Michelle Jay isn’t sure who had the idea, but it came up at a meeting of P.E.I.’s Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
With International Women’s Day approaching, council members wanted to do something despite knowing COVID-19 meant it would look different this year.
Council members had been listening to the Dialogue with Drake and Daboo podcast, hosted by Sweta Daboo and Emma Drake, and they recognized the Island’s growing interest in podcasts.
“This is something we could do,” Jay remembered the council deciding.
Read more: HEROES OF 2020: Daboo and Drake use podcasting reach to help Islanders amid pandemic
Today, the council released five episodes of a one-on-one interview podcasts they call Choose to Challenge.
Farahnaz Rezaei was one of the interviewers. She spoke with Marie Antoinette Pangan, a UPEI nursing graduate who came to P.E.I. from the Philippines.
“I was very inspired about her story,” Rezaei said. “She’s a very hard-working woman with many obstacles and challenges by choosing to immigrate to a new country.”
International Women's Day podcasts launching March 8th! The fourth episode of the series features two inspiring women...
Posted by PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women on Friday, 5 March 2021
Rezaei asked Pangan about why she came to Canada, her goals in life, her role models and the challenges she faced in a new country.
“What did this young girl go through to get to where she was?” Rezaei said.
She also asked how she’s inspiring others, noting Pangan’s perseverance and determination.
“So that she becomes a role model for other women who are facing these challenges,” Rezaei said. “It kind of reminded me of who I was. I saw a lot of myself in this young girl.”
As a newcomer to P.E.I. years before, Rezaei recognized the position Pangan was in.
“Try to walk in her shoes and then you’ll see,” she said. “I think that’s why the podcasts are really powerful,” said Jay, who is a program co-ordinator with the advisory council.
While International Women’s Day is a celebration of how far women and gender-diverse people have come, it is also a time to acknowledge the work yet to be done, in Canada and around the world, Rezaei said.
About International Women’s Day:
- The first official International Women’s Day (IWD) was in 1911
- It was spurred in part by a 15,000-woman march in New York in 1908
- The first IWD saw more than one million people march in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland
- Voting and labour rights were some of the foundational issues
Before immigrating from Kuwait, the Iranian-born Rezaei worked as an advocate for women’s rights in countries where equality is not enshrined in law.
When she came to Canada, it looked like a perfect country, she said. The citizenship test alone assured her that women in Canada had rights and the government wanted them to know about them.
But when she arrived she found something that shocked her.
“It was the Indigenous people and how much of a lack of basic human rights many of these people who live on the reserve are facing,” she said.
So she did some digging.
“I started reading and reading and reading. And then I went to the residential school and started understanding the background and the history,” she said. “We have a long way to go and it takes hard work by every member of the community.”
To create the podcasts, Jay wrote questions, did promotional work and sat in on the interviews.
She also got technical help from Ainsley Kendrick from Women’s Network P.E.I.
In previous years, International Women’s Day events were in-person, family gatherings, Jay said.
“We always had food and dancing and singing and doing things together and stations for the kids. I still miss all that and it’s hard to let it go, but we had to do something differently this year.”
Even with the pandemic, the council wanted to find a way for people to participate.
“It’s not to be just a show. It’s to be a way to interact and relate to each other,” Jay said. “It’s all a bit of a learning curve, but in the end we’re really pleased with what we’ve been able to put together.”
International Women's Day Video Banner 2021 from peistatusofwomen on Vimeo.
