All-women lecture series at U of R conference

REGINA When Antonia Maioni was pregnant with triplet boys 20 years ago, she was the first woman in her university department to request a maternity leave.

“It was not the 19th century, it’s 1998,” Maioni, the dean of arts at Montreal’s McGill University, told an audience at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences conference on Tuesday at the University of Regina.

“Nobody knew what to do. ‘Maybe 22 weeks?’”

Maioni’s lecture topic was Gender in Canada: Are we really making progress?

In the past two decades, she said, we’ve come a long way for gender parity.

However, representation of women in politics continues to lag. Men lead three major federal political parties, and Canada has never elected a woman prime minister. Only two of 13 provinces and territories have women premiers.

In March, Karina Gould became the first Canadian Member of Parliament to take a maternity leave.

“Everybody should be allowed to reconcile both family and their profession, and I think this is something that’s been a long time coming,” said Maioni.

“Women in my generation were told, ‘ Whatever you do, don’t have kids before you get tenure.’”

Maioni was the fourth speaker in the conference’s six-part Big Thinking series. The all-women lineup is a first for Congress, which has been held annually since 1931.

“Here we had Antonia Maioni, who is McGill University ’s first female dean of arts — which clearly shows there is something to celebrate in terms of the progress we’ve made — but also someone who has lived the change and been someone who has overcome some of these obstacles,” said Gabriel Miller, executive director of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Wednesday’s Big Thinking speaker is Alaa Murabit. A United Nations high-level commissioner, she will speak on leadership and sustainable peacekeeping.

On Thursday, Francoise Baylis, Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University, will speak on scholars’ role in sharing their knowledge and informing public debate.

Their presentations are at 12:15 p.m. in the Riddell Centre University Theatre.

The Congress began at the U of R on Saturday. It wraps up Friday.