The PDF of the full report can be accessed here.

Introduction: Gender and the impact of COVID-19

As British Columbia gradually emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s with a newfound and sobering understanding of the depth of gendered inequality in our province. And the pandemic has done more than just highlight these inequities; its economic impact has often magnified divisions of wealth, privilege and power.[1]

Here are just a few examples:

As schools and child-care centres closed their doors, and parents stopped working outside the home, the domestic workload has increased dramatically — including everything from homeschooling to preparing additional meals. Yet that burden landed unequally; multiple studies have shown that women have taken up by far the majority of that extra work. That situation is further intensified for single parents.[2]
In many lines of front-line work, women (often racialized women) predominate — often in low-paid positions with less job security, authority and less agency in self-advocating for workplace safety. This is true of long-term care, where the virus has been its most devastating, health care grocery store workers, teachers and early childcare educators.[3]
The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) has been a welcome lifeline for many. But a significant number of women aren’t able to access it, including sex workers and those in the so-called “grey economy.” As well, it looks increasingly likely that as the economy restarts, CERB will be supplanted by EI’s return. And since EI is an income-based program, it reflects and reinforces the gender pay gap, which has been stalled for several years at a point where women have to work an average of 26% more to receive the same pay as men. The impact is even greater with groups such as women of colour and other equity-seeking groups. Indigenous women, for example, face a 35% gap, while for women with disabilities the figure is 46%.[4]

There are many more impacts we know about — and countless more still that we don’t. One more gap exposed by this pandemic is one of knowledge: We don’t have the information and analysis we need to fully understand how the economy affects women and other equity groups in normal times, let alone during a crisis of this size and nature. And that information is badly needed to inform our efforts at ensuring a just, equitable and enduring economic recovery.

In 2008, in the wake a severe global recession, many governments adopted recovery plans that emphasized on large and unconditional bailouts for corporations; they failed to focus on people and failed to recognize existing social and economic inequities. The result was that many who needed help the most were left behind in a “recovery” that mostly benefited the wealthiest.

This time, we need to get it right. An intersectional gender lens can allow us to see both the impact of the pandemic and the most effective, most equitable responses to it with far greater clarity. This submission will explore some of the most important gendered impacts of the pandemic and its economic fallout. And we’ll offer recommendations for making sure the government’s response is truly equitable.

We’ve organized our analysis and recommendations into three major categories:

Safety
Economic security
Leadership

Gendered Impacts of COVID-19

Women's Safety: Effects of COVID-19 on gender-based violence

Experience has confirmed early fears that an extended period of stay-at-home distancing would lead to a rise in gender-based violence. Community organizations report a surge in calls since the shutdown began.

Compounding the issue is the increase in isolation experienced by women, trans and non-binary people, people with disabilities, Indigenous community members on and off reserve, LGBTQ2IS community members, seniors and elders and racialized community members, particularly when a language barrier or precarious immigration status (including the often-tenuous position of temporary foreign workers) is a factor.

Our community partners report that a growing number of women are turning to sex work after being laid off. They, along with those already working in the sector, have had to contend with hotel closures by resorting to isolated, unsanitary and unsafe locations including back alleys and vehicles. Violence is a much greater danger in those circumstances, along with the risks that come with severely unhygienic conditions.

The increase in violence has revealed gaps in our community’s ability to respond. Those gaps are especially critical, for example, when people with disabilities experience intimate-partner violence; first responders, service providers, care providers and law enforcement often lack protocols for wraparound services, to ensure people with disabilities receive the particular support they need in a crisis. As well, many women’s support organizations that had their federal funding cut during the Harper years still haven’t recovered and are finding it difficult to meet the surge in demand and the strain on their resources. This, at a time when increasing funding to women’s shelters is one of the United Nations’ guidelines for addressing gender-based violence during COVID-19.

And for many women, the workplace offers no refuge from violence. Frontline workers in sectors like health care and community and social services are subject to on-the-job violence even in normal times. Acts of violence are the second most prevalent form of injury for workers in long term care in BC; they represent sixteen percent of all injuries, or 2,367 reported cases, from 2014 to 2019. During the stress of this pandemic, the danger posed by workplace violence has escalated.

Women’s Economic Security: Removing barriers to the full and equal participation of women in the economy

The economic damage of the pandemic has hit women especially hard. Since March, unemployment among BC women aged 25 and up has risen from 6.6% to 9.9% — with employment dropping by 84,600.[5]

This threatens to erode gains in recent years in women’s participation in the workforce. This is a particular risk if quality, affordable childcare options are not readily available as economic sectors reopen. And even those services will not help some of the women who need it the most, such as parents without immigration status.

Meanwhile, the pay gap we described in the introduction remains a daunting reality. Its persistence suggests that closing it once and for all will require action on several fronts, from equal pay legislation to removing barriers to forming a union.

It doesn’t help that women, young workers and equity- groups are overrepresented in precarious and gig work. In 2018, women were twice as likely to work part-time as men (26% of employed women compared to 13% of men), and one in four women aged 25 to 54 who work part-time cite childcare as a primary reason — three times the proportion of men who do.[6]

Another harsh reality for women participating in the economy is workplace health and safety. Many women feel unsafe in the workplace, whether from violence, illness or accidental injury. That’s even more true in the COVID-19 era. Of the 15 job classifications with the highest Physical Proximity Index scores — which we can take as a measure of the risk of contracting COVID-19 as our economy re-opens — all but three have higher proportions of women workers than men.[7] For example, women account for more than 90% of nurses, 75% of respiratory therapists and 90% of personal support workers.

Greater workforce participation by women hinges on a safe, healthy workplace, and that includes robust inspection and enforcement of health and safety laws and regulations.

Women in Leadership: Ensuring women have a voice at every table where economic recovery is on the agenda

One of the biggest reasons that past economic “recoveries” have failed women so badly is also one of the simplest: Women have had little voice in shaping them.

As we begin reopening the provincial economy, we are determined that BC will not repeat that mistake. As a disproportionately affected group, women, trans and non-binary people must be key stakeholders. That means holding space for them to have a full voice in any discussion of economic recovery, to ensure the plans that result will reflect their experience and their needs, and to establish the conditions for their success.

Recommendations for a recovery with equity

As in the BCFED’s recent submission Rebuilding Our Economy for All, we have divided our recommendations into four phases of economic recovery. In our case, we consider immediate, short-term, mid-term and long-term action — ranging from the measures needed right now to deal with the needs of women in this crisis, to long-term strategies geared to building a more equitable economy for all of us.