strategies to advance gender justice

July 21, 2023

A new book that explores how feminist strategies have influenced federal policy is based on research from York University’s Centre for Feminist Research (CFR).

Feminism’s Fight: Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada since 1970, published by UBC Press, is edited by York Professor Emerita Barbara Cameron and Professor Meg Luxton both of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

*Feminism’s Fight: Challenging Politics and Policies in Canada since 1970* book cover

The book is one outcome of the Gender and Public Policy research cluster organized by associates of the CFR. This edited collection consists of 13 chapters based on the research collaboration of the cluster and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded grants housed in the CFR.

Feminism’s Fight assesses feminist strategies to advance gender justice through federal policy from the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to the present. It outlines the transformation in how feminism has been treated by governments and asks how new ways of organizing and emerging alliances can advance a feminist agenda of social and economic equality.

The authors examine the ideas that feminists have put forward in pursuit of the goal of equality and traces the shifting frameworks employed by governments in response, and evaluate changing government orientations through the 1970s to 2020, revealing the negative impact on women’s lives and the challenges posed for feminists.

Feminism’s Fight asks two key questions: What are the lessons from feminist engagement with federal government policy over fifty years? And what kinds of transformative policy demands will achieve the feminist goal of social and economic equality?

The book will help inform researchers, graduate students and faculty in gender and women’s studies, political science, sociology, history and social work as well as those engaged in work relating to, or with an interest in, inequality, social justice and activism.

Find more information on the book here.

Professor’s book details care home labour exploitation

July 14, 2023

Exhausted nurse, doctor, medical practitioner sitting on care centre floor

By Joseph Burrell, communications officer, YFile

York University Distinguished Research Professor Emerita Pat Armstrong’s latest book, Unpaid Work in Nursing Homes: Flexible Boundaries (Policy Press, 2023), follows unpaid labourers in nursing homes across six wealthy countries, including Canada, and launches on July 18.

Armstrong, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, leads a team of international researchers who have, over a decade, produced a series of books identifying hazardous trends in health-care systems as well as “promising practices for making nursing home care as good as it can be.”

“You may assume that in nursing homes most of the labour is provided by staff paid and trained for the job. But you would be wrong, especially in Canada,” Armstrong says. “This book is about who does what kinds of unpaid work, under what conditions in nursing homes. By comparing the nature and conditions of this gendered work in different countries, the book shows that the boundaries between paid and unpaid work are flexible not only for families and volunteers, but also for paid staff and residents.”

This latest entry features the results of ethnographic studies carried out in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Norway, Sweden and Germany – each country among the most resource-rich in the world and employing an array of contrasting approaches to long-term care. The follow-up entry to Armstrong’s latest book, Care Homes in a Turbulent Era (2023), also launches in August.

For all of the cultural and practical differences in each country’s approach to delivering care, a common element throughout the team’s research was that many nursing homes were dependent on unpaid labour to varying degrees.

“One of the many things that stood out for us was the amount and range of labour undertaken without pay by families, volunteers, residents and even by staff otherwise paid for the work,” Armstrong explains. “However, the amounts and kinds of unpaid work varied significantly from country to country, indicating that such work is not inevitable.”

This breadth of unremitted work, particularly the work carried out by staff who were paid in some circumstances but not in others, gave rise to the “flexible boundaries” referred to in the book’s title. Although Armstrong emphasizes that these inequities have existed in nursing homes around the world for many years – a fact demonstrated throughout the nearly 30 books that she’s published on the topic since the 1980s – she also points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a recent force stressing the limits of the workforce and illuminating the severity of workers’ situations.

Unpaid Work In Nursing Homes: Flexible Boundaries by Pat Armstrong — *Unpaid Work In Nursing Homes: Flexible Boundaries* (2023) by Pat Armstrong

As homes were quarantined and family members barred from entering, the dependence on unpaid labour became apparent to the public. But even in light of COVID-19’s global repercussions, some countries proved better equipped to handle the health crisis in nursing homes than others.

“Staffing levels are much higher in Norway and Sweden,” she says. “The ownership of care homes also differs significantly. Norway especially has very few for-profit homes while in Ontario, nearly 60 per cent are for-profit. A poll in Sweden found that a majority would like to enter a nursing home if they needed help with two or more issues, while 90 per cent of those polled in Canada say they don’t want to go into a nursing home at all.”

Noting the similarities in age demographics as well as illness prevalence across all of the countries, Armstrong suggests that differences in health outcomes and perception of nursing homes are owed to “differences in both the quality of care and values.”

Despite their comparative successes, Armstrong cautions that countries like Norway and Sweden shouldn’t rest on their laurels. According to her research, each country shares the common issue of overworking majority-female labour forces and increasingly depending on immigrants from lower-income countries to fill jobs seen as undesirable, making the problem of exploitation one that intersects with sexism, racism and classism.

