Word doesn’t always get around evenly, so in case you missed it, here’s the scoop!

In April 2023, LiisBeth Media, a leading feminist media publication focused on feminist enterprise practice merged with rabble.ca, Canada’s longest running (founded, on April 18, 2001) online, award-winning, lefty, independent, community-driven news outlet.

Since then, we have been on quite a journey. But lovin’ every minute! Mergers, or in this case, mind-melds between two indie, under-capitalized entities with long to-do lists is like travelling on a cow path versus a super highway.  We are diligently taking it one kilometre at a time. 

About rabble.ca

Cofounded by Tonya Surman (Centre for Social Innovation), Mark Surman (Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation) and Judy Rebick (Canadian feminist activist, journalist) in 2001, rabble.ca is one of the first digital journalism organizations in Canada, and the first to incorporate as non-profit. rabble.ca has been at the forefront of reporting on national politics with a credible progressive lens that centres on issues of social movements, labour, and grassroots activism. Feminist journalism has always been part of the editorial focus. With LiisBeth in the house, their coverage of the feminist economy will increase. 

On LiisBeth

LiisBeth was launched in 2015 by pk mutch and grew to serve and inform over 30,000 unique annual readers and 2700 newsletter subscribers. The media enterprise also co-launched the Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum, the Feminist City Walk and sponsored feminist initiatives like VenusFest and The Don’t You Want Me Campaign.  The goal of the feminist media upstart was to raise awareness and interest in the feminist enterprise space, support feminist enterprises in whatever form, and connect feminist entrepreneurs globally. 

LiisBeth and rabble.ca began working together in 2021. It was soon clear that coming together would benefit both readership communities. 

On the Merger

pk mutch, founder and publisher of LiisBeth is excited about how this “exit in community” will evolve. 

“The LiisBeth board and team are all super proud of this merger which took a lot of care, thought and planning for a year to bring to a close.”

Over my 50-year experience as an activist, I have found that the most effective way to win a battle is by making connections across differences. We are doing that less and less these days in a time of polarized, denunciating politics but we have never needed it more.

One of the most successful coalitions that I was part of was the National Action Committee (NAC) on the Status of Women, the largest feminist group in Canada from 1972 til the early 21st century. I was the President of NAC for three years in the 1990’s during which we elected a diverse executive, with Indigenous, Black, immigrant, 2SLGBTQIA+ and disabled representatives probably the first in the country. But NAC began in 1972 with a politically diverse coalition. Young women, like me at the time, wanted revolutionary change and looked with disdain at older more conservative women like Laura Sabia, who was a Conservative councillor in a Toronto suburb. We may have recognized how rare it was to have a woman in this position but honestly we didn’t care, we wanted a revolution and to be completely equal with men. It was Grace Hartman, then a rare female President of a union, CUPE and Madeleine Parent, a working-class hero from Quebec who was charged by the neo-fascist Duplessis with treason for her union organizing, who convinced us to make an alliance with Conservative women who wanted an independent women’s group against Liberal women arguing that it be advisory to the government.  NAC became the most effective women’s group in the country and perhaps in the world. It was a cross class, cross political party organization.

Another example of an effective coalition was the pro-choice movement that won abortion rights in 1988, making abortion a medical procedure like any other. A group of birth control providers and feminist activists in Toronto decided to try and set up an illegal abortion clinic like Dr. Henry Morgentaler did in Quebec. It’s a long story but the part of it I want to tell here was the coalition we built. From the group we contemptuously called the Rosedale Ladies, who raised money for the defense fund, to the labour movement, who taught us how to defend the clinic from anti-choice protesters to the church women who made sure we debated abortion issues on many Sundays, we built a very broad coalition.

