Blog - Page 66 of 93 - Maureen F. Fitzgerald

Martha Payne a nine-year old girls rocks

I love stories like Martha Payne’s. She is a nine year old Scottish girl who’s websitewent viral. Its called NeverSeconds and she posted pictures of her school lunches and ranked them on a scale of 0-10. She used her site to raise money for a local food charity. It was not until the local school council pulled

Obituaries for women promote stereotypes

I was reading the obituaries lately and realized that longest and most detailed peices are about women. Not only that, but the words used to describe these women are quite telling. One in particular read: “In high school she was voted the student most likely to succeed … she was “the embodiment of everything that is good

Yeah for Brenda Morrison

Restorative justice expert and SFU professor Brenda Morrison wrote a great OpEd in the Vancouver Sun on June 19, 2012 comparing Vancouver to London and how they dealt with the rioters that damaged our city streets over the last few years. London courts combine punishment with restoration whereas Vancouver seems to be stuck in prosecutions and penalties – at a very

Social isolation is related to loss of feminine

Until we feel pain, we hardly notice it. Yet social isolation (e.g. loneliness) is a direct consequence of a society that mostly values money, individual status and working 24/7. Although we readily admit that these are our modern gods we fail to see the link between these goals and our unhappiness. The reaserch clearly says that the happiest people are thsoe who

Yeah for Team Pink women who cycle

Dr Cathryn Zeglinski is not only a whistler doctor but was on the national cycling team and is a mountain bike racer and mother. She wears a pink jersey to show support for women in cycling – a sport dominated by men. As she says, in a sport where only the top 10 count, it

1938 in Vancouver looks like Occupy

It was 20 years before I was born yet it looks like the Occupy Movement! A 1938 picture in today’s Vancouver Sun showed that Vancouver police injured 39 men and arrested 22 for a sit-in strike at the Vancouver main post office. It lasted 6 weeks and the men simply wanted jobs or financial support because they were starving from

Women get less severance pay

Professor Ken Thornicroft at the Universty of Victoria has discovered that when women are wrongfully fired from their jobs and sue for wrongful dismissal they receive less severance pay in court than men in similar circumstances. About 1.7 months less on average. He also conducted research on his students and found that in 600 sets of staged workplace dismissal negotiations, female students received

Nun is criticized by pope for sexual ethics book

Wow. A professor emeritus at Yale University who is also a Catholic nun has been told by the Pope that her award-winning 2006 book, “Just Love – A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” is not appropriate. Her book mentions both masturbation and homosexuality. The Vatican wrote a stinging report telling her that her writing manifest a “defective

Punishments do not stop bullying

Apparently there is a federal Senate Committee looking into cyber-bullying. Although many anti-bullying experts have told the committee that harsh punishments do little to stop online bulling (or any bullying for that matter) it took eight teens from Calgary Alberta via video conference to bring this very simple message home. May be I better send

We need a positive culture not just for schools but also for the teachers’ strike

BC Premier Christy Clark just announced a $2 million strategy and anti-bullying program to keep school kids safe. As she rightly points out, laws and punishments do not work and we need to “create a positive school culture.” She stated correctly that, “educators need tools to be able to deal with conflicts in an appropriate