CUUWA is a UU women’s organization with specific goals: to raise awareness about women’s history, rituals, and perspectives, through training, communication, celebration and many resources.
The Canadian Unitarian and/or Universalist Women’s Association (CU*UWA) invites all congregations across Canada to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2020. We have prepared this package of worship and study materials to help you prepare your activities. It is our goal to have IWD services and/or activities in all congregations in Canada every year. Will you help us achieve this goal of promoting awareness of gender equality and women’s issues?
This year, we will also offer an online Worship service starting at 5:30pm Eastern / 2:30 Pacific on March 8. We will meet on Zoom, and an invitation with the link is included in the package.
Our 2020 theme is Wisdom. Our package includes options for your chalice lighting, readings, blessing, and closing words, suggestions for sermons and interactive services, reflection questions for individuals or small groups, comments by CU*UWA Council members, original artwork and poetry, and resources for study.
We hope this material inspires you to reflect on your own sources of wisdom, your ways of knowing and experiencing the world, the Divine Feminine and goddesses, prophetic and authentic voices of women and femmes, and your vision of a world informed by women’s wisdom. We encourage you to share your stories on our Facebook page, in your congregations, in your creative work. We will be sharing prompts related to our package on our Facebook page every day from February 29 to March 8, 2020 and would love to read your responses.
For Spring and Summer 2020, the Canadian U*U Feminist Book Club has transformed itself into a club for exploring poetry, TedTalks, online videos and movies, and other free sources of learning. In particular, we are learning together about intersectionality and the lives of racialized and Indigenous women, Queers, and femmes.
On July 12, 2020, we will be continuing our discussion from June 14 on intersectionality, privilege, and the lives of Indigenous and racialized women through a video by Pam Palmater on MMIW, Ted Talks by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Peggy McIntosh and others, and the movie 13th. The list of links can be found below.
This time we will focus our learning by checking in with one experience during which we were aware of your own privilege and our need to learn more, and then each of us will briefly talk about what we learned from one of the media resources below. We will allow ourselves to be inarticulate. We will acknowledge that we are all learning.
Contact us for the Zoom link.
Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality TEDWomen 2016 • 18:49 • Posted November 2016 https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality
Peggy McIntosh: How to recognize your white privilege — and use it to fight inequality TEDxTimberlaneSchools • 18:27 • Posted June 2020 https://www.ted.com/talks/peggy_mcintosh_how_to_recognize_your_white_privilege_and_use_it_to_fight_inequality
Dolores Huerta: What we can learn from the history of feminism TEDxOakland • 6:31 • Posted December 2019 https://www.ted.com/talks/dolores_huerta_what_we_can_learn_from_the_history_of_feminism
Roxane Gay: Confessions of a bad feminist TEDWomen 2015 • 11:28 • Posted June 2015 https://www.ted.com/talks/roxane_gay_confessions_of_a_bad_feminist
Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa: Black life at the intersection of birth and death TEDWomen 2017 • 7:49 • Posted February 2018 https://www.ted.com/talks/mwende_freequency_katwiwa_black_life_at_the_intersection_of_birth_and_death
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We should all be feminists TEDxEuston • 29:28 • Posted April 2017 https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists
Pat Mitchell: Dangerous times call for dangerous women TEDWomen 2019 • 17:14 • Posted January 2020 https://www.ted.com/talks/pat_mitchell_dangerous_times_call_for_dangerous_women
Alyson McGregor: Why medicine often has dangerous side effects for women TEDxProvidence • 15:29 • Posted October 2015 https://www.ted.com/talks/alyson_mcgregor_why_medicine_often_has_dangerous_side_effects_for_women
Jen Gunter: Why can’t we talk about periods? TEDWomen 2019 • 11:42 • Posted January 2020 https://www.ted.com/talks/jen_gunter_why_can_t_we_talk_about_periods
There’s also a video of Pam Palmater I’d ask you to look at on the Kairos website: https://www.kairoscanada.org/missing-murdered-indigenous-women-girls/videos
or on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dULLnpG9Hg&feature=emb_title
Added last month: Deconstructing White Privilege with Dr. Robin DiAngelo (especially for those, like me, who haven’t read her book) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIx3KQer54
Angela Davis – “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” hosted by The University of New England https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u1aHpEtWyA
13th, which is available on Netflix or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8 There are also some live videos related to it here: https://www.facebook.com/13THNetflix/
March 2020
Please note that our March meeting is cancelled; join us instead for an online Worship service for International Women’s Day.
