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Jocalyn: Hello, welcome to the Lancet voice it's August, 2021, and I'm Jocelyn Clark, executive editor at the Lancet. I'm thrilled to be joining the podcast with two of my favorite work friends and colleagues, our co hosts, Gavin Cleaver and Jessamy Baganel. It's pretty much been COVID 19, 24 7 for the last 18 months at the Lancet.
But we've also been talking increasingly about other things. Equality, economy, recovery, and how to be a good intersectional feminist. Feminism is for everybody. That was the title of the editorial which opened our special theme issue from two years ago, which we called Lancet Women. We're going to talk today about how feminist economics and theory can inform a better recovery from COVID for everybody.
The conclusion we drew from that special issue, Lancet Women, was that if we are to achieve meaningful change, actions must be directed at transforming the systems that women work within, making approaches informed by feminist analyses essential. We, of course, wrote this editorial before the COVID 19 pandemic, an event which has upended the world and caused endless conversation and debate.
About how we can avoid returning to the old normal before COVID. How can we repair the fault lines in societies which are unequal? And how does this exit and recovery from the pandemic allow us to think of a better world for the health, being, and equity of everyone? When we think of how feminist theory and feminist economics can improve health and inform and advance our societies post COVID 19, there was no better person to talk to about the subject than Professor Sarah Kaplan.
Professor Sarah Kaplan is a professor of strategic management and distinguished professor of gender and the economy at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. She's also the founding director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy or GATE. Her work looks broadly at organizational management, how organizations respond to new fields and technologies, and really interestingly at how they manage fields emerging at the nexus of gender and finance.
And it's her work particularly on applying an innovation lens to understanding the challenges for achieving gender equality that connected us to her here at the Lancet. In fact, there's a lot for us to learn in medicine and science from management studies and this is why two years ago I commissioned an article from Professor Kaplan and her colleague, Professor Sonia Kang for our Lancet Women theme issue, which was interested in advancing women in science, medicine, and global health.
Their article is called Working Toward Gender Diversity and Inclusion in Medicine, Myths and Solutions. It lays out brilliantly five myths that exist that perpetuate gender bias, and it busts them with evidence from the cognitive sciences. The business literature and management studies. I really love that article and its structural approach to looking at gender bias.
I read it and I share it all the time. And I know it's been one of the best read in our special issue. So I'm absolutely delighted that professor Kaplan is joining us today on the Lancet podcast. I also have a personal connection to Sarah. She's based in Toronto where I'm from, and she teaches at the university of Toronto where I'm an alumna and an adjunct.
Professor, I'm really so delighted that Professor Kaplan has joined us. I know our listeners will be so interested to learn about her work. And I'm joined by my colleague, Jessamy Baganel, and together we'll explore with Professor Kaplan, her work on gender and the economy, and in particular, what that means for the challenge of recovering from COVID 19.
Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah: So pleased to be here. Thanks for including me in your fantastic podcast.
Jocalyn: So let's start with the basics. What is feminist economics and how does it relate to health?
Sarah: When it comes to feminist economics as it relates to health, we're talking about gender based violence as an example.
That is an economic question, but it's also a health question. And, in fact, they intersect because when people experience gender based violence, they need to access health care. But it also means that they often are unable to do their work or their jobs. They have to potentially move to get away from violence at home.
And that is going to impact their economic circumstances, which again has feedback onto their health circumstances if they're unable to access or pay for the healthcare that they need. So it's that kind of reinforcing cycle as an example of the kinds of things that feminist economics can bring to the conversation about healthcare.
Jessamy: That's so interesting, Sarah. And we've had these conversations over the last year about what COVID 19 has shown us and it's almost feeling like it's a bit cliché to keep talking about it. But I think it is important to keep talking about it because there are forces trying to pull us back in a different direction, back to a sort of normal state.
What do you think from your sort of lens are the things that we've learnt in terms of the sort of inclusivity of the political economies that we inhabit?
