30% Club Malaysia signs Memoranda of Understanding with MICG, CnetG and ASB

30% Club Malaysia has signed Memoranda of Understanding with the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG), CnetG Asia Sdn Bhd (CnetG), and Asia School of Business (ASB).


These partnerships include the promotion of diverse and inclusive leadership as part of corporate governance advocacy with MICG; access to research and leadership development that support the goal of developing more board-ready women with ASB through its MBA and select Executive Education programmes; and collaboration with CnetG, to develop framework that advances diversity on boards and C-suites with PLCs, multinational companies, universities and professional bodies.


“As the world increasingly works in a collaborative manner, we seek to strategically partner with those who will amplify our goal to increase women representation on boards and senior leadership positions. In 2020, five years on, our focus has been on building a more robust ecosystem aimed at this case for change,” said Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar, Co-Founding Chair, 30% Club Malaysia during a virtual signing ceremony, the first of its kind for this business-led campaign.


30% Club Malaysia Widens Eco-System with New Partners

Three New Partners To Join Forces For Sustainable Change in Malaysian Corporates


Kuala Lumpur, 10 December 2020 – Recently, 30% Club Malaysia has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG), CnetG Asia Sdn Bhd (CnetG), and Asia School of Business
(ASB) respectively.


This is a positive step in building an ecosystem of partners, moving together towards a common goal – the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), with a focus on gender balance on Boards and C-Suites, encouraging businesses to work together for change and sustainable progress.


These partnerships will enable 30% Club Malaysia to establish avenues for corporations to gain access to knowledge, insights and best practices in advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda in their organisations.


These would include amongst others the promotion of diverse and inclusive leadership as part of corporate governance advocacy with MICG; access to research and leadership development that support the goal of developing more board-ready women with ASB through its MBA and select Executive Education programmes; and a collaboration with CnetG, to develop framework that advances diversity on boards and C-suites with PLCs, multinational companies, universities and professional bodies.

Professor Charles Fine, President, CEO and Dean of Asia School of Business said, “The partnership between Asia School of Business, in collaboration with MIT Sloan and the Malaysia chapter of the 30% Club is another step in building a holistic and collaborative talent ecosystem in Asia. This relationship allows us to learn and cocreate on key talent development initiatives with the Malaysian and broader regional business community.”


“CnetG Asia is committed to guiding boards and senior management to make effective and inclusive leadership hiring decisions. Our objective is to encourage boards and executive search firms in Malaysia to support principles and best practices in building a diverse and inclusive board and management teams. Executive search firms play a key role in identifying and engaging with a wider pool of talents through their various networks, trust and credibility with executive talents,” said Raj Kumar Paramanathan, Managing Partner, CnetG Asia Sdn Bhd.


He added, “Partnering with 30% Club Malaysia will enhance our efforts to influence and impact by advancing conversations around diversity and inclusion with boards and senior leadership teams.”


Dato’ Yusli bin Mohamed Yusoff, MICG President said, “I am delighted that MICG will be in partnership with the 30% Club Malaysia. MICG looks forward to supporting and empowering more women on their journey towards senior leadership and Board positions. The Institute will support in kind with participation as speakers, contribution of articles and research and opportunities to mentor women as they take on increasing responsibility in their organisations.”


“Since our establishment in 2015, we have been on a journey with key stakeholders to increase the representation of women on the boards of Malaysian public listed companies. Today, we are pleased to welcome Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG), CnetG Asia Sdn Bhd and the Asia School of Business into our ecosystem of partners for sustainable change,” said Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar.


She continued, “As the world increasingly works in a collaborative manner, we seek to strategically partner with those who will amplify our goal to increase women representation on boards and senior leadership positions. In 2020, five years on, our focus has been on building a more robust ecosystem aimed at this case for change.”


