Monday March 8th is International Women’s Day.

This year’s Canada’s theme is #FeministRecovery.

From Status of Women Canada’s website:

It has identified fundamental gaps in our society and disproportionately impacted those who were already marginalized, vulnerable or struggling. On every front, the COVID-19 pandemic has eroded hard-fought gains to gender equality. From layoffs to lack of child care to increased unpaid work to the rise of domestic violence, women have been most deeply impacted by the health and economic crisis.

Just Recovery Hamilton is a coalition of organizations working to ensure that we don’t return to a pre-covid ‘back to normal’, but forward to better instead.

JRH’s policy paper looks at justice from many different lenses including:

• disability

• housing at a human right

• inclusive city design

• systemic racism

• labour

• gender

• supporting 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities

• and more

JRH’s Investing in Women theme calls on their municipal government to have both an urgent covid response, a continual response, as well as a responses centering labour, child care, addressing violence, and access to menstrual products that recognize how covid has impacted women more intensely.

The impact of COVID-19 has been massively gendered. Women, specifically women of colour, make up the majority of frontline essential workers in occupations known as the 5Cs: caring, cashiering, catering, cleaning and clerical functions. These women are putting their bodies at risk to maintain the health and safety of our communities working in roles including personal support workers, grocery store workers, nurses, midwives, and long-term care workers. Women constitute 90% of Canadian nurses, 75% of respiratory therapists, and 90% of personal support workers in long-term care and nursing homes (Statistics Canada, 2020). Women were also overrepresented in the figures of who were furloughed or laid off during the earliest months of the pandemic; women represented 70% of all job losses in Canada and, unlike men, were unable to access employment as readily following the first wave of the pandemic.

YWCA Canada has created a feminist covid response that includes:

• Paid sick leave for all workers

• Funding emergency child care for essential workers

• Creating an emergency fund for charities and non-profits

Choose to Challenge and Choose to Celebrate

We are encouraging folks to share what they are challenging and what they are celebrating this year on International Women’s Day.

Take a pic with your message and tag DWS!

Need help getting the ball rolling with your message? We've got some ideas:

I choose to challenge:

• sexist beliefs

• the gender pay gap

• sisters stolen from our lands and communities

• that there are ‘girls’ toys and ‘boys’ toys

• myself to rest when I need it

I choose to celebrate:

• my healing

• ancestors who have fought for justice

• my circle of support

• all the amazing women that exist - intersex women, trans women, cis women, and more!