Sarah: I think a key to the answer to that question is in your statement about people wanting to get back to normal. And one of the things that the COVID pandemic has revealed in its.
terrible consequences, both health as well as economic consequences is that the old normal was not so awesome for very many people, that there were lots of people who were, have historically been excluded from the economy or who have been disadvantaged for example, because they don't have unpaid sick days.
And the lack of unpaid sick days was actually a primary driver of the spread of COVID in places like long term care homes because the workers could not afford to not go to work and yet they were sick. And they infected lots of people and because their jobs were so bad, they often had to work at two or three care homes to make ends meet, in which case they were actually spreading from care home to care home.
And something like a policy around paid sick leave would have both. ameliorated their economic circumstances as well as dealt with some of the terrible consequences of the spread of COVID. So that's just an example about what this experience has taught us about the political economies we inhabit.
And in particular, a lot of these impacts that we're talking about most acutely felt by women. immigrant women of color who are often occupying some of those kinds of jobs that require them to put their bodies physically on the line, risking their own personal health to be able to do their job.
So when we talk about wanting to quote, get back to normal, I think, I'm hoping we don't, I'm hoping that we actually are. Using the insights that we've generated from this to as I've said, and other peoples have used the language build back better, but, I want to be more robust in my comment about that in terms of thinking about how can we use these insights to look at the jobs.
poorly paid or don't have good benefits and fix those. Another major insight that came from covid was the unequal distribution of work, unpaid care work at home, especially as Children were out of school or out of daycare. And so now that we have how much work it is to take care of Children at home.
Many people, I think we're already aware of that. But maybe people in power men, typically straight white cisgender men may not have always had a view into that. And so people in positions of power now have a closer view into something that feminist economists and also many women already knew.
And so we have to address those issues going forward. And we can think of COVID as a portal into, this potential new way of thinking.
Jocalyn: Yeah. I think many of us who work in the field of gender. studies are taking as one positive from the enormous consequences that come from the pandemic, that it is making some people retuned to issues around gender that perhaps only half of the population may have been aware of.
And the losses as you described for women have been very deep and wide. Is there, and what is there that you feel hopeful about? Now that we're moving toward pandemic recovery plans and thinking about ways that we can perhaps redress some of the inequities that existed in that past normal life.
What are you feeling hopeful about in going forward?
Sarah: Yeah I don't even know if I want to call it a positive, but I will call it at least a silver lining on a very dark cloud. And it is exactly this. This idea that people in positions of power, whether we're talking about corporations or we're talking about policymakers have more acutely seen these inequalities.
And I think this also because black lives matter got a big boost also during this time in terms of attention to the issues particularly provoked by George Floyd's death, that all of that happening at once. opened up a series of conversations that I think will be hard to shut down. Now, of course, the patriarchy is very powerful in its and so it is amazing how many times we have to open up these conversations and yet find later that they do get shut down.
But my hope is That that this greater awareness amongst policymakers and corporate leaders of these inequities is going to change all sorts of policies that they have. For example, as I keep mentioning, offering a paid sick leave as an example offering, we've flexible work and work from home and work from anywhere actually works.
These were kinds of accommodations that people with disabilities had been asking for years. And we're told it's too expensive, it's too hard, we don't know how to make it work. But it turns out when everyone has to use it, we can make it work. And I don't think we're going to go back to the same working styles which were built on a old industrial model that doesn't exist in how we work anyway.
And so we have these opportunities to think about how could we structure work that would actually allow people to accommodate the other obligations that they have in their life? People have always thought that those who took flexible work were less committed to work because they had these home responsibilities.
But my view is they've always been more committed to work because they were trying to make work with their home responsibilities. So many women have been jettisoned from the workforce during this pandemic. Companies are going to need, are aware of this fact and are going to need to institute policies that gets them back to work and not just back to any job because women's employment has risen almost back to levels pre pandemic, but it's not in the same kinds of quality jobs.
