By Leisha Toory, General Member
I had the opportunity to attend the Equal Futures 2023: A Gender Equality Summit in the Yukon as a youth bursary recipient.
The Equal Futures Network, an initiative of the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH), held the Equal Futures 2023: A Gender Equality Summit on the traditional territories of Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, also known as Whitehorse, from May 17-18, 2023. The summit gathered the gender equality movement, in all its diversity, from coast to coast to coast to share expertise, strengthen capacity and shape a path towards a more equitable and inclusive Canada.
Through the theme of “People, Perspectives and Partnerships”, the summit centered on the diversity of voices that make up the gender equality movement, shared experiences from the North, and highlighted the unique challenges faced by northern and rural communities. Women, in all their diversity, who live in rural, remote, and northern communities face unique challenges throughout their lives. Equal Futures 2023 Summit programming centered their perspectives and expertise and created opportunities to exchange perspectives to find unique solutions in the pursuit of equal futures for everyone, everywhere. The Summit also aimed to break down silos of the region, language, industry, and more. Equal futures for everyone, everywhere can only be achieved through collaboration, and collective action establishing communities to uphold and push our collective work forward.
As a part of the Equal Futures 2023 Summit, attendees were asked to consider bringing menstrual hygiene products (pads, tampons, and/or menstrual cups) to be donated to the Yukon Period Pantry. According to survey results released by Plan International Canada in May 2022, one in five people who menstruate in Canada said they struggled to afford menstrual products for themselves or their dependents. Nearly half of the survey’s Indigenous respondents said they rationed or used products longer than they should because they couldn’t afford more. For people living in the North, period poverty may be further exacerbated by the high cost of menstrual products – which are almost double the price as those found in southern parts of Canada. The Yukon Period Pantry is a community-led project that provides 24/7 access to free, clean, and safe menstrual hygiene products to people who menstruate living in the Yukon – especially those experiencing period poverty. The Yukon Period Pantry operates on a take what you need and give what you can basis and under a no questions asked policy.
Opening Panel: The Power of Partnership: Perspectives on Advancing Gender Equality in Rural and Northern Communities & Knowledge Spotlights
The Summit opened with a dynamic panel that set the stage for Equal Futures 2023: A Gender Equality Summit. In this session, a diverse panel of Northern leaders, change-makers, and local voices unpacked the unique challenges for advancing Gender Equality in their communities, shared solutions, and discussed the opportunities to develop partnerships with GE movements across Canada.
Speakers shared their pride in Yukon being a matriarchal society. Whitehorse Mayor and guest speaker- Laura Cabott- talked about the importance of women's participation in politics at both municipal, provincial, and federal levels because women bring a diverse and intersectional voice to the table which is game-changing resulting in better policies making bigger differences in the community.
How do we support the dissemination of the matriarch energy to other parts of Canada:
1. We need to support each other first and foremost.
2. We tend to forget about people in the past who started making changes; we need to celebrate and recognize these women and continue their work.
3. We need to set up formal and informal programs to mentor women and gender-diverse youth.
4. We have a tendency to mentor up, but we need to mentor across; we need the community to rise and amplify our voices.
5. We need partnerships steeped in cultural identity.
6. We need to expand support outside of funding.
7. We need to acknowledge the trailblazers who are already making changes.
8. We need male allyship.
What has Yukon done to crack the code:
1. There are organizations working pan-territory, creating spaces and advocating for women.
2. Decision-makers from Yukon attend conferences and tables across Canada to engage and connect.
3. The people share what they want their community to look like and the government works towards making that happen as there is no one-size approach for solutions. This strengthens the community by valuing their voices and acknowledging their lived experiences to implement solutions. There is thus a willingness to hear what the unique concerns and needs are within the community.
4. There are successful respectful, inclusive, diverse, and open partnerships where work is divided based on individual strengths.
Panel: The Case for Feminist Financing & Transforming Food Security and Nutrition
The second panel opened the platform for an enlightening discussion between leaders and changemakers in the feminist financing, funding, and philanthropy space who unpacked what challenges they face in these systems and shared their best practices and lessons learned along the journey towards creating a feminist and equal future for all.
Guest speakers highlighted that feminist financing works to center the voices of the marginalized to benefit philanthropy; the power imbalance between men and women impacts the finance in the feminist philanthropic spaces. Feminist funding and financing should focus on partnerships where one party gives the knowledge on problems, needs, and solutions, and the other party gives the money rather than having restrictions and limitations to fit in Indigenous, Black, and LGBTQ2S philanthropies.
Gender equality cannot be achieved without feminist financing in philanthropy. There is a gender bias and an investor bias where men are more likely to receive funding and gender inequality prevails in interview questions for capital.
Panel: Transforming Food Security and Nutrition – Perspectives for Food Justice
The third and final panel unpacked and connected the challenges of food security through a gendered lens and its implications for advancing gender equality in Canada and around the world. In this session, participants heard from a diverse panel unpacked the unique challenges at the nexus of gender equality, nutrition, and food security, shared solutions, and discussed the opportunities to develop partnerships with local and global movements pushing for gender transformative approaches for equitable food systems.
Panelists outlined that malnourishment when faced by young women and children is a barrier to education, social inclusion, and economic inclusion, especially in regions like Kenya. On a global scale, single parents, in particular women, have to deal with the different layers of low income, marginalization in addition to the lack of affordability of fresh produce. Women from single-parent households are also juggling different jobs and are unable to have the time to prepare healthy meals due to time constraints and unreliable transportation in many communities which further contributes to gendered food insecurity. The pandemic worsened the existing food insecurity by closing access to communal spaces where people could network, engage in gardening in community gardens as well as exercise in communal spaces with the community.
Guest speakers focused on the importance of advocating for food sovereignty for Indigenous communities as they are overrepresented in incarceration and healthcare systems, inter-alia which makes it difficult to fit everyone’s dietary needs and diverse physical and mental health, contributing to both food insecurity and negative impacts on health as food distribution and access is not a one-size-fits-all category: different territories and communities have different needs.
Gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of food insecurity. Food insecurity is a women’s rights issue: food is produced by women in agriculture and the irony is that it’s the women who eat less as a result of gendered food insecurity. Gender transformative actions are needed in the nutrition project: in a lot of global cases, the men of the house are the sole providers and the person who buys the groceries, thus setting a market for products based on a man’s health needs. This blocks access to a woman’s health needs; for example, when pregnant, women have different limitations on what they can consume.
Panelists shared that childcare and food insecurity are directly linked: a struggling single mother is more likely to be a victim of child protection services and denied access to help from food banks and food provision services from the welfare system as she has to provide a number of documentations and proofs which add to the struggle of balancing child care and the intergenerational curse. One example of this fact is a single mother who is capable of buying and preparing food only for her child and thus, not eating any meals herself; if the child mentions that their mother is not eating at home, child protection services will immediately be at the mother’s doorstep instead of providing access to food security solutions.
The day closed with an evening reception with a performance from The Dakhká Khwáan Dancers and a spoken word performance from Yukon Speaks.