The United Nations warned in an April 2020 policy brief that the pandemic “is deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems.” The report notes that the effects of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls “simply by virtue of their sex,” but that women will be the backbone of recovery in communities. “Every policy response that recognizes this will be the more impactful for it.”  

Recognizing the challenges Canadian women face and the disproportionate number of related charities affected by the pandemic, the Canadian Women’s Foundation launched Building Women’s Economic Security in the Pandemic project the same month the report came out. Nearly 90% of women’s service providers surveyed by the foundation said they were concerned about the impact the pandemic would have on their capacity to continue to operate.  

“Women have faced economic insecurity for a really long time and now that’s coming out in a major way,” says Andrea Gunraj, Vice-President of Public Engagement for the Canadian Women’s Foundation. She notes that last March, women lost jobs in record numbers, then men got laid off, but when jobs started coming back, far fewer women returned to work than men.  

One of the key reasons, she says, is lack of childcare, especially because many of the women who were laid off work in low-paying sectors such as retail, hospitality and personal care. “We’re definitely seeing more barriers to involvement in many of the programs we support,” Gunraj adds. In additional to lack of childcare, those include a heightened risk of gender-based violence that keeps women from accessing any services, let alone ones to build economic security.  

This week, Scotiabank committed $200,000 over two years for the foundation and nine organizations whose services are focused on economic development and career advancement for women. The organizations, which stretch from coast to coast, and urban to rural and remote locations, will each receive $10,000 a year. The donation will be an important part of ScotiaRISE, the Bank’s 10-year, $500 million initiative to promote economic resilience among disadvantaged groups. 

One of those organizations is Moncton, NB-based Employment My Way YWCA, which assists women in researching and writing a business plan to turn an idea into a business.  

Lack of childcare has become an issue for clients, says Alicia Mazerolle, Associate Director/Director of Employability & Youth Services at the organization. Most clients used its in-person service, which provided childcare and transportation as well as valuable networking opportunities. With the pandemic, the organization has found it difficult to get women interested in launching businesses and many existing ones are closing down. That challenge is being compounded by having children at home after New Brunswick shut its schools and daycare centres at the onset of the pandemic.  

“The burden of childcare still lies very heavily on women, particularly with shutdowns and lockdowns limiting access to childcare and those services. Then, everyone is impacted by the mental health of isolation and a lot of the women we talked to are having a lot of difficulty supporting their families and moving forward,” Mazerolle says.  

Lack of access to technology also is proving a challenge for some women accessing Employment My Way’s services during the pandemic. The organization had an online module, but it wasn’t the primary way it delivered its service. With the pandemic shutting down New Brunswick, Employment My Way was forced to move entirely to virtual sessions. That highlighted the limited access and lack of digital literacy that comes with being a rural province. “We still have many communities operating under dial-up Internet,” Mazerolle notes.  

“The digital gap is still very big and it’s not necessarily something that’s easy to address, so that’s certainly been a big part of our operations during the pandemic,” she says, noting the YWCA now offers clients support in accessing digital devices, Internet service and basic computer literacy. 

With the onset of the pandemic, the needs have been very diverse and unpredictable, CWF’s Gunraj says. “We've heard some groups put funding toward staffing… Others have used funding for things like PPE and cleaning supplies,” she says. However, she identifies the costs of digitizing services and ensuring women have access as one key new area requiring funding. This is especially true for rural and remote communities across Canada, and especially in the North, where there has always been a technology gap.  

“Now, the technology gap is like life and death for people. We continue to hear about need for greater access in the North to Wi-Fi and the Internet, as well as the tools — things like having more than one laptop in a household so that everybody can do what they have to do for school and work,” Gunraj says. 

The Canadian Women’s Foundation supports women, girls and gender-diverse people to move out of violence and poverty through research, advocacy, knowledge sharing and fundraising for grassroots projects across the country. “With this project, the idea is to make sure these programs last through the pandemic and after the pandemic. It would be awful for us to give money in an emergency and then find out these programs had to close their doors right when people needed most to be able to build up their security,” Gunraj says.  

“Scotiabank recognizes how individuals can thrive when barriers to career advancement are removed,” says Meigan Terry, Senior Vice President, Global Communications and Social Impact at Scotiabank. “Through Scotiabank’s donation, the Canadian Women’s Foundation will assist organizations across Canada to provide disadvantaged women and girls with programming that will help to foster skills development to enable their financial success.”