The 2007 Sarah Shorten Awards were presented at the May CAUT Council to sociologist Patricia Monture, an award-winning writer, activist and community leader and Jill Ker Conway, internationally renowned historian, best-selling author and feminist.

When CAUT established the Sarah Shorten Award in 1990, it was to recognize outstanding contributions in promoting the advancement of women in Canadian universities and colleges. The number and frequency of the award were left to the discretion of Council and the Women’s Committee of CAUT.

Though of widely disparate backgrounds, Monture and Conway have worked toward similar goals in making universities more inclusive, accessible and positive places for female students and academics.

Patricia Monture

Award recipient Patricia Monture, currently a full professor in the department of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, has carved an outstanding path as role model, scholar and community builder and leader, following from and through her Mohawk background from the Grand River Territory.

Monture’s academic interests include Aboriginal law and justice, indigenous knowledge, and criminology, particularly as they affect women.

In presenting the award, Katy Haralampides, chair of CAUT’s Women’s Committee, said, “Professor Monture’s writing and activism concerning the advancement of Aboriginal women within the academy have enabled Aboriginal women to defend their community-based research agendas and to establish a publication record that challenges the norm, securing advancement and tenure.” Monture has authored numerous books and publications on women’s issues, the criminal justice system, Aboriginal rights, child welfare and racism and in 2000 won the Saskatchewan Book of the Year award for Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations’ Independence.

Nomination letters told of tenacity, commitment, compassion, personal involvement and tireless efforts. One noted Monture’s coordination and launch of the National Centre on First Nations Gover­nance as “one of her most impressive achievements as a scholar-activist.”

“As a teacher, activist and community leader, Professor Monture is an extraordinary role model for many and has made universities more inclusive and positive places for all women,” Haralampides said.

Jill Ker Conway

Born in Australia, Jill Ker Conway’s childhood was spent on a sheep station; her graduation from the University of Sydney in 1958 with a degree in history and English, and subsequent rejection of her homeland’s perceived intellectual insularity and rampant sexism, launched her life’s course of pioneering feminist research, writing and teaching.

Conway earned a PhD in history from Harvard in 1969, taught Canada’s first feminist history course starting in 1971 at the University of Toronto, and went on to become UofT’s first female vice-president (internal affairs) and ultimately the first female president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States.

She also made a direct contribution to CAUT, serving in 1972 as the inaugural chair of the status of women committee.

“In the year that we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of CAUT’s women’s committee, we wish to honour our first chair, Jill Ker Conway, one of the world’s great historians and an international champion of women’s higher education,” said Wendy Robbins, the former chair of CAUT’s Women’s Committee, in announcing her nomination.

Visiting scholar and professor at MIT’s program in science, technology and society since 1985, Conway holds 38 honourary degrees and is the author of several best-selling books on feminism and education.