I see the answer to homelessness in embracing its complexity — and that means recognizing that gender-specific challenges require gender-specific solutions. When we fully understand how homelessness affects women and gender diverse people differently, we can build responses that truly work. When we embrace the complexity of homelessness, we also embrace the humanity of people living it.

This year for International Women’s Day, I think of all the women and gender diverse people at Cornerstone who need a safe, affirming place to land. I see the complex ways that they become homeless and remain in the shelter system. Every day, I see the courage it takes to start over after violence, displacement, or crisis. I see the barriers that stand in the way, particularly for women and gender diverse people.

There are some undeniable truths about our work. Women and gender diverse people who are racialized experience homelessness at higher rates compared to their white and cisgender sisters. They are more likely to experience systemic racism in all areas of life: housing, employment, healthcare. That is a piece of the complexity that we need to understand and address. There are many other layers of complexity and this is only one of them.

So, this International Women’s Day, I’m calling on our community to turn your compassion into commitment and action. Let’s embrace the complexity together. We can all do tangible things that make a difference.

Firstly, you can call on politicians to ensure organizations like Cornerstone have sustainable investment in order to address the complexity that is homelessness. Cutting funding and simplifying services is not the way out of this.

Secondly, we all have to have hard conversations with people in our life. We can create a big impact through small conversations. At a dinner party years ago, I called out a problematic comment from a guest. Six months later, I got a phone call from that guest’s partner asking my help to flee her violent relationship. She had no one else she could talk to, but she knew I would be a safe person. She never would have called if I hadn’t said anything.

And finally, get involved. When things are daunting and scary, we have a tendency to look inwards. To want to protect ourselves. To keep things small and simple. I promise you that it feels better to say or do something than it does to sit and wallow in the difficulty of solving homelessness. Volunteer, fundraise, or do a food drive in your workplace for organizations that spark your passion for supporting women.

This International Women’s Day, the theme is Balancing the Scales. Let’s be forceful in our commitment to ending homelessness, to having tough conversations, and for getting involved in our community. We don’t get out of this problem through disengagement.

For more information about Cornerstone or to donate.

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I had the privilege of interviewing her about her ministry for an article in the Anglican Journal in 2014, which we have excerpted here with permission in tribute to her important contributions to the church and women:

Ordained as a deacon in 1979, and as a priest in the diocese of Toronto in 1980, Medcof was one of the pioneers breaking ground, and in some cases ice, with those in the church who had not yet accepted the idea that women could serve as priests.

She began by taking divinity courses at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College part-time. She would see her two children off to school, drive downtown to take a course in the morning, race home to give her children lunch and then return to the college to attend more classes in the afternoon. At the time, she was also worshipping and singing in the choir at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto. The priest, Fr. M. Hutt, was one of the people who had written a manifesto against the ordination of women. Medcof thought it best to tell him what she was doing before he heard it through the “clergy grapevine,” she said. “There was nothing we could do but sit at opposite sides of the table and cry, because at this point, he, my pastor, was totally opposed to what I might become.”

She worked as an assistant curate at St. Paul’s Lorne Park in Mississauga, Ont. “We had to publish in the bulletin who was celebrating which service so people could [decide whether to] come,” she said.

Medcof says she did have strong support from a group of male priests, including Cyril Powles and Kenneth Fung, who sought out jobs for her; in fact, they found four possible positions. When she asked a pastoral professor at Trinity College for advice about which one to choose, she says he told her, “Alice, you don’t have a political bone in your body, but it is time you grew some…You go to Christ Church Deer Park because they have five members of diocesan synod and if you can convert them, just think what good you’ll do for the rest of the women.”

