Paulette Senior, President and CEO, Canadian Women’s FoundationSUPPLIED
A year since the first pandemic lockdowns in Canada, it’s clear that this crisis has been a gendered one.
The shock of the pandemic has shaken 30 years of gender equality gains and deepened pre-existing inequalities for diverse women, girls and gender-diverse people nationwide. From economic security and freedom from violence to quality of life and human rights, we’re in a tenuous position.
As Canada marks International Women’s Day, we move into an uncertain future when it comes to gender equity.
We all have a role to play in charting the way forward and taking barrier-breaking action.
It’s time to support and invest in gender justice
American legal scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 to give voice to Black women’s experience of race and gender barriers. The concept has helped us address how different people face different kinds of barriers at large. In the context of the pandemic, we see the disproportionate impacts on not only women as a group but on women with disabilities, Black and racialized women, senior women, migrant women and more.
And gender justice today means attending to the unique needs of all women and gender-diverse people, at every intersection of their identities. It’s time for us to band together and make moves to address the gender pay gap, to end gender-based violence, to build affordable and accessible housing and childcare, to end systemic racism and discrimination.
In the words of one of our founding mothers, the Honourable Rosemary Brown, “Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it.”
Change starts with you. How will you act? How will you ask leaders to be accountable?
Visit canadianwomen.org for three ways to make moves for gender justice and help stop the reversals in equality gains this International Women’s Day and beyond.
Advertising feature produced by Randall Anthony Communications. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.