The 30% Club Malaysia is part of a global campaign led by Chairs and CEOs taking action to increase gender diversity at board and senior management levels. Statistics at the end of 2019 showed women representation on the top 100 public listed companies (PLC) boards rose to 26.9%. There was also no all-male board in the Top 100 PLCs. The percentage today has dipped slightly to 25.4%, believed to be largely attributed to the change in the composition of the Top 100 companies, with several PLCs now in the Top 100 having no women on board.


The 30% Club hopes this is a temporary setback and will continue its efforts to address the gap. Malaysia remains in the lead position amongst its peers in ASEAN as well as some other Asian markets, such as Japan and Hong Kong.


[END]

For media enquiries, please contact:
Norlida Azmi
Media/PR & Communications
Email: comms.30percentclubmalaysia@gmail.com


Inching closer to 30% women on board

Kuala Lumpur, 18 Nov 2020 – The 30% Club Malaysia observes that more organisations in Malaysia have embraced gender diversity on boards, an integral component of good corporate governance.


According to Co-Founding Chair Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar, statistics at the end of 2019 showed women representation on the top 100 public listed companies (PLC) boards rose to 26.9%, almost double what it was in 2015 when the Malaysian chapter of the 30% Club was established. There was also no all-male board in the Top 100 PLCs.


The percentage today has dipped slightly to 25.4%, believed to be largely attributed to the change in the composition of the Top 100 companies, with several PLCs now in the Top 100 having no women on board. The 30% Club hopes this is a temporary setback and will work towards helping to address the gap.


Nevertheless, according to Tan Sri Zarinah, Malaysia remains in lead position amongst our peers in ASEAN; in fact Malaysia ranks second only to Australia in the Asia Pacific region.


Women representation on the boards of all the 900+ PLCs has also steadily increased to 17.2%, an increase of 6.5% from 2015. Tan Sri Zarinah was speaking at a virtual event to celebrate the successful completion of the fifth cohort of the Club’s Board Mentoring Scheme and the on boarding of the sixth yesterday.


The Board Mentoring Scheme, established in collaboration with PwC Malaysia in 2017, aims to accelerate the appointment of more women to company boards by fast tracking their acquisition of competencies and appreciation of the role and expectations of board members from advice and guidance by senior and highly experienced mentors.


Since the launch of the scheme in 2017, 48 women have gone through the 9-month mentoring program and 27% have been appointed to boards of companies.


“The road to achieving 30% women on board has not been easy. The 30% Club Malaysia through its Board Mentoring Scheme has helped to develop a broader pipeline of board-ready women candidates to be considered for board positions,” said PwC Malaysia Partner and 30% Club Malaysia Steering Committee Member Pauline Ho.


“The Board Mentoring Scheme is part of 30% Club Malaysia’s effort to address the gender imbalance at the top of the corporate structure,” she added.


According to Tian Pouw (TP) Pun, a Board Mentoring Scheme working member of the 30% Club Malaysia, the scheme brings together experienced board directors as mentors and aspiring board-ready women under an umbrella with a focus on professional and personal development.


He added that besides gaining clarity, building courage and confidence, participating in this scheme will lead to enhanced leadership capabilities to succeed in a diverse environment in their current workplace.
[END]


For media enquiries, please contact:
Norlida Azmi
Media/PR & Communications
Email: comms.30percentclubmalaysia@gmail.com

Mujeres ocupan 17% de los puestos en las juntas directivas de emisores colombianos

La presidente de mastercard y cochair del Club del 30% explicó que, aunque el país está en el promedio mundial, todavía falta mucho para tener equidad de género en las compañías.

‘Mujeres en juntas directivas es un negocio que vale la pena’

Mónica Contreras, CEO del Club del 30%, habló del reto que tiene el país para subir la participación de las mujeres en esos espacios de 17% a 30%.

 

https://www.portafolio.co/economia/mujeres-en-juntas-directivas-es-un-negocio-que-vale-la-pena-club-30-por-ciento-546305

Fireside chat with CEO MSWG

The Influence Pillar of 30% Club Malaysia was privileged to have an online fireside chat with Mr Devanesan Evanson on 23 October, where we drew his views as CEO of the Minority Shareholders Watch Group (MSWG) regarding Board-related matters, including diversity and inclusion.