Often it's more part time, often they had to take a lower stress job because they have these other obligations and that's going to wipe out, Basically three decades of progress. This is what the UN says, wipe out three decades of progress. So what's hopeful to me is that there's now all this attention to this and we've had this moment of intensive experimentation in alternative ways of working and hopefully all those experiments are going to lead to all sorts of new ways of thinking about how we can work and work in more protected ways.
Now that's wonderful for those of us who are able to work from home. I hope it also creates a greater attention to those people who are essential workers, because the other thing we've. Discovered in the pandemic is who exactly are essential workers? It turns out it's grocery delivery people, restaurant delivery people, workers and fulfillment centers for online purchases.
Those are the essential workers, and those people put their bodies on the line. And I think that there's a greater understanding that those people need more protections. So that's my hope. My silver lining is, I think it would be hard for all of these issues to fade from memory, even as the economy recovers.
Jessamy: What really fascinates me, Sarah, about your work and about many of the recovery plans and a lot of the new sort of talk around economics is that historically, I suppose I'd always presumed that there was The economics had some kind of science to it, that things were factual. And what I seem to be discovering more and more is that it not, it's not made up, but it's very opinion based.
And now, you have these voices. I was listening to the news this morning in the UK and in the States. people questioning these large recovery plans, whether it's going to increase inflation too much. We don't seem to have any historical pattern to be able to really know the answer to any of these questions, but there seem to be forces to try and hold us back from progressing to a recovery that takes resilience really at the heart.
And I suppose a lot of how we run our economies is how we measure things. So I was wondering what you think about GDP. It seems to be such a root of many problems and evils and what could replace it. And also what your thoughts are about economics now and what we know and what we don't know. I'd be fascinated to know.
Sarah: I think that my colleagues in the field of economics, at least academic colleagues do feel like they are being fact based. However, and they are, and they're, some of the study, most economic studies are very compelling and very well researched. However, as you point out, it depends a lot on what kind of And again, what feminist economics points out is that a lot of times the questions that are being asked are not the right questions, which is, where your point about things being ideologically oriented, that you, what questions you ask depends upon what your point of view is about how the economy should work.
So that, that becomes more problematic when you then try to translate. Rigorous academic research into policy because, of course, in many countries, we're seeing increasingly polarized discussions about policy. I just I don't want to feel like economic, I don't want to end this conversation with this idea that economics is opinion based.
I think it's, it can be very subjective. scholarly. However, it does matter on the, what your inquiry is. And of course, as you point out, a lot of the inquiry depends upon what your quote dependent variable is. What is your outcome measure that you're trying to look at? And if the measure is GDP, then we are going to miss a lot of things.
So GDP is a measure that was only created less than 100 years ago. It was created during the Great Depression and the World War two in order to measure productivity of manufacturing plants, basically and it has become the primary measure and that is It's problematic.
The problem comes when we're trying to measure when we use GDP as a measure, we are then and then we're trying to optimize that measure. We're not optimizing for all of the other things that are happening in our society. And that's again, what feminist economists point out is that measure in and of itself Self and studies that use that as a, as the basis of inquiry are not gonna capture a lot of the things that are affecting, 50% of the population are more because then we're talking about elders, we're talking about children, and we're talking about women who are, because of gender norms.
seen as the primary caregivers at home. I have a fantasy that one day that will not be the case, but for now and heterosexual couples, there's certainly this massive division of labor that only got better for about three or four weeks during the beginning of the pandemic. And then, and I was.
Very hopeful for three or four weeks. And then it all reverted back to the standards that we expect with women carrying the primary burden. I guess I agree with you that GDP, it has its purposes, but if it's the only measure we're using, it becomes highly problematic. And so one of the things that we proposed in the Institute for Gender and the Economy did a feminist.
economic recovery plan for Canada jointly with the YWCA Canada. It was the first in the world for a national feminist economic recovery plan and came on the heels of the state of Hawaii in the United States that did one. And one of the things that we recommend at the end of our report is we need to have other measures and many countries are starting to experiment with that, looking at measures, not just of jobs, but of good jobs, meaning jobs that have benefits or paid sick leave looking at affordable housing and how many people have access to housing looking at time spent on what is now unpaid care work.
