Philanthropy has a crucial role to play in supporting the chronically underfunded work of gender justice organizations – which are holding communities together in an age of precarity – and the moment is now.
Published February 2, 2026 Written by:
Mira Oreck is the executive director of The Houssian Foundation.
Vani Jain is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Philanthropy.
This article is written by sector contributors. Learn more about how we work with writers and about the Journal.
We keep being told that to fix the economy we need to tighten our belts. Cut “non-essentials.” Make do. But whose essentials are we talking about – and who gets to decide?
Across Canada, something deeper than financial strain is taking hold. Yes, groceries cost more and debt loads are rising. But research from Abacus Data shows that Canadians aren’t just worried about having less; they’re worried that everything around them is becoming less stable. Nearly half the country now lives with high or extreme precarity, fearing that one shock – a rent increase, a climate disaster, a job loss – could upend their lives.
Younger Canadians feel it most. Women carry heavier strain than men. And even households earning more than $100,000 a year no longer feel insulated from instability. In 2026, precarity is not a blip. It is the emotional baseline of the country.
When the federal government released what it called a “generational budget,” many hoped this meant investing in the supports that make life predictable: the systems that allow families to work, plan, and hope. Instead, Budget 2025 doubled down on a familiar hierarchy of value. Budget 2025 prioritized capital projects and industry-facing investments while sidelining or underfunding universal pharmacare expansion, stronger income and disability benefits, childcare wages and access, long-term-care staffing, and the public service capacity that makes these systems function.
For philanthropy, particularly those committed to long-term stability, productivity, and democratic resilience, this shift should be a warning signal.
“The programs that anchor people during instability are the very ones treated as ‘non-essential’ when budgets tighten.”
Here is the part we rarely say out loud: the programs that anchor people during instability are the very ones treated as “non-essential” when budgets tighten.
The work of keeping communities stable – making sure people can raise families, access healthcare, build livelihoods, and feel safe – is still framed as soft, peripheral, or merely “social.” Yet, this work is the backbone of a safe and functioning society. It is the work of the people and organizations who hold communities together every day. It is the work of the gender justice sector.
From childcare to reproductive healthcare, from shelters to consent education, from newcomer support to community safety, gender justice organizations build the infrastructure that makes life predictable. They are holding communities together in an age of precarity, yet their work is routinely underfunded, overlooked, or treated as optional. This includes the policy advocacy, service delivery, systems coordination, and narrative work that make other public and private investments viable.
The deeper question is what this government believes counts as building. Increasingly, anything related to people – care, services, community supports – is treated as a cost to contain, while capital projects are framed as the only investments that matter. But our country is held together by more than concrete and steel. And nowhere is that clearer than in the places where the human foundations of stability are already unravelling at the seams.
We’ve been told for years that gender equality is a “nice to have,” something to trim when budgets tighten. Yet evidence from the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Canada’s parliamentary budget officer is unequivocal: investing in care is one of the fastest ways to strengthen productivity, expand labour markets, and build long-term economic stability.
To be clear, the federal government avoided the most damaging cuts and announced funding for Women and Gender Equality Canada. But the overall orientation is unmistakable: dramatic investments in capital-intensive areas such as defence, transit, and heavy industry, paired with cuts to the public service and no meaningful expansion of the human systems that allow Canadians to weather instability or power up those big projects.
This “capital good, operating bad” framing may balance a ledger, but it weakens the infrastructure that most directly shapes people’s lives.
Health is prosperity. Care is infrastructure. People are the project.
When contraception is accessible, people stay in school and in the workforce. When childcare works, the entire economy hums. When people can access basic care, the systems they uphold remain stable.
“When public investment is uneven and human infrastructure is treated as a cost rather than capital, philanthropic investment becomes one of the most powerful levers available.”
This is where philanthropy’s role as a long-term, risk-tolerant investor becomes essential. When governments underinvest in the human foundations of a country, philanthropy becomes one of the few actors with the freedom to step in boldly, quickly, and imaginatively. Philanthropy cannot replace government. But when public investment is uneven and human infrastructure is treated as a cost rather than capital, philanthropic investment becomes one of the most powerful levers available.
Few areas offer a greater return on investment than gender justice, where even modest support delivers outsized gains in economic security, health, and democratic resilience and strengthens every other system philanthropy cares about. In the coming weeks, you’ll see pieces from three organizations – Women’s Shelters Canada, Rise Women’s Legal Centre, and YWCA Canada – all of whom demonstrate that funding gender justice organizations doesn’t need to entail a departure from existing philanthropic priorities; it can actually be a way to strengthen them.
A generational philanthropic strategy looks like investing in gender justice, one of the least supported areas in Canadian philanthropy, because the future depends on it. Great movements are built on long-term, bold investment. It means supporting advocacy, civic engagement, and systems change – not just services.
History shows that philanthropy often leads where governments hesitate, backing the ideas and institutions that later become the cornerstones of national strength. Nation-building takes time, and the returns – stability, cohesion, prosperity – are generational.
We have a choice: fund the scaffolding of stability, or allow precarity to deepen. Philanthropy can be the catalyst Canada needs right now, not as a substitute for government, but as a force that insists people are worth investing in.
This is the moment to fund the future Canadians deserve to live in.