“Staff members talk about lying awake at night worrying about not having had the time to help Mrs. Jones eat her dinner, to help Mr. Banerjee walk down the hall, or to comfort a daughter when her mother died, even though these staff members came in early and stayed late,” Armstrong says.

A key takeaway throughout all of Armstrong’s work is the variety of solutions applicable to these problems. Such health-care crises are mitigated not just by training more medical professionals, but by educating citizens in effective policy, like increasing public investment in long-term care facilities.

“Long before the pandemic, research had shown that for-profit care homes had the lowest staffing levels, lowest pay and lowest quality of care,” she explains. “Attending to the conditions of work is essential to… responding to the individual needs of residents. The conditions of work are the conditions of care.”

Unpaid Work in Nursing Homes: Flexible Boundaries is available for purchase in paperback format, or for free download as an e-publication, through Policy Press.

Professor’s new book redefines girlhood during Medieval, Renaissance era

July 12, 2023

Author and Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) Professor Deanne Williams investigates the overlooked roles of girls in theatre – and performing arts in general – from the 10th through 17th centuries in her new book Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Performance and Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Williams’ research cites eyewitness testimony, stage directions, paintings and even records of payment to explore girls’ appearance in dramatic performances, as well as their contributions to writing and translating plays, singing, dancing and performing music. While previous histories of the actress have begun with the Restoration in 1660, this book charts this history all the way back to the Middle Ages.

Deanne Williams

Through its close analysis of plays from this time frame, as well as the broader cultural environments that produced them, Girl Culture demonstrates that girls were active and influential participants in dramatic culture, rather than passive observers.

“Girls have occupied a marginal role in theatre and cultural history, because of the assumption that performance was largely restricted to boys and men,” Williams explains. “But Girl Culture shows that they played an important role in medieval religious drama, Tudor pageants and royal entries, Elizabethan entertainments, and the Stuart court and household masque.

“My research shows that girlhood was a time of comparatively greater freedom for girls. Performing parts at home or in the schoolroom was a significant part of their education and they participated also in religious as well as civic performances. This book reveals medieval and early modern girlhood as a time of tremendous creativity and intellectual development,” she adds, before girls were “restricted by the expectations placed upon married women to run households and bear children.”

For over twenty years, Williams has devoted herself to research and redefining medieval and early modern girlhood. Her work includes staging readings of Jane Lumley’s Iphigeneia, the first-ever translation of the Greek drama into English, as well as Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam, the first female-authored original play (published in 1613), with Tom Bishop of the University of Auckland. With John Edwards, artistic director of the Musicians in Ordinary, she produced a podcast recording of Milton’s Comus and they are currently working with noted stage director Paul Hopkins on a film production of Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish’s play, The Concealed Fancies. With her colleague Bernice Neal and research assistant Asra Khonsari, Williams is also putting the finishing touches on a database called the Girls on Early English Stages (GEES) Project.

*Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Performance and Pedagogy* (2023) by Deanne Williams

Williams has also explored how even Shakespeare, whose plays were performed on an all-male stage, was influenced by girl culture and the participation of girls in the public sphere. In her previous study, Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (2014), Williams devotes “entire chapters to Ophelia and Juliet, as well as to lesser-known girl characters, such as the Queen in Richard II.

“In [that] book, I argue that girl characters are key to Shakespeare’s plays, and that Shakespeare’s ideas about girlhood developed over the course of his career and shaped our own ideas about girlhood today,” Williams says. “My new book, Girl Culture, takes a very different approach. Rather than exploring the influence of Shakespeare on girlhood, it locates the influence of girls on Shakespeare, whose lived experience of the girl actor, and girls’ significant cultural presence, shaped his conceptualization of girl characters such as Juliet, Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It, Marina in Pericles, and Emilia and the Jailer’s daughter in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen.”

Among many other examples Williams hopes readers will be pleasantly surprised by, she highlights Anne Boleyn – whose life was marred by tragedy – as being a far more literary person than sordid histories tend to let on.

“[Boleyn’s] reputation was tarnished by Henry VIII, but her girlhood was bookish, pious and extremely musical,” she says. “I also think readers will be astonished to learn about Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, who wrote six Latin plays to match those of Latin comic playwright, Terence, in order to educate the girls of Gandersheim Abbey. I think she was horrified by what she found in Terence and wanted to provide her girl readers – and actors – with better role models.”

In her graduate and undergraduate teaching, Williams always seizes the chance to share the updated history that’s uncovered in Girl Culture and bring to light the seldom discussed influence on the arts by girls of a bygone era.

Lassonde students embody Women in Engineering Day

June 27, 2023

From the Civil Engineering department at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering, current student Peace Ikpotokin and recent graduate Josephine Morgenroth represent the intent of International Women in Engineering Day, celebrated annually in late June, to draw attention to women changing the face of engineering and the world’s future.