So until we think of those Other outcome measures that and if we stay limited to thinking about GDP as the be all and end all measure of economic performance, we are going to be perpetuating a lot of the inequalities that the three of us have been talking about so far today.
Jocalyn: Thank you, Sarah. I mean that is one of the most prominent pieces of work that the Institute for Gender and the Economy has done recently, and we wanted to ask you a bit more about that.
So you partnered with the YWCA in this first feminist pandemic recovery plan for Canada, and you've told us a little bit about what different measures are required in order to, fit a more appropriate pandemic response. Can you tell us a little bit more about Other principles that underlied this work and how this plan offers something different than the, plethora of other build back better initiatives we've seen globally.
We
Sarah: were very excited, at the Institute for Gender and the Economy, we're very focused on the academic and scholarly work. We use that work to change the conversation on gender equality because we think that actually scholarship knows a lot and can myth bust a lot of those myths just like you talked about in the introduction, but we're really excited to partner with the YWCA Canada because they're very focused, they're field based, they're very focused on the communities.
Canada. And so bringing together that experience from the field with the academic scholarship to think about what would a recovery plan look like was incredibly powerful. We came up with several principles that we thought needed to be examined as part of the recovery plan. And the first was around intersectionality and understanding power.
That means that we cannot look at policies without analyzing them using an intersectional gender based lens, thinking about the impact of socioeconomic class, of race, of disability, of in Canada, of course, we have a big discussion going on indigenous rights. So we need to think about the impact on indigenous communities and looking at the issues is really important, including things like immigrant status.
So if you look at who was doing all the work in the long term care homes and in the grocery stores, it was a lot of women, a lot of women of color, and a lot of immigrant women. And until you do that intersectional analysis, you can't really understand the outcome. So we strongly encourage that. And that is also part of what the Institute of Gender and the Economy has been promoting the idea of gender analytics, which is this intersectional methodology for understanding those issues.
We put out a online five course series specialization on Coursera specifically because we think people have a really hard time thinking this way. We don't normally think about all of the different intersections and who has power in the system. And that's the first principle.
We also specifically called out systemic racism because as much as we talk about it, we think we need to understand the root causes of that. And that has to shape a policy. And then we focused on care work as one of the most important things that we can attend to. Not only the unpaid care work, but the lack of availability of slots for children in early learning and childhood care.
And that was one of the most important recommendations we made because we think it certainly was not something that just happened in the pandemic. This has been a huge issue for a long time, but we felt like the pandemic created this window of opportunity to really amplify that conversation. And we've had a big win in Canada on that front, which we can talk about later if you like.
And then we focused on things like bolstering Small businesses, which are disproportionately run by women. We talked about strengthening infrastructure and defining infrastructure broadly, Joe Biden also in the United States has talked about defining infrastructure to include care work childcare.
And, we completely agree with that. We also focused on the digital divide because we've learned that you can't. go to school or do your job if you don't have access to broadband internet. And so that has very intersectionally important because we're talking about children in remote rural and indigenous communities who are unable to go to school because they don't have access to broadband internet.
So really thinking through these kinds of issues, we had a number of other themes and we concluded the report by talking about diverse voices and decisions. So making sure that the people who are making the diversity of the communities that they're serving. And this would be important both in public policy making, but also in corporate decision making.
So it's had a lot of pickup both at the federal provincial and actually at the city level and not only just in Canada, but we've been consulted by countries around the world who want to look at these kinds of issues and use them to inform policies as. As they try to recover from the pandemic and my view is that if you actually do these things, it's not like an add on or a do gooder thing.