The toughest challenge was the alliance between the Canadian Association for Repeal of the Abortion Law (CARAL), mostly middle-aged, middle of the road women who had been lobbying the government for decades to repeal the restrictive abortion law passed in 1969 and the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC), a younger, more radical group. They thought we were crazy and thought we would ruin everything with our more radical tactics. Nevertheless, we worked together even if we didn’t like each other so much. It came to head when the Catholic Church called out their troops, including Catholic schools, to protest in front of the clinic every day for a week. Up until that point the church had been doing their lobbying behind closed doors. They had a 1,000 people a day in front of the clinic on Harbord St.,  Monday to Thursday. The OCAC decided to organize a counter demonstration at Queen’s Park in front of the legislature on the Friday. CARAL opposed it.  “We can never out mobilize the church,” they argued. “It will show our weakness.”

We considered their opinion, and we weren’t sure if we could out mobilize the church but what we did know was that it would demoralize all the people who had worked so hard to keep the clinic open on the streets and by building support in their workplaces and neighbourhoods. We decided to go ahead but then I learned something very important about coalitions. CARAL was furious with us, but they decided to do everything possible to build the biggest demonstration we could. They didn’t go off in a huff and denounce us. The movement is what mattered, and they did everything to build that demo even if it proved them wrong.

The media reported the Church demo’s every day. At the end of their report they said “and on Friday the pro-choice groups will be organizing a counter demo at Queen’s Park.” I will never forget standing on the steps of the Legislature, you could do that back then, and watching the waves of people emerging from the subway. It was huge. At least 15,000 people covered the grounds around Queen’s Park. It was a turning point.

Another example of an extraordinarily broad coalition was the Action Canada Network that formed to fight the free trade deal with the U.S, basically to fight neo-liberalism. The co-chairs were Maude Barlow, the leader of the Council of Canadians and a former Liberal and Tony Clarke who  at the time was a senior staff person with the Conference of Catholic Bishops.  This was during the pro-choice struggle and yet we managed to build a coalition against free trade at the same time as we were fighting each other in the streets over abortion rights. It must be said that Tony himself was pro-choice and later was fired by the Conference of Catholic Bishops for his activism. We won a majority of votes against the Free Trade Agreement but the free trade Tories won because of our undemocratic electoral system. By the time the Liberals came to power, they supported neo-liberalism even though they opposed it in 1988.

Women don’t make as much money as men. Full stop.

That’s true in a very short-term, dollars-to-donuts way– in Canada, as of 2021, a woman makes 89 cents for every one dollar a man makes. In real world terms, this means that if a man has to work 1,000 hours to make enough money to pay for something–a car, a piece of clothing, rent–a woman has to work 1,110 hours to purchase the same item, an amount that comes out to an extra 2.75 40 hour work weeks. 

The matter only compounds when you account for other intersections: as a racialized woman makes approximately 59 percent of what a white man makes, only 16 percent of women with a disability report being paid fairly compared to their peers and trans women make, on average, one-third less after transition than they did prior. 

The larger problem however, is that the buck, as they say, doesn’t stop there–these upfront short falls, along with social expectations and responsibilities around motherhood, caretaking and the culture of wealth and investing itself all conspire to create a situation where women not only earn less on the dollar than their male counterparts, they take longer to catch up and longer to accrue wealth, and are less likely to take “aggressive” investment options to maximize returns,  says says Kristine Beese, founder and CEO of Untangle Money. 

All this, says Beese, not only contributes to the wealth gap between men and women, but can have big impacts on women–who tend to outlive their male partners by a significant margin–on their quality of life and financial stability when it comes time to retire. 

Untangle Money, Beese says, strives to correct for this imbalance by creating “financial plans specifically designed for women and their lived experiences.” 

Cool–so what does that actually mean? 

Beese, who got her start in more classical financial management working for Bay Street firms in wealth management and investing, says it means looking at the actual culture of financial planning, which isn’t geared towards real, everyday women, but to wealthy, largely white and cis, men–the exact demographic that makes that 11 percent more on the dollar, and makes it earlier on, for longer, than women. You can’t take that tool, she says, and just try to slam women–especially women of colour, or women with disabilities, or working class women–into it and expect it to work for them. 

