About
The Beginning . . .
8:00 PM, 27 February 2004—the end of a long day. Ten feminist equality/Charter activists, lawyers, and academics are sitting around a long table eating pasta and drinking red wine in an Italian restaurant in downtown Toronto. We have spent the day together talking about section 15 of the Charter—recent cases, recent losses. We have been pushing ourselves and our thinking, strengthening and developing our equality analysis, trying to respond to the challenges of intersectionality and of ‘‘competing rights.’’ We have been strategizing about how to move forward with our ideas. Over the course of the day, we have had moments of exhilaration, moments of intense debate and discussion, and some break-through eureka moments. It has been an exciting, productive day full of possibilities. Yet despite all of these positives, the day has been overshadowed by an overriding sense of gloom brought on by what we all see as grievous judicial backsliding on equality.
About Us
The Women’s Court of Canada is an innovative project bringing together academics, activists, and litigators in order literally to rewrite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms equality jurisprudence. Taking inspiration from Oscar Wilde, who once said “the only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it”, the Women’s Court operates as a virtual court, and ‘reconsiders’ leading equality decisions. The Women’s Court renders alternative decisions as a means of articulating fresh conceptions of substantive equality.
Members of the Women’s Court of Canada
Gwen Brodsky
Melina Buckley
Marie Chen
Rachel Cox
Shelagh Day
Mary Eberts
Avvy Go
Kasari Govender
Jennifer Koshan
Sonia Lawrence
Diana Majury
Jenna McGill
Sharon McIvor
Teressa Nahanee
Margaret Parsons
Dianne Pothier
Denise Réaume
Tess Sheldon
Kate Stephenson
Jonnette Watson Hamilton
Margot Young
Court Co-ordination
Melina Buckley
Shelagh Day
Jennifer Koshan
Diana Majury
Denise Réaume