Canada’s social impact sector needs a professional childcare system

As COVID-19 forced parents across Canada to reconsider their childcare plans at lightning speed, YWCA CEO Maya Roy started hearing from her organization’s own childcare workers. They, too, were quitting their jobs.

Economist Armine Yalnizyan coined the term “she-cession” to describe the disproportionate number of women who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those who quit their jobs to care for their children or other family members. Roy was watching this phenomenon play out in real time with childcare providers at one of Canada’s oldest feminist organizations. “It was bananas,” she says.

This dynamic is playing out everywhere in the Canadian economy right now, but it becomes especially frightening for social impact organizations. Roughly three-quarters of sector employees are women at a time when they represent the majority of pandemic-related job losses. In March, 70 percent of laid-off workers were female. Compared to their private sector or civil service counterparts, female non-profit workers also earn smaller salaries with fewer benefits. And at a time when schools are closed or severely restricted, female non-profit workers are often struggling to do their jobs and care for their children at the same time. 

The childcare sector, both private and not-for-profit, also needs to support female workers.

Unaffordable childcare is one of the main reasons female participation in Canada’s workforce has declined to levels not seen since the 1980s. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to severely restrict or shut down women-dominated sectors — especially hospitality and social services — but the inability to afford basic childcare is a major factor behind the “she-cession.” The YWCA and other social impact organizations focused on childcare are welcoming the recent announcement of a national childcare strategy, but say the childcare sector, both private and not-for-profit, also needs to support female workers, including the staff who make affordable childcare possible. 

In all major economic downturns, from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Great Recession of 2008, workers across a swathe of industries lose their jobs in droves — and some of those jobs never returned. Ontario alone permanently lost 250,000 manufacturing jobs after ’08. But the COVID-19 crash is different. “What we’re seeing now is that the same will happen, but for female-dominated jobs,” says Claudia Dessanti, a senior policy analyst with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC). “And the concern is that it can be potentially more difficult for those women to recover because they often face barriers to re-entering the labour force that men may not, one of them being childcare.” This is especially true for marginalized women. Dessanti says one survey she’s seen suggests racialized women are twice as likely to not be currently searching for work in order to take care of their children.

The Throne Speech called for several distinct policies to support women during the pandemic, although it does not offer many specifics. One of them was an action plan to bring more women workers into the Canadian economy, backed by an as-of-yet unannounced panel of intersectional experts. But the other major policy point for women, and arguably the most important, was the national childcare policy. Dessanti worked on a major report for the OCC about female employment during the COVID-19 pandemic and childcare came up in every conversation she had with business leaders. “They’ve personally shared stories — even without me bringing it up — about childcare affecting their workforce, or them personally,” she says.

However, provincial and territorial governments already help fund childcare spaces across Canada. It isn’t enough. “The government subsidies are so low that you can barely afford to run a non-profit daycare,” Roy says. “And a lot of the private daycares are actually shut down because of COVID because they’re just not making any money.” Actually working at a childcare facility, be it non-profit or for-profit, isn’t exactly glamorous. The average salary of a Canadian early childhood educator is just $37,000 a year, according to a 2018 report in The Globe and Mail.

On top of that, wrangling children all day is no easy task. Years ago, Roy says, she used to have the organization’s senior management spend a day with childcare staff as part of the YWCA’s “Take Your Co-worker To Work Day.” They always left exhausted. “It’s literally the hardest job in a non-profit.”

This is why the Canadian Child Care Federation, an association representing the sector, is asking Ottawa to launch an action plan aimed at improving the skills — and compensation — of childcare workers. Don Giesbrecht, the federation’s president, says such an action plan might not be of interest to parents desperate for a childcare spot, but it is vital for the sector’s expansion. “You can’t build without a workforce,” he says.

While childcare is essential to our society, it is also woefully informal. Giesbrecht points out that teaching, another important caring profession, did not require much formal education until the 1970s. His father, an elementary school teacher, only required two years of training. Today, teachers are required to have, at minimum, a university-level teaching degree, as there should be, Giesbrecht says. “We need to figure out that same path forward for the childcare sector,” he adds.

The issue of childcare isn’t new. “We’ve been talking about affordable childcare for over 50 years,” Roy says. “It is quite literally the Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Findings from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, issued in 1971, highlighted the importance of daycare to an equal society. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin proposed a national childcare strategy in the early 2000s, but it never took flight. Social impact organizations are optimistic about the Throne Speech, but are waiting for more details. It isn’t clear how such a system might work, who would be eligible and — perhaps most importantly — how much it would cost parents. 

If the national childcare plan and action plan for female employment go ahead as promised, the YWCA’s mission as a women’s organization may change.

Those questions likely won’t be answered until the Liberal government tables its next federal budget. But if the national childcare plan and action plan for female employment go ahead as promised, the YWCA’s mission as a women’s organization may change. Shifting childcare responsibilities from the YWCA to the government would free up the organization’s resources for other purposes. Roy is fine with that. After all, she says, the point of social impact is to work towards a more equitable society. “Part of our job is to literally put ourselves out of business,” she says.

But even if the national childcare plan was an instant success and ended the COVID-19 “she-cession” — along with more training opportunities for women, the elimination of the gender pay gap, and better mentorship for women entrepreneurs — the YWCA would still be busy. Roy points to the shockingly high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, racism against Black women, and other discrimination. This matters for a social impact sector struggling to not only retain female employees, but encourage Black, Indigenous, and queer women to enter its ranks. Simply put, it’ll take more than a successful campaign against the “she-cession” to guarantee equity for Canadian women. “Unfortunately, we still have a lot of work to do,” she says. 

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