When I was a first-year student, I remember reading a Varsity opinions piece by former SAC Equity Commissioner Liz Majic. In it, she lambasted the actions of various male politicos as being sexist, and unjust. I remember thinking that she was probably overreacting, that sexism was all but dead on the 21st century university campus, and certainly that women were being treated equally.
After two years on the executive of the Students’ Administrative Council, I recognize how wrong I was. Since getting involved, I have realized that women are anything but equals-we are few and growing fewer in student politics at U of T, and that’s the way a serious old boy’s club wants it. The Students’ Administrative Council has had over 100 presidents, and only 4 have been female. Only 3 of 21 candidates in the last executive elections were women. The President or Chair of every college council is male, as are the leaders of the Law Society, the Medical Society, the OISE Student Teacher’s Union, the TYP Students’ Association, and every other society except Nursing and Music. There’s a reason for this-which is that when women do make it into positions of power, they are often targeted, and weeded out. And I’m not just talking about Sheila Copps here.
In the summer of 2003, I recall stumbling into an exchange between a co-executive of mine, and a one of the college reps. They were making jokes about who was “fuckable.” One said of a female executive, “I wouldn’t fuck her.” The other replied, “I want to fuck her just so next time she stands up to talk at a Board meeting I can say, ‘Shut up bitch. I fucked you.'” This is an example of the way that female student leaders are still critiqued based on their bodies, and not their talents. I cannot imagine an equivalent conversation ensuing about the chest or thighs of our male SAC president. It is also an example of a stereotypical reaction to women-that they should be seen and not heard. Their ideas are not worth critiquing, but their measurements are.
If the jokes about forced sex and men sizing us up is not enough to scare off women from running for student leadership roles, their actions can be equally scary. Once after a board meeting, a group of students went to a College St. bar for a pint or two. By the time we arrived, plenty of our colleagues were already there and pretty sloshed. I noticed a woman not on the board was already very drunk, and was almost falling out of her seat.
One college council president was getting very friendly with her, touching her, even though she seemed to be passing out. I asked the server if he should stop bringing her more beer, and he said to me, “Yeah, our manager said maybe I should. But your friend there asked me to bring her some shots.” From down at the other end of the table, I could hear that president and some SAC board members joking about how many more drinks it would take before the woman would to go to bed with them. While one held the beer glass to her face so she could drink more, the others blew whistles from SAC frosh events, which ironically enough were part of the No Means No campaign-designed to prevent date rape.
More than half of the undergraduate students at U of T are female, yet 90 per cent of our leaders are not. Not only is it time for more women to get into positions of power, but it is time that once we got there, the old boy’s clubs that run SAC and many other student associations treat the women with more respect.
