Engineers Canada’s Jeanette Southwood, Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Strategic Partnerships, attended the 67th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW67) in New York City, NY, from March 6 to 10, 2023, as a civil society organization (CSO) representative in the official Canadian delegation, led by the Honorable Marci Ien, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, and Parliamentary Secretary, Member of Parliament Jenna Sudds.
The UNCSW is the principal global body dedicated to creating policies that promote gender equality and the advancement of women. The theme for the 2023 Summit was “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.”
“One of Engineers Canada’s core purposes is to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion, and one of our strategic priorities focuses on increasing the representation of female-identifying engineers. This event provided an opportunity to be part of a larger, international discussion on how to achieve these goals in the Canadian engineering profession,” said Southwood. “Engineers Canada brought its long-standing commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, as well as its commitment to licensure and its associated code of ethics and values as part of the solution to the challenges around gender-based violence that is facilitated by technology.”
During the Commission’s annual two-week session, international representatives gather to discuss progress and gaps in the implementation of global policies related to gender equality, as well as emerging issues that affect gender equality and the empowerment of women. Negotiations are made to agree on further actions to accelerate progress and promote women’s enjoyment of their rights.
As part of her participation in the Canadian delegation, Southwood served as a CSO representative in Canada’s Rapid Response Team providing input to Canada’s negotiators. “My role and the role of my fellow CSO members on the Rapid Response Team was to provide our expertise and share our views with Canada’s negotiators on key negotiation issues including issues that Canada should support, and areas of the negotiation documents that needed to be strengthened. In addition, my role was to bring engineering and EDI expertise to Canada’s CSO Rapid Response Team to support negotiations on UNCSW67 outcomes that will shape gender equality goals globally,” Southwood explained.
The engineering community was well represented in the Canadian delegation. Southwood was joined by Damineh Akhavan, a Canadian engineer with De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Limited and Founder and CEO of Global Women in STEM Inc., and Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko, President, Board of Directors, Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades, and Technology (CCWESTT) and Founder and President, Canadian Association for Girls in Science (CAGIS).
Akhavan has been an outspoken advocate for human rights for women and equity-deserving groups, and mainly women in engineering, for over a decade. She stressed the importance of involving engineering professionals with lived experiences in the UNCSW and in policy negotiations.
“As an immigrant woman engineer in a male-dominated aerospace industry, I have experienced workplace harassment, wage inequity, and discrimination throughout my professional career,” Akhavan said. “There is a substantial need for attention to gender equity in STEM and especially within the engineering profession. While we have been advocating for women in STEM as a whole, women engineers (and especially intersectional women engineers) have fallen through the cracks on various issues such as pay equity, gender-based violence, and gender discrimination. These topics were heavily discussed at the UNCSW67.”
She also noted the UNCSW67 discussions around the harmful impacts of some of today’s technology on women’s and girl’s rights, and the connection between technology and gender-based violence, noting that with engineers’ role in technological innovations, it is important that professionals recognize the impact of their work, and the obligation they have in ensuring that human rights are upheld and honoured.
Vingilis-Jaremko also spoke of engineering’s important role in advancing gender equity through technological innovation and closing the digital divide. “Engineering must be represented in these discussions of gender equity to ensure that the multi-faceted implications of women and gender diverse people’s underrepresentation in engineering be recognized, including coding bias into systems, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and propagating gender stereotypes about who belongs in engineering,” she said.
She identified ongoing discussions and important priorities on how advancing gender equity must focus on fixing systemic barriers, that the work must be intersectional, and that the collection of disaggregated data should be prioritized in order to properly tackle the current challenges.
Vingilis-Jaremko organized and hosted a UNCSW67 side event on March 17, 2023. Southwood joined Vingilis-Jaremko in the virtual panel discussion titled “Gender equity in Science, Technology, Trades, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): barriers and evidence-based solutions” alongside Eden Hennessy, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Data Specialist, Office of the Associate Vice President EDI, Wilfrid Laurier University; and Diya Kalia, Student and Youth Advocate, CAGIS Teen Ambassador.
The panelists discussed the work they were doing to identify and tackle challenges in this area. Engineers Canada focused on research and partnerships with organizations such as Engendering Success in STEM, EngiQueers, Black Engineers of Canada, and AISES in Canada.
“Our work with our partners is very important to help us build coalitions to effect change in Canada,” Southwood said. “We shared our research, the data we collected, and the work Engineers Canada, our regulators and our partners are doing to support the path to licensure for all genders, along with aspects specifically connected to female-identifying students, EITs, and engineers.”
The recommendations and evidence-based solutions that were discussed during this side-event can be heard in the event recording.
Engineers Canada knows that engineering is at the forefront of innovation and technological change and understands that the engineering profession must reflect the society that it serves. One of the ways Engineers Canada is working to increase the representation of female-identifying engineers is through its 30 by 30 initiative, which was originally adopted to raise the percentage of newly licensed female-identifying engineers to 30 per cent by the year 2030.
Southwood’s participation at UNCSW67 allowed Engineers Canada to continue to work towards fostering recognition of the value of engineering and sparking an interest in the next generation of engineers, while continuing to advocate on behalf of women and other equity-deserving groups in engineering.