The Influence Pillar was represented by Datuk Zunaidah Idris, Datin Sunita Rajakumar, Ilham Sunhaji (MBA), Nirmala Doraisamy, CGMA, FCMA, CA(M), Karpana Somasundram, and Susan Sha, while Pushpa Nair moderated the session.


On getting Boards to have a minimum of 30% women, Devanesan explained that MSWG will vote against a new male member on an all-male Board. 


Although MSWG’s shareholding is small, this is a matter of principle. MSWG also questions boards at AGMs on their inability to get at least 1 woman on board.


While some countries mandate female representation at Boards, Malaysia has a principle-based Recommendation on gender diversity in the Code of Corporate Governance. In terms of effectiveness, MSWG finds naming and shaming is effective to encourage compliance.


The Influence Pillar thanks Mr Devanesan for sharing his views and agreeing to be our influencer to support and improve D&I in the Investors Community.


Engagement with Tenaga Nasional Berhad

Recently, members of the Activate Pillar of 30% Club Malaysia met with representatives of Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), the national utility company. 


The purpose of the meeting was to share and introduce efforts by 30% Club Malaysia to increase awareness of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion amongst PLCs.


This very engaging interaction strongly echoes the raison d’etre of 30% Club Malaysia which is to build an ecosystem of corporations, advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the country.


Shukreen Ma of Tenaga Nasional Berhad and her team were on hand to meet Marzida Mohd Noor, Raj Kumar Paramanathan, Geetha Kandiah and Frances P. of the 30% Club Malaysia’s Activate Pillar.


Sharing session with Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance

As part of an ongoing initiative, members from the Activate Pillar of the 30% Club Malaysia met with representatives of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG).


During the meeting, Marzida Mohd Noor, Raj Kumar Paramanathan and Wan Mazlina Wan Mustafa introduced various initiatives carried out by the 30% Club Malaysia to increase awareness on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion amongst PLCs.


Moving forward the 30% Club Malaysia and MICG agree to explore joint opportunities to reach a larger audience and focus to enhance Corporate Governance in the boardroom.


At the 30% Club Malaysia, we seek to work alongside organisations and leverage on expertise, readily available resources and experience to build and progress women into leadership positions in corporate Malaysia.


This comes at an opportune time as the 30% Club Malaysia continues to work on building an ecosystem of corporations, advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the country.


Roshni Jayantilal and her team at MICG were on hand to receive members of the 30% Club Activate Pillar.


The two health crises facing Black people in Canada: COVID and Racism

A conversation with Sané Dube on the two health crises facing Black people in Canada: COVID and Racism

By Stephania Varalli

 

By early April, just a few weeks after COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic, the headlines started appearing: Black people were experiencing an increased risk of infection, hospitalization, and death from the virus. 

 

The stats were coming from the US and the UK, because we weren’t collecting race-based COVID data in Canada — despite awareness of the risks for Black communities, community members sounding the alarm, and supporting evidence by way of overlapping COVID and census data. 

 

As Black Lives Matter protests erupted globally at the end of May in response to the killing of George Floyd, accelerating calls from Black community health leaders in Canada to have anti-Black racism declared a health crisis — mainstream discussions were still asking, “Is Canada racist?” 

 

Sané Dube has been advocating for greater visibility and action with respect to the connection between race and health. Currently the Policy and Government Relations Lead, with a focus on Black health, at the Alliance for Healthier Communities, she has worked in community development, health promotion, research, and strategic policy development. 

 

I spoke with Sané about the link between anti-Blackness and the severity of COVID among Black people in Canada, the distinctly Canadian blind spot that serves to halt progress on the issue, and what we could be doing differently to dismantle systemic racism in healthcare. 

