On March 10, 2021, Dr. Jill Andrew (MPP Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ontario NDP Critic for Culture and Women’s Issues) was the featured speaker for the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies’ Annual Lecture.

The recording of the event “And Still We Rise: Womxn Opposing Oppression & Proposing Change” is linked for those who were unable to attend.

Check out Dr. Andrew’s book, Body Stories: In and Out and with and Through Fat, available through Demeter Press, at Another Story Bookshop, or purchased through your local independent bookstore.

Womxn have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. While COVID-19 has been referred to as an ‘unprecedented’ pandemic, in this talk Jill Andrew (she/her) highlights the ongoing pandemics far preceding COVID-19 waging war on womxn that are exacerbated by this current moment.

Black, Indigenous, womxn of colour, queer and trans womxn, disabled women, sex workers, incarcerated women, fat women, elder women and those representing the bulk of gig-economy, sole-parent and essential worker groups have felt the physical and mental weathering of a pandemic also fueled by the realities of pay inequity, discrimination and chronic underfunding in health care, ‘justice’ and education, rising gender-based violence, lack of real affordable and supportive housing and systemic anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism.

Using the pandemic as a guise, decision makers have routinely ignored the impact of class-stratification and environmental racism on womxn’s bodies and have in fact created policies expediting these crises.

Andrew proposes an inter-ministerial plan for a COVID-19 recovery that centers womxn and discusses her Motion 89 - a call for the Ontario Government to adopt an intersectional, gender equity strategy as a mandatory component of the COVID-19 response. Andrew tabled this motion in December 2019. It is necessary now more than ever.