Women & Environments International Magazine

The Working Group on Women's Access to Municipal Services in OttawaThe reporter caught both the diversity of women and their desire for full participation in municipal affairs in the description of our forum. This forum was part of a project to examine...

Environmental Risks, Breast Feeding and the MediaBreastfeeding as a media subject is both sexy and emotional. Sometimes the media extols the many, well-documented benefits of breast-feeding. But on the subject of environmental toxins in mother's milk,...

The military and corporate agendas are ruthlessly rolling back the gains and services women in the North have won with such effort in the 1970's and 80's. At that time women were discovering the gender imbalance reflected in our cities and communities....

The Namibian Women's 50/50 CampaignAfter a long history of oppression under colonialism, the people of Namibia have a Constitution based on the fundamental values of equality and human dignity for all. And Namibian women are well on their way to claiming...

Women Activists Taking Care of Halifax Nova Scotia"We are concerned about the fate of the planet, and some of us believe that living simply is part of revolutionary political practice. We have a sense of the sacred. The ground we stand on is shifting,...

More Women Might Be Better"Gender mainstreaming is the systematic integration of gender into all systems and structures [of government], policies, programmes, personnel, processes and projects, into ways of seeing and doing, into cultures and Organisations."...

Getting Around Without a Car"Something momentous and rather sinister happened ... we transformed our lovely New World landscape, and virtually all our townscapes, into an immense, uniform automobile slum, from sea to shining sea. In the process, we created...

An Emergent Body Politic and its FreedomAmid flattering images of French suburban high rise housing, a caption at a French website tells us "arretons de critiquer les banlieues!" (stop criticizing the suburbs!) The author of the website is anonymous....

A common criticism of newly built settlements is that they are beautiful, but dead. Residents often invest little more than their money in their surroundings. They tend to be double earners spending a lot of time outside the neighborhood. In order for...

Tough ChoicesIf you had to choose between paying the rent or feeding the kids, what would you choose? For Louise and Charmaine, two Aboriginal women living in poverty and poor housing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, these are their daily life choices (names,...

SAFE HAVEN The Story of a Woman's Shelter Rae Bridgman University of Toronto Press, 160pp, CAD $21.95 paperback Reviewed by Sylvia NovacThis ethnographic account by Rae Bridgman is a vivid description of the conception, birth, and early life of an "experimental,...

STRONG WOMEN STORIES Native Vision and Community Survival Edited by Kim Anderson & Bonita Lawrence Published by Sumach Press, 264 pp, CAD $26.95 Reviewed by Viola ThomasThe power of words shared within this anthology, Strong Women Stories, reminds...

Solving Housing Problems With And For WomenThe Maria Auxiliadora Community is not an urban development nor a settlement. It is, as its name indicates, a community, where land and housing title deeds for women are recognized. It is located in Cochabamba,...

An Emerging Future For Urban TransportationIn ecological terms, it should come as no revelation that as cities grow and become more complex and diverse, they begin to create more efficiencies. Ecosystems grow from simple systems with a few pioneering...

A Research Report"There is plenty of evidence to suggest that men tend to have more spatial skills, and women more intuitive and language skills" (Phillips, 2003). The publication of the research report, "Why women leave architecture" provoked Philips'...

Are We Getting Anywhere?In the Cowichan Valley of Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast, the Safer Futures Program (Cowichan Women Against Violence Society) has been working with local governments since 1996 to research women's safety issues and develop...