Impacts of the Pandemic on Women: Input to the Premier’s Council on Charities and Civil Society

By Alexa Briggs, CCVO Director, Policy & Research

The Premier’s Council on Charities and Civil Society recently requested that CCVO complete a questionnaire designed “to gather input on the nature of challenges facing women and inform the Council’s advice to government”, particularly “how Alberta’s civil society can help ensure the recovery is inclusive and acknowledges the experiences and challenges women face during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic”. Select organizations were also asked to present to the Council on this issue, CCVO was not one of those organizations.   

While CCVO does not hold expertise specifically on this issue, we have completed the survey to represent what our own research on the impacts of covid has revealed, to highlight for the Council  the great work that many nonprofits are already doing in these areas, and to note that further consultation is encouraged to ensure that the perspective, expertise, and experience of those organizations is captured in the Council’s advice to the Government of Alberta. You can find the full questionnaire and our responses immediately below.   

Challenges and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women 

Question 1
Preliminary evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate impacts on women’s participation in our economy and communities across Alberta. Please rank the following key challenges facing women in order of their importance, with “1” being the most important or impactful.  

____ Family/domestic violence and gender-based violence  

____ Unemployment and under-employment 

____ Over-representation in low-paid work 

____ Lack of career advancement and entrepreneurship opportunities (e.g. access to capital or mentors) 

____ Unpaid domestic labour and caregiving roles (e.g. lack of access to child care or other supports) 

____ Lack of diversity and inclusion considerations in services, supports and opportunities 

Briefly explain your ranking of the key challenges above. 

CCVO: We have chosen not to rank these challenges, as doing so nullifies the importance of intersectionality and the inter-related nature of the impacts of persistent and ongoing gender discrimination. These challenges noted above do not exist in isolation from each other, rather they are related, and we would encourage the Premier’s Council to consider the complex interplay of compounding factors impacting women’s participating in the economy that stem from systemic discrimination. In addition to the considerable existing data and research on the impacts of COVID-19 to women’s participation in the labour force and communities, qualitative methods can be a rich source of data for research on complex challenges like those listed above, in order to gain more context and a better understanding of the inter-related nature of the challenges that women face.  While we believe that asking respondents to rank the factors above diminishes the extent to which experiences of women will be understood, we appreciate that the Council is asking about these challenges in order to provide a path to solutions and believe that deeper exploration, through qualitative or mixed methods, could bring greater clarity to the impact of COVID on women. 

Question 2
Which key challenges are missing from the list (if any)?  

CCVO: Lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare for all families.  

Question 3
How has COVID-19 increased or worsened these challenges for women in Alberta?   

CCVO: An ongoing theme of COVID-19 has been the exacerbation of existing inequities, bringing attention to the inequitable amount of time and energy that women contribute to care work. As COVID-19 became a crisis and then an ongoing state of life for more than a year, women took on the burdens of unpaid care work, which led to women exiting the work force or reducing their hours. Women are also primarily responsible for paid care work, or the ‘care economy’, which is underpaid and undervalued.  

Challenges for diverse women and communities 

Question 4
How do these identified challenges affect women from diverse backgrounds and experiences–including youth, seniors, racialized or marginalized women, Indigenous women, single mothers, immigrant women, women with disabilities, or women experiencing low-income? 

CCVO: CCVO is a nonprofit serving organization that supports nonprofit organizations through sector research, advocacy, and convening. Our expertise does not extend to this issue specifically.  We encourage the Premier’s Council and the GoA to consider an intersectional lens in understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on women. Further, we encourage the Premier’s Council to reach out specifically to nonprofit organizations that work directly with the diverse groups of women listed above as they hold considerable knowledge of the challenges that these women face, and considerable expertise in how to mitigate impacts. Also speaking directly to women that have been impacted by the pandemic will provide lived experience regarding the challenges that women face.  

Question 5
How do these identified challenges affect women from rural and remote communities?  

CCVO: CCVO is a nonprofit serving organization that supports nonprofit organizations through sector research, advocacy, and convening. Our expertise does not extend to this issue specifically. We encourage the Premier’s Council and GoA to consider an intersectional lens in understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on women. Further, we encourage the Premier’s Council to reach out specifically to nonprofit organizations that work directly with women in rural and remote communities as they hold considerable knowledge of the challenges that these women face, and considerable expertise in how to mitigate impacts. Also speaking directly to women that have been impacted by the pandemic will provide lived experience regarding the challenges that women face. 

Gaps and Opportunities 

Question 6
What is civil society doing now in response to these challenges that is working well that we could build on to address and/or prevent these challenges? 

CCVO: In general, nonprofits are working to deliver the infrastructure that supports women and families to address these challenges. Thus, nonprofit professional experts that work specifically in this space and hold knowledge regarding the experience of women should be brought to the table and compensated as experts to inform this enquiry and the work of the Premier's Council. Nonprofits also continue to be part of efforts that advocate for:  

• affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare.  

• pay gap legislation.  

• salary disclosure.  

Question 7 
What gaps exist in civil society’s current efforts to address and/or prevent those challenges?  

CCVO: Nonprofits and civil society are hindered by ongoing and persistent gender discrimination that prevents women from fully participating in the labour force, the economy, and their communities.  

Question 8
Looking forward, what could civil society do differently to address and/or prevent these challenges? 

CCVO: Civil society organizations must show leadership by making salaries transparent, collecting and reporting on disaggregated data, examining where current inequities may be present in their organizations, and implementing robust equity, diversity, and inclusion policies.  

Question 9
How could the Government of Alberta support civil society to address and/or prevent these challenges and ensure an effective and sustainable recovery for women in the following areas (a –d)?  

a) Build capacity and expand coordination and collaboration 

b) Advance research, data collection and data sharing 

c) Improve the sustainability and financial resilience of civil society organizations (e.g. foster charitable giving; advance social enterprises and strengthen social finance ecosystem) 

d) Other Government of Alberta actions or policy change. Please specify.  

CCVO: The GoA should centre community in Alberta’s recovery with a commitment for a $350 million investment into a Community Recovery Fund to address the gap in the Government of Alberta’s Recovery Plan, which does not have a concrete plan for women, racialized people, or the nonprofit sector. Additionally, the GoA recovery plan does not utilize an equitable approach that addresses the gendered division of COVID-19 impacts, and it does not go far enough to consider marginalized groups and communities across Alberta. This impact is significant within the nonprofit sector, which employs many women and people from marginalized groups as well as supports these groups with services and programs. Without an approach to addressing women and marginalized groups in the economic recovery process, Alberta's economic activity is at risk. The provincial government must value the nonprofit sector in its recovery plans, and in its budget, in order to fully realize the potential of the nonprofit sector in community recovery. Preliminary analysis by CCVO shows promising priority areas for investment in four key areas: fostering Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, engaging and retaining youth, supporting mental health, and leading digital transformation. Our organization will be conducting extensive research to understand the impacts of the pandemic on nonprofit organizations and will have data to establish firm priority areas for investment by the winter of 2022.  

Closing 

Question 10
In closing, what is your single most important piece of advice to government to help civil society address or prevent challenges affecting women’s full participation in our economy and communities? 

CCVO: Implement a universal childcare system that provides affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare to all families.