FROM OUR CHAIR
KEYS TO EMERGING FROM THE COVID-19
“SHE-CESSION”
Over the past 6 months we have seen the dramatic impact COVID-19 has wrought in our personal lives and on the economy. One of the most notable and concerning developments has been the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, resulting in what many commentators have labelled a “she-cession”. During the 2008 financial crisis, 79% of jobs lost belonged to men, as manufacturing and goods sectors suffered the hardest hit. During the pandemic, however, the numbers have been reversed: in March 2020, 62% of the 1.1 million jobs lost belonged to women. According to a report issued by Royal Bank of Canada (“RBC”) in July 2020, during the first two months of the pandemic approximately 1.5 million Canadian women lost their jobs and 45 per cent of women suffered a decline in hours worked. The pandemic has reduced women’s participation in the work force to its lowest level in three decades according to the RBC report. In recognition of this issue, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (“OCC”) together with MBOT, on September 9, 2020, released a policy brief entitled “The She-Covery Project: Confronting the Gendered Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Ontario” containing many valuable recommendations. As stated recently by MBOT’s own President and CEO, David Wojcik:
SUSANNE BALPATAKY 2020 MBOT Chair Speigel Nichols Fox LLP
“Temporary business shutdowns during the state of emergency most severely affected sectors that predominantly employ women. Restrictions on schools and paid child-care facilities have shifted additional hours of unpaid family care onto parents, and this work has largely been taken up by mothers.” According to Statistics Canada, women comprise approximately 50% of Canada’s workforce and Canadian women contribute approximately 40% of household income. Based on data gathered by the Business Development Bank of Canada in 2019, the number of female entrepreneurs has also grown three times faster than the number of male entrepreneurs over the past 40 years. As a result, economic recovery is impossible without women going back to work. COVID-19, however, has laid bare many social inequities: that women are more often employed in marginal jobs; tend to make less money than men do; and represent the vast majority of health care, child care and elder care workers. Service-sector employees and part-time workers are also disproportionately women and therefore have felt the economic effects of COVID-19 most acutely. Recent Statistics Canada data shows that in March, 2020 women between the ages of 25 and 54 lost more than twice as many jobs as men in Ontario. Women have also seen much slower reemployment than men; between April and August, 2020 employment gains in Ontario were 200,200 for men and only 131,700 for women.
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CONNECT | 2020 ISSUE 4