Thursday, February 11. 2021

Today's classes are:

9:15 - 11:50 D Block Legal Studies

12:30 - 3:05 A Block Physical Geography 

D Block Legal Studies - Today we'll review the difference between prejudice and discrimination. We'll look at discrimination in Canada focusing on the Persons case and women's issues of injustice connected employment and pay equity, sexual harassment, and discrimination against pregnant women. On a global scale consider this: From the UN HDI GII...

"Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labour market, etc. with negative consequences for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice".

UNICEF USA: Towards Gender Equality from UNICEF USA on Vimeo.

The GII measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development:

1. Reproductive health; measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates;
2. Empowerment; measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education and
3. Economic status; expressed as labour market participation and measured by labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older.

And from the World Bank:

Better educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn higher incomes, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and enable better health care and education for their children, should they choose to become mothers. All these factors combined can help lift households, communities, and nations out of poverty. According to UNESCO estimates, 130 million girls between the age of 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million girls of primary-school age—half of them in sub-Saharan Africa— will never enter a classroom. Poverty remains the most important factor for determining whether a girl can access an education. Studies consistently reinforce that girls who face multiple disadvantages — such as low family income, living in remote or underserved locations, disability or belonging to a minority ethno-linguistic group — are farthest behind in terms of access to and completion of education.

(from the OSSTF) In 2016, a report conducted by Statistics Canada showed that one in five Canadian women had been harassed at work in the past year, compared with one in eight Canadian men. The women who were most vulnerable to this type of abuse were young, single or unmarried. Indigenous women and those persons who identify as LGTBQ+2 were also disproportionately targeted by harassment.

(from the OHRC) While sexual harassment occurs across different occupations and industry sectors, research suggests that it is more common in certain types of employment. For example, sexual harassment complaints are high in traditionally male-dominated work environments, such as the military, policing, firefighting, mining and construction work. So we'll watch the CBC documentary "The Fire Within" to see just one example of workplace harassment that women must face.

I'll have you work on the following questions:

1. What are some of the current barriers to equality facing women?
2. What is pay equity?
3. How are different jobs compared under pay equity?
4. What is employment equity?
5. What groups are protected under employment equity laws?

*warning there is potty mouth in the following videos so please be aware and watch with care


To help check out, Supreme Court orders female firefighter rehired

From the Canadian Human Rights Reporter:

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the Government of British Columbia's aerobic standard used to test the fitness of forest firefighters discriminated on the basis of sex, and further that the Government failed to show that the discriminatory standard is justified as a bona fide occupational requirement ("BFOR").

 Canadian Labour Relations: Gender Discrimination in the Workplace

Human Rights in British Columbia: Sex Discrimination and Sexual Harassment 

Most B.C. women have experienced gender discrimination: Poll

HUMAN RIGHTS CODE [RSBC 1996] CHAPTER 210

Justice Education Society Legal Rights in BC  Human Rights

Human Rights in British Columbia: What you need to know

A Block Physical Geography - Today you’ll look at tectonics and plate boundaries. You’ll have to take down a few notes on divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries along with hot spots and then you'll need to define anticline & syncline, and work on questions 4 - 5 from page 412 in your Geosystems text). While you're doing this we'll watch:


We'll also watch a bit of Geologic Journey to understand the Wrangellia Terrane (focusing on the Mg rich Karmutsen Formation that formed on the ocean basin 230 mya and arrived on the west coast of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii about 100 mya) along with folding (the Rockies). The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau is a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks (geological shield) that forms the ancient geological core of the North American continent (the North American Craton or Laurentia). Some of the rocks in the Canadian Shield are over 3.96 billion years old, and Laurentia has been together in its present form for the last billion years.
FMI:
Behind the Canadian Shield
Geological History of Canada
Sweet!

For more on Plate Tectonics check out:
Earth Floor: Plate Tectonics
UCal Berkeley Plate Tectonics animated Gifs
NASA: Our Restless Planet animation library
Plate Tectonics Earth View
UCAR - University of Michigan - Plate Tectonics
Essentials of Geology textbook Plate Tectonics animations