This time the Never Okay Project participated in a Webinar organized by the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) titled “Feminist International Policies in the Time of COVID 19 Perspective from Canada and Sweden”. Held from 15:00 – 16:15 CEST, the discussion was interactive featuring 2 speakers from Canada and 1 speaker from Sweden.

The timely opening of the event was led by an operator from DCED named Aatif Somji. Aatif presented an overview of the Webinar discussion, which included the objectives of feminist regulations, as well as examining feminist regulations through the lens of the COVID 19 crisis and other crises. After that, Aatif invited Shawn Hayes to present first about his perspective.

Shawn Hayes is a senior policy advisor in the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). The perspective from Canada regarding the existence of assistance policy itself is to promote gender equality for women and children, freedom of expression, political engagement, and access in the economic field. All of these goals are achieved by forming a system that fundamentally reaches gender equality and human rights in areas such as collaborating with organizations, raising awareness from an early age about the importance of gender equality, and providing funding to marginalized women.

The presentation was then continued by Reneta Lambreva, who is also a senior policy advisor at FIAP Canada. The area of action for FIAP in dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic is committed to helping women who are economically affected, such as providing jobs and improving the quality of existing jobs. FIAP also focuses on women who have informal employment by providing services such as free childcare programs, transportation services in Jordan, and many others. 

The Webinar continued with a presentation from Ulrika Grandin as the deputy director in Sweden. Ulrika revealed that Sweden was the first country to have a feminist policy, thus the country highly upholds gender equality and human rights. Ulrika's perspective on feminist policy is divided into 3 main points: women and girls in rights, representation, and resources. They are currently developing new strategies related to gender policy that are evolving to address this global gap. COVID 19 as a global crisis is seen by Ulrika as an opportunity to further develop gender policy.

Finally, the three speakers conveyed their arguments about feminist perspectives in the context of the COVID 19 crisis. This situation indeed harms many parties, including women and children. Jobs in the informal sector, such as commercial sex workers, are also disrupted, causing unrest. Therefore, in times like this, support and mutual cooperation greatly help in raising awareness of feminism and human rights.