 

This interview has been edited for length. 

 

 


Statistics are showing that Black people are more likely to die from COVID — but while the numbers are making the headlines, not everyone is gaining an understanding of why this is happening. Can we start there? 

 

Health is about a lot more than being able to walk into a doctor’s office or being able to walk into a healthcare facility. Health is really influenced by a range of factors and the environments we live in. Social determinants of health can be understood as the conditions that you live, work, and play in — it’s really a combination of the social and economic factors that impact your health.

 

Housing, for example, impacts health in very significant ways in terms of stability. We know that people who are unhoused or are experiencing homelessness tend to have worse health outcomes than people who have stability and don’t have to worry about housing. These social determinants of health are really looking at health with a much broader view than just through the ability to see a doctor, nurse or healthcare provider. They’re looking at the everyday things in someone’s life that can either help their health or lead to deterioration of their health.

 

 

Early on in the pandemic, when first called upon to collect race-based data with respect to COVID, Dr. David Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, responded that statistics based on race aren’t collected in Canada unless certain groups are found to have risk factors — which seems to completely ignore the existence of social determinants of health. 

 

That moment was really shocking. At the same time that Ontario was saying we won’t collect the data, we were seeing really striking statistics coming out of the United States and also the United Kingdom. We now know that in the US, Black people are five times more likely to be hospitalized and more than twice as likely to face fatal outcomes from COVID, compared to white Americans. 

 

We know that in Ontario it’s the same story. At the time when Dr.Williams made this comment, we were already seeing the impact of COVID on some communities. It was really disappointing to hear.

 

There was a lot of rallying, there was a lot of mobilization — I think people were pushing back against this thing that often happens in Canada, where we try and make invisible the way that systemic racism and structural inequality impact the most marginalized and vulnerable in our communities. We often get, ‘We’re not the same as the US,’ which invisibilizes the harm that Black, racialized and Indigenous people experience in this country. 

 

 


The efforts made by advocacy groups eventually led to 
the Ontario government changing course on the collection of race-based data for COVID, which is certainly a win. But to put that in perspective — this can’t be the first time this conversation was happening, right? 

 

You’re right. This is not new. People have been calling for this for literally decades. I was looking at something today — someone showed me a committee that had been put together in 1998, asking for the collection of this data. I think that this happened to be a window of opportunity because of the devastation that we have seen with COVID.

 

Data is collected in Ontario for other sectors. Education collects data by race. Justice also does. And there was a discussion, around 2017, to collect the data for health, but at the time the ministry said that there are lots of privacy concerns. I don’t think in calling for more data collection now, people are saying we should not be mindful of privacy. It’s also important to say that the collection of the data is not the end goal — but having the data means we have better tools to dismantle what causes harm.

 

“This call was partly pushback saying, no, things are really awful, and this is not an issue just in the US. Even in Canada, Black people are dying, Indigenous people are dying, because of what happens with policing, because there isn’t a recognition of the ways that racism leads to death, or racism leads to us getting less services than other people, or getting care that just isn’t good enough. “

 

You were a signatory on thejoint statement calling for anti-Black racism to be declared a public health crisis. Can you share what led to its release on June 1, and what were the main goals of this joint effort?

 

You’ll remember that in the same week in the US, we had just seen the killing of George Floyd and Tony McDade, and we were talking about the killing of Breonna Taylor. Then in Canada, that same week, we had seen Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an Afro-Indigenous woman, fall to her death in police presence. There have been two other deaths in Ontario under similar circumstances. In New Brunswick, we had just seen Rodney Levi, an Indigenous man, killed by an RCMP officer, and Chantel Moore, who was also Indigenous, killed by police who were called in to respond to a mental health and wellness check.

 

All these things were happening in Canada, and our Premier was asked about systemic racism, and his response at that time was that ‘we’re not as bad as the US’ — the premier did later reverse this, but in that moment it had the effect of minimizing the violence Black and Indigenous communities were facing.  

