Military Museums, Central Library celebrate International Women’s Day with stories and symposium

Calgarians celebrate the contributions women have made to society during International Women’s Day Saturday.

The Military Museums honoured the contribution of women in the Canadian Armed Forces on Saturday, while the Calgary Central Library hosted a women’s health symposium.

The Military Museums event, which featured a number of speakers including Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, and guided tours highlighting the roles of women in military history, was held in recognition of International Women’s Day.

“Women are leaders. Innovators. Change-makers. Caregivers. Trailblazers,” Gondek posted on social media.

“Today, we celebrate them. But more importantly, we commit to breaking barriers, creating opportunities, and ensuring that equity is not just a goal, but a reality.

“Happy International Women’s Day!”

A naval career

Lieutenant Commander Adina Danila shared her personal journey in the military, over two decades of travel and service with the Canadian navy which took her to many of the world’s hotspots, most recently the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I have sailed on a number of different vessels around the world to many countries,” she said, “provided support in a number of different means, such as humanitarian, financial or just support to our troops.

“From a logistical perspective, I’ve enjoyed every moment of it,” she added. “I have seen some very hard, sad and difficult things, and it puts things into perspective for me in the sense that we live in such a safe, calm country that this isn’t the norm across the world.

“It’s very touching and emotional when I see other women and children harmed and in danger in other countries and we know that it shouldn’t be that way,” she said, “and it can be the way it is In Canada, where everyone lives in peace and harmony.

“And I think a lot of the work that we do around the world,” she added, “is in an attempt to bring that, to bring stability, to bring peace, to bring a different way to these people of living, to help them prosper and flourish.”

Women’s health in focus

At the library, a full-day symposium brought together different specialists to talk about women’s health.

“One thing that we’ve noticed and our work in health care community is that women’s health is actually very underrepresented, underfunded, not talked about, really,” said Rebecca Bowman, a vice-president of philanthropy and chief development officer at the Calgary Health Foundation. “So we are hosting this symposium today to educate and advocate for women’s health.”

Bowman said there’s even a gender gap when it comes to medical research.

“Historically, education awareness has really been dominated by male doctors and male educators in the past, and we’re at a stage now that there are women educators and women doctors that can help advocate and educate the community,” she said.

“So that gap has just been a historical problem,” she added. “I think part of it, too, is our in that research.

“There’s very little funding,” she said. “Only three per cent of funding goes to any kind of women’s health, so we aren’t funding things. I had a doctor tell me recently that she had no problems getting research, to do prostate research, but to get anything for trauma-informed research or women’s research was really difficult, and so we’ve just from funding historically, women aren’t getting the research funding.”

With files from CTV’s Tyler Barrow and Darren Wright