“You have to fight the big economic structures”: Maude Barlow on 50 years of activism and how civil society can advance women’s economic resilience

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Maude Barlow’s new memoir, Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism, weaves hope into the fabric of the pandemic’s economic crises. 

As an activist who has advocated for women’s rights and economic empowerment since the 1970s, Barlow shares how women’s economic independence has evolved over the decades, the role civil society plays in their victories, and how to work with or against the government to achieve those ends. 

In 1975, Barlow co-founded Women Associates Consulting to advance Canadian women in society – the first organization of its kind for Canada. She went on to become the director of Equal Opportunity for the City of Ottawa, head of the Ottawa Task Force on Wife Assault, a member of National Action Committee on Status of Women and Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Women, and was senior advisor on women to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Anchoring hope as a theme, Barlow shares her perspective on how to advance women’s economic independence despite the effects of the pandemic. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Sherlyn: You and several women formed Women’s Associates Consulting Incorporated, and that helped promote women in business and career counseling and advocating for pay equity. I believe it was actually the first of its kind [in Canada] and that was back in 1975. What challenges did you face creating and implementing something monumental like that? 

Maude: I found that a great deal of what we needed to do, we had to do through the law — through literally changing the law — so that there were equal pay laws and opportunities for women that hadn’t existed. If an employer didn’t want to do it, they had to do it because that was the law. But you can’t legislate a feeling of justice; a feeling of “I have a right to be here.” And that took a long time. 

Of course, when we look at the diversity of women, not all women come from a privileged position or a family with a lot of money or high education. A lot of [women’s opportunity] depends still, unfortunately, on the colour of your skin. We do have inequality, deep inequality in our country, and it’s time we faced it and said it. It’s very important for us to look at the intersectionality of all of the issues that different women face. You’ll find some women are more comfortable, perhaps taking power, or with the economic opportunity, because they’ve perhaps been more groomed for it by mothers who’ve already gone through this kind of thing, but others perhaps not so much. It’s in that collective that we have to really think.

I have spent a lot of time in the book talking about kindness, which seems like a strange thing to spend time on. What is kindness? What role does kindness play? Because I really believe in our Western, modern, industrialized, so-called democracy, we are pushing everybody. It’s all competition. Women who have to go in and know that they’re going to knock the guy out or knock the woman out beside you. You have to show the guy that you can lean in. There was even a book called Lean In by some woman who’s talking about how women have to join capitalism and corporations and lean in and fight their way in. And I remember saying this years ago: “I don’t want to be equal to men in that world.” I don’t want that competitive, me-first [type of world]. That’s not the world I want. I don’t want half of that pie. I want a new recipe here based on something profoundly different. 

The point of feminism [is] not to get half of what was, but to profoundly change the dynamics of the economy of our culture and our democracy.

Sherlyn: We see the way work is devalued in female-dominated workforces. We see it all the time with the care economy, whether it’s unpaid or paid. How might we as a society begin to value this work? Is there a framework among civil society or charitable organizations or the government to begin valuing this work? 

Maude: Well, that was always very much a part of this questioning of the existing system. You know, an economist makes this, a doctor makes that, the women’s professions do not – if you’re looking at your child care, teaching, nursing. I mean, look at what’s happening in Doug Ford’s government, going to give $5,000 to nurses to keep them from quitting because they’ve been treated so horribly by — I would say — his government but also by many people in society, who have just denigrated what healthcare workers have done during the pandemic. I don’t blame a nurse for saying, “I can’t take that load of work, but I can’t take that load of abuse”. We really have to look at what people do, and not devalue it [just] because it’s the work that women do.

Many, many a woman – and it still happens, but more in my generation – gave up their careers for their husbands. That started to be recognized with the changes in law during the 70s and 80s and 90s, when it was recognized that a woman who gave up her best earning years for her husband, who then maybe left her or they divorced for whatever reason — that she would need compensation for that. Before that, there was just no concept of that. He might have to give her a little money just so she wouldn’t starve to death. The fact that she had given up her best earning years for his career was not taken into account. But that changed, and when that was legally understood in the courts of law, and in decisions around separation and separation of assets, that became tremendously important for women. I mean, it’s just unrecognized work. Going where he goes, giving up everything for him and his job and his career and his promotions, costs you something. Emotionally, it costs your ego, it costs your sense of self. But it also costs something profoundly important economically for a woman when she gets older. It was keeping up the legal changes, the policy changes with the changes that were happening for women. 

But we’re still not there yet, in terms of truly recognizing the importance of the traditional areas of work for women. We [need to] start saying that a childcare worker and a nurse and these professions are incredibly important because they take care of the sick, they take care of the young. Or if you’re working in a long-term care facility, and you’re getting paid minimum wage, you’re looking after elderly people who need you at that point in their lives more than ever – that’s valuable work, and that needs to be recognized. And that’s part of the social change that still hasn’t completely happened. Lots has happened for women in the years since I was a kid, but there is still a lot to be done in that precarious workforce, and valuing those roles is incredibly important for women today.

Sherlyn: We’ve seen the beginning of this valuing with the federal government offering support to parents trying to put their children in childcare and make different agreements with the provinces. How does it feel to see that amount of widespread attention finally going up to the highest form of government on those issues, especially during the pandemic?

Maude: It’s a very important piece of the quest for equality for women. I can remember 50 years ago, we were demanding universal child care for women. That was one of the most important demands for women going into the workforce and their careers. 