 

This call was partly pushback saying, no, things are really awful, and this is not an issue just in the US. Even in Canada, Black people are dying, Indigenous people are dying, because of what happens with policing, because there isn’t a recognition of the ways that racism leads to death, or racism leads to us getting less services than other people, or getting care that just isn’t good enough. Racism leads to our communities being underfunded, so that in the social sector, the health sector, our communities receive less. That ends up influencing our health.

 

With the declaration of anti-Black racism as a public health crisis, we were calling for it to be seen that racism was impacting people’s lives. It was a push to make things visible, and to then have the system be accountable for the ways that people are harmed. Declaring something a public health crisis shows urgency, that this is a critical issue that demands a response. It ensures health resources are designated, and there’s planning for the appropriate resources to be put in place, as well as accountability, infrastructure, and mechanisms for the system. 

 

 


A lot of the mainstream media stories have focused on the mortality rate of COVID being higher for Black people. What’s not making the headlines that should be, with respect to Black communities and health? What about mental health? 

 

When that question comes up, my first thought is always, how do you talk about this in a way that doesn’t pathologize Black people? Anti-Black racism, anti-Indigeneity has done so much harm and continues to do so much harm. White supremacy does so much harm to our people, and yet we often talk about mental health in a way that somehow again places the harms of these huge, unrelenting systems at the feet of Black people, without holding the system accountable for the distress that it causes to our people. What I would really like us to ask is, ‘What does this system do to Black people and in what way is it not accountable?’ 

 

I’ll give the example of healthcare workers who are dying in Ontario. Most have been personal support workers, many of them Black and racialized. It’s caused tremendous distress to their families, especially the circumstances under which they have died. I think that even the system has not held itself accountable for the way that it’s contributed to those deaths.

 

Earlier on in the pandemic, Chief Medical Officer of Health, David Williams, was asked about personal protective equipment for personal support workers. He initially did not name them as essential workers, or prioritize access to equipment for them. Then personal support workers started dying, and there’s no apology for the way that they have been treated, there is no acknowledgement of the way that the system has failed them. Instead, when you read about their death, it’s almost framed like they are responsible for what systemic and structural issues have done to them.

 

 

Is there a way we can tell these stories differently, so that they are contributing to positive change?

 

We need to be able to tell these stories in a way that also holds the system and these structures accountable for the harm that they do to people.

 

With Regis Korchinski-Paquet, for example, I think we have to ask, as a 29-year-old young woman, what other support had she received to that point? Had she been able to find care that was culturally appropriate and that understood her very specific cultural issues that she was bringing? If she hadn’t, then why isn’t there more of an effort, even as we discuss her case, to talk about funding for mental health programs that are designed by and for marginalized communities, so that people can get the care that they need?

Even with Chantel Moore, I think that there just hasn’t been as much useful conversation talking about the way that policing continues to be part of the colonial project in Canada. It again goes back to that accountability. So much of the media coverage in Canada has been focused on the question, is there systemic racism? — which is just a distraction, and it takes away from what people are going through. 

 

And while we’re wasting time asking if there’s systemic racism, people’s lives are still being negatively impacted. People are still not getting the care that they need in Toronto’s  North West to deal with a deadly pandemic. While we’re asking, ‘Is there systemic racism in prisons?’, people who are Black and Indigenous — who are also overrepresented in prison populations — are not getting all the supplies that they need to deal with COVID, even though they are at some of the highest risk because of the condition that people in prisons live under.

 

 


Has the conversation around racism and health evolved at all, as a result of the pandemic?

 

I think that we are having conversations right now in 2020 under COVID that we weren’t having in 2018, which is great. But it would be naive not to look at the ways that already white supremacy is mutating and working to keep the status quo in place. I think there’s a lot of words that are being put out, but I don’t know that most of them are turning into actual work.

 

 

You have written about how anti-Blackness is a health crisis that deserves more than lip-service. Is there anything that gives you hope for change in what’s happening now? 

