Gender, Culture and Religion. Tackling Some Difficult Questions

The Propagandist's own contributing writer Lauryn Oates will be joining Tarek Fatah, Aruna Papp, Morton Weinfeld, Alia Hogben and others October 1-2 in Calgary for the The Marsha Hanen Symposium on Ethical Leadership and Gender Equality, organized by by the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. The symposium's topic is Gender, Culture and Religion: Tackling Some Difficult Questions. From the Foundation's website:

The Sheldon Chumir Foundation is concerned with how we organize ourselves so as to live ethically well together – peacefully, with dignity for all and in mutual respect. Equality issues are central to our mandate. This Symposium will provide an opportunity for thoughtful engagement with one set of equality issues – those presented by the tension between gender equality and Canada’s cultural and religious diversity.

Registration details here.

In the spirit of this topic, today's Calgary Herald features Lauryn's op-ed

, What does misogyny look like? The image of gender inequality:

...In the guise of an objective position, relativism is nothing more than protection for selfishness and preservation of insularity. Relativism implies the privileges and freedoms we expect in the West are values that only we own. It's sloppy scholarship and a bad joke that far too many have fallen for.

Cultural relativism allows us to listen to the power-hungry gun-wielders of a society like the Taliban, and drown out those who, inconveniently, want the same things that we do: democracy, human rights, wealth, and the capacity to live a life of dignity and free of fear. It is easier to ignore the will of Afghan intellectuals, progressive MPs, artists, activists and reformers to pretend the Taliban's world view is the status quo; it demands no action on our part.