A Reflection on Women’s Rights: Courageous Conversation

On May 21, the Senior School community gathered for the first event in our new At Issue panel series, "A Courageous Conversation on Women’s Rights"—a student-led initiative grounded in inquiry, civic learning, and respectful discourse. The series is part of York House’s Courageous Conversations initiative, a key piece of the Spark strategic plan. Our mission is clear: To create an environment that elevates the mind, celebrates uniqueness, inspires creativity, and encourages discourse.

 

Discourse - this means to help students navigate complex topics, listen with intention, and speak with courage. Modeled after CBC’s At Issue political panel, the format invites students to engage in conversations on current but sometimes challenging topics that directly affect their lives.

For this inaugural event, the panel explored feminism and reproductive rights, a subject that intersects with health, justice, policy, and personal belief. The panel featured two guest speakers with contrasting feminist perspectives:

Why did we feel the need to start having courageous conversations? Last year, many students expressed concern about the geopolitical divides in the world, and the inability to talk about important issues with their peers, for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Situ ‘26 said it best in her opening speech of the assembly:

 

"We realized these conversations were happening, but mostly in private, and mostly between people who already agreed with each other. That’s what we call an echo chamber, and social media often reinforces it. While it can make us feel informed and self-assured, it also limits our ability to grow and weakens our activism.

 

Echo chambers may feel safe, but they don’t prepare us for a world where disagreement is inevitable. If we’re serious about social change, we must also be serious about listening, even when it’s uncomfortable. Real activism isn’t just reposting infographics or going to rallies. It’s being willing to hear opposing views, reflect on our biases, and stay engaged in hard conversations."

 

At York House, we pride ourselves on being a progressive, girls-inclusive community. But that doesn’t mean we all share the same beliefs, especially on topics like women’s reproductive rights. Our backgrounds and experiences shape how we understand the world. So we need more spaces to practice respectful disagreement and dialogue across those differences. It’s easy to critique someone from within the safety of our own echo chambers. It’s much harder, yet more important, to say, “I completely disagree with you,” face to face, with respect and openness.

 

So Situ ‘26, Fiona ‘26, Annie ‘26, and Angela ‘25 came together to form the Courageous Conversations committee to create a forum for difficult conversations. Our first At Issue talk was moderated by Situ ’26, with student speakers Angela ’25 and Fiona ’25 engaging in the dialogue to present diverse perspectives.

Over the course of the discussion, students facilitated a conversation that addressed difficult but essential questions:

What does meaningful choice look like when social and economic systems are unequal?

In a truly pluralistic society, how do we share conflicting views, challenging the content and not the character of the other person while also seeing their humanity and common ground?

 

How do female inequalities intersect with other identities, and how do systems compound these issues? 

 

Despite their ideological distance, both speakers agreed on one thing: women deserve better. Better systems, better policies, and better support—before, during, and after pregnancy.

 

One of the most powerful moments came when the students turned the conversation toward media coverage of gender-based violence. “Why do we see headlines about women being hurt, but rarely about who is hurting them?” asked Angela ’25. “Why is language so passive when the reality is anything but?” MacDougall responded with characteristic clarity: “Because naming power is uncomfortable. But we cannot transform what we refuse to name.” 

 

In her closing reflection, Angela ’25 said, “When we silence women through law, fear, or shame we don’t just lose voices, we lose futures.” The key takeaway: feminism is not a monolith. It is not liberal or conservative, religious or secular. It is a framework that can and should adapt to different lived experiences.

 

This event gave students the opportunity to think critically and empathetically—to listen to opposing views and ask: What does real support look like? Who gets to choose? What makes choice possible in the first place? These are hard questions. But they are exactly the kind of questions that prepare students to engage in difficult conversations beyond the world of York House.

 

As we look ahead, the At Issue series will continue. Future topics may explore online harm, sustainability, equity in education, and other areas where young people are both impacted and invested. The choice is in their hands.

 

I am inspired by our students for leading with conviction, compassion, and care. And we are committed to continuing this work, not just as a program, but as part of what it means to be a Yorkie: brave enough to ask, prepared enough to lead, and grounded enough to listen.