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Celebrating women in leadership positions

InternationalWomensDay_WEB
International Women's Day is March 8, and this year's theme is #EachforEqual. Photo: Micheile Henderson/Unsplash

"An equal world is an enabled world," states the description of this year's International Women's Day (IWD) theme of #EachforEqual, a call for a gender-equal world.

Celebrated annually on March 8, the movement is a celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, and marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

“Equality is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue,” declares the IWD website. “Gender equality is essential for economies and communities to thrive.”

A 2017 report from international management-consulting firm McKinsey & Co. agrees, indicating Canada could add $150-billion in GDP growth by 2026 – six per cent higher than business-as-usual forecasts – just by advancing women’s equality.

The report called for government, private corporations and educational institutions to undertake initiatives in five priority areas: removing barriers against women entering STEM fields, enabling more women to be entrepreneurs, reducing gender inequalities in child care and unpaid care work, amplifying women’s voice in politics and reducing gender bias, and reshaping social norms.

Locally, women in leadership positions are breaking through the traditional model of what a woman is expected to be.

Dr. Fozia Alvi

Airdrie-based family physician Dr. Fozia Alvi has seen the plight of refugee women and is determined to do something to help.

After completing her medical training and residency in the United States, she came to Canada about 13 years ago and became involved in charity work about three years later. However, it wasn't until her 2017 medical mission to Bangladesh that she actively began working to better the lives of women.

"I saw a lot traumatized women and children," she said. "They were escaping to Bangladesh after their husbands and the boys got killed by the army."

Alvi told the Airdrie City View in 2019, she remembered one instance where a young girl told her she had seen her mother being raped and the murder of her father and six-month-old sibling.

After witnessing the state of the refugee camps, Alvi said she told herself, "I have to raise my voice for those women and the children."

"After that, I got I started raising my voice for the advocacy work, as well as I started arranging medical clinics there, sending doctors there and sponsoring medical clinics, hiring local doctors from Bangladesh and hiring nurses and buying medication – that's what I've been doing for the last two years," she said.

In addition to practicing full-time in Airdrie and her work in Bangladesh, Alvi and her husband have opened a hospital in Pakistan and support training programs for health-care workers there. The couple is also involved in building an orphanage in Turkey for orphaned Syrian girls, which she said will be completed in April.

"I believe that all women, we are equal, we are human beings and that's what my rationale is to stand for them," Alvi said. "It doesn't matter if they were born in Bangladesh or if they're born in Africa, they should have equal rights in terms of education, quality health care and especially those women who are in the refugee camps [who] have gone through a trauma in their life."

Though she said she hasn't taken the time to consider is she's a role model because "I never had time to take a break, the work is so busy," she is proud of the work she is doing and the impact it has had.

A trip to Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., to speak at a Doctors Without Borders event in 2019, connected Alvi with a grad student who recently started a club for Alvi's foundation at the school. Alvi said the club is now in the process of expanding to other cities.

"I was really inspired, I was like, 'Wow, really? You guys want to do it?'" she said. "So I think that's that's how the work continues, even after you're not here, you die, that's how the work continues."

As IWD approaches Alvi said she encourages everyone to "come out of our comfort zone" and do something to help refugee women.

"I want to give a message to the women of the Airdrie community that they should look outside their bubble because I feel that – especially living in North America, Canada, Calgary – we are living in our small bubbles and we don't see, we don't think about that what's going on the rest of the world. Yes, we hear the stories in the news but...our stories move on – every hour, we have a new story and then we forget about it," she said, adding the refugee women she works with need our help.

Coun. Candice Kolson

Now in her second term on Airdrie City council, Coun. Candice Kolson has embraced her "strong personality" and is working on behalf of a demographic she said wasn't "as represented as it could have been" prior to her time on council.

"It takes a long time to get things done," she said. "So I think that's kind of why you see councillors that have been on council for so long because you just really want to see those projects through, and the cogs turn very, very slowly when it comes to government."

Kolson said the some of projects she'd like to see to fruition include a new library space and a permanent 40 Avenue interchange.

A mother of two to a 12- and 14-year-old, Kolson also manages the Airdrie Farmers' Market and transformed it to a successful business.

"I think I'm fortunate in that I have a strong personality – sometimes, that can be intimidating to those that you come up against – but broadly, as far as equality goes, I guess I would say that I don't take anything less than equal and I hope that others don't take anything less than what is equal. I'm teaching my kids the same," she said.

