Scholarship created in city builder's name to support WGSI students
April 3, 2020
When Ceta Ramkhalawansingh enrolled at the University of Toronto as a 16-year-old in 1968, there was just one female professor in the English department, Hart House was a men-only club and engineering was notorious for its misogynist student newspaper.
That didn’t sit well with the city builder and human rights activist who, in her second year, was at the forefront of the movement that successfully lobbied for the establishment of a women’s studies program that celebrates its 50th anniversary next year.
To mark the milestone, a scholarship in Ramkhalawansingh’s name has been created to support students in the Women & Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) that is dedicated to exploring the entangled work of gender, race and sexuality in identities, relations, practices, theories and institutions.
It has developed a distinct strength in transnational feminist studies which links questions concerning nation states, citizenship, colonialisms, diasporas and global capitalism with concerns about how to understand the gendered, queered and raced politics of subjectivity, activism and knowledge-making.
Ramkhalawansingh was a program lecturer for seven years and, in 2002, was made a WGSI honourary member for her leadership in developing women and gender studies as a field of study in university education.
She said the new scholarship emerged after a meeting last fall with U of T’s New College Principal Bonnie McElhinny who is a former WGSI Director.
“We talked about the importance of recognizing the leadership role the university played in getting women studies acknowledged,” said Trinidad & Tobago-born Ramkhalawansingh. “I was involved in the teaching group that worked on getting the first course in gender studies set up to be introduced 50 years ago.”
The first scholarship will be awarded next year to an upper-year graduate student enrolled in a major or specialist program in women & gender studies or in Caribbean studies.
The base amount of $25,000 has already been raised.
“We have enough money to pay out the first scholarship,” said Ramkhalawansingh whose work has transformed the social environment for women entering university. “We are up to about $35,000 and the goal is to get to the $50,000 mark.
Dr. Alissa Trotz, the Director of the WGSI and New College’s Caribbean Studies program, welcomed the new initiative.
“This award will alternate between Caribbean Studies and Women & Gender Studies students with academic merit and financial need and will be given to a student taking courses that revolve around public policy, development and women in the public sphere relating to the Global South,” she added.
Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1972, Ramkhalawansingh secured Child Study diplomas in 1974 and 1976 and completed a Master’s and the residency requirement for a PhD at the U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).
After finishing her Master’s in 1981, she joined the City of Toronto Diversity Management office and rose to the position of Diversity Management & Community Engagement manager before retiring in 2010.
The former Trinity-Spadina Councillor led the city’s ground-breaking human rights, equity and diversity policy and program development, worked on reviews of women hiring in male-dominated fields and ensured the rigorous enforcement of the city’s Employment Ontario contractors program that saw the employment of women increase from 29 to 51 per cent among 8,000 firms in a seven-year period up until 1992.
During Ramkhalawansingh’s tenure at City Hall, the City of Toronto scholarship was established three decades ago to commemorate the centenary of women being admitted as U of T students in 1885. It is awarded annually to students entering fourth-year or the equivalent and deemed likely to continue on to graduate school.
