{"id":251,"date":"2024-11-13T16:40:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T21:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/?post_type=cu_people&p=251"},"modified":"2024-12-06T15:24:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T20:24:06","slug":"julie-delahanty","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/people\/julie-delahanty\/","title":{"rendered":"Julie Delahanty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Executive Director, Oxfam Canada (2014-2020)
Bachelor of Arts, Law (\u201891)
Master of Arts, International Affairs (\u201895)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she finished her education, Julie Delahanty was anxious to get out into the world and start making a difference for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She began working on a project in Bangladesh conducting research on women\u2019s health in garment factories. But her enthusiastic confidence was soon dampened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI pretty quickly realized I was in way over my head and needed to listen more closely to what the women were telling me,\u201d recalls Ms. Delahanty, who worked for the North-South Institute. \u201cI understood the issues theoretically, but they were living it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had a similar realization when she worked on a project in Africa that collaborated with a women\u2019s rights organization in Chad. The office was ransacked and the women working on the project went into hiding.
\u201cThere are women working around the world who are risking their lives for change,\u201d she says. \u201cI realized I had nothing to teach any\u00adbody. What I could do was raise awareness and funds to help these groups do the work they needed to do in their countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Delahanty credits these experiences, along with her work in Iraq, Central America and Pakistan, with providing her with a global view of women\u2019s lives. While Oxfam has a strong international focus, she is extending that view to the Canadian experience, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanada has a significant level of domestic violence, including against Indigenous women,\u201d she says. \u201cWe also have legislation that works on paper, but often isn\u2019t actually implemented. Women are not able to access the rights they are entitled to because attitudes, norms and behaviours haven\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Delahanty led Oxfam Canada\u2019s involvement in the \u201cUp For Debate\u201d campaign during the last federal election, which called for the party leaders to offer measurable commitments that would change women\u2019s lives for the better. Four out of five of the leaders participated in the campaign, which involved 175 women\u2019s rights organizations.
Ms. Delahanty says her passion for women\u2019s rights and gender equality was sparked by her experience as an undergraduate in the Department of Law and Legal Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA number of the professors were strong feminists and they gave me so much in terms of passion and strength,\u201d recalls Ms. Delahanty, who worked throughout university. \u201cI didn\u2019t come from a privi\u00adleged background, but they saw potential in me and supported and encouraged me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the moral support, she remembers the strong academic underpinnings within the department.
\u201cThey taught me to think logically through problems and gather evidence. It was quite rigorous, but also socially conscious. It was because of them that I became interested in women\u2019s rights issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That grounding helped her as she continued her studies at Carleton\u2019s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, she\u2019s the mentor\u2014for university students who volunteer and work at Oxfam. She advises them to worry less about \u201cthe right job\u201d and more about doing what they love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to do what you love and trust that it will work out,\u201d she says. \u201cI am incredibly aware of how fortunate I am and that I have the best job in the world. That\u2019s because I kept pushing to do what I love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":631,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Julie","cu_people_last_name":"Delahanty","cu_people_initials":"JD","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[25],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-251","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-alumni"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"President\/CEO of International Development Research Centre (IDRC-CRDI)","cu_people_degree":"","cu_building":"","cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/251\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/npsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}