The Covid-19 crisis catapulted women health and care workers to a new visibility. During the first general lockdown in March 2020, women workers were serenaded from European balconies for providing ‘essential’ economic services. In the health arena in particular, the gender imbalance has become acutely visible — globally, women account for about 70 per cent of doctors, nurses and care workers.
The euphoria of seeing women centre-stage soon however crashed with reality. The contradiction between serenading ‘essential’ women workers and subsequent silencing of their inclusion is particularly evident in the focus of the European Union’s recovery package, ‘Next Generation EU’. A gender impact assessment stresses that the economic stimuli envisaged are geared mainly to industries with high male employment — such as the digital, energy, agriculture, construction and transport sectors — while neglecting those with a high female ratio: care and health, education and social work, culture and recreation. Women make up 93 per cent of childcare workers and teachers’ assistants, 86 per cent of personal care workers and health-service employees, and 95 per cent of domestic cleaners and helpers in the EU.
The battle to include gender objectives and targets in the Covid-19 recovery plans and task forces is not restricted to the EU. Judging from the many webinars organised since the outbreak by global, national and regional organisations, think-tanks and academic institutions, the silencing of the gender gaps in care, wages and position is a global phenomenon. It has been labelled a re-traditionalisation of women, setting them back in their career goals and their subsequent pension entitlements.
Reducing women to care
Yet, while this feminist engagement on behalf of the care economy is laudable, the focus on the social consequences of the pandemic is blind in its neglect of how macroeconomics fundamentally influences the productive capacity of the economy. Much of the narrative of feminist economists and sociologists is located at the micro-level of the care economy — centring on how the decline of public goods has been associated with the shifting of the burden to female household members, contributing more unpaid labour or poorly-paid care work in public and private facilities.
Gender relationships have an impact on the economy, and economic processes at the same time shape gender relations through feedback loops.
Framing the issue of care as women’s work however reduces women to the care sector and makes it difficult to change the wider discourse. Presenting panels mainly of women for female audiences unwittingly consolidates the impression that care remains women’s work.
On a broader canvas, attending only to the micro-level fails to link the everyday gender challenges of the care economy to the changing landscape of global macroeconomics. Yet this is essential to understand how the shift to a finance-dominated capitalism has created greater wealth inequalities, which tend to affect women more than men. Gender is not only a micro-level variable but an endogenous macroeconomic variable, with an impact on aggregate demand and economic stability.
The macro-level of the economy has both demand and supply components. High female participation rates mean women are integrated into the economy, have access to bank credits to purchase goods and services and thus contribute to economic growth. In contrast, gender inequality may contribute to a lack of demand for credit by women, leading to aggregate low saving rates, low investment rates and also lower aggregate demand. Similarly, if people do not have the required level of education or skills, companies may find that they are short of the human resources needed to manufacture the material and immaterial goods and services to attain desired outcomes. Gender relationships thus have an impact on the economy, and economic processes at the same time shape gender relations through feedback loops.
Men as the norm
That traditional macroeconomists neglect the care sector is nothing new. It starts with their prerogative to select data for statistical accounting, such as gross national product, in which the contribution of care work and household production is ignored or at best undervalued. If selection of data is unthinkingly based on the experience of men, as the norm or default, gender-blind outcomes are the consequence. Such inadequate metrics have led to wrong policies and widened the gender gap.
Feminist research needs to deconstruct the ‘black box’ of global finance. This is essential to understand the transformation from ‘boring banking’ to a largely-privatised, finance-dominated capitalism which not only resulted in the financial crash of 2007 but also widened the wealth gap between and among nations, affecting different classes of women and men and ethnic minorities in dissimilar ways.
Since the financial turmoil, central banks have adopted unconventional monetary policy, intervening with large infusions of liquidity to ensure economic growth and financial stability. One of the ‘bazookas’ — itself a tellingly male metaphor — in their toolbox is ‘quantitative easing’. QE is used when the interest rate is close to zero and the normal instruments of monetary policy are no longer effective. Buying government and commercial bonds on the secondary markets adds new money to the economy, providing banks with sufficient liquidity to lend to actors in the real economy.
These impacts of QE should be of concern not only to central banks but also to feminists.
An unintended side-effect of QE is a rise in asset prices, which have skyrocketed, and this may have contributed to higher wealth inequality. Given the uneven distribution of assets within and between private households and with higher-income households accumulating a disproportionate share of total assets, unconventional monetary policy also has distributional effects. If we assume that the rich own more assets than the poor, unconventional monetary policy benefits the wealthiest quintile, containing on average more men, at the expense of the poorer strata of society, with on average more women.
These impacts of QE should be of concern not only to central banks but also to feminists, since money is one of the most important transmission channels between monetary policy and household wealth.
Holistic and systemic
To resolve the shortcomings in traditional macroeconomics and feminist studies, academics with a more holistic and systemic view of the global economy — such as Mariana Mazzucato, Maja Göpel, Kate Raworth and Ann Pettifor — suggest analysing the care economy in the larger context of financialisation and the monopolistic extraction of value at the expense of value creation in the real economy.
A feminist lens needs to be applied to the transmission channels which have a structural effect on the balance sheets of financial intermediaries and on the company and private household sector, via changes in the supply of and demand for credit finance and asset acquisition. At the same time, it is important to analyse other transmission channels of unconventional monetary policy, which may decrease the unemployment rate, thus increasing the labour income of the poorer social segments, or (taking into account low interest rates) make home-buying more affordable.
Feminists need to design a concrete but ambitious strategy for social and economic wellbeing and suggest how the large disparities which have emerged in the course of unconventional monetary policy can be reduced. Such a mission-oriented strategy could be linked to the Sustainable Development Goals and the ideal of a social-economy Europe, to bring real change via the post-pandemic recovery — rather than accepting a symbolic narrative of ‘genderwashing’.
This article was originally published on Social Europe.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
