By Cheryl Jahn

IWAU kicks off for its ninth year

Nov 13, 2024 | 3:55 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It’s in its ninth year and, while some of the issues are familiar when it comes to promoting women’s rights, the faces behind organizing the event have changed over those years. So what inspired the creation of Inspiring Women Among Us in the first place? Well, the annual National Day of Remembrance. A single-day event.

“A lot of people will be studying or writing exams or be home,” explains Zoe Meletis, Co-Founder of IWAU. “And it was thinking about how can we extend officially talking about thinking about coming together, about gender and gender relations beyond one day in a university setting is how it started.”

This is Zehra Zawawi’s second year as part of the organizing committee for IWAU. She is Pakistani by birth.

“There’s much more work to be done in my country, for sure. So that’s why it’s more important for me to be involved here and learn from the countries which are actually speaking about issues like that. So, yeah, in Canada at least there is something being voiced around. It’s a democratic country. And hopefully, you know, I’ll go back home and also, you know, do something about it there as well.”

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There will be rally on the agenda this year; one that has significant bearing tomorrow. A rally in front of the University Hospital of Northern BC. A reproductive rights rally.

“Ultimately, people need to decide what they can or cannot do with their bodies,” explains Tanvi Guhagakar with the Northern Women’s Centre at UNBC. “And I don’t think there should be any sort of intervention, any sort of coercion, any sort of force or any kind of manipulation around that choice.”

Meletis says, for a while it seemed like each year, progress was being made in terms of goals and aspirations behind the Inspiring Women Among Us, recent events have cast a shadow on that perceived progress. Where the word “feminist” is becoming an ugly word.

“That’s unfortunate because that is definitely a step back. But that’s not the end of the story. Sometimes it’s all about exposure or just understanding that actually you are a feminist or you were born from a feminist, or you just haven’t really been imagining feminists in a realistic, comprehensive way.'”

The conference runs through the course of the week with events like the rally, Louis Riel Day, a panel on women in science and closing with the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women next Wednesday.