Reflections, praxis and explorations of community struggles and resilience during pandemic times

BIOS

Moderators:

Anoushka Chandarana is a Graduate student at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Originally from India, she combines her background in sociology with her experience as a woman of colour to advance issues of social justice. She has worked in the Indian education sector, trying to improve the quality of education offered by public schools in her city. Here in Vancouver, Anoushka is currently working with the International Organization for Migration to develop a diaspora engagement strategy for the Mongolian diaspora. She has a keen interest in understanding the role of gender in protests, and hopes to push for gender equality as the world copes with the pandemic, and the current refugee crises.

Eylul Kara is a second-year International Scholar at the Faculty of Arts majoring in International Relations with a minor in History. Her research interests include politics of humanitarianism, and women’s peace and security, as she is looking to specialize in law and transitional justice after her undergraduate degree. She has worked with grassroots women’s organizations in Thailand, Turkey, India, and Canada working towards fighting forced marriage and young women’s right to education. Her work and projects have been recognized by UBC as she become one of the 2020 Karen McKellin International Leader of Tomorrow Award recipients. She is the co-founder of Building Bridges, a new initiative of indigenous and non-indigenous youth working towards bridging the knowledge gap in Indigenous history through education to encourage non-indigenous youth to take action through social entrepreneurship.  She is currently working in social impact consulting and is in training to become a legal advocate for women and girls subjected to domestic and sexual violence.

Panellists and projects:

Cheryl-lee Madden is an interdisciplinary community demographer, whose advocacy ensures your community group’s opinions, ideas, and points of view are not only heard and understood but have a civic-level impact—especially amidst competing voices and opinions. She is passionate about how women were disproportionately affected within the retail food services having experienced a greater degree of job loss – many of which will not return post-pandemic. To this end she advocates for labour force gender equality and believes spatial mismatch hypothesis that will shed a light on who is returning to the downtown central business district and how we can create critical social infrastructure to ensure women are not being permanently left behind. Community partnership building involves creating healing, post-colonial space-time reclamation in collaboration with the Black community (in cartographic Afrofuturism visualization, for example), listening to Indigenous People, people of colour, the elderly, newcomers, refugees, and other diverse groups by filing reports that voice their concerns within City Hall—where it matters most!

Mapping of Unchartered COVID-19 Evictions: Are Women Disproportionately Affected by Job Loss?
It has been suggested that among global cities, Vancouver’s spatial mismatch is unique. As well as being transnational and indigenous in scope, this striking disconnect between low-income housing and adequate employment opportunities is characterized by large numbers of working poor—primarily women—with inadequate access to educational opportunities and well-paid jobs (Sassen, 1991). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the social stressors of living and working in Vancouver have been further compounded due to pandemic-related job losses. Moreover, few affordable rental units remain available to renters. With the neoliberal global deindustrialization shift to service-dominated employment, women on the front lines of the service industry have very likely ended up being the most affected. However, to date there has been scant research into the long-term social effects of women’s job and income losses vis- -vis their mobility (i.e., evictions or forced moves). In the present study, a small subset of the retail sector - Vancouver’s working poor women - is examined to explore in real time income/eviction data and thereby demonstrate that these women were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 job losses. These qualitative interviews will capitalize on the knowledge and experience of the targeted communities’ inhabitants as they contribute various pieces of information to the spatial mismatch discourse and, in the process, render it comprehensive. Gaining such reliable data from immigrant women is critical if we want to turn the tide and create adequate-wage employment and more socially responsible housing in Vancouver, the world’s second least affordable city.

Megan Bobetsis (she/her) is a MA student in Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies (GSWS) at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and previously received a BA from SFU and a Journalism diploma from Langara College. Megan worked for 3 years as a Project Coordinator at the Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity prior to starting her MA. Her research interests include intimate partner violence, sexual assault, BC criminal justice system and sexual assault/IPV, and survivor resilience.

Healing & Justice for Sexual Violence Survivors: Communities of Care During a Global Pandemic
We are living in a time when sexual violence remains a prominent issue in society, yet the voices of survivors are so often still silenced and unsupported. The isolation that comes with being a survivor of sexual violence is only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, this project aims to create a community of care for survivors and highlight what healing and justice mean to survivors. During these unprecedented times, it is critical to make space for survivors to express what healing and justice mean to them, as this is unique to each survivors’ experience. In addition to this, asking the community to share messages of support fosters engagement and care centred on the lived experiences of survivors.

This project was undertaken as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) in January 2022 at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The project asked survivors of sexual violence: “What does healing and/or justice mean to you?” and asked the community: “How do you support survivors and/or what would you say in support of survivors?” Responses were submitted anonymously via the project website and included short and long form written answers, as well as poetry. Submissions will be compiled and presented on the project website in the hopes of creating a space where survivors can see their own voices and those of fellow survivors recognized, alongside messages of community support. We hope the submissions shared through this project will help guide our community and service providers to continue learning what is needed to best support survivors. 

Project website: www.sfu.ca/gsws/community/Sexual_Assault_Awareness_Month_2022.html