text: A recession is, in its own way, a contagion. From closed shops and beleaguered companies, the disease spreads, triggering mass job loss, missed bills, evictions. The economic consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown cascaded through many industries that heavily employ women: hospitality, service, retail, recreation, arts and entertainment, but also, perhaps surprisingly, health care and social services—making it the first recession in Canadian history that is service-driven. All told, the pandemic plummeted women's participation in the labour force to 55 per cent, its lowest point in three decades. In the first two months alone, 1.5 million women lost their jobs, sparking the term "she-cession." Women in the core working ages, between twenty-five and fifty-four, lost more than twice the number of jobs lost by men in the same age range. But if women's losses were unprecedented, so too was their ability to fix it. "On both sides—on both the carnage as well as the pick-up-the-pieces side—women are for the first time leading economic responses through public policies and through market actions," Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers, told CBC's The Current in March. Meaning, women were driving the losses, but they were also, in many cases, driving the recovery.
  
  Women could be forgiven, however, if it felt like they only saw evidence of the carnage. Before CERB was announced on March 25, and before the program began accepting applications on April 6, tens of thousands of Canadians who had already lost their jobs overloaded the country's antiquated EI system. On one early Monday in March, people filed 71,000 claims, punching through the previous single-day record of 38,000 set during the 2008 recession. They broke the record again just a few days later, filing 87,000 claims. By the end of March, the government had 2.2 million EI claims on its virtual desk. People waited for hours and, more often, days to get through to Service Canada's information line. One man reported making 1,700 phone calls before he got through, while others enlisted friends' and partners' phones to call from multiple numbers at once. To help with the overload, and in anticipation that CERB would trigger an avalanche on Employment and Social Development Canada, the government quickly recruited 1,500 volunteers from within to work the phone lines. In the end, about 7,000 people raised their hands to step outside their regular jobs and help answer calls. And still call times stretched like Guinness World taffy. Many people reported calling dozens of times before getting through, only to gratefully make it to the next step: listening to elevator music for, very possibly, their entire day. Or, as one woman put it in mid-April, "Finally got put on hold for three hours…made two loaves of banana bread and at 4:35 p.m. they answered. I swear I cried."
  
  By the end of September, at the program's close, more than 8.8 million people had accessed CERB, totalling $80.62 billion in government relief. Many of them had stayed on CERB for months, holding tight to the lifeline. For plenty of women, and particularly mothers, the line frayed anyway—even if it didn't snap. One twenty-seven-year-old single mother from Ontario who lost her job at the beginning of the pandemic shared that she was no longer able to afford medication for her rheumatoid arthritis. After taking care of rent, covering utilities, and paying for her baby's needs, she had only $200 left every month to buy gas and food. She was forced to skip bills, and felt the pain settle in joints. "My baby has everything he needs and that's what you got to do," she said in May. "I'll live on pasta as long as I have to." Another mom, who lives in B.C. with her boyfriend and two children, said that, while CERB ensured the family's survival, it was barely enough; under the program, and while keeping one of her jobs as a part-time server, she still brought in anywhere from $1,300 to $2,300 less each month. CERB didn't quite cover her rent. Without her partner's help, she would have been in a "scary situation": unable to buy food or pay her bills. "Sadly," she acknowledged, "I'm not the only one."
  
  In many ways, CERB helped to normalize social assistance. In the process, it squashed—or, at the very least, stepped on—stigmas about who needed to access such programs, and why. People who once uttered, "I would never…" and "Only lazy people …" found themselves without jobs, without opportunities, and yet with plenty of bills and basic needs. More revolutionary, however, were all the renewed conversations about, and demands for, a universal basic income (UBI). The unforeseen and ultra-accelerated economic quake, and with it the introduction of CERB, underscored the precarity of many Canadians. People who'd never heard of a UBI, or had perhaps dismissed its need, were newly open to the conversation. Suddenly, a program under which everyone is guaranteed basic earnings didn't seem so far-fetched. Advocates pushed for Trudeau to pledge its implementation in his September throne speech, and for a while it felt like he would. He didn't (quite), but all the speculation only forced UBI more into the mainstream conversation, something that was, largely, previously unthinkable. "COVID brought us face to face with the fact that stuff happens that is beyond anybody's control," said Dana Wylie, who organized a basic-income rally in September in Edmonton. Before the virus, she hadn't been involved at all in the issue; the pandemic changed her mind. "Yes, the government stepped up and helped but what that made me realize is that this happens to families all the time."
  
  But, for all its positives, CERB wasn't a panacea. The temporary relief could do little to address the flip side of the "she-cession"; that is, the need for a so-called "she-covery." As the economy haltingly—and in some cases, seemingly rapidly—reopened, many women were left behind. They did not recover their jobs at the same rate as men, and for multiple reasons. Fields that tend to employ more women, like the hospitality industry and administrative services companies, face significantly longer recovery periods, at eight and five years respectively. Compare that to construction or manufacturing, which, by fall 2020, were looking at significantly shorter recovery timelines of just over one year. And reduced child care services added another set of house-sized concrete hurdles to women's back-to-work paths. As one woman said in May, "Do I find a job first? Do I find child care? How do I do one without the other?" Between February and May, employment among parents with toddlers or school-aged kids fell more for mothers than fathers, and more still for single mothers. One report found that, while women accounted for about 45 per cent of the decline in hours during the initial downturn, they would only make up 35 per cent of the recovery.
  
  At the same time, the economic infusion—for some—also prompted the government to discontinue CERB in October, precipitating plenty of panic, even as promises of a smooth transition back to an expanded EI program abounded. "I feel almost caged," said one mother in Winnipeg who was still unable to return to work. "I've been put in some type of situation where I have to sit there and deal with whatever comes my way, and I have no control over it." Many women were left wondering how they'd pay back any CERB payments they received in error—a not uncommon mistake made by the government in the rush to provide assistance. Others wondered how they'd later pay the required income taxes that came with CERB. Almost all wondered what they could possibly do next. Every day seemed to bring on a new anxiety, their grip on the lifeline feeling a little looser. To make matters worse, the end to eviction bans had a parallel timeline. Already in April, Ontario landlords, for example, had reported a 10 per cent delinquency rate, a tenfold increase from the usual 1 per cent. At that time, one tenants' advocate predicted a "bloodbath" when the ban officially ended, and for many people that was now coming true. And around the same time, about 760,000 Canadians had deferred mortgage payments coming due. "It's a limit that you thought you'd never have to hit," said the Winnipeg mom, speaking of the resulting stress. "And then you hit it. And you have to hit it again the next day." That's to say nothing at all of the women who couldn't access CERB—or any other form of government assistance—in the first place.