FEATURE
A WOMAN’S PLACE IN OECTA By Carley Desjardins
“Why are 300 Catholic educators sitting here on plush chairs in Toronto’s newest, poshest hotel on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon in October, and why is that woman on stage talking about such terrible things?” It was October 1985. The educators were classroom teachers, superintendents, nuns, priests, directors of education, consultants, and support staff from all over Ontario; they represented all kinds of “who’s who” in Catholic education attending a conference on women’s issues. The conference, “Images II,” was co-sponsored by the Equal Opportunity Committee of OECTA and the Affirmative Action Committee of the Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB), and the woman addressing them was Maude Barlow, former senior advisor on women’s issues in the Prime Minister’s Office. According to the December 1985 issue of The Reporter, OECTA’s official publication of the time, one conference delegate explained that it was time to take a look at how society had changed in just a few short years. “The impact of broken homes, one-parent families, single-parent breadwinners and the need for more and better child care has forced people to look at how roles have changed.” The same issue of The Reporter covered a conference organized by the Ontario Advisory Council of Women’s Issues, which hosted 500 young women from high schools across the province. Former Provincial Attorney General Ian Scott, who was also the minister responsible for women’s issues at the time, explained to delegates that women of the day earned “only about 63 per cent of what men earn.” Later in his remarks, he added, “The government plans to increase child care spaces, ask industries to provide equal pay for work of equal value, and is encouraging employers to provide incentives for women.” Fast forward some 30-plus years later, and much of this sounds all too familiar. Here we are nearing the end of 2018, in the midst of the next women’s movement and on the heels of OECTA’s inaugural women’s leadership conference, Fempower, which brought together more than 200 women members and leaders from across the Association; providing a unique opportunity to meet and share concerns and experiences particular to women in the workplace, and to build capacity in a positive, safe space.
8 CATHOLIC TEACHER | DECEMBER 2018
As Catherine Marshall, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania explained in that same issue of The Reporter back in 1985, “People are motivated to achieve when they identify with others in similar positions, when they have access to relevant training, when the criteria for success are clear, when a mentor supports and trains them and when they have personal and social supports to help them endure difficult tasks as they seek their career goals.” Women make up 76 per cent of the Association’s membership, and this segment of OECTA’s history highlights some of the defining moments women have had within the Association.