Later, she was appointed to her first position as an incumbent at Church of the Epiphany, Scarborough, which had, ironically, just become vacant when the Rev. Michael Bedford Jones, another one of the authors of the manifesto against the ordination of women, moved to another parish. The search committee had rejected three male priests whom they interviewed, and when the bishop told them there was no one else, a female warden, Virginia Finlay, who worked at the diocesan centre, said, “Yes, there is. There’s Alice Medcof.” Once hired, Medcof says, she found little resistance from parishioners, as long as she provided the 9 a.m. congregation with the full high-church service to which they were accustomed and the very different 11 a.m. congregation with a sermon that “preached the word” in 25 minutes.

In 1996, Medcof became one of the founders of the International Anglican Women’s Network, an official body of the Anglican Communion that reports to the Anglican Consultative Council on women’s issues. In 2003, she began what would be two terms as chair of the network, during which time she annually accompanied Canadian groups to UN headquarters in New York to participate in the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Their work contributed to votes by the Anglican Consultative Council, in both 2009 and 2012, to make the elimination of gender-based violence a priority. 

In recognition of her outstanding leadership in the Diocese of Toronto, she was named a Canon of St. James Cathedral in 1997, and in 2013, she received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Trinity College in Toronto, In later years, she worked on a campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking around the world.

The post Remembering the Rev. Canon Dr. Alice Medcof appeared first on Perspective.

Canadian women helped create IAWN, as you can read in our tribute to the late Rev. Canon Alice Medcof (below), but in recent years, involvement had waned.

The first big project Hill got started with was a survey of women’s leadership in the Anglican Church of Canada. She and Dr. Andrea Mann, director of global relations for the Anglican Church of Canada proposed the survey and the Rev. Dr. Neil Elliot, statistics and research officer for General Synod, designed it. 

Conducted in 2022, it was “intended to offer a reflection of women’s leadership and authority in the Anglican Church of Canada in 2022 as the Church approaches the 50th anniversary of women’s ordination (2026).” It was not intended as an exhaustive examination of the subject, but a snapshot “to stir the curiosity of people of all genders as they consider the contributions of women to the leadership of the church in recent years, as well as where, in working toward gender equity, we still need to encourage and welcome women’s gifts.”

The report noted that research on gender identity and gender equity needs to be considered anew and carefully. The team consulted with the Rev. Dr. Wendy Fletcher, principal of Renison College, to discuss whether research about women per se was still relevant. After some discussion, Fletcher said it is still important use the word “women” in a survey such as this: “Being a woman does mean something,” she said. Indeed, what it means to be a woman in the church remains an important question.”

Twenty dioceses (67%) responded to the survey. As promised, statistics for individual dioceses were kept confidential, but the national averages in diocesan ministry were: 

55% of central diocesan leadership groups were women (lay and ordained)

41% of bishops were women

35% of priests were women

60% of deacons were women

The proportion of paid and unpaid clergy is similar between women and men. There are significant variations across both rural and urban dioceses.

In its analysis of the results, the team wrote: “It is clear that the Anglican Church of Canada has much to celebrate. From sea to sea to sea women are being called to ministry and authority in the church. Not only do women comprise 55% of diocesan leadership, over forty percent of our bishops today are women. …However, the results also make it clear that we cannot remain complacent. It is a concern that only 35% of priests in dioceses are women. In addition, there are regional variations in diocesan results that reflect that women’s leadership is not well-accepted in every diocese.”

In her work as the IAWN link for Canada, Hill said the goals are broad—celebrating women’s ministries, both lay and ordained; seeking an end to violence against women; and achieving equity.

An interactive webinar on Feb. 26 (8 am to 10 am Pacific Time) will honour the 30th anniversary of the episcopal ordination of Bishop Victoria Matthews, the first woman to be ordained bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada. Panelists will be:

Bishop Victoria Matthews, episcopal administrator with the Diocese of Moosonee, who has served as suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Toronto, as Bishop of Edmonton in Alberta and as Bishop of Christchurch in New Zealand

Bishop Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, England

Bishop Riscylla Shaw, suffragan bishop, Diocese of Toronto

Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy, Archbishop of Perth, Anglican Church of Australia

For more information visit: https://www.anglican.ca/primate/30th/

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