UBC Gender Equity Champions Series

The following series of profiles, showcasing gender equity champions in our UBC community, has been compiled in partnership between interviewees Niki Najm-Abadi, Christine D’Onofrio and Marianne Vidler with Jacob Fischer-Schmidt at ORICE (Office of Regional and International Community Engagement). The process has been interview-based, and has used participatory methods to work towards self-representation.

This profile series is part of our UBC community mobilization towards the Women Deliver Conference 2019 (WD 2019).

Niki Najm-Abadi

Niki uses she/her pronouns, and is an uninvited migrant here on Coast Salish lands. She is Iranian, and her intersecting identities of being a woman of colour guides a lot of her activism. At the heart of what she strives to do is create space and hold safe spaces for folks. Niki has organized with the Women’s Centre for three years, and is now co-president. She also work at the UBC/AMS Sexual Assault Support Centre (SASC) as an outreach and education worker.

Arriving on campus, three or four years ago, was very isolating. That’s not just unique to my experience: I think that’s very relatable to folks. Community means something different when you’re marginalized; you face risks and persecutions on a campus like UBC. My organizing has always wanted to create a space that bridges difference for folks. A lot of that is guided by my lived experience, but it’s also guided by the experience of other brilliant folks —women and non-binary folks of colour— that want to help make it happen.

Including anti-racism while fighting for gender-based justice has always been at the forefront of my work because of how important it is that we fight for gender-based justice through the methods of racialized women, and specifically Indigenous and Black women, by using decolonial tactics.

At the SASC, I provide education to help other folks facilitate space that is survivor-centric and intersectional in their approach to fighting sexualized violence and rape culture. At the Women's Center, we believe having resources is a good way of addressing some of the needs of our community. We organize consciousness-raising sessions.

It has always been important to highlight through education the voices of queer and racialized women, and non-binary folks. That's where it starts. Education is a political choice: what and how will you teach your students? Working in education it puts me in a position where I can ask: what does your community need? These communities are in communication with me, they let me know what they want and then using the resources of the SASC, the Women’s Center, my own knowledge, and other forms of knowledge, I can begin to address those needs.

Hear more from Niki Najm-Abadi at the UBC WD Profiles site.

Christine D’Onofrio

Christine D’Onofrio is an Instructor at UBC’s, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory. She teaches and practices in lens-based and digital media. Her recently-launched user-content-generated archive site Intuition Commons aims to connect women artists and cultural contributors by way of intuitive, affective, and tacit links that inform creative output and ways of being in the world

My art practice consists of curiosities and provocations of how gender can influence a mode of inquiry, which hopefully brings about new ways of knowing. I question power structures, reveal oppressions, and bring attention to what is overlooked and/or silenced. My work uncovers these themes in different ways: through art-historical references, sometimes transferring into critiques of capital and more recently how gender has been empowered and/or privileged online. Interests in my art practice also influence my teaching, both in facilitation and content; I try to make space for historically overlooked voices or narratives — which also has a lot to do with systemic biases; gender is included in this. As I engage with these issues, I notice how we are energized to act: something has intuitively affected us, and we are trying to work out what this new space might be, how we can activate or engage in an understanding that is not yet stable.

I am interested in embodied knowledges that we live, murmurs and whispers that have a lot to offer us if we would just pay attention. Intuition Commons is a space where we can articulate those whispers for contemplation, to make sense of the abstract or not-so-stable insinuations or connections we are slowly materializing. It is a space where intuition can be processed into intellect. Intuition Commons is my attempt to stand outside patriarchal structures of how we know. We don’t have the full picture if women are just forcing themselves into dominant and legitimized narratives and systems.

If we can apply the value of learning from community to a critical deconstruction of how gender biases exist in knowledge, then I think the university would only grow from it. It is in this space where we can understand each other’s differences, acknowledge them and respect them as part of what brings us together.

Hear more from Christine D’Onofrio at the UBC WD Profiles site.

Marianne Vidler

Marianne Vidler is a Research Manager in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at UBC. She is responsible for research leadership, direction, management planning, and implementation of the five PRE-EMPT projects across multiple international research jurisdictions. Marianne also provides oversight to UBC-based project staff and activities for the research group. Marianne is the Acting Program Manager for the Centre for International Child Health (CICH) at BC Children’s Hospital. Marianne also serves as an Assistant Editor for BMC Reproductive Health.

The PRE-EMPT research team works out of the BC Women’s Hospital. Our team consists of 10 to 12 people, and I serve as the manager for that group and project. PRE-EMPT comprises of five main projects that are focused on prevention, monitoring, and treatments of the hypertensive disorders in a global context. We are engaged in a variety of countries but our focus is primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Over the years, we have kept the same mandate, but our work’s scope has broadened: our work is directly related to hypertensive disorders or maternal mortality, and more generally antenatal care, primarily in the Global South.

There are barriers and obstacles all along the way, for women, especially in some of the most vulnerable communities globally. Most of those are based on gender disparities and injustices, and take into account other axes as well, of intersectionality of oppression. The whole trajectory of care — the decision to seek care, accessing care, and receiving quality care — is littered with obstacles that are rooted in these gendered injustices.

By really highlighting, promoting and reinforcing the women who are doing amazing work, we are allowing space for those people to be recognized and celebrated — there are many of them. We need to acknowledge that disparities in health often affect women. It is also very important that we acknowledge the inequities within women in Canada, particularly the health conditions of Indigenous women in Canada. This discussion is important, and as a community of UBC, we need to push it forward.

Hear more from Marianne Vidler at the UBC WD Profiles site. For the full list of profiles follow this link.

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