Hampshire College Alum Sylvia Bashevkin 72F Recognized for Leadership in Gender Equality

She is a professor emerita of political science at the University of Toronto and the author and editor of several books, among them 2018’s Women as Foreign Policy Leaders: National Security and Gender Politics in Superpower America and 2019’s Doing Politics Differently?: Women Premiers in Canada’s Provinces and Territories. 

In 2024, Bashevkin was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, which described her as “one of Canada’s top scholars of gender and politics.” One of the first to study the obstacles facing women in public life, she analyzed the consequences of women’s political participation and has worked to broaden opportunities for a diverse population to engage in politics. 

She also received a 2024 Persons Award from Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth Marci Ien in honor of her dedication to gender equality. “Recipients of the Persons Awards serve as beacons of inspiration, encouraging the next generation to reach new heights and continue the tradition of courage, integrity, and hard work that the Famous Five of the Persons Case inspired,” according to the news release. Persons Day takes place annually on October 18, marking the date in 1929 when Canada’s highest court of appeal declared that the legal definition of the word person included both women and men. 

What drew you to Hampshire?
I was attracted by the promise of independent learning in a college that dared students to stretch themselves in new directions. Hampshire drew boundary-pushers, in the faculty and in the student body, and that was all very exciting.

How did your experience here influence your career?
My time at Hampshire gave me the confidence to pose questions that weren’t commonly asked, in both my scholarship and my work as an activist. It encouraged me to pursue directions that were beyond the standard repertoire for a social scientist at a major research university. I understood that forging a different path would entail costs, but I was prepared to take the risks.

What are you most proud of in your work?
I’m most proud of helping to shape civic debate in Canada, so that greater attention now focuses on the importance of having a demographically diverse leadership face in this country. My research has been widely cited as part of efforts to attract more women, members of new immigrant communities, and Indigenous people to positions of public responsibility. The process of civic renewal in which I participated remains crucial to our liberal democratic future.