‘We can’t have a full recovery if women aren’t included’: New report looks at pandemic’s impact on women in Hamilton

A study focusing on the impact of the pandemic on women living in Hamilton has found that COVID-19 exacerbated" inequities and challenges that women already faced in the community.

The 120-page report, titled Women Out of Work, was released Wednesday morning during a virtual launch event held by the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce.

Marie Nash, chief operating officer of the chamber, said the goal of the study was to tell the story of the pandemic's impact on women through a Hamilton-focused lens in hopes of offering tangible solutions to mend the damage being done."

The analysis isn't the first in the city to focus on the fallout of COVID-19. Last August, the city's Social Planning and Research Council (SPRC) put out a report that showed women, younger workers and part-timers in Hamilton bore the brunt of last year's job market collapse.

We were seeing decades worth of progress really falling apart because of the way women had been disproportionately impacted," Nash told The Spectator. And if we didn't truly understand how they were being impacted, we didn't think we could recommend how to best correct it in the future."

The latest study, which began last September, was led by the chamber in partnership with the YWCA Hamilton, Workforce Planning Hamilton, and Goodwill, The Amity Group. The project was funded in part by the both the provincial and federal government.

Katie Stiel, project co-ordinator and co-author of the report, said the voices of women in Hamilton came in loud and clear" through their digital survey, which garnered nearly 1,600 responses.

Some of the key findings include:

• More than 50 per cent of racialized respondents and respondents with disabilities experienced negative job impacts due to the pandemic;

• Racialized respondents were twice as likely as white respondents to indicate they were struggling financially in January 2021;

• Nearly 90 per cent of respondents working in the hospitality sector experienced negative job impacts;

• More than 25 per cent of self-employed respondents indicated their business was unlikely to survive the next year;

• Nearly 70 per cent of respondents felt overwhelmed trying to balance work and caregiving responsibilities;

• More than 70 per cent of respondents were worried about long-term impacts of the pandemic on their mental health.

Stiel said many of the challenges women faced already existed, but were exacerbated and pushed to the forefront" amid the pandemic.

It really inhibited women from continuing to progress in the workforce," said Stiel. The barriers to entry and the barriers to remain in the workforce became for some impossible and for others a large challenge in the aspect of their careers."

As a result of the study, Nash said the group has made a number of policy recommendations aimed at ensuring women in Hamilton can make up for lost ground."

Those recommendations include:

• Development of a centralized women community resources network that is multilingual, accessible and collaborative;

• Increased investment in child care that is both accessible and affordable;

• Establishment of targeted programming in high schools that connects young women with mentorship opportunities in male-dominated sectors of the economy;

• Increased targeted support for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and women-owned businesses in the forms of financial assistance and training;

• Creation of inclusive human resources strategies that include anti-harassment, anti-racism, mental health, sick leave and equity, diversity and inclusion policies.

The policies proposed aren't new," Stiel noted, as many of them overlap with ideas already pitched to the city earlier this year by a group of community organizations leading the call for a Just Recovery from the pandemic.

But with the Hamilton-specific research, Stiel said the chamber is able to back up" and bolster the stories and experiences decision-makers have heard throughout the pandemic.

We can't ignore these women in giving them the tools they need to participate in Hamilton's workforce," said Stiel. We can't have a full recovery if women aren't included in it."

Fallon Hewitt is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach her via email: fhewitt@thespec.com