Dedication to social justice leads to life's work
- Bryna Hallam
Eli Manning was drawn to social work through her passion for social justice. Now the UVic alumna, who graduated last fall with a master's degree in social work, could be changing public health policy in Canada.
Manning's thesis, which is being awarded the 2011 Lieutenant Governor's Silver Medal, looks at how language prevents people from accessing health care. The topic grew out of her work at a Winnipeg community health centre that mainly serviced people living with HIV/AIDS.
“Being part of the queer community as well as active in the trans community,” she says, “I found that the categories used in HIV services, prevention and care excluded transsexual, transgender, some two-spirit as well as intersex folks.”
In her thesis, “Who are the men in 'men who have sex with men'?” Manning found that while Canadian public health policy did include men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women, it still reflected binary and opposite categories of sex and gender: man/male and woman/female.
“The implication of this is that people who don't fit squarely into these categories get left out,” she says, noting there are “very real consequences” to this shortcoming. “My experience as a service provider and community member showed me that people end up contracting HIV at very high rates and end up dying.”
The work is having an impact. In April, Manning won the New Investigator in Social Sciences award at the Canadian Association of HIV Research for a presentation that was based on part of her thesis, and is now publishing the piece in the Canadian Review of Social Policy.
Manning first came to UVic in 1997 as an undergraduate student (she already had a BA in Native Studies from the University of Manitoba), attracted by the School of Social Work's focus on feminist and First Nations critiques of social work practice. Ten years later, she returned for graduate studies. Manning worked almost full time as a sessional instructor and research assistant to support herself, and received a University of Victoria Graduate Fellowship, a Canadian Institutes for Health Research Travel Award, and a BC Association of Social Workers Prize.
“I could not have dreamed of a better experience,” she says. “The support that I received from the School of Social Work was outstanding.”
Manning, now a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University, is also a fellow with Universities Without Walls, a national training fellowship for emerging HIV researchers.
“I have been passionate about social justice work since I was a young teen and wanted to continue to contribute to society through positive social change,” Manning says. “For me, social work was a way to meld my love of popular education, advocacy and systemic change.”