By Joy Johnson, President and Vice Chancellor at Simon Fraser University
August 24, 2023
Back in May, I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at a conference entitled “Women Lead the Way” for the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Federation of University Women.
When I originally began planning for this event, I thought I would share lessons learned from our SFU: What’s Next? strategic planning process. But as the date got closer, I realized: things have changed.
I look around and it seems to me that women across the world are—to put it bluntly—under attack.
In the United States, we are witnessing the undermining of reproductive rights and women’s control over their bodies, as well as a worsening climate for transgender women and non-binary individuals. In Afghanistan and Iran, we see women fighting for their rights to pursue an education, live freely and maintain their basic human rights. Just recently in Canada, a hate-motivated stabbing occurred in a gender studies class at the University of Waterloo.
In January, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced her resignation, saying that she “no longer had enough in the tank” to continue. Her resignation was followed by the resignation of Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in February.
I’m sure these resignations happened for many complicated reasons, but these leaders navigated an unbelievable amount of harassment and hatred for just doing their jobs. It would be naïve to think that misogyny did not play a part in their decisions.
Hearing about those resignations moved something in me. It made me realize that we are in a moment where women leaders are feeling very vulnerable.
I started to reflect on my career as a student, a nurse, a researcher and now a university president. I also thought about how many women today may feel reluctant to enter higher-profile positions of leadership.
And instead of getting up on stage and talking about strategic planning, I talked about why difference matters—and why we need women in leadership, now more than ever before.
I want to share some of those thoughts with you.
About me
I originally went to school to study nursing—inspired by my mom, who was also a nurse—and my professional career started as a nurse in intensive care at St. Paul’s Hospital.
From there, I went to grad school to do my masters and PhD, “got the research bug,” as I like to say, and decided to stay in academia.
It has been a wild ride, and I’ve had an incredible amount of support over the years. But there have also been times when people looked at my history, my career path—and yes, even my gender—and made assumptions about me.
Assumptions that someone who started their career as a nurse could never be a university president. Or that my leadership style wouldn’t lend itself to running a large organization. But the truth of the matter is that I think all of my history and lived experience makes me better at my job.
I think that difference matters.
Why difference matters
This is an idea that I have talked about throughout my presidency, and sometimes when I say it, people get uncomfortable. We live in a polarized world, and I think people can blame that polarization on the idea of “difference.” There is an assumption that focusing on our differences pushes people apart instead of bringing them together.
I think that viewpoint misses a part of the picture.
No matter how much we might have in common, the truth remains that everyone brings different intersections of identity and experience to work, to school and to everyday life. I believe that choosing to ignore our differences—the unique perspectives we carry as we move throughout our lives—leads to worse outcomes for everyone.
Let me give an example from the university context, where difference matters because it makes us better teachers, knowledge producers, researchers and innovators.
During my time as Scientific Director for the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, I was constantly reminded of how we do not pay attention to sex and gender differences, even though it is very clear that things like gender roles and gender expectations shape our life opportunities and health.
Take, for example, research trials on new drugs. Historically, trials were conducted on male animals and humans because scientists had trouble accounting for hormone fluctuations in females. They decided the fluctuations were too difficult to deal with and ignored those differences rather than addressing them. As you might imagine, soon after some of these new drugs were approved for use, they were creating “unexpected” problems for women and had to be removed from the market.
We see this pattern replicated across history. It never ends well—and it never changes all by itself. In the context of research, it took the hard work and activism of women, transgender and non-binary researchers, as well as allies, to bring these issues into sharper focus.
So when I say that difference matters, I mean that ignoring difference creates worse results for everyone, across all fields and professions. But I also mean that our differences—the unique parts of us that we bring to every role in our lives—those matter too.
Which brings me to some reflections on my time at SFU.
Difference and leadership
SFU announced that I would be the university’s next president in January 2020, with my term set to start in September.
I was excited, and a little apprehensive. I was confident in myself and my abilities, but this was a huge leap. I sought counsel, read books and articles and prepared as best I could.
And then, of course, the pandemic hit.
You can’t prepare for that. The first years of my presidency were not anything like I expected them to be. During that difficult time, I found myself really leaning on those skills I honed during my time as a nurse.
