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Breaking barriers - a celebration of women

By: Nitya Kharidehal

With International Women’s History Month right around the corner, this is the perfect time to celebrate the significant contributions of women. Women have had to fight for their fundamental rights and to be seen as equals throughout history. Fortunately over time, significant progress was made on this front. Time and again, women used their voices to advocate for important causes worldwide. Today, let us recount a few of these heroes with these five women that have broken barriers and started important conversations:

Maya Angelou: Maya Angelou was a renowned writer, poet, activist and director. She was an African-American woman, vastly recognized for her groundbreaking book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This book details Angelou’s early years, her experience with being sexually assaulted, and why she stopped talking after. It is a profound piece of literature that emphasizes oppression, freedom, and how it can change a person. When Angelou started speaking again, she used her voice to advocate for causes like education, anti-racism, and joined the civil rights movement. She worked closely with activists like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and served on the presidential committee twice. She was honored with several awards including three Grammys, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Langston Hughes Medal for her literary and activist contributions. She wrote several books until her death in 2014. To this day, her work remains influential, and is discussed in academic settings. Her mark on this world cannot be erased!

Malala Yousefzai: Malala’s story is as inspiring as it is haunting to girls all around the world. Born in a Pakistani family that believed in educating women, Malala treasured her schooling. When the Taliban took over their town, they imposed several rules like banning girls’ education, and those who dared to break them endangered their lives. Enraged, Yousafzai fearlessly advocated for women’s right to education publicly. For this, she was shot in the head and took several months to recover. While this would have silenced someone else, Malala chose to fight back. She moved to the UK, started the Malala Fund with an aim to promote girl’s education. Her relentless efforts and great work, made her the youngest recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Now an Oxford graduate, she spoke in the COP26 conference about climate change in relation to gender equality, and has been bestowed with many awards for her work.

Greta Thunberg: Climate change is a controversial and most debated topic. A high school student is the last person you would expect to speak up about this issue. Yet we live in a world where Greta Thunberg shouldered the responsibility of reminding us about the receding climate. Greta was only seventeen when she walked out of school and called for the Swedish government’s attention regarding the climate crisis. Her movement garnered attention from the UN and various countries. She stated she wants us to, “feel the panic that she feels everyday,” thinking about the future of this planet. She continues to advocate and also participated in the COP26 Climate Conference. Named the Time’s Person of the Year in 2019, Thunberg stands out, not just because of her passion, but because of how young she was when she spoke up. To the world, she is a beacon that displays and celebrates the power of youth. She is proof of what one can achieve with passion and fearlessness.

Alexa McDonough: Canada recently lost Alexa McDonough, an influential politician and social worker from Nova Scotia. She started her political career in the Liberal party before she switched over to the NDP and represented the party as the first woman in the legislature. She led the NDP federally for several years. Throughout her political career, McDonough was notorious for proving naysayers wrong. She was ridiculed and discouraged constantly but each time she won, it spoke volumes about her talent and prowess. McDonough dedicated her career to advocating for gender equality and social services. Though being the only woman in an unreceptive institution was not easy, she stood strong. Her influence on Canadian politics resulted in many honors and accolades, like naming the Mount Saint Vincent University women’s studies institute after McDonough.

Laxmi Agarwal: Laxmi Agarwal is an Indian woman from New Delhi. She was merely fifteen when she was attacked with acid in public by a man. The attack not only physically deformed her but also gave a lot of mental trauma, along with taunts about her looks. When she realized how unfair society is to women like her, she took it upon herself to change the system. To start off, she filed charges and the perpetrator was sentenced to prison. She then proceeded to fight the laws on acid attacks and acid sales. After her massively successful petition, the Supreme Court of India established rules to protect acid attack victims. Laxmi Agarwal continues to lead movements to bring more awareness about acid attack survivors. She founded the Chhanv Foundation, which helps victims with rehab, legal help, and even finding jobs. She aims to change beauty standards and to make society more inclusive towards acid attack victims. Her work is recognized globally, with people like Michelle Obama lauding her. Her resilience and initiative are things to learn from!

