In this issue:
Gender equality
The summer/fall 2020 Our Schools/ Our Selves digs into the underlying issues of equity and access that have been revealed and exacerbated by the COVID-19-related shutdown and subsequent move to online and remote learning; a cross-country scan provides an overview of the various funding mechanisms currently in place for public education in each province and territory to illustrate the link between funding, policy and priorities.
Maria Rose Sikyea is a young Dené artist living in Yukon with her adorable three-year-old. When I spoke to her in November, she was expecting a second child, whom she hoped would be delivered with the assistance of a midwife. But like many others in her situation, Sikyea faced a considerable roadblock: Yukon is the only Canadian jurisdiction that does not offer access to government-provided and funded midwifery.
"If we learn anything from COVID-19," write Lindsay McLaren and Trish Hennessy in their cover feature for this issue, "it should be that we need to build and foster a more comprehensive version of public health that acts on what we know about the social determinants of well-being." Economy and health are not separate things, they argue, and public health policy should not be limited to matters of primary care.
As part of Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy White Paper consultation, the federal government asked civil society organizations and individuals how Canada can use the diplomatic tools at its disposal, in multilateral and bilateral forums, “to reinforce efforts to uphold and advance human rights, gender equality and inclusion, while helping to reform the current international rules-based order and shape the system as it evolves to Canada’s advantage.”
Following 50th anniversary of the Release of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women report, support for women in the economy is greatly needed.
December 8, 2020
OTTAWA, ON — With the Throne Speech promise of an Action Plan for Women in the Economy, the federal government committed to ensuring an intersectional feminist response to economic recovery from the pandemic.
The COVID-19 infection rate for prisoners in federal penitentiaries is nine times higher than the general infection rate in Canada. Meanwhile, social movements across North America are calling for substantive law enforcement reform and the dismantling of systemic racism. Together, these developments call the prison system into question.
Illustration by Michael DeForge
It has been six months since we shut down the economy to all but essential activities in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Federal and many provincial emergency measures introduced since then, though imperfect and unevenly available across Canada, have stabilized incomes and bought governments time to figure out what comes next.
Economic losses due to COVID-19 have fallen heavily on women, and most dramatically on women living on low incomes who experience intersecting inequalities based on race, class, disability, education, migration, and immigration status. The pandemic crisis has revealed the fragility of response systems and the urgent need for structural rethinking and systemic change.