What can the economy do beyond recovery?

What if the economy was designed with the prosperity of gender-marginalized youth in mind?

The COVID-19 pandemic remains a destabilizing factor for the Canadian economy, illuminating cracks in existing structures, systems, and institutions that have deepened in times of crisis. As governments initiate processes to investigate and respond to these revelations, Fora’s Young Feminist Economy report, summarized in this brief, centers the lived experiences and aspirations of gender-marginalized young leaders either emerging or settling into the workforce at this destabilizing time.

In our consultations with 40 young leaders across Canada, we learned that gender-marginalized Canadian youth not only long for a just recovery, but a reworking of traditional economics and financial structures at the systemic level to ensure that these vital systems allow youth to enjoy a dignified life, not merely survive. Thus this report aims to fill information gaps in existing recovery discourse by centering young leaders and asking: what must the economy do beyond recover? Where has it failed? What are the barriers, and how will we dismantle them?

Adopting an intersectional feminist and capabilities approach lens, the report analyzes the financial state of gender-marginalized youth in Canada in relation to cost-of-living and affordability; career development; inclusion in decision-making; and macro trends such as degree inflation and a demoralizing job market.