“The first step is to define your financial goals–but you have to remember that a traditional financial plan is geared towards people who already have money,” Beese says. “When you have money, it’s great to define what goals you have for yourself…but when we start with clients and they define their goals, they (say) things like ‘well, I’d like to have a car, I’d like to go back to school,’ things like property, education–things which, for the middle class, are actually very (financially) tight.” 

When you look at these goals and the income of the average woman and put it into the usual investment and financial planning strategies, it often looks like they not only can’t afford to meet these goals, they “can’t afford to retire,” says Beese. “I think that really shows what happens when you inadvertently take a tool that was designed for really wealthy people and try to apply it to the average person,” she says. 

Instead, Beese asks clients to create realistic portraits of their “now money” and set expectations around that. 

“So, we (Untangle Money) says ‘okay, here’s what you’ve told us about your money, here’s where we envision you’re going to be able to go with that, and here are the drivers that go into that picture–and so we’re trying to get your money to work harder to you,” she says. 

One facet of this is understanding that women have consumer needs and spending that men don’t have, and pay more for basic consumer goods–women’s clothes, for example, cost an average of 8 percent more than men’s clothes, and toiletries like deodorant or razors cost an average of 13 percent more, even when they’re chemically and practically the same product. This is important to think about, because that markup had to be adjusted to account for the lower earning power women have in the first place–that dress shirt that costs 108% instead of $100 was already 11 per cent more expensive for a woman even we account for gender-based inflation, because is only making 89 cents on the dollar in the first place. 

Moreover, “women’s spending is often seen as frivolous,” Beese says; both scotch and manicures–for which Beese herself has been “lambasted for getting” in the past– are consumer goods with social cache, but while scotch is seen as serious purchases, manicures are seen as silly. There are also social ramifications, Beese notes, for not being able to engage in certain kind of spending for women–’attractive’ people make between 10 and 15 percent more than people perceived to be ‘unattractive’ in the same position. While this is true for both men and women, to meet this standard, women have to put in more time–and spend more money–in order to avoid the ‘beauty gap’ standard, which makes these purchases, to a point, personal investments, as opposed to consumer luxuries. 

“There’s nothing more discerning about getting your nails done than buying a fancy bottle of scotch,” Beese says. 

“One can actually (see nails) as an investment, but when I talk to a financial advisor, they see that as a discretionary spend.”

This is more true of some industries, such as customer service or sales, than in others, adding that, for example, when she was a server she actually had a contract that said she was required to meet a certain standard of grooming in order to keep her job. This is especially true for racialized women, who–in some unfair, racist, and biased workplaces–are often expected to meet a white-centric “standard” of beauty around their hair for example, which has additional social, economic and temporal costs. 

“When we talk to black women, for instance, and they talk about all their hair maintenance, that is not discretionary (spending),” says Beese. “And so (Untangle Money) includes recurring hair maintenance as part of the cost of living that you incur (in your financial plan).”

Lower earning power and higher costs of living aside, women have another big problem when it comes to their financial and retirement goals, which is the culture of investment and finance itself. Women, says Beese, are culturally perceived to be less successful with money and investment than men–but we aren’t talking about anecdotal evidence, we’re talking about numbers, and the numbers say that not only is that not true, but that women are, overall, better with their money than men in the long terms, says Beese. In fact, when men and women invest at a similar level of risk, women’s investment portfolios outperform men’s by 1 percent; essentially, at a certain risk level, if a stock is expected to give a 4 percent return on investment in a man’s portfolio, women are seeing 5 percent–which is a bigger deal than it sounds, because that 1 percent return is compounded annually. 

What does that mean, in real world terms? Imagine you have 100 cows and your friend has 100 cows. After selling calves to meet your costs, you have four cows extra in your herd to start off next year, but your friend has five cows–a four and five percent increase for each of you, respectively. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but after five years you have 117 cows and your friend has 121; after 10 years, you have 142 cows, and your friend has 156. 

