Alberta has amended the eligibility criteria for a government scholarship to remove a requirement added over the summer that required applicants to identify as a woman or man.
The Persons Case Scholarship provides $100,000 from the province spread across 40 post-secondary students who are studying in fields where their gender is underrepresented or disadvantaged, or, whose work advances gender equality.
Students looking to apply for the scholarship last week encountered eight eligibility requirements listed on the award’s website, with the first reading that applicants must “identify as a woman or man.”
On late Monday afternoon, that language was removed with the other seven eligibility requirements remaining unchanged.
The gender requirement marked a sharp change from eligibility criteria from just months earlier.
An archived version of the scholarship website from August of last year reads that “applicants of all genders are eligible to apply.”
That language remained through May 30 of this year but was changed sometime between then and Sept. 10 when the woman or man requirement was added, according to archived versions of the website.
Arts, Culture and Status of Women Minister Tanya Fir was not made available for an interview Monday.
Her office issued a statement indicating the language change was being worked on Monday.
“The Persons Case Scholarship is available to post-secondary students in Alberta looking to study in fields that advance gender-equality, the website will be updated to reflect this eligibility criteria.”
The statement did not address questions about why gender was included in the eligibility, or if the prior language applied to transgender students.
The scholarship is named after the landmark 1929 case brought forward by The Famous Five, a group of Alberta suffragists. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that women were “eligible persons” to be appointed to the Canadian Senate and represented a major step towards political gender equality.