Inuit woman earns PhD

Karla Jessen Williamson successfully defended her dissertation at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland on March 10, becoming the first Inuit woman to receive a PhD from that university, and possibly in the world.

Williamson’s daughter, Laakkuluk, said she knows of two cases of Inuit men awarded honourary PhDs, but that her mother may be the first to earn a PhD as a student.

The title of Williamson’s dissertation was “Inuit postcolonial gender relations in Greenland.”

Williamson traveled to her home community of Maniitsoq in southern Greenland to conduct part of her research, which sought to find out if gender equality really existed in the traditional culture, and how it is changing.

Her study was the first to use Inuit thought on gender relations, which assumes gender equality, rather than the traditional western view where men and women are assumed to be unequal.

Williamson works for Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in Ottawa.

The University of Aberdeen is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to 1495.