This one percent overperformance is so significant that, for a professional investor like Beese, it would be “career defining.” 

“If we consistently outperform the market by one percent, that makes you an incredible investor,” she says. 

Women, however, tend to be attracted to–and steered towards–lower risk, lower reward investment strategies, says Beese. On the surface, this seems like a safer bet–and one which might offer a cash-first safety net, even if it comes at the cost of paying off interest heavy debt–but have long term repercussions, especially when you consider that women make less, start generating investable wealth much later, and will live longer than their male counterparts. Part of what Untangle money does, Beese says, is take these things into account and give women all the information they need, including options that might look riskier up front, but have higher payoffs to help generate the cash needed to close that gender pay gap and shore up funds for the future–investment strategies women may have been taught to consider to “aggressive” for their own portfolios, but which men are encouraged to make. 

Upfront, women-focused financial planning aside, Untangle Money has a social, as well as economic focus, says Beese. For one thing, the company only creates financial plans – it doesn’t sell you any stocks or other investments, because that creates situations Beese feels can lead to “conflicts of interest.” For another, the company–acknowledging that their primary clientele is middle to upper middle class women at the moment–has several tiers of access in order to try to make their services more widely available to a broader set of income brackets, although only one of them is up and running at this time. 

Untangle Mini ($500+HST), the entry level program currently available, offers the “basics” for middle-class women looking to take control of their finances, plan for the future and get grounded in the basics of investing. Untangle Maxi ($2,500+HST) is a more advanced program with greater focus on investing and long term planning; it’s not currently available, but should be ready for purchase soon. Untangle Auto is an app that will provide all the same tools as Mini and Maxi, but with more capacity for the user to proceed at their own pace, checking in annually to observe their progress and set up notifications to make sure they are meeting their goals. 

Beese says she hopes to have Untangle Auto up and available by next International Women’s Day. At $50, the app is geared to a more lower-middle or working class bracket–the group of women Beese says she most wants to reach and help take control of their finances. Beese says she recognizes that the Maxi and Mini programs aren’t really useful to these groups, because in order to invest money, you need to have money to invest, and the Auto program is designed to make that easier and more realistic for a broader set of women. 

“Our goal is to get a financial plan into the hands of every woman in the world,” says Beese. 

LiisBeth Media has been a supporter of the women’s entrepreneur StrikeUP conference since the start. Why? Because we are both all about elevating the work of not only feminist founders but also women, queer, trans enterprise crafters everywhere. 

Our assignment from the Strike Up team? Come up with a creative way of both honouring International Women’s Day 2023 and encapsulating the year’s event; Over 4000 women across Canada and around the world participated. 

In the first year, 2021, we invited Katie Chappell, a graphic illustrator from the UK, to attend the event, summarize learnings in a graphic illustration, and also write about her experience. You can read about her takeaways here.

In 2022, we contracted Timaj Girard, a spoken word artist to attend and write plus perform a poem that captured the essence of the event for her. Her brilliant work can be found here. 

In 2023, in response to women’s rights rollbacks around the world, we wanted to send a message: We are never going back.  The medium? Music. 

We started looking for someone who embodied feminism, entrepreneurial spirit and the term “powerhouse” and found her!

Kritty Uranowski is an established feminist, experimental music performer, band leader and multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter who has also works with well-known bands like U.S. Girls, and Queen of Swords.  Uranowski works as a performance coach at Girls Rock Camp Toronto and Baby Pineapple Studio. Uranowski was also the producer of the 2018 Polaris Prize gala closing ceremony  She currently leads Lavender Bruisers, an experimental music project.  

Creating a song that celebrates the work and progress of women entrepreneurs was an opportunity Uranowski could not say no to. 

Learn more about Uranowski in the video interview below. 

pk mutch:  Kritty, what was your first thought when we invited you to consider the gig?