You'll actually get a better recovery because there's going to be no recovery without dealing with the issues that women and people of color and indigenous people and immigrants face. We just will not get a robust recovery. So this is not do a regular recovery and then add this on top. This is the recovery.
This is what will lead to better economic outcomes and a more robust and resilient economy.
Jocalyn: Oh, it is such a compelling piece of work and you make such a persuasive case for why all these elements need to be baked in from the very beginning. And here you have it sounds like an incredible platform and opportunity to seize as we're Beginning to discuss how to exit COVID with so many of the issues that you describe being, acutely felt by citizens, by policymakers, by those people in power, as you described.
So we're really anxious to hear how have you got traction with. various levels of government. What kind of progress are you seeing at the federal level in terms of their interest and commitment to taking up the plan that you're proposing to them? And what's the big win on national childcare? We we'd love to hear how far you've got with this.
Sarah: Yes. So there has been a lot of interest in consultation, as you probably know, in Canada our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has positioned his government as a feminist government, one committed to feminist issues. And the pandemic created a window of political willingness on the country level to implement some of these ideas.
So the biggest win was in the latest budget Chrystia Freeland, our Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister announced. Canada is committed to funding a universal 10 a day childcare. Now if for Europeans listening to this, they may be shocked that we don't have that yet in Canada. Of course, in Canada, we look south of the border to the United States and see that it's even worse in the U S but this would be the first time in Canada to get to universal affordable childcare, the province of Quebec has had it for a number of years, but nowhere else really effectively in Canada.
And so it's very exciting to see. See that real money, billions of dollars is being put forward in the federal budget to fund that. So that's the biggest win. But I wouldn't say, I wouldn't claim that it's a win that just this, the report there was a incredible community of people. As activists, academic researchers and others who have been for years and years advocating for and fighting for these, this exact kind of child care policy.
And so when we go to the silver lining of the pandemic, it did create that awareness, that political awareness, the political window of opportunity to be able to do something like this. where people would stop focusing on quote, how expensive childcare is and realize actually this is the, it's an investment in infrastructure that actually pays huge dividends, not just in more women being able to enter the workforce, but you have better educated children who over their lifetime have greater earning potential because they were in high quality early childhood learning and care.
And so it allowed the pandemic, allowed the people who were promoting childcare to frame it as this incredible investment in the future of the country. And it was that framing that I think maybe our feminist economic recovery plan helped put it over the edge was one of the many darts that were being thrown at the target.
And that's the big win that we have in Canada. And I think it's an incredibly important one.
Jocalyn: How far beyond the childcare benefit, which is. Which is fantastic news. How far has government got, the federal government that is, got in incorporating the feminist economic principles that you're proposing in your plan in their own exit strategies and recovery of the Canadian economy?
Sarah: So one of the other big recommendations we had was around gender based violence, which we know has been a hugely exacerbated during the pandemic with the various lockdowns that force people into their homes and often into incredibly unsafe conditions. And so we do know one of the winds that came before the pandemic was the creation of a department for women and gender equality in Canada with, a minister and a department with staff who are working on things.
And one of their primary issues in their file is. Gender based violence and there's been an increased investment in creating places for people to go, creating more resources for people experiencing gender based violence. That's something that also was, has been an essential part of the economic recovery plan.
And then, I think just, so many feminist issues like worrying about affordable housing, worrying about getting broadband implemented in communities that don't have access to it. These are all themes. that have been part of the recovery, including a lot of the wage and income supports to people who have been unemployed or underemployed during the pandemic, which is a very progressive rather than regressive policy in the sense that is helping the people at the bottom.
I know in the United States, for example, those payments led to a 50 percent reduction in Children living in poverty during that time. So these are the kinds of things that can be seen as very very big wins because the attention is being focused on these inequalities and the policies have been focused on the people who are the most needy as opposed to the people who are the most powerful.
Jessamy: The long term health gains of everything you're talking about have just huge potential. And when we're speaking about it, it just seems like common sense. And I'm wondering, this is a basic question, but, and it might be too basic, but what do you see as besides the short term financial input, what are the major barriers?
against this type of recovery plan, it seems like the obvious way.
