Resetting Normal

Building Gender Equality in the Pandemic Recovery

New series of reports

Resetting Normal is a series of reports on gender equality and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. In collaboration with the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, lawyer and community organizer Fay Faraday, and academic Kathleen Lahey, we explore risks to women’s economic security exposed by the pandemic and propose new ways to build a gender-equal Canada in recovery efforts.

Women, Decent Work and Canada’s Fractured Care Economy

The COVID-19  pandemic has highlighted that care work is:

• Essential
• Made up of predominantly women workers, particularly immigrant, Black, Indigenous, undocumented, and migrant women workers
• Not invested in adequately and some forms teeter between surviving and collapsing during crisis and beyond
• Critical part of our nonprofit and charitable sector

COVID-19 is an opportunity to create an equitable and thriving care economy. In our new report with the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and lawyer and community organizer Fay Faraday, we explore the pandemic’s impact on women’s work, identify what makes up care work and who delivers it, and analyze the state of Canada’s care economy. We also explain why and how long-term care, child care, and gender-based violence services have been specifically impacted by the pandemic. 

We propose three big ideas for an equitable pandemic recovery:

1. Revitalize social infrastructure through care sector investments.
2. Ensure care work is decent work.
3. Focus public investments on transforming care sectors including long term care, child care, and gender-based violence services.

These recommendations will not only transform women’s economic security, but will also transform care work, the sectors that deliver it, and the communities that rely on it.

Funding a Thriving Women’s Sector 

As women experience higher rates of gender-based violence and financial precarity, organizations that serve them are at the leading edge of innovative and timely responses. But decades of underfunding have robbed organizations of the capacity to truly meet community needs for these essential services. The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to change this and forge ahead with new resources for the women’s sector.

We propose four recommendations:

1. Provide core funding to women-serving and equity seeking organizations
2. Guarantee a gender-based analysis plus in policy-making; involve the women’s sector in decision-making at all levels of government
3. Ensure a gender-based analysis plus in data collection on the nonprofit and charitable sector
4. Make gender-based analysis plus a requirement in transfer payments from the federal government to provinces and territories and in agreements with nonprofits and charities

These recommendations will not only transform women’s economic security, but will also transform care work, the sectors that deliver it, and the communities that rely on it.

Call to action

1. Share the reports with your networks;
2. Include our recommendations in your policy advocacy work;
3. Apply a gender and intersectional lens to your recovery efforts.