Care Services are the Key to Pandemic Recovery for Women

By Sarah Kaplan and Maya Roy

It is now well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis has disproportionately affected women, especially Black, Indigenous, and racialized women, women with disabilities and newcomer and immigrant women.

Economist Armine Yalnizyan has called the COVID-19 economic fallout a "she-cession." The disappearance of jobs in majority-women sectors such as retail meant that in March the decline in employment for women was twice that of men. As the economy reopens, men's jobs are returning faster than women's.

Discussion is turning to how we get out of the pandemic-induced recession. We believe the tragic inequities in the impacts of COVID-19 also give us insights into how to achieve a robust recovery.

The pandemic has put the care economy in the spotlight, and investing in this crucial aspect of Canada's social infrastructure will be at the core of any response to the crisis.

Before the pandemic, women already took on more of the household duties and care of children and elders than men. The closing of schools and care services has exacerbated the gendered division of labour at home. Women are now even more likely to shoulder caregiving burdens, leading 71 per cent of women in Canada to report feeling more overworked and anxious during the pandemic due to unpaid care work.

The economy will face an unnecessarily slow recovery if women who have lost their jobs, or have been forced to leave them due to caregiving duties, cannot return to paid work because of the lack of access to safe, affordable, and high-quality care.

We risk undoing decades of work toward women's economic equality without attention to the resources required to enable their employment.

See full op-ed (paywalled) in the Toronto Star: Care services are to key to recovery