Illustration by Michael DeForge
Gender equality
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.
During the pandemic, women in abusive relationships face long periods of isolation with their abusers alongside decreased job security and limited access to support systems. This isolation exacerbates all forms of domestic abuse, from verbal to physical to sexual. But there is another type of abuse that is less visible and can also worsen under these conditions.
The summer issue of the Monitor features two previously published reports on the crisis in Canada's nursing homes, one from the CCPA's national office, Re-imagining Long-term Residential Care in the COVID-19 Crisis, and one from the CCPA-BC,
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is collaborating with the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN), and Dr. Kathleen Lahey to prepare a new series: Resetting Normal. The first report, “Funding a Thriving Women’s Sector”, lays out the extraordinary challenges facing women-serving agencies and gender-equity groups to meet rising demands, undermined by a deeply flawed funding model and decades of government imposed austerity.
A Bangladeshi worker (photo from ILO Asia-Pacific, Flickr Creative Commons)
“COVID-19 will be a catastrophe for Bangladeshi garment workers.”
In our first issue following the outbreak of COVD-19 in Canada, Monitor contributors assess the federal and provincial government responses to date and propose how we might use this moment of government activism to fix the gross inequalities in our society—by improving social programs such as employment insurance, income assistance and our health care system, for example.
Des experts et expertes réclament des mesures à court, à moyen et à long terme afin de soutenir les collectivités et de les protéger contre les effets de la pandémie