In nursing school, I learned to listen—really listen—to the needs of my patients. I learned how to work well under highly stressful situations. To pivot my approach based on the fast-changing environment around me. And how not to faint at the sight of blood. (You would be surprised how often this comes in handy.)
It turns out that my rather different path to becoming a university president gave me a lot of tools that make me a better leader, while empowering me to make positive changes at my organization.
Presidential priorities
In the first few months of my presidency, I established three presidential priorities for the university.
The first priority was Reconciliation. The second was to create a more vibrant student experience across our campuses. And the third was to advance equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at SFU.
That final priority was important to me because it was very personal. As a member of the queer community, I was deeply affected when Delwin Vriend was fired from a college in Alberta in 1991 because of his sexual orientation. I was a graduate student at the time, and I questioned whether there was a place for me in academic life.
As president of SFU, and as one of the few women presidents of a research-intensive university in Canada, I want to use my time in this role to make SFU more inclusive and equitable. To build a community where difference is celebrated and valued instead of something to be afraid of.
Since establishing that priority, I have led the creation of a new Vice-President position that is directly responsible for overseeing People, Equity and Inclusion (PEI) at SFU. We brought the incredible Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, PhD on board as SFU’s inaugural VP PEI and established SFU’s first Equity Office. With the recent release of a university-wide EDI strategy, the Equity Compass, we continue pursuing progress towards a more equitable and inclusive campus environment where everyone feels like they belong.
Of course, EDI has always been an important cause advanced by leadership at SFU. But I would like to think that my lived experience and my deep, personal commitment—my difference in perspective, if you will—helped move this work forward in a meaningful way.
To be frank, it has not always been easy. Universities are institutions with deep roots in elitism and colonialism, and they exhibit a lot of resistance to change. But I don’t ever want a student at SFU to feel the way I did in 1991, so I keep pushing.
I know that being president of a university is a position of enormous agency and privilege. I have been given incredible opportunities, none of which I take lightly. I am also grateful for the support system of friends, mentors and colleagues I’ve been able to lean on in this time. For those who told me, time and time again: your voice is important. Difference matters.
What the world needs
I was grateful to speak at “Women Lead the Way” because I believe we are in a moment where people, and especially women, need to be paying attention and standing up for each other.
Everyone at that conference brought different lived experiences to the table and sat at different intersections of identity. Those experiences—those differences—matter now more than ever.
I used to think that only certain types of people could be leaders. People who were in control all the time and gave orders and knew all the answers. But as I’ve progressed throughout my career, I’ve learned that leaders can show up in different ways.
As a leader, you have to take on a lot of responsibility, think strategically and make tough decisions. But you can do all that while still being yourself. I can lead a 40,000-person organization and still have fun and be compassionate and care about people.
To return for a moment to Jacinda Arden, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand—she gave a beautiful resignation speech that deeply moved me.
During that speech, she said: “I cannot determine what will define my time in this place. But I do hope I’ve demonstrated something else entirely. That you can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve…you can be a nerd, a crier, a hugger. You can be all of these things. And not only can you be here, you can lead.”
Now more than ever, I think we need to build a culture where we embrace difference instead of running from it. Not only does embracing difference make us better students, colleagues, parents, teachers and community members—but by doing so, we resist this societal narrative that leadership is only reserved for certain types of people, with certain types of experience.
If all of us, together, work to uplift the women in our lives, to support each other and stand up for the rights of women here and around the world, we will start to see a change. I truly believe that.
And I saw it in action after my speech.
Women came up to me and told me that they felt seen and heard. That I had opened a door to new conversations about EDI and social justice within that group, where the average age was about 60.
It was incredibly gratifying. And now I am even more determined to keep pushing forward.
If you’ve read this far, thank you for reading. I want to end by encouraging you—as I encouraged the women in that room—to lean in. Be on a board, volunteer, mentor, speak up against injustice.
It might not always be easy. There are challenges, many of which I’ve just outlined.
But for all of us today, and for the generations who will come after us, let’s carry Jacinda Arden’s words with us out into the world…
You can be here, and you can lead.
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