When she was head of production at Variprix, Grad says she tried to lead with flexibility, because caregiving extends to many people.

“There was a man who lived in Newmarket (ON) who would drive downtown to Liberty Village everyday,” she says. “He had basketball with his boys twice a week and I said, ‘You better get your ass up there. Those are the important things.’

“Men and women – we all have other priorities. That opportunity really taught me that’s not something to compromise on when we’re running our business.”

Although they are at different places in their life, Grad says she’s learning a lot from Wylie, who, at 52, brings a “menopausal lens” to their partnership and business.

“For so long, for so many decades, no one spoke about it,” says Wylie. “Yes, you see women in later stages of their lives change their careers and do different things and that’s amazing. But how many of those women made those changes because they couldn’t navigate their current career path feeling the way they were feeling?”

“(Menopause) ebbs and flows – particularly (for me in) the last three months, I’m ebbing in the most challenging of ways. I adapt, sometimes daily, to my energy and focus levels, taking breaks and shifting tasks/priorities when possible,” she says. “ It most definitely makes me more aware of other people’s energy and trying to make a space for people to share feelings, ask for help, or to just be if that is what they need.”

Like the flexibility that Grad has sought out as a single parent, Wylie says she now finds herself adjusting her work schedule to prioritize her well-being as she goes through menopause.

“I grew up with the notion that to succeed you need to work harder and longer and keep your emotions in check. Success was intrinsically linked to performance, how much I did and how well it was received. I am working on reframing that notion, and today my success is more about being self-satisfied with the work I produce, how it is done and in the environment I help create for others to work within.”

The lack of these important conversations about their lived experiences have encouraged Grad and Wylie to open up space for more human conversations with their partners and colleagues. One area they strive to invest their time and energy in is through mentorship. As Wylie puts it, they, “want to make the time to be able to give back to the next generation of super producers and female entrepreneurs.”

“For example, we just wrapped up six days on set with a really lovely crew,” says Grad. “The conversation at the end was: we really loved working with you, but let’s have a coffee to talk about what you like to do so that we’re putting you in the right position next time. Just because you came on as an associate producer or camera assistant, we realize you have other skills and other interests. We can definitely put you in the same role the next time, but if we know what you like to do and we have opportunities to provide that, then let’s make that happen. Those conversations are important to us.”

“I feel very strongly about our efforts to create a business where we work collaboratively with others, creating a space that supports our team learning and growing and contributing to our shared success,” adds Wylie. “Growing the business and being profitable is unquestionably a goal, but the first priority is always the people and community we develop and grow the business with.”

Grad and Wylie emphasize the empathy and generosity that they aspire to bring to all aspects of their work. As Grad says, “It’s important for us to take what works and share it with other people. If you like our process, take it. If you like the way we structured our call sheets, take it. If you like the way we build, take it. Our success is not the ultimate goal. We want to see everybody’s success.

“Let’s all rise together. If we figured it out the hard way, take the easy way.”

The number of freelancers is growing. But are freelance unions growing? If not, why not? And what would happen if freelance unions worked together?

Freelance writer Toni Main (not their real name) landed a new $6,000 gig. There was no formal contract–just a series of emails and mutual trust about what was expected, what they would deliver and how much they would make. Several months later, Main remained unpaid. As a last resort, they turned to the Canadian Freelance Union for help. 

“And that’s why we’re here, says” Nora Loreto, new President of the Canadian Freelance Union (CFU), a local of Unifor, founded in 2006 by the Communications, Energy, Paperworkers Union (CEP). “It’s also what I like most about what we do. When someone has a grievance, been harassed, or strung along by a contractor, we get involved. We use a variety of tactics to get justice for our members. And we have not failed yet.”

CFU, like other unions in the media and communication space also provide members with health care insurance options, training opportunities, contract negotiation support and press cards.