 

This is a question that we also see a lot in Canadian media. I think that hope is a critical part of resistance; hope is a critical part of being able to remake a world where we can live better. I think that often what happens when people are asked to be hopeful, is minimization of the very real pain that people are in and the difficulty of this moment. So I don’t usually answer that question, ‘what gives you hope?’ But what I do say is that I recognize hope is a critical part of resistance.

 

 

Throughout the pandemic we’ve heard the phrase “We’re all in this together” — but are we? Looking closer, the impact of COVID-19 is not equal for all. The 30% Club Canada and Women of Influence are partnering on Unmasked — a series that amplifies the voices of community leaders, sharing unique challenges and thoughts on how we can build a better, more inclusive future.

COVID’s greater impact on women and how we can rebuild equitably

A conversation with Sarah Kaplan on COVID’s greater impact on women and how we can rebuild equitably

 

 

At this point in the pandemic, we should no longer be asking if COVID is affecting women to a greater degree than men.  

 

The evidence shows it is, and in many ways; a primer on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 released in April by the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) pointed to higher participation in risky front-line work, greater susceptibility to economic uncertainty, increased domestic and caregiving responsibilities, increased vulnerability to domestic violence, and barriers to sexual and reproductive healthcare — with Indigenousracialized, low-income, LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable groups worse affected.

 

Even as social distancing rules are relaxing, the situation has not improved. The latest statistics show women suffered a greater loss of jobs and are experiencing a slower recovery, have higher reported mental health issues, and a higher COVID mortality rate in Canada — and relatively speaking, this is still just the immediate impact. We don’t have a clear view of the long-term effects of the pandemic for women. 

 

I spoke with Sarah Kaplan, Founder and Director of GATE, to get her take on why it’s important to look at COVID with an intersectional gendered lens, where we are headed with respect to gender equality, and what we can be doing to build a more inclusive future. 

 

The interview has been edited for length. 

 

 

From the very beginning, you’ve been looking at the pandemic with an intersectional gender lens. Why is this so important? 

 

When we first put out our primer on the gendered impacts of COVID, I had a colleague reach out to me irate that at a time when people were getting sick and dying, and the economy is in the tank, that I would dare be talking about gender issues — as if gender were something on the side, a nice-to-have, but it has nothing to do with the core economic or health impacts. 

 

And of course, when you actually do look with a gender lens, you see how much it does have to do with gender, and you see the very unequal economic and health impacts. Gender, or women’s issues, or issues of masculinity, are not just something you focus on when times are stable — this moment of crisis is when we should be spending the most time looking at these kinds of issues. 

 

 

Some people might argue we should take a ‘neutral’ approach to these issues, rather than a gendered approach. Is that even possible? What do you think could be the impact of that kind of thinking? 

 

There is evidence from previous economic downturns and previous corporate layoffs that often diversity suffers, because if you approach it with rules like ‘we’ll furlough all the part-time workers’ or ‘we’ll furlough the people with the lowest evaluations’ or ‘we’ll furlough the people who are most recently hired’ — all of those are gendered. Women are more likely to be part-time, we know that performance evaluations are often gender-biased, and because companies have historically been bad at diversity, women are less likely to have seniority. 

 

These supposedly gender-neutral rules have really gendered outcomes. We need to have an explicit diversity lens on these decisions, or you’re going to kill off whatever diversity we’ve been fighting to get in the last decade or so, including in corporate Canada. 

 

 

That’s a very bleak thought — but not unsurprising, considering how many ways women are being affected from an economic standpoint. Are there any repercussions that you are particularly concerned about? What’s the worst case scenario here? 

 

I think we could end up quite far back. Take a situation like yours, with young kids at home — if there has historically been a gender division of labor in the household, then it’s much more likely that the woman is going to drop out of the labour force, because it’s too hard for her to manage small children and perform in her job. 

