Paulette Senior is president and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation. She has devoted her career to empowering women and girls to overcome barriers and reach their full potential.
Her work and advocacy with shelters, as well as employment and housing programs, paved the way toward leadership roles at national organizations. She served as CEO of YWCA Canada for 10 years before joining the Canadian Women’s Foundation as CEO in 2016. Her work with the foundation is guided by the vision of an inclusive, national movement toward gender equity that will strengthen all Canadians.
She is a member of the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, an advisory body that develops recommendations on gender equality issues across the Group of Seven agenda. In 2021, she received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Lethbridge. She is featured in the book Inspiring Canadians: 40 Brilliant Canadians and Their Visions for the Nation.
It’s estimated that Canada could add $150 billion to our gross domestic product by 2026 by advancing gender equality and boosting women’s workforce participation. Everyone in the ecosystem of contemporary capital has a part to play, writes Canadian Women’s Foundation CEO Paulette Senior, including philanthropists.
Governments have been slow to act on the disproportionate weight of climate crises on women and gender-diverse people, writes Paulette Senior, and Canada is no exception. But philanthropists are well positioned to invest in underfunded solutions that leave no one behind, she argues.
As we celebrate our mothers and caregivers this Mother’s Day, we need to address the gendered catch-22 of motherhood, writes Paulette Senior. Philanthropy must move beyond the ethos of “motherhood as solution” or “motherhood as problem,” she says, and centre women’s humanity beyond their care work – and get ambitious about lightening their load.
The term “misogynoir” refers to a particular form of discrimination against Black women, girls, and gender-diverse people. As we mark Black History Month, the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Paulette Senior calls for those with philanthropic clout to vie for better work, invest in better futures, and join the uproar for policy-making that actively includes Black women and gender-diverse people.
Je me souviens où j’étais le 6 décembre 1989, lorsque j’ai appris que 14 femmes avaient été assassinées à l’École Polytechnique de Montréal. Je me souviens de la
While much has changed since 1989, when 14 women were murdered at École Polytechnique in Montreal, we’re only at the beginnings of where philanthropy needs to go in Canada when it comes to ending gender-based violence, writes the president and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
With no shortage of gendered inequities to tackle in Canada and abundant research that demonstrates how equality benefits everyone, the CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation calls for increased investment in gender equality on Give to Women and Girls Day.
