Written by Emily Cranston
January 28, 2021
With the emergence of COVID-19 and its constant presence affecting nearly all aspects of living in Canada, it is necessary to consider the gendered impact that the continued public health measures have introduced.
The responsibilities women and girls often take on in their homes and as part of their greater communities can lead to a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19. Statistics show that childcare, elder care, and other caregiving needs are handled mostly by women. Furthermore, women often play a bigger role in frontline health positions such as personal support workers, social sector responders, cleaners, and in food preparation. In fact, Canadian nurses, respiratory therapists, and personal support workers in nursing homes are 90%, 75%, and 90% women, respectively. The need for these jobs is only increasing with the rigorous cleaning and sanitization regimes many companies now require because of COVID-19. These unpaid duties are intensifying the already prevalent gender pay gap in Canada as women give up career opportunities and thus limit their income to better handle these unexpected tasks. This disparity is only deepened for those who face additional discrimination due to disability, race, and Indigenous identity. When looking at those who have had job losses since the pandemic began, 63% of those workers are women even though they comprise only 47% of all paid workers in Canada.
In addition to the increase in caregiving roles, unpaid responsibilities, and job losses, crisis events (such as this pandemic) have been proven to exacerbate other risks in marginalized communities such as violence, abuse, and sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, the systems and supports to protect against the detrimental effects of gender-based violence during the pandemic are not in a sufficient a position to provide care to the influx of cases. The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses report that more than a fifth of their 70 shelters in Ontario have seen an increase in calls. Many shelters and community-based sexual assault centres were under-resourced and at-capacity before the pandemic, and now access to the essential and potentially life-saving services at these organizations are met with waitlists and inadequate support for those in need. For context, a woman is killed by her intimate partner on average every 6 days in Canada, and the very real potential for this already staggering statistic to increase because of the pandemic is alarming.
Public health measures for COVID-19, specifically the directive to self-isolate at home, is evidenced to effectively mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, the home is the primary place for intimate partner violence against women. Additionally, the increase in remote work has led to less opportunity for women to safely request assistance and to access individual and group therapy. This issue has been in part acknowledged by the federal government with a contribution of $40 million dollars to help those affected by gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic and a significant proportion of these funds will go towards shelters and sexual assault centres in Canada to better undertake the increased demand for their services.
As individuals, groups, and public and private organizations look to implement measures that allow for a return to normalcy during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, an intersectional lens that incorporates the needs of marginalized communities of women should be highly utilized. The experiences of women are not only affected by societally induced gender disparities but also influenced by the existence of other interlocking systems of oppression such as race, Indigenous identity, immigration status, gender identity, disability, and senior status. The construction of new policies and programs needs to be done so with careful consideration, using evidence-based methods which combine the advice of experts and the best available research with the perspectives and lived experiences of those directly affected by the initiatives.
Specific recommendations on reshaping society in response to COVID-19 have been researched and synthesized by the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ontario Nonprofit Network, and Fay Faraday in their “Resetting Normal: Women, Decent Work, and Canada’s Fractured Care Economy” document published in July 2020 and should be given the appropriate weight and consideration moving forward. This report exists amongst a series of reports on gender equality and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada along with other resources to learn more about the pandemic’s impact including podcasts, letter templates to encourage action from federal and provincial governments, and other statistics.
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