No Women, Peace and Security Without Addressing Gendered Risk Eroded by COVID-19: Perspectives from Canada
Currently, Canada is developing its 3rd National Action Plan (CNAP) on Women, Peace, and Security. CNAP focuses both internally and externally. In this blog, I write about WPS issues that women and girls and LGBTQ+ people face every day in Canada in the COVID-19 era and urge 3rd CNAP to consider these issues seriously.
Time to read: 9 min
Globally, countries are considering United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda as a tool for advancing gender equality and empowering women. In October 2020, UNSCR 1325 celebrated its 20th anniversary. UNSCR 1325 is the first resolution that focuses on the gendered impacts of armed conflicts and aims to promote women’s equal rights and build peaceful societies. Non-conflict-affected countries such as Canada, the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, and Australia, among others, also utilize WPS principles to promote gender equality both domestically and internationally. National Action Plans (NAPs) on WPS promotion support objectives in 1325 and advance the WPS agenda. Since the launch of 1325, countries have been making progress in empowering women and enhancing women’s rights.
WPS, COVID-19, and Everyday Gendered Risk in Canada
All countries, communities, families, and societies have experienced and are continuing to experience COVID-19 impacts (public health, economic, social, political) but not to the same extent. Marginalized, racialized, and vulnerable communities, and groups, especially women, girls, and LGBTQ+ identified people, are disproportionately affected. Most worrying is COVID-19 erodes WPS gains pushing gender equality further behind and overturning decades of feminists’ hard work. This happened in Canada, where at the start of weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, women aged 25-54 were twice as likely as similarly aged men to be working precarious and part-time jobs and led within two months of the pandemic to 1.5 million women losing their jobs, given their positioning in more precarious labor. This was Canadian women’s lowest rate of participation in the workforce since the 1990s. This is just the tip of the iceberg of gendered labor market precarity. Racialized immigrant women and girls in Canada are overrepresented in “5 Cs” jobs (caring, cleaning, clerical, catering, and cashiering). These jobs are often underpaid and non-unionized and cannot be performed remotely. Statistics Canada in July 2020 reported that South Asia women faced the highest unemployment rate among other groups of women at 20.4 %. Worldwide, many women lost jobs in the pandemic, and it's uncertain whether women will resume those jobs or find new employment, particularly as a global recession loom.
Further, COVID-19 has led to an uptick in gender-based violence. Systemic inequalities including racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, ageism, and ableism, cause GBV. GBV disproportionately impacts racialized and marginalized women and girls and LGBTQ+ identified people. In Canada, Indigenous women are three times more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women, and women with disabilities are twice as likely as women without disabilities to GBV. The federal government talks with frontline groups found an increase of 20 to 30 % in rates of gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence. Similarly, the Vancouver-based Battered Women’s Support Services experienced a 300% increase in crisis calls compared to the pre-pandemic period. The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, with more than seventy shelters across Ontario, says a 20 percent rise in crisis calls. Online gender-based violence, including cyberbullying, also surged during the pandemic.
According to Statistics Canada 2022, 10 percent of women in Canada live on low incomes. Indigenous women, racialized women, and women with disabilities are more likely to face higher poverty rates, which is exacerbated by COVID-19. For example, remote locations, inadequate housing facilities, and lack of access to supplies contributed to the spreading of COVID-19, increasing gender-based violence, and poor health conditions—these problems only trigger poverty.
The rise of the household and community care work burden is another major concern worsened by COVID-19. ILO reports that women perform unpaid work three times more than men, which is 76.2 % of total hours. Prior to the pandemic, women, and girls spend approximately 12.5 billion hours on unpaid care every day, the pandemic increased the care work burden on women's shoulders.
In Canada, women are overrepresented in the care economy, and racialized and marginalized women make up the highest number, especially in professions such as personal support workers, long-term caregivers, and home care workers. COVID-19 exacerbates care needs in health care centers and households. These care workers are underpaid and struggle to meet their everyday needs, such as paying for housing, rent, childcare, health insurance, education, etc., and juggling to do multiple jobs (double and triple shifts). Although the COVID-19 crisis has made visible the value of "essential" care work in hospitals, unpaid care work done mainly by women within the household is systematically undervalued. WPS aims cannot be achieved until these issues are properly addressed.
Reconsidering the WPS agenda regarding COVID-19 effects is necessary to effectively address the complicated and interconnected challenges that women and girls and LGBTQ+ identified people face every day in Canada.
I propose the following to consider in Canada’s 3rd NAP on WPS:
1. Feminist analysis: With the vaccine rollout, Canada has lifted most of the COVID-19-related restrictions. However, the pandemic’s impacts have been deep and dense. We are experiencing the pandemic’s impacts every day with—rising food prices, fuel and rent prices, growing homelessness, increasing poverty, inequalities, violence, mental illness, and job precarity. These over impact racialized and marginalized women and girls and LGBTQ+ identified people. Current discussions center around economic responses and less on feminist inquiries and feminist responses. There is no full recovery until women’s economic recovery. Incorporating feminist analysis will help build better and inclusive economic recovery plans and address feminist challenges eroded by COVID-19.
2. Preventing violence against women and girls should be the highest priority in Canada’s 3rd NAP: In Canada, Indigenous women face a high rate of violence impacted by multiple forms of marginalization. Similarly, racialized and marginalized women (Women of Color, Black women, Muslim women, immigrant women, and refugee women) also face systemic discrimination and racialized misogyny, all of which put their lives at high risk. For example, Assaulted Women’s Helpline of Ontario informs 400% surge in emergency calls in April 2020. A recently published report warns that racialized women are at more risk of GBV amidst COVID-19. A solid action plan with long-term funding is urgent to prevent GBV now.
3. Utilizing an intersectional lens in WPS NAP planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluation: Intersectionality allows us to understand multiple and overlapping forms of identities, including drawing attention to privilege, power, and oppression that shape and reshape our everyday experiences. Even after 20+ years of UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda, Indigenous women, Black women, and Racialized women continue to face violence, poverty, inequality, and multiple forms of crisis and COVID-19 aggravates it. Intersectionality cannot be used as tick boxing. Women and girls and LGBTQ+ issues are contextual and diverse and require an intersectional lens to develop a practical policy and bring systemic change that benefits all women, not only a few.
5. Addressing women and girls' care work burden: Women in Canada spent an average of 50.1 hours per week on childcare, more than double the average time (24.4 hours) spent by men. COVID-19 puts more care work burden on women. Women being primary caregivers at home, making time for education, skills development, or entering politics or taking-up public roles becomes challenging for them. This prevents women’s advancement and erodes WPS objectives. Canada’s 3rd NAP must rethink how to address women’s care work burden to enhance women’s and girls' rights.
6. Feminist financing: Historically, organizations run by Indigenous and racialized women and girls and LGBTQ+ people are marginalized from access to funding. With the COVID-19 and funding cuts, such organizations might face severe challenging in getting financing. Engaging diverse women and girls and LGBTQ+ people in WPS NAP financing through feminist financing approaches are effective and key to achieving the WPS agenda. Feminist financing helps (re) shape the feminist vision, build feminist work and feminist movements stronger and establish gender equality.