Yet, despite the benefits of joining a union and increased number of freelancers due to ongoing tsunami waves of layoffs in the media sector, including Postmedia’s recent move to cut 11 per cent of its editorial staff, CFU freelance union membership numbers (200) seem surprisingly low.

Loreto says part of the reason is that there many freelance media/communication professionals unions out there, like the Canadian Writer’s Union (1,600 members), The Canadian Freelance Guild (340 members), the  Communications Workers of Canada (6,000 members due largely to CBC worker memberships)  and CFU’s parent union, Unifor Media Council (8,000) to name a few.

Ultimately, this fragments both membership and power. There is also the out of pocket cost issue ($125-150 per year per union) and member churn; if someone gets a job, they leave.

Other reasons include the fact that the majority of Canada’s 2.8 million (15 per cent of the labour force) contractor workers and self-employed founders, are largely under informed about the existence and benefits of freelance unions and the value of collective bargaining.

However, Loreto is optimistic that will change.

Recently, Loreto co-organized a hybrid freelancer summit in Toronto at Metropolitan University. Approximately 20+ people representing a variety of organizations—or themselves—attended the event, which took place February 3. 

One of them was Chris Katsarov Luna, freelance photojournalist and founding member of the freelance union United Photojournalists of Canada. Luna says many photojournalists have recently found themselves pink-slipped due to tight budgets and then re-hired on contract terms, an arrangement that saves the company up to 25 per cent per person in staff costs. 

“Some (people) think freelancing is great, but most of us are not in the least bit interested in being self-employed and would prefer a regular, waged position with benefits,” says Luna. 

This includes soft benefits too, like corporate discounts for gym memberships, and other “soft” benefits not extended to contractors. 

Luna felt the freelance summit meeting was very productive and believes collaboration can power up and bring more negotiating power to their members.

Freelancers growing in number

Contract workers, solopreneurs and self-employed founders (freelancers) remain the fastest growing segment of the Canadian labour force. Surveys done by Statistics Canada shows the top reason for going freelance was freedom, followed by the inability to find suitable employment.  Women freelancers also cite escaping workplace discrimination, harassment and corporate glass cages as key reasons for exiting traditional employment. Although the number of people employed as freelancers dipped slightly in 2021, Upwork, a U.S. based, global freelance platform with more than 14 million users, anticipates freelancers will represent over 50 per cent of the U.S. workforce in the U.S. by 2027. A 2023 study by MBO Partners, a U.S. based  independent worker management company,  shows the number of American freelancers increased by 26 per cent in 2022. Experts predict similar growth trends in Canada, especially as companies begin to insist on a return to the office, a condition some workers now balk at.

The pay gap

Freelancing is tough for all, but especially women and other marginalized groups.

While income data varies by industry, age and province, the majority of freelancer workers are barely keeping their heads above water. In 2020, Canadian male freelancers earned on average $45,600, while women working in the same field made just  $34, 400–a 24 per cent gender-based wage gap. Thus, average freelancer incomes barely exceed Canada’s current poverty line ( $37, 542). When we further compare the gender pay gap in the freelance space to the waged employment space, recent OECD data shows the pay gap for women freelancers is a  whopping 40 percent higher than that experienced by women in the waged sector. The more intersectionalities you add in, the wider this income gap gets– available studies also show racialized people, single parents, and recent immigrants are over represented in the freelance and self-employment space, and even more likely to struggle financially than their white counterparts, and black freelancers often face discrimination in online hiring platforms.

Being a freelancer is clearly a tough hustle at the best of times, but with rampant inflation, no paid leave or access to subsidized health or dental plans, and chronically late pay cheques– studies show 29 per cent of freelance invoices are paid late– it’s getting harder and harder for freelancers to make ends meet. This is again, especially true if you’re a woman– while male freelancers are paid late 24 per cent of the time, female freelancers are waiting on a payment that’s “in the mail” 31 per cent of the time. 