"I'm not the type of person that feels marginalized or unequal in any way; however, I do see it and I am very aware that it is out there. It's my hope that is slowly changing and that it's getting better."

She said that strong personality goes against traditional expectations of women who were instilled with the belief they should be seen, not heard.

"I feel like our voices are heard perhaps a little bit more and more and more," Kolson said. "The more we speak up the more we are heard, so we need to speak up, we need to be heard.

"I would hope that the people, like the women you're speaking to with this article, that we are confident enough to be those leaders and to help create that change."

She said girls need to see women in leadership positions because, "If you see it, it's a possibility for you."

"I think it's important that if those young girls are coming from a home where women aren't perceived as equal, at least they can see it out in their community, that, 'Hey, I can run for council or I can be a leader or I can open my own business, and that I don't necessarily need permission from anybody to do so,'" she said.

Kiersten Mohr

As a trans woman and president of Airdrie Pride Society, Kiersten Mohr is well acquainted with issues of equality.

"I always joke that I was undercover for so many years in corporate Calgary, so I've got a lot of interesting perspectives on what gets talked about," she said.

Mohr said embracing her authentic self was a long process, over a lot of years.

“It just comes down to that choice to live your life and to be happy and to be honest with who you are, and within that authentic space, there’s a lot of power and there’s a lot of freedom that comes with that,” she said.

Though she said her journey was easier than she expected it to be in Airdrie and that her community and support system is twice what it was before, the transition has not come without its challenges.

“I never mean to sound negative, so I’ll put that disclaimer, but for myself, personally, there’s no way to disappear anymore,” Mohr said. “Before that, we could walk anywhere in a city and ‘disappear,’ nobody turns or turn their backs, and that’s just kind of gone now.”

She said an additional challenge has been seeing the differences between genders as the average white male versus a trans woman.

“The expectations are different, completely. When you’ve got a very confident, strong...woman, I would always hear they’re trying too hard, they’re too abrasive, they’re too, all of those kinds of descriptors that are negative and down-playing,” Mohr said. “Compared to a male individual in that same situation, [they’re described as] very strong-headed, confident, makes good decisions quickly, etc., etc. They’re revered and admired, and they’re strong, and they’re confident.”

She added those negative descriptors are meant to devalue or take power away.

“It’s that expectation of what women need to be to be successful, but I think that isn’t authentic to the average woman,” Mohr said. “Which is why it feels gross, you don’t feel right.”

To challenge the unconscious inequality, she said it comes down to education and a “need to see it to believe it.”

“Within the trans community in particular, there is just an incredible [need for] one, education, but two, a need to see people that are successful in that space to break, what I call, that kind of subtyping,” she said.

“The whole move to equality in the community will take more and more and more of us kind of standing up and being those strong voices in the community to do that education and awareness and all that work that needs to be done.”

Stacey Foster

Airdrie business owner and armwrestler Stacey Foster might not fit into the traditional idea of femininity, and she is just fine with that.

In Foster’s first year of competitive armwrestling, after just 10 months of training, she entered the 2016 Canadian National Armwrestling Championships and won a gold, two silvers and a bronze medal. Then, at the 2018 Alberta Provincial Armwrestling Championship, Foster took home gold in both left- and right-arm events in the women’s under-154 pounds weight class.

"I think you can be you can be one extreme to the next and still be feminine," she said. "I don't think you have to be all dolled up to be feminine. You can be just as sexy or feminine wearing a pair of Lulus and a baggy T-shirt with your hair done up in a pineapple knot, as you can be dressed to the nines going out on the town. I think it's both are sexy."

Foster said her experience growing up on a farm "slinging bales and milking cows," along with armwrestling and owning Stub Tech Enterprises Ltd. Custom Welding and Fabrication, is proof women can take on just as much as men.

"I can do anything I want," she said. "We have a welding shop, and when my husband needs work help pulling in material from the back, I'm in the back pulling in. You want something done? I can do anything."

The co-founder of the Airdrie Arm Wrestling Club said the armwrestling community is supportive and called it a big family. She said she hasn't experienced issues of gender disparity in armwrestling or in general; however, she acknowledged the impact a woman in a dominantly male-driven sport has had on others.

"I think what I'm doing is I'm showing them to go out there and try things," Foster said. "Especially in today's society where everybody says you have to live in this box. You don't have to live in the box, step outside the box. Just try different things in your life, you don't have to follow the norm."

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