Sarah: Yes. Sadly, the basic common sense to those of us who are attuned to these kinds of inequalities does not, is not basic common sense to people in positions of power who are, hardwired to want to preserve their privilege and have been taught a certain way of thinking about things.
As we discussed before, GDP being a primary measure of economic output. Then if that's your measure and you're refusing to consider other measures, then that's usually problematic. I also think that the people in power, they have a lot of wealth and most of these kinds of programs that we're talking about are redistributive.
Someone is going to have to pay in the United States. There's a big debate right now about whether people would be willing to tax the extremely wealthy, the very wealthy at the very top, and just a small increase in tax in them could pay for all the kinds of programs we're talking about.
But those extremely wealthy people don't want to, even though they have billions, they don't want even a little portion of their billions and they have the power. And so that's, what's so important about taking a feminist perspective is that critiques. That system and highlights that the people in positions of power are shaping these kinds of policies.
And so every effort that we make to change something gets, drawn into the existing system, so we're trying to create more gender equality. Then people say you have to create a business case for gender equality. And then the moment you create a business case, you then undermine all of your efforts.
to actually create gender equality. You create affirmative action to get more people of color represented in universities or in jobs. And then that gets turned on its head because then suddenly, white people are claiming that they're being, discriminated against. And I've had that question many times.
When I've been promoting, for example, I work a lot on questions about getting more women into corporate boards because those are the key decision makers and we should have representation that looks like the society in which these boards serve. And I've had, straight white men who are current corporate directors saying why are you advocating discriminating against a certain class in order to get women in?
And I'm like, but don't you understand that for the entire history, women have been discriminated against. We're not talking about discriminating against men or white people. We're talking about leveling the playing field so that everyone has an equal opportunity but people in positions of power don't want to have that be the narrative.
And so it's, that's why it's. Two steps forward, sometimes three steps back. It's unbelievably depressing to think about how hard people have been fighting for how many years and how the, we count a tiny little win as finally getting childcare. It's a big huge deal, but like why is it 2021 when we're finally getting a universal affordable childcare in Canada?
So I, I'm hopeful that we can make more progress right now, but I also. I have wised up to the, to, to the forces that push against it.
Jocalyn: Wow. It's an extraordinary passion and commitment and very obvious how you and your team are developing such strategic intelligence to fight back against those forces.
And I think all of us fighting for. Equity and inclusion feel that the backlash is real and it's strong and it's just been such a pleasure talking to you and hearing about this work as Jessamy said, it has incredible and substantial impacts on health and how we deliver health.
And it's wonderful to hear such a deep dive into, really important framing discipline that has so much influence on the kind of work that we do here at the Lancet.
Sarah: Thank you. It's always fun to talk about these issues. And as you can tell, I sometimes get overly enthusiastic, but it's only because I really, I just really feel like I can't do anything else.
This is, I was always an innovation scholar. And then I just realized one day I had to do, gender, racial and other kinds of equity and equality is my day job when I founded the Institute and I feel like I. I have to just keep fighting and I'm just so grateful to The Lancet that they're interested in fighting alongside all of us who are doing the work, so thank you.
Jessamy: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Lancet Voice. Building on the Lancet Women theme issue, which you can find at lancet. com forward slash Lancet dash women, we have continued to commission and publish original research and commentary across all 22 titles at The Lancet Publishing Group to advance gender equity, intersectionality, racial equality and other areas highlighting the multiple dimensions of diversity.
Our diversity pledge and commitments can be found at lancet. com forward slash diversity and our new diversity and inclusion hub showcases content that can be found at www. thelancet. com forward slash racial equality. We'll also be covering these issues and more of course here at the Lancet Voice and if you're not subscribed already just search the Lancet Voice and find the platform of your choice.
We appreciate you joining us and we'll see you again next time.