Opinion
Sports
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Steep costs drive students away from grocery stores 13
The Gateway’s Super Bowl XLIX Preview 28
Our Superbowl horoscopes will predict your Sunday 31
gateway January 28th, 2015
Issue No. 23
Volume 105
THE
T H E O F F IC IA L STUDE NT NE WS PA P E R AT TH E UNIVE R S IT Y OF A LBERTA
Feminist U kicks off with pilot event SU initiative targets inequalities in leadership Kate Black
managing editor @kategblack As one of only two elected female executives this year, Students' Union Vice-President (External) Navneet Khinda is an anomaly — but she's ready for that to change. In an Oct. 2014 Students' Union survey, male and female University of Alberta undergraduates expressed an equal interest in running for a student election. But, females are disproportionately unlikely to run in elections — from 2004 to 2012, only 22 per cent of SU executive candidates were female. "Equal interest, different outcomes. There's something in the middle that's going wrong," Khinda said. Khinda said she believes the tipping point between this interest and outcome is gender. She's looking to combat this disparity with Project Feminist U, an initiative to create a venue for conversation surrounding gender, politics, leadership and feminism at the U of A. The initiative is kicking off with a pilot event on campus from Feb. 3 to 5, featuring nine workshops and discussions hosted by groups from the U of A and Edmonton's feminist community. The initiative's two main goals are to mitigate gender-based barriers to involvement in leadership and politics, and to work towards the goal of the U of A becoming a "feminist campus." "By that, I don't mean one where everyone is a self-proclaimed feminist, but where if we're talking about issues, we just make sure we have a gendered lens when looking at it," Khinda said. Khinda was first inspired to start the project after noticing that explicit mentions of feminism are missing in current rhetoric meant to empower women. While popular messaging is encouraging, she noted a marked absence of discussing how to integrate feminist thinking or a gendered lens — that is, examining how issues impact people of different genders — into one's everyday life. Khinda said this omission comes from the perceived "divisiveness" of feminism. "(Feminism) is controversial, for some reason. But I think most good ideas are," she said. "It's so uncomfortable to really focus on structures that prevent people from doing things. It's uncomfortable to talk about how you benefit from some ideas while others don't. But we're never going to learn unless we confront our discomfort."
PLEASE SEE feminist u PAGE 5
Feature
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Arts PAGE
16
The lowdown on staying happy and healthy at school
APIRG gives students a lesson in protesting 23
“meet you at bae enterprise square station.”
#3LF page 13