You know, it’s one of the lessons of the book and one of the lessons about hope — that it takes time. And I don’t mean, just sit back and think “Oh, I don’t have to do anything, because it’ll all happen.” Be urgent in your desire and your fight, but understand that some things do take time. It’s a cultural thing.

And more importantly, or as importantly, what we women learned from the women’s movement, we brought it into other areas of equality – racial justice, reconciliation with First Nations, the fight against the climate crisis and the knowledge of environmental racism. A lot of what we know now, and what we’re bringing forward came from those early fights for women and really understanding that it was for all women. It had to be across class, socio economic divides. Getting certain rights for certain groups wasn’t enough – that we actually had to challenge the whole notion of class and gender and race and justice together. And I think that’s one of the really important legacies of the women’s movement of which I was a part, and so many of us were a part.

Sherlyn: The Canadian government expressed commitments to gender based analysis to identify and act on gender inequities. Prime Minister Trudeau has a gender-balanced cabinet. I want to know, in your opinion and your experience – how do these shifts result in on-the-ground change for women’s economic empowerment? 

Maude: I think it’s very important to pay lip service to it — because sometimes that’s all it is, but at least people see that. But here’s the thing, and this is what’s so important about what I’ve learned in my life, I think, and why I went from the women’s movement into the fight against economic globalization: you have to fight the big economic structures. And it’s not enough to have X number of women in Cabinet. If you still have a system that gives corporations the right to make decisions around our lives, and gives financial institutions the right to implement and influence government policy, you can have all the women in the world – you’re still going to have a system that’s going to be harsh on both women and men who don’t fit into that power structure. 

Of the world’s 100 largest economies, 69 are corporations. This is really important. Only 31 are countries. The GDP of most countries in the world are smaller than the annual profits of the major corporations. When these companies say we’re going to dictate the terms of finance, of trade, of labour standards, and who gets paid what — and, “Oh, by the way, if we want to set up our manufacturing in this low wage area, and we want to dump our toxins into that river, don’t say anything, please” — the benefits will come back to the wealthy and the wealthier countries, and that’s the way it is. If we’re not challenging that, then it isn’t good enough that half of the people making those decisions are women. 

That’s what I meant about really deeply challenging the fundamentals. The fundamentals of economic globalization are deregulation, and that includes social services, privatization, taking government hands off the protection of people and the environment and their resources and leaving it to the market. Even the International Monetary Fund and institutions that were totally for economic globalization, free trade, and corporations, are now saying the private sector failed the world when it came to the pandemic. [The private sector] did not get vaccines to the Global South. The supply chains broke up and harmed our ability to provide healthcare for people and food for people. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund have turned around and said governments have to come back, they have to invest in their people, they have to invest in social security, they have to invest in young people in education. Leaving it to the corporations and leaving it to the market didn’t work. 

The pandemic taught us. It didn’t make the situation. It exposed the fact that there’s such deep inequity [not only] within our country here in Canada, but among countries. And that inequity has caught up with us. You’re not going to get to the end of a pandemic until everyone in the world is safe. And that lesson is what we’re learning. Learning the hard way is a very profound one coming from this crisis that we’re just beginning to emerge from. 

I think it really resonates for we women to say, “Yes, this is what we’ve been saying.” It’s not just enough to get half of Cabinet to be women, or women as head of corporations or whatever unless you’re really challenging that fundamental political and economic model, which is keeping women down and men down in other places; that is totally based on some people doing all the work [and] some people having all the environmental devastation dumped on their doorstep. 

Sherlyn: If you were able to be Minister for Women and Gender Equality, what policies or initiatives would you prioritize and implement to increase women’s economic resilience in Canada as we recover from the pandemic and try to take back the progress that you’d fought for years ago?

Maude: Well, I think the [things] we’ve talked about: recognizing and paying decently for the work that many women do, women-dominated areas, truly fulfilling the child care pledge, which I think they’ve taken seriously, deep reconciliation with First Nations because it’s very often the women in First Nations communities who are carrying the the load for the family and bearing the work of of child rearing and so on. But again, challenging the macro economic policies that have created a system of such inequality — because until you deal with that, you’re really going to be putting out fires. You’re going to be helping this situation here, but you’re not not really addressing the big agenda, the big picture. 

We need to come together with something called hope. As you know, in the book, I talk about wise hope. Not a Pollyanna-ish, ‘Everything’s fine, you don’t need to do anything dear, it’ll all be fine.’ No. [I’m talking about] hope that says, ‘Look the situation straight in the eye. Understand you can’t control the outcome, but know that you have to do something. You are required to do something.’ 

Hope is a moral imperative, particularly for those of us lucky enough to live in Canada — and other places where we’re not having bombs falling on us and we do have clean water coming out of the taps. [Editor’s note: Most people in Canada have access to clean water, but many don’t.] We really have a moral responsibility, if you will, to care and to do what we can within the framework of what we can touch. The part of the universe that we can touch, we need to touch. We need to do something. We need to bear witness. And we need to have faith that others are doing something too. And we can’t know what all of that is. We just have to have some faith that there is something larger – a larger principle in humanity that is going to bring us through this. 

To watch the full interview — including historic achievements of women’s economic resilience, the state of women’s precarious work, economic violence, and internalizing equality — become a Future of Good member today. Tickets to the Women’s Economic Resilience Summit come with one year of membership. Click the banner below to find out more and start your membership.

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