Ontario Nonprofit network has been awarded a three-year grant from the Department of Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) under its women’s economic and prosperity through systemic change stream for its care policy scorecard project.
Specifically, the project will address systemic barriers within Ontario’s care economy by:
- Adapting Oxfam Canada’s care economy scorecard to the Ontario context.
- Assessing Ontario’s care economy using the adapted scorecard.
- Mobilizing the results of the Ontario care economy scorecard.
- Identifying efforts to seed, support, and grow to advance a care policy framework (care informed public policy and a collective and holistic public policy approach to the care economy) rooted in Gender Based Analysis.
Background
The Care Policy Scorecard was launched by Oxfam in September 2021. The scorecard provides care advocates with a practical tool to measure and track government progress and commitments on policies that have a direct impact on care (unpaid and paid) and provides policy makers with evidence and information to make informed decisions on these policies.
The scorecard draws on the work of feminist and development economists and the International Labour Organization’s 5R Framework to outline the key components of a care-enabling public policy environment: one that is able to recognize, reduce, redistribute, and represent unpaid care work and adequately reward paid care work. This is accompanied by a set of policy indicators and questions to assess progress systematically and holistically across relevant public policy areas for unpaid and paid care work.
Adapted to be used at multiple levels of government, the scorecard allows researchers to carry out an assessment of the care public policy environment in any country to understand where there is positive progress, and where there are gaps and room for improvement. The scorecard is intended to be used by civil society, government, and academia alike. The scorecard allows for an assessment of the care public policy environment in any country to understand where there is positive progress and where there are gaps and room for improvement. The indicators and assessment questions have been designed to have relevance across different socio-economic contexts and be used around the world to measure governments’ progress towards an enabling policy environment on care, in line with commitments on SDG 5.4 and other international human rights obligations.
Recently, Oxfam Canada adapted the tool at the federal level but cited its limitations given most care policies are in the provincial and territorial jurisdiction.
Opportunities for engagement
- Participate in one of two scorecard adaptation sessions in Toronto in February-March 2024
- Participate in one of seven assessment validation sessions across the province in Spring 2025.
- Attend the care policy summit in early 2026.
- Participate in amplifying the adaptation and assessment (including report) when launched
- Connect with ONN at any point to learn more about the work and offer feedback
Project contact
Pamela Uppal-Sandhu
Director of Policy, Interim Co-Executive Director
pamela@theonn.ca