Confidence Culture

In Confidence Culture, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.

How Wearing a Social Justice Lens Can Support You, Your Clients, and the Larger Community: An Intersectionality Workshop With a Twist

Counsellors may not comprehend fully the impact of their blind spots as a result of unconscious cultural encapsulation. The authors propose a self-reflective method by which counsellors can self-examine their assumptions about diversity and intersectionality. They invite readers to engage with the contents of this article to identify their blind spots, biases, and assumptions through self-reflective exercises. This article summarizes an intersectionality workshop with a twist that was offered by Melissa Jay, Jason Brown, and Rebecca Ward at the 2019 conference of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. The intention of the workshop was (a) to raise consciousness about systemic oppression, (b) to explore Collins’s (2018c) culturally responsive and socially just case conceptualization as the framework for the workshop, (c) to bring client intersectionality to life using four vignettes they created, (d) to reflect on client intersectionality and cultural identity, and (e) to propose a method by which counsellors can self-examine their assumptions about diversity and intersectionality, leading to more culturally competent counselling.

When a Hybrid Account of Disorder is not Enough

In this paper I discuss Wakefield’s account of mental disorder as applied to the case of gender dysphoria (GD). I argue that despite being a hybrid account which brings together a naturalistic and normative element in order to avoid pathologising normal or expectable states, the theory alone is still not extensive enough to answer the question of whether GD should be classed as a disorder. I suggest that the hybrid account falls short in adequately investigating how the harm and dysfunction in cases of GD relate to each other, and secondly that the question of why some dysfunction is disvalued and experienced as harmful requires further consideration. This masks further analysis of patients’ distress and results in an unhelpful overlap of two types of clinical patients within a diagnosis of GD; those with gender-role dysphoria and those with sex dysphoria. These two conditions can be associated with different harms and dysfunctions but Wakefield’s hybrid account does not have the tools to recognise this. This misunderstanding of the sources of dysfunction and harm in those diagnosed with GD risks ineffective treatment for patients and reinforcing the very same prejudiced norms which were conducive to the state being experienced as harmful in the first place. The theory needs to engage, to a surprising and so far unacknowledged extent, with sociological concepts such as the categorisation and stratification of groups in society and the mechanism of systemic oppression, in order to answer the question of whether GD should be classed as a mental disorder. Only then can it successfully avoid pathologising normal or expectable states, as has been seen in past ‘illnesses’ such as homosexuality and ‘drapetomania’.

Art and Heart to counter the one-hour-zoom-diversity event: Counterspaces as a response to diversity regimes in academia

This text explores our work as Women of Color (WoC) nurturing spaces and practices in response to the mirage of support, the inadequacy of resources, and the tepid responses to systemic oppression within the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of our university, a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) in the Midwest. Via reflective vignettes, we discuss developing a community art collaboration as a counterspace, defined by various scholars as “social spaces ... which offer support and enhance feelings of belonging” (Ong, Smith, and Ko 2018, 207) for minoritized students. Throughout this text, we discuss the potential of art-based projects shaped by an anti-racist praxis as a resistance to the “check the box” institutional diversity efforts and as transformative spaces to imagine alternative academic futures for Women of Color staff, faculty, and students.

The Faces of Institutionalized Discrimination and Systemic Oppression in Higher Education: Uncovering the Lived Experience of Bias and Procedural Inequity

With seven cases drawn from both personal experience and informal interviews with colleagues from other research-intensive universities, we attempt to demonstrate the forms institutionalized discrimination and systemic oppression can take and if it is supported by policies or procedures encoded into an institution’s rules and regulations. We suggest heuristics for reexamining such procedures to more fully address such inherent biases. We proffer a qualitative methodological approach not only to explore the lived experiences of faculty of color but also to explore the latent as well as manifest meanings of these experiences for the faculty involved, which are frequently neither obvious nor transparent to both non-minority faculty and those responsible for carrying out institutional policies and regulations. Finally, we offer some criticisms of qualitative research in this arena to which organizational researchers must attend.

Anti-Black racism and behavioral medicine: confronting the past to envision the future

Behavioral medicine research and practice have not traditionally acknowledged the detrimental effects of anti-Black racism (and other forms of systemic oppression) on health, interventions, or research. This commentary describes four ways that behavioral medicine researchers and clinicians can address the past to envision the future of behavioral medicine to promote equitable health for all: 1) name anti-Black racism, 2) ensure interventions address structural inequities, 3) advocate for systemic change, and 4) change expectations for publications.

Fair access to regulated professions: decoding the transition of migrant caregivers to nursing in Ontario

The Live-in Caregiver program provides a gendered pathway to permanent residency in Canada for women who are internationally trained nurses. Upon attaining permanent residency and open work permits, internationally trained nurses can become registered members with the College of Nurses of Ontario, which will allow them to re-enter the nursing profession. However, in light of recent amendments to the registration regulation by the College of Nurses of Ontario issues of unequal treatment for international applicants arise. This paper examines the regulation of the Live-in Caregiver Program, and the recent amendments to the registration regulation by the College of Nurses of Ontario, to present the systemic oppression and discrimination which creates barriers for internationally trained nurses to their transition from caregiving to nursing in Ontario. Conclusions state that amendments to the regulatory policies must occur to eliminate the inequalities against internationally trained nurses.

Fair access to regulated professions: decoding the transition of migrant caregivers to nursing in Ontario

The Live-in Caregiver program provides a gendered pathway to permanent residency in Canada for women who are internationally trained nurses. Upon attaining permanent residency and open work permits, internationally trained nurses can become registered members with the College of Nurses of Ontario, which will allow them to re-enter the nursing profession. However, in light of recent amendments to the registration regulation by the College of Nurses of Ontario issues of unequal treatment for international applicants arise. This paper examines the regulation of the Live-in Caregiver Program, and the recent amendments to the registration regulation by the College of Nurses of Ontario, to present the systemic oppression and discrimination which creates barriers for internationally trained nurses to their transition from caregiving to nursing in Ontario. Conclusions state that amendments to the regulatory policies must occur to eliminate the inequalities against internationally trained nurses.