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Jane Arscott (B.A. Queen’s, M.Litt. Oxon, Ph.D. Queen’s) is a Professor at Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University, located in Alberta, Canada. Her work concerns the election and appointment of women in public life. She advocates for a next-generation gender equality agenda to carry forward that produced by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women a half-century ago. Truth and Reconciliation plays a major role in the future of postsecondary education as do matters of representation. Conversations likely to emerge about the common global good that can be anticipated as a result of technological changes over the course of the next half century.
A settler inhabitant of Treaty Six lands for most of her life she brings a broad historical and comparative perspective to the study of futurity. Ideas about dissent, centralization and self-government, and freedom of political association led her to study why so few women were being elected and appointed to public office in Canada. In The Presence of Women (Harcourt, Brace, 1997) began mapping the gender dimensions of the electoral landscape. Still Counting (Broadview, 2003) and Stalled (2013, UBC Press) followed extending, deepening and amplifying action to address women’s under-representation. She collaborates with academics and community partners to make gender justice a reality in advance of challenges technological change presages for global society and its governance.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor, Athabasca University