Earlier meetings
January 12, 2020:
Book: Judy Rebick, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution
Welcome to our low-stress, low-maintenance, open, intentionally queer-positive and intersectional, feminist-in-its-broadest definition book and chat club. We explore books by feminists and about feminism and, perhaps even more importantly, share our experiences as feminists. You are free to join us whenever you can, whether or not you have read the book selection, whether you want to share or listen… We meet for about an hour most months throughout the year. Check out our selections and topics here.
Day and Time: We meet most months on the second Sunday at 8 pm Atlantic, 7 pm Eastern, 6 pm Central, 5 pm Mountain, and 4 pm Pacific time. Jan 12, Feb 9, April 12, June 14, etc. 2020 Details: Email Jo-Anne, message us on our Facebook page, or join our Google group for confirmation of the date, information about the book, and the Zoom link
Join the CUUWA for a conversation on Privilege and Gender, as part of IWD/Women’s Month. The conversation will be facilitated by Catherine Strickland. Before our discussion, please watch this sermon Catherine gave to North Shore Unitarians on this topic.
These calls are open to all members and friends of the CUUWA and are free of charge. The discussions are designed for us to work through the various layers of privilege in our own lives, develop empathy for and learn from others, and share our personal experiences and reflections with other feminists. They take place on Zoom; here is the link and the details for Monday’s chat:
March 25, 2019 at 3:30 PM Pacific time, 4:30 Mountain and Saskatchewan, 5:30 Central, 6:30 Eastern, and 7:30 Atlantic
Join Zoom Meeting on the web at https://zoom.us/j/373322268 or on the phone at 6475580588 with meeting ID 373 322 268.
We will be discussing The Red Word, by Sarah Henstra. Our first meeting was wonderful, and we look forward to talking to new or continuing members of this open, low-commitment book club: we welcome you to attend whether or not you have read the book, to listen or to chat.
The battle of the sexes goes to college in this nervy debut adult novel by a powerful new voice
A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to which ideology can go The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomore year begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry — particularly at Gamma Beta Chi. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus. The frat known as GBC is notorious, she learns, nicknamed “Gang Bang Central” and a prominent contributor to a list of rapists compiled by female students. Despite continuing to party there and dating one of the brothers, Karen is equally seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surprise her by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of a charismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen finds herself caught between two increasingly polarized camps, ringleader housemate Dyann believes she has hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture — but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price.
The Red Word captures beautifully the feverish binarism of campus politics and the headlong rush of youth toward new friends, lovers, and life-altering ideas. With strains of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, Alison Lurie’s Truth and Consequences, and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, Sarah Henstra’s debut adult novel arrives on the wings of furies.
Discussion is on April 14th at 8:00 pm Atlantic, 7:00 Eastern, 6:00 Central, 5:00 Mountain and Saskatchewan, and 4:00 Pacific.
Join Zoom Meeting online at https://zoom.us/j/328662153 or on the phone at 6475580588 with meeting ID 328 662 153.
March is just around the corner! To mark International Women’s Day, the CUUWA has planned a number of activities to take place in March 2019. Materials for worship and study are available free to the public at:
March 3, 2019, and March 10, 2019. Congregations are encouraged to do a service for International Women’s Day. Materials in the package include original words for Chalice Lighting, Responsive Reading, Blessing, Joys & Sorrows, the Offering, and the Closing, as well as options for sermons or a panel of presenters, and an abundance of poetry. Other materials are included for individual reflection and for study, discussion, and small ministry groups.
From March 3 to March 10, special postings on IWD and Journey will be posted on our Facebook page. Share your experiences in response to a series of reflection questions.
March, tbd. IWD Edit-a-thon: Women editing Wikipedia. Details forthcoming from Mary Bennett.