These are just five out of the millions of women that defy social norms and expectations every day in their own way. While it is undeniably important to celebrate Women’s History Month in honor of all such women who have opened the doors for future generations, let us remember that one month is just not enough. The unrelenting courage of women must be acknowledged and celebrated each day in as many ways as possible. Let us recognize all women for their strength, courage, sensitivity and perspectives every day. Here’s to women!

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A fractured democracy

By: Saanvi Dixit

On November 7th, 2020, Joe Biden was elected as president of the United States, albeit by a narrow margin that could shift again in the upcoming elections. Even with Trump out of office, America is spiraling towards a bleak future. The 2020 election exposed some of these gaping flaws in the voting system.

One of the biggest problems is the Republican party and the direction that they are taking. More specifically, Trumpism is the issue. Many senior Republicans have already announced that they will not be running for their seats again, leaving the radical ideas of white grievances and anti-democratic action in the hands of younger, more inexperienced politicians. The polarization of the GOP is a looming threat to the 2024 elections, with the power they currently hold to set up electoral barriers and prevent any progress from being made even if the Democrats win again. Any progress the Democrats could potentially make would be blocked by the Republicans, who are already infected with extreme partisanship. However, Trumpism isn’t the only problem. The Republicans have been weaponizing voter suppression to use as a core strategy in their campaigns, where they have been making it harder to vote, especially for minorities. This is a big problem for the Democrats in particular, considering the fact that Biden largely won due to the huge turnout from Black and other minority populations. Undermining the voting system and purging citizens from voter rolls could affect who gets a say in the final results of the elections. To add more fuel to the fire, current statistics show that the electoral college system the United States employs gives Republican presidential candidates a 4-5% advantage over their Democratic counterparts. This is a problem that primarily lies within the Senate, which favors senators from low-population rural states that have a majority of White electorates. This gives the Republicans a stronger hold over Congress, who can then use that power to prevent the Democrats from reforming the outdated and unrepresentative system. Many of the voter districts are also in favor of the Republicans, who were responsible for drawing the lines in the first place. These kinds of institutional problems make it much more difficult for the United States to move forward.

Another problem is media bias, low-information voters, and misinformation. Money is an important factor in politics, and media outlets in the status quo are focused far more on sensationalism and conflict as opposed to objective reporting or liberalism. During both the 2016 and the 2020 elections, mainstream media outlets like Fox News and CNN spent more time focusing on Trump because of the controversial statements he would often make. Due to this, the public gets very little information on actual, substantive policy which could be crucial to a fair democratic election. Instead, they are fed information that is meaningless and heavily biased. Perhaps the worst part of this, however, is that the public is also culpable for watching and allowing these for-profit channels to benefit from sensational news when the truth is far more important to the longevity of the nation. The media bias from mainstream sources has led to voters being unable to make fully informed decisions when casting the ballot, with dire consequences for the future of the United States.

The judicial system has also proven to be an obstacle in the path of progress. Under Trump’s presidency, many Republican judges were instituted, including the three right-winged nominees for Supreme Court justice. While this judicial activism is largely ignored by media outlets, it’s what allows states like Texas to purge large numbers of voters and reduce polling and ballot drop-off stations, further extending the problem of voter suppression.

The woes of the electoral system of the United States may seem far away and unrelated, but the recent federal election in Canada has brought us one step closer into the world of divisive, polarized politics. We may use the first past-to-post system instead of the electoral college, but the situation is becoming increasingly similar in the sense that people’s votes are less dependent on who they actually want to see in office, and more along the lines of who they don’t want to see in office. This is quite evident with Trudeau being re-elected as prime minister, despite being more actively disliked by Canadians than otherwise. The voting system here in Canada is still quite transparent; however, we still need to understand the flaws of America, the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, to ensure that we continue to uphold the rights of every Canadian.

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The impact of affirmative action

By: Riya Piryani

On January 24, 2022, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments that will allow it to rule once more on whether universities can consider race in admissions decisions, and affirmative action supporters are worried about the conservative-dominated court.

After sustaining the decades-old precedent in 2016, the United States Supreme Court will examine the validity of affirmative action in post-secondary learning.

