Swift Current event celebrates women in science on International Women's Day
The Southwest Newcomer Welcome
Centre hosted a special Cooking
Culture event in celebration of International Women's Day, March 8.
Cooking Culture is a regular cultural cuisine exchange held by the Southwest Newcomer Welcome Centre and hosted at the St. Stephen's Anglican Church in Swift Current. It brings people together to enjoy a good meal prepared by local residents who are sharing their food traditions with the group.
This event on International Women's Day also included a program with keynote speakers and a roundtable discussion after the meal.
The theme for this year's International Women's Day in Canada was Innovate for Change to recognize the achievements of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, but also to highlight the underrepresentation of women in these fields.
The two guest speakers at the event therefore have a background in science and technology. Dr. Samia Berraies is a research scientist at Agriculture and AgriFood Canada's Swift Current Research and Development Centre (SCRDC) and Dr. Michele Jagga is a family physician in Swift Current.
Dr. Berraies grew up in Tunisia and holds a PhD in biological science. She specializes in agriculture and her passion is wheat research. Dr. Jagga grew up in South Africa, where she studied medicine. She has worked in Australia and New Zealand before coming to Canada.
Dr. Berraies said science is a continuous process of learning and exploration, and through innovation and technology there is always something new and different to learn and you have to keep up to date.
“You become curious about it, what's next, what's next,” she said. “Now what we see in genetics and molecular biology is just amazing.”
She felt she was destined to come to the prairies in 2014 in pursuit of her interest in wheat research. This is where she wants to be and her SCRDC colleagues are an awesome group to work with.
“I had a dream, I realized this dream, I still have many more, and it's still with wheat,” she said. “I'm ambitious, but always I think be humble and just be yourself. ... The learning process never ends. So don't wait for someone to believe in you. Believe in yourself first, and then everything will follow.”
Dr. Jagga already realized at the age of five she wanted to become a medical doctor. She paid tribute to the female medical pioneers who made it possible for today's women to have medicine as a career choice.
Women are the majority of physicians in the age group below 44, but they also have the highest risk for burnout due to the demands they face in trying to balance their careers and family life.
“We are doctors, but we fall in love and we have children, and medicine is a very jealous lover,” she said. “It does not share kindly.”
She spoke about her own experience. She was very passionate about emergency medicine and worked very long hours in New Zealand in a city larger than Regina, where she dealt with acute sexual assault cases.
“It is a very emotionally challenging job and to do this job, you have to take away from your family,” she said.
She did not realize that her family was suffering as a result of her job, but an incident occurred when she almost accidentally hit her youngest child. She was getting ready to reverse from the driveway to go to work and saw her daughter just in time. It forced her to review her working life.
“We can have our dreams, but we are mothers,” she said. “We are the mothers of nations. We are raising the future of this country. Embrace that. That is not a weakness. That is a strength and we should fix the crown on each other's heads when they're crooked without letting others know that they are. So here's to all the strong women we know. May we be them, and may we raise them.”