The gender impact statement included in this week’s provincial budget is historic, according to the executive director of the New Brunswick Women’s Council.
Beth Lyons said from what they’ve found, New Brunswick is the first province to do anything like this. Even better, it’s exactly what they asked for.
“It is entirely about how the budget can impact different groups of New Brunswickers differently, and it primarily looks at gender but it also talks about folks with disabilities, about folks who are First Nations, Metis, Inuit. The very fact that a document like this has been published is a big deal,” she said.
She said for the government to open up and account for decision-making based on differential impacts is really exciting as well as the acknowledgement that it’s a starting point, which indicates more work will be done.
We commend government for publishing a gender impact statement for the 2021-2022 budget. According to government, the statement is their first focused effort at reviewing & reporting on how budgetary decisions affect groups of New Brunswickers differently https://t.co/nKlQysdca5
— New Brunswick Women's Council (@nbwomenscouncil) March 18, 2021
Lyons said the statement itself indicates there’s a lack of data which could possibly lead to New Brunswick developing a different data strategy to get the information that’s needed to support evidence-based policy. She said the council would also be interested in a gender impact statement assessment published for all public policy work since they were able to do this for the budget which tends to be more secretive.
Lyons said while the provincial government did announce in 2016 that they would be using gender-based assessments on all their decision-making, it was disclosed later that did not include the budget. The council has been asking for an intersectional gender lens specifically on the budget and to also disclose more about their assessments such as who does it, how many people are trained, what is subject to it and when something that should be subject to it is exempted.
“When gender-based analysis is done well, this isn’t just a process of a single person sitting in the office with statistical data from StatsCan. It should be part of the entire policy development process and gender-based analysis really helps with that consultation and engagement piece,” she said.
Lyons said getting to a policy should start with looking at the data and reaching out to stakeholders and community groups for qualitative data. She said getting an updated statistical profile will help but the more important part of covering the gaps is talking to the people and community groups. Lyons said the council has done work of that kind.
One of the reasons the Women’s Council is so pleased with the assessment is that while is uses terms like male and female, it’s because it’s accurately representing the data StatsCan would use.
“What’s noteworthy is in the statement they dig into that and they talk about the fact that when we use the language of male and female, there are folks who are trans who are gender nonconforming or nonbinary who don’t have an option that accurately represents them so they end up having to pick what we call the sex that they were assigned at birth which may not resonate with them,” she said.
“So they acknowledge that there’s a shortfall in the data and seeing a gender impact statement do that is really important.”
Lyons said it’s promising that the gaps in the data are being followed with “qualitative research that’s done by people who have rigorous approaches to their work”.
“What we want to see next is not just that the government understands that there are differential impacts, but how those are shaping decision-making in New Brunswick because that’s how we get to good public policy especially in the wake of COVID-19 that has had disproportionate impacts on women,” she said.
Lyons said we have to get better about intersectionality and the research has to reflect that. She said she wants to see this work improved and said the government has treated this as the serious work that it is.
She said the Women’s Council still has plenty of asks including getting a sexual violence framework funded in New Brunswick, bringing midwifery across the province and looking into systemic racism.