Ikpotokin, who is in the final year of her master’s degree at Lassonde, conducts research with Liam Butler, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, focused on monitoring the distributed strain behaviour of two-way slabs produced with low-carbon concrete. The production of concrete poses a major problem for the world, accounting for 7 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions globally.

Ikpotokin’s research aims to find solutions to this growing issue with environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional concrete.

Morgenroth, who completed her PhD in civil engineering at Lassonde under the supervision of Associate Professor Matthew Perras and Associate Professor Usman Khan, researched combining disciplines of machine learning and rock engineering to predict geotechnical behaviour underground.

Contributing knowledge to an emerging field, her work aims to enhance the underground rock engineering design of structures such as tunnels, in a way that is useful for practical rock engineers.

Both graduates have garnered significant accolades. Ikpotokin has received the Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) International Peace Scholarship, American Association of University Women (AAUW) Scholarship and numerous certificates acknowledging her leadership efforts. She is also a highly active member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), an organization that empowers women to achieve their full potential in engineering. Morgenroth has been awarded the Professor Doug Stead PhD Thesis Award from the Canadian Rock Mechanics Association, NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship and Joan Bath Award for Advancement of Mineral Industry.

Ikpotokin and Morgenroth have made an impact too on the industry. Following her undergraduate studies, Ikpotokin began working in the industry as a site engineer, structural engineer and supervisor for various building and construction projects. Morgenroth works as technical services manager at digital mining company RockMass Technologies, supports clients by coordinating fieldwork and providing expertise to help implement solutions for rock engineering problems.

Together their efforts are indicative of a shift in the engineering field. Over the past decades, Canada has experienced its largest growth of women in post-secondary engineering programs and professions through the support of various organizations, events and campaigns addressing underrepresentation. However, with women making up a meagre 14 per cent of practicing engineers in Canada, there is still a need for improvement.

“There was actually a lot of women representation in grad school, but not so much in the mining industry,” Morgenroth says.

Ikpotokin agrees. “There is a low number of women in engineering, the gap is very clear,” she says. “It would be nice to have more peer support and female students. It’s really satisfying and empowering to work alongside other women.”

Despite the need of improvement, there are signs of progress – and hope. Both engineers credit the immense support they received from their Lassonde research and PhD supervisors to contribute pivotal knowledge to novel fields of research. Furthermore, Morgenroth is seeing change through companies like the one that employees her. “Our CEO is a woman of colour, and a lot of our team members are women too. We can talk about someone’s wedding at lunch, and then get into rock mechanics right after – it’s great.”

Looking to the future, it’s situations like hers that are important to highlight, which is why representatives like Morgenroth and Ikpotokin are so important. It’s also why Morgenroth ensures to use her platform to inspire and motivate women in engineering through various talks at Lassonde. “Representation is important in fields like engineering,” says Morgenroth. “Diversity breeds innovation and challenges people to think differently.”

Schulich research shows bias that favours male entrepreneurs

June 27, 2023

Two Black women sitting on a couch in conversation

New research by Schulich School of Business Associate Professor Ivona Hideg shows that women-led startups are evaluated less favourably than men-led startups because of “benevolent sexism” – a form of bias that undermines gender equity by giving greater advantages to men.

The findings are contained in an article published recently in the journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. The article, titled “Benevolent Sexism and the Gender Gap in Startup Evaluation,” was co-authored by Hideg, the Ann Brown Chair in Organization Studies at Schulich, together with Nhu Nguyen, a PhD student in organizational behaviour at the Desautels Faculty of Management; Yuval Engel, associate professor of entrepreneurship at the Amsterdam Business School; and Frédéric Godart, associate professor of organizational behaviour at INSEAD.

According to the researchers, benevolent sexism undermines gender equity in startup evaluations by boosting men’s outcomes without directly harming women’s outcomes.

The researchers initially hypothesized that the more evaluators endorse benevolent sexism – perceiving women as gentle and fragile – the less they would perceive startups founded by women as viable. Counter to their hypothesis, the researchers didn’t find any effect of benevolent sexism on the evaluation of women-led startups. However, the more evaluators endorsed benevolent sexism, the more positively they evaluated men-led startups. In other words, benevolent sexism was advantaging evaluations of men’s startups while seemingly not affecting evaluations of women’s startups.

“We know that hostile sexist attitudes that link entrepreneurial savvy and competence with men but not women can harm women,” says Hideg. “But what’s revealing about these findings is that benevolent sexism can be just as counter productive. Benevolent sexism involves seemingly positive attitudes toward women, seeing them as warm, moral, refined, yet fragile and in need of protection from men. This type of sexism is socially acceptable and rarely seen as problematic.”

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