March 10, 8:00 pm. Atlantic, 7 Eastern, 6 Central, 5 Mountain, 4 Pacific. First meeting of the monthly online Canadian U*U Feminist Book Club at at https://zoom.us/j/328662153 At our first meeting, we will be discussing two books by indigenous women of two different generations: read one of them or both, if you have time, or feel free to join and listen! Books: Lee Maracle, I Am Woman, Press Gang, 1988; Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries: A Memoir, Counterpoint, 2018. Open to all.
March 25, 2019, 3:30 Pacific, 4:30 Mountain, 5:30 Central, 6:30 Eastern, 7:30 pm. Atlantic. CUUWA discussion on Privilege and Gender, led by Catherine Strickland, NVC practitioner. Watch Catherine’s sermon on the topic here before attending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn0H48XlW6c&t=772 Open to members and friends of the CUUWA. https://zoom.us/j/373322268.
Looking past March, please save the date for our Annual Tea and AGM, on June 8, 2019. Organize a cluster in your community, serve “subversive tea,” and attend the online Cross-Canada CUUWA Check-in and AGM. Starting at 10 am Pacific time, 11 am Mountain, 12 noon Central, 1 pm Eastern, 2pm Atlantic.
The CUUWA is governed by a national Council currently composed of the following regional representatives: Atlantic (shared): Jo-Anne Elder-Gomes, Chair and Anneke Elder-Gomes; BC: Lillie Lentz; Prairies: Christine Mishra; Ontario: Kathy Sage; At large: Margaret Linton (Treasurer/ Membership), as well as Ministerial Liaisons Rev. Linda Goonewardene and Rev. Christopher Wulff.
Membership is $25 per year, with reductions for longer periods and additional family/household members. Support our efforts to improve human lives.
At our first meeting, we will be discussing two books by indigenous women of two different generations: read one of them or both, if you have time, or feel free to join and listen!
Lee Maracle, I Am Woman, Press Gang, 1988;
Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries: A Memoir, Counterpoint, 2018.
The Canadian Unitarian Universalist Women’s Association, an affiliate of the CUC, invites all to join the Canadian UU Feminist Book Club.
The Canadian Unitarian and Universalist Women’s Association (CUUWA) invites all congregations across Canada to celebrate International Women’s Day on one of the Sundays close to March 8, IWD, each year. It is our goal to have IWD services in all congregations. Will you help us achieve this goal of promoting awareness of gender equality and women’s issues?
This year, we have compiled a set of worship and study materials and share them with you, in time to plan for your March 3 or 10 service, or for a small group ministry session, study or discussion group in March.
Download the 2019 IWD Service Packet: Journey
Our 2019 theme is Journey.
Our packet includes a Chalice Lighting and other readings for a Sunday Service, suggestions for sermons or panels, children’s stories, reflection questions for a small ministry group session, and links to music and web resources. There are two special features this year. One is a focus on “before” and “after” which includes a documentary on second-wave American feminists and photos accompanying our CUUWA Council members’ stories of their journey(s). They offer opportunities for reflection, discussion, and sharing of your own stories of discovering feminism or finding yourself, of how feminists and pioneers or activists of our U*U movement have influenced your journey, and of how feminism and experiences of gender and sexuality have changed over your lifetime. The second is a major section on poetry. This year, for the first time, we put out a call for writing and artwork based on the theme of Journey. We were thrilled by the response from Canadian U*U women, and happy to include rich and varied poems in this package.
Please follow our Facebook page from March 3 to March 10. We will be asking questions about your journey, and inviting you to share how your congregation or group made use of these materials.
These materials are free of charge and we invite you to share the package widely. If you would like to support the CUUWA’s efforts to produce information, offer educational programs, and create opportunities for U*U women and allies to connect, please consider joining our organization.
This is an opportunity for
us to connect with you and let you know
who we are and what we are doing.
Our Council and other volunteers work hard on behalf of our members and other UU women across Canada on a range of feminist and gender issues. Our specific goals are to raise awareness about women’s history, rituals, and perspectives, through training, communication, celebration and many resources.