 

Among heterosexual couples, we know that we don’t have equal sharing of responsibilities in Canadian households — there is an incredibly gendered division of labour. The likelihood that we are going to see a whole generation of women with pre-teen children dropping out of the workforce is extremely high. It’s just not manageable. And until we get a vaccine, I think we’re going to see a whole slew of people leaving the workforce, and that will undo a lot of the progress. 

 

 

 

 

“We’ve known for 30 years that childcare is the secret to women’s advancement in their jobs, and now we’re talking about how the secret to economic recovery is going to be childcare — it gives me some hope that we might actually get a universal child care solution.”

 

 

What about the argument that men are now seeing how much work is involved in care responsibilities?

 

Yes, on the positive side, and again talking about heterosexual couples, there are situations where the male partner is seeing exactly how much care work is required at home, and actually participating more and becoming more committed to getting corporate policies adjusted to adapt. 

 

This may be a wake up call for many male leaders about what exactly has been happening behind the curtains. Some people predict that maybe we’ll get a wave of more equal households going forward, but I’m not sure about that. I think it remains to be seen exactly what social changes are going to be wrought from this. 

 

I think one thing is true: we are never going to go back to everyone always working in their offices, now that people are set up to work from home. The future of work is going to change because of this, or accelerate at least, and I don’t think we have a good way to predict which way it’s going to pull — whether it’s going towards more gender equality because men have gotten more involved in care work, or it’s going to uphold inequality because women will have to give up their work in order to deal with the additional care work. 

 

 

 

In the face of losing ground in the push for gender equality, what gives you the most hope? 

 

A few things give me hope, including this broader conversation about care work. We’ve known for 30 years that childcare is the secret to women’s advancement in their jobs, and now we’re talking about how the secret to economic recovery is going to be childcare — it gives me some hope that we might actually get a universal child care solution. That would be great. 

 

The second thing that gives me hope is that we all got thrown into a period of experimentation. We had been talking for years and years at the Rotman School about doing some online education, and there was resistance to that change — and then from March 13 to March 16, the entire in-person experience got transferred to online. We’re seeing similar things in all sorts of companies; between experiments with collaborative work, and different tools, we may come up with a better way of working. 

 

We’re also able to include so many more people at work than we were ever able to include before. For example, people in smaller communities can now get a remote job at a big corporate in Toronto, get the advantage of that salary, and the advantage of staying in their communities. And many of the things that we have ended up doing because of the pandemic have been things that people with disabilities have been asking for for years. We can still do a better job of including people with disabilities — virtual meetings can be harder for people who have a vision impairment, or people who have a hearing impairment if they can’t read people’s lips — so it’s not perfect, but I see all kinds of experimentation leading us to think about ways of work that could actually be much more inclusive, and that gives me hope.  

 

 

These are all examples of positive side effects of the pandemic, which are great, but what do you think we could be doing to intentionally rebuild in an equitable way

 

GATE has actually partnered with the YWCA to develop a feminist recovery plan — because we definitely need to be intentional about what is included. From a more narrow focus, corporate recovery plan, to a broader focus, like where governments should invest in infrastructure. These kinds of big projects have major feminist dimensions to them. 

 

As an example, investing in caregiving pays huge dividends — it basically pays for itself in a very short period of time — but it seems really expensive and so people don’t want to do it because it’s just caregiving, it’s not a highway. Investing in social infrastructure as opposed to physical infrastructure is a way of reconceptualizing the major government spending that will happen to help recover the economy.  

 

It would be very different from how countries typically spend to recover the economy, and without some more very serious conversations, it’s unclear we’re going to get the feminist solution that we need.

 

 

Throughout the pandemic we’ve heard the phrase “We’re all in this together” — but are we? Looking closer, the impact of COVID-19 is not equal for all. The 30% Club Canada and Women of Influence are partnering on Unmasked — a series that amplifies the voices of community leaders, sharing unique challenges and thoughts on how we can build a better, more inclusive future.