Canada wants women at work. Our institutions still assume they are at home

Women cannot drive the economy while the same economy continually harvests their unrecognized unpaid labour.

Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez. Canada has built women’s paid labour into its economic model without removing women’s unpaid availability from its institutional model, writes Yusra Qadir. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY YUSRA QADIR

September 16, 2026

My child’s first day back at school lasted one hour. Drop off at 10 a.m., and pick up at 11 a.m.As a full-time working mother, this one hour in the middle of a working day posed both a mothering and a management challenge for me.

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