At the start of the pandemic, many women stopped looking for work. Data from Statistics Canada shows that by April 2020, 55 percent of women remained in the workforce, down from 61 percent in January 2020. As an RBC report pointed out, women’s workforce participation hadn’t been that low since the 1980s.

In 2020, the Canadian Human Rights Commission warned that the pandemic could “erase the gains that have been made towards gender equality in Canada.” Over two and a half years after the start of the pandemic, the situation is still dire. Women have been slow to recover their lost ground in the workforce compared to men.

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