All posts by Yasmine Ghania

Ottawa neighbourhoods with high percentage of single parents more exposed to COVID-19, data shows

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Sonia Poliquin, a single mother, and her nine-year-old son Robert-Michel, pictured at the Stonebridge Trail near Barrhaven. Many Ottawa neighbourhoods with a high percentage of single parent families also have higher rates of COVID-19. [Photo © Sonia Poliquin]
Sonia Poliquin, 46, remembers being screamed at by another woman in a Costco parking lot for leaving her nine-year-old son in the car as she ran in to get groceries.

She only had two options: keep her son in the car or bring him into the store to risk contracting COVID-19. That’s the reality for many single parents during the pandemic.

“If I want to go grocery shopping or do anything he has to come with me,” the Barrhaven resident explains. 

The Ottawa neighbourhoods with the highest total COVID-19 rates are also the ones with a higher percentage of single parent families, according to an analysis of Ottawa Public Health data which tracks COVID cases excluding cases in long-term care and retirement homes reported from March to October 2020. 

Total COVID rate per percentage of single parent families

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This is the trend among most Ottawa neighbourhoods, with a few exceptions. 

Single mothers are bearing the brunt, as they make up 78 per cent of single parent families, according to the 2016 Canadian Census. 

This bar graph shows the top five neighbourhoods with the highest total COVID-19 rates per 100,000 people from March to October 2020. The percentage of single parent families living in these neighbourhoods are at least 20 per cent or higher. [Visualization by Yasmine Ghania]

Ivy Bourgeault, a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa who specializes in gender and health, explains there are many factors that can increase the risk of exposure for single mothers.

“Mothers tend to do the hands-on body work with children, dressing, feeding, bathing, which puts them at increased risk,” Bourgeault says. “If you are in a partnership you are disproportionately doing that work but there is somebody to share that with. As a single mom, you don’t.”

The sectors in which single moms tend to work also have an impact. “Single moms are segregated into certain labour market areas that we now call the frontlines such as the retail and hospitality sectors,” Bourgeault explains.

The low incomes generated by these types of jobs cause single mothers to live in higher density housing which furthers their risk to the virus, Bourgeault adds.

Samantha Pha, 40, is dreading going back to her sales associate job at a big-box store as she’s a mom to a nine-month-old daughter. The Britannia resident has been on maternity leave since March and has been able to get half her income during that time but must return to work in February. 

She’s afraid of potentially bringing the virus back home to her baby who has had some medical issues including frequent fevers.

“My concern is her safety above and beyond everything because she’s my one and only,” Pha says as she begins to cry.

Samantha Pha, a single mother to a nine-month-old baby, describes her fears of going back to work in February in a big-box store. She didn’t feel comfortable sharing the name of the store. [Photo © Samantha Pha]

Pha chose to become a parent without a partner and went through a sperm bank.

“I said to myself ‘by the age of 40, if I don’t have a reliable partner who is willing to have children with me, then I will do this on my own,’” Pha says. 

She gave birth to baby Eleanor just four days before Ottawa went into lockdown.

Poliquin is also concerned about her son’s safety as she struggles to find a childcare centre to accommodate her work schedule. As a hairdresser at exhālō Spa, Poliquin has to work many long evenings and weekends. 

With the rest of her family in Sherbrooke, Quebec, her son often has to go to his friend’s house after school, who they have included in their bubble, to wait for his mom to finish work.

“The last thing I want is to have a stranger in my house to come babysit,” Poliquin says.  “Most of my friends are working in the public so I don’t want them to take care of my child when they are exposed to a lot of people as well.”

Canada sees highest number of young women working part-time, can’t find full-time jobs since April

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Salsabil Rahman’s hours at the Canada Revenue Agency were cut by more than half due to the pandemic. She’s one of  thousands of women who have had to settle for part-time jobs this summer. [Photo © Shafayet Turash]
Three years ago Salsabil Rahman, 24, came to Canada for a better education, job and to help her family struggling financially in Bangladesh. She planned on saving thousands of dollars this summer working full-time at the Canada Revenue Agency. Instead she ended up being one of 107,300 young women who had to work part-time because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. The number of women facing this problem increased by 192 per cent, almost tripling among women aged 15-24 from April to August, according to Statistics Canada.  

“I saw it coming. The management said my department isn’t of high importance right now but obviously I was very sad,” Rahman says.

In February, the third-year Carleton University finance student landed a job as a project management officer for an appeal modernization project at the CRA. When the pandemic hit, Rahman’s 40-hour work week was downgraded to 16. She constantly searched for other full-time finance jobs but had no luck.

Frances Woolley, a Carleton economics professor, explains the increasing demand for full-time work is actually a sign that the economy is improving.

“When there (are) no jobs around people won’t bother looking. It’s only when people think that they have a chance of finding a job that they start looking so there’s some good news,” Woolley says.

There’s a particular increase in women’s part-time employment because women are more likely to accept part-time work than their male counterparts, according to Woolley. She draws this analysis based on more than two decades of her cited work which is mostly about feminist economics and inequality within the household.

She adds that it’s more common for women to work in the service sector which is currently hiring less full-time workers due to the pandemic, also contributing to the increase in women settling for part-time work.

A bar graph illustrating the increase in the number of women aged 15 to 24 who are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania

Besides the financial loss, Rahman says she’s disappointed about the slash in her hours because it gives her less time to convince her employers to give her a permanent position upon graduation.

Both Rahman and her husband Mazharul Towhid, also a Carleton student, already have university degrees from Bangladesh but decided to continue studying in Canada in hopes for a better life. Thankfully Towhid was able to keep his full-time summer job as a financial analyst at Harris Computer Systems which paid for rent and bills.

“It’s very important that we have something set in the long run,” Rahman says. “We need to land on something very good, at least one of us.”

While Rahman only worked two days a week, she still made $1,200 a month meaning she wasn’t eligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Her supervisor told her she could nullify her contract so she could get $2,000 from CERB but Rahman decided to continue working. 

“Calculating the long-term benefit, I didn’t want to take the risk of leaving. I already have a low opportunity of proving myself. I didn’t want to cut the chance even more,” Rahman says. 

Although both men and women are struggling to find secure employment, Woolley explains there are “gendered structural differences” that impede women’s advancements in the workplace. 

A new report released Friday from Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute and the Public Policy Forum finds that the number of men and women at entry level jobs are equal, yet men are promoted at double — sometimes triple — the rate.

Julie Cafley, co-author of the report, is calling on the Feds to ensure gender equality in COVID economic recovery plans. 

“We need to ensure that we’re not building back the economy the same way we’ve done it in the past,” Cafley says. “There’s a huge opportunity to build back differently.” 

Given the high chance many sectors will be forced to shut down amid rising COVID-19 cases, Woolley says it’s difficult to predict how the labour market will look in the next few months.

For now, Rahman says she’s focused on graduating university with high marks so she can be one step closer to a permanent position at the CRA.