Canadian Women and the COVID-19 Crisis: Impact and Recovery

 

With 138 million diagnosed cases and 2.97 million resulting deaths at the time of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an undeniably devastating effect on human beings the world over. The impact has, however, been particularly felt by women. Globally, women are overrepresented in the service industry, which has been particularly hard hit by pandemic related job loss. As a result, women’s jobs are approximately 1.8 times more vulnerable than those held by men. While there is no doubt that economic strife due to pandemic related job loss has been experienced the world over, the fact that women 25-34 are already 25% more likely than men to live in extreme poverty means that they are in a especially precarious position. This figure becomes even more drastic when considering additional aspects of marginalization one faces: BIWOC, queer, trans, and disabled women are even more likely to experience poverty.

            Beyond the gendered considerations surrounding the COVID economic impact, the pandemic has also served to highlight gaps in health and social programming for women and girls. While domestic violence rates have soared throughout the pandemic, shelter access has become limited due to the logistic challenges of providing the space to maintain adequate social distancing procedures. Meanwhile, access to consistent and effective mental health services remain expensive and difficult to obtain, even in the face of global crisis when incidence of violence is sure to increase. In 2020 alone, 160 Canadian females were violently killed; 90% of the perpetrators were men. For women, domestic violence has become a secondary health crisis, yet it remains widely unaddressed while the public conscious is focused squarely on the dominating concerns of the pandemic.

            The pandemic has had a clearly disproportionate effect on women. As such, women should be prioritized in global recovery efforts, and systemic failures must be addressed so as to ensure that women are better equipped to survive future crises. In Canada specifically, some of the following actions and policy revisions could serve to ease the burden on Canadian women and provide them with the necessary tools to expediate the recovery process:

·       Expansion of crisis housing facilities.

·       Inclusion of expansive mental health services in universal health care.

·       Tax breaks and economic initiatives for women-owned businesses.

·       Accessible and affordable quality childcare.

·       Universal basic income and financial support for unpaid caregivers.

·       Mandatory paid sick and family leave time.

·       Increased worker protections and oversight.

·       Immediate action on health, safety, and potable water concerns facing Indigenous communities.

The focus the COVID crisis has drawn to existing inequities facing women has been stark. The potential exists, however, to use the momentum that the recovery effort is generating in order to efficiently address some of the many concerns that continue to negatively impact both Canadian and International women. With the necessity of creating a “new normal” comes an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the systemic discrimination that Canadian society was built upon, and it is our responsibility and our privilege as post-pandemic citizens to ensure that said “new normal” is inclusive and accessible for all citizens, regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic standing.

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