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has held that race can be considered as one of several factors in college admissions, but that quotas or formulas cannot be used to diversify a class. The court said that the purpose of a diverse student body supports the use of race, along with other considerations, in admissions rules in the landmark 2003 case Grutter vs. Bollinger, which the cases against Harvard and UNC are attempting to undermine.

Activists argue that abolishing affirmative action would make top universities more racially homogeneous and less representative of the country as a whole. They cite data from a number of states that have abolished racial preferences on their own as proof. Since the state removed affirmative action in 1996, enrollment rates for Latino, Black, and Native American students have dropped considerably in the University of California’s system. According to some higher education experts, abolition of affirmative action would not only harm people from underrepresented groups by denying them access to prestigious colleges, but would also deny students at those schools the benefits of on-campus diversity.

According to a university committee, if Harvard stopped considering race in its admissions process and instead relied solely on race-neutral factors, the proportion of African American students admitted to the class of 2019 would have dropped from 14 percent to 6 percent, and the proportion of Hispanic or "other" students would have decreased from 14 percent to 9 percent. Meanwhile, the research stated that "this decline would result in a comparable increase in students of other races, mostly white children."

Scores on the standardized exams that universities ask candidates to complete have been presented as evidence in every lawsuit against affirmative action in admissions. Since average racial differences on test scores continue, reflecting deep and long-standing educational inequities, boosting a university's Black student representation necessitates accepting some Black students with lower test scores than rejected white students. Some of white students will subsequently be able to argue that they have been victims of racial bias. In a very limited sense, they are; it is impossible to say if a specific candidate would have been admitted without affirmative action, but accepting more students from any area at such an extremely selective institution inevitably means accepting fewer students from other groups.

Throughout the decades of debate over affirmative action, opponents have frequently argued that the whole American educational system should be reformed so that affirmative action is no longer necessary. That argument presumes that racial integration as a goal is inherently objectionable, and it also suggests a project that is nearly unimaginably large.

Many experts believe the issue will be heard by the Supreme Court during its next term, which begins in October.

Business as (un)usual

By: Selena Zhou

Twenty-five years ago, a man named Avtar Singh started a roti shop called Gandhi Indian Cuisine. His restaurant pioneered the concept of combining West and North Indian styles, and for decades his mom and pop shop was one of the most beloved restaurants in Toronto.

Twenty-five years later, Gandhi Indian Cuisine announced its closure. After months of struggling to stay afloat due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this family owned business could no longer continue.

For nearly two years now, small businesses all over the world have been struck by change after change due to the ongoing pandemic. Policies have teetered unpredictably from complete closure to pivoting to opening and then back to complete closure. Almost all of these businesses have lost an insane number of sales and over 100 000 previously active businesses have been shut down according to StatCan. The impact of COVID on small businesses can be analyzed in three waves: the first shutdown, when restrictions were lifted, and then when restrictions were reintroduced.

The first wave that hit small businesses was immediately following lockdown when pandemic restrictions were introduced. The first shutdown hit businesses without warning and thus many were unprepared with the limitations COVID brought. Stores were unable to conduct business but still had to continue paying expenses like rent and inventory maintenance. Before the pandemic, many local and family-run shops never needed to get online. Stores that were unable to pivot to curbside pick-up or delivery options in time collapsed, while others barely stayed afloat thanks to loyal customers and more forgiving leases. Although the Canadian government provided grants and aid for small businesses, it wasn’t timely nor was it enough to keep them running.

The second wave saw many of these businesses resurface and attempt to return to business as usual. When Canada released restrictions stage-by-stage, in-person stores including restaurants and small shops that hadn’t completely shut down or transitioned online opened as soon as they could. At this point, most businesses had some sort of online option. So once a third wave hit and in-person shopping and dining were forced to close again, most businesses had experience from the initial shutdown.

This meant that e-commerce platforms—Amazon, UberEats, SkipTheDishes—that were already gaining intense volumes of traffic due to less in-person purchases were continually growing at exponential rates throughout the pandemic. In order to stay alive, almost all restaurants had to create an UberEats or similar virtual delivery account. Even businesses that created their websites and delivery options couldn’t outbid aggressive marketing from larger e-commerce platforms.

Currently, small stores are still struggling due to the ongoing pandemic, but thanks to ecommerce and standardized platforms, maybe we can all make it out of this alive.