Are Entrepreneurs Freelancers too?

Anyone who works independently, without a formal salary, according to Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) essentially self-employed aka a freelancer—and this includes consultants, contractors, and includes self-employed entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are commonly viewed as people building the next Facebook. But the fact is, 55 per cent of all incorporated businesses are enterprises with just 1-4 employees. micro enterprises–the vast majority of which solopreneur enterprises. However, a search of start-up and growth programs (such as Startup Canada and Futurpreneur) shows no mention of unions and how solopreneurs founders might benefit by joining. Instead, solopreneurs default lawyers to help with contract disputes or harassment claims.

Given that even a simple “cease and desist letter” or taking legal action to get paid can run into the thousands, many solopreneurs across industries increasingly realize they have a lot in common with freelancers when it comes to living with precarity, vulnerability and accessing basic worker rights. Nancy Wilson, founder and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce, says their members, many of whom were hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic, are increasingly looking to the government for answers to systemic self-employment related exploitation issues felt more acutely now than ever before.  

“Anyone fighting to change the system can learn a lot from the labour movement. We deliberately reached out to the Canadian Freelance Union and the Canadian Labour Congress to join our advocacy alliance for self-employed individuals,” Wilson says.

As an entrepreneur, what’s your time worth to you? 

Now, what’s having control of your time worth? 

For most people who own their own business–especially small businesses owned by women–the answer is a lot. Studies show small business owners regularly work more than 50 hours a week, with 68 percent of those hours spent just managing daily tasks, such as emails or phone calls, and only 31 percent of that time spent actively growing their business. Moreover, in a 2021 survey, 41 percent of small business entrepreneurs reported being called away to handle a work-related matter, even when they were actively trying to take a break.

These are the kinds of problems Toronto-based Jennifer Hazel of Curate Concierge has set out to solve. 

Essentially, Curate Concierge helps entrepreneurs design and implement tightly curated, streamlined, technology-enabled work flows so that founders spend more time on their business rather than in their business. 

“My services appeal especially to growing small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to scale their systems operations to fit the budget, the needs, and the projection of their own growth,” Hazel adds. “ Our solutions are also really customized, scalable and agile– ones that can adapt.”

Similar to the way a scientist needs carefully crafted, systematically controlled research practices in order to conduct a successful experiment and gather the most accurate and useful data, small businesses too, need efficient, personally tailored operational and data gathering  systems to be successful.

Everyone knows this. But there is seemingly never enough time. And few founders go into starting a business dreaming about building a starship enterprise style operating system or healthy approach to work. They figure out the importance later on. 

This is a story Hazel knows well.

After returning from a maternity leave, Hazel says she returned to a job in which her duties were so “dramatically altered that I couldn’t really work it anymore.” With her young daughter at home and dependent on her, Hazel, who had initially been studying to be a lawyer, found she had to “make a shift very quickly,” and went into a retraining program to be a paralegal. 

Why Entrepreneurship?

“It wasn’t like I chose to be an entrepreneur at that point,” says Hazel. “Paralegal seemed like a good middle ground and timing wise, it fit. I was relying on a childcare subsidy that I absolutely had to keep – but you absolutely have to be employed or in school or…you have to be working.”

When she finished the program, however, Hazel found herself in an awkward position–she couldn’t work as a paralegal yet, because she was waiting for her licensing to come through, but was severely over qualified to be an administrative assistant. Hazel began thinking about the practice management skills she had learned during her certification as a paralegal, and that’s when the idea of running her own business “started to gel.”

Taking the Busy out of Business

Entrepreneurs–particularly women and especially women with kids– come up against “structural barriers” within contemporary work culture that not only make it harder for them to succeed, but create an emotionally and professionally damaging environment. 

Hazel soon realized she had skills which could help other entrepreneurs not only build less “busy” time sucking businesses, but better lives., Hazel’s business, Curate Concierge started as a business admin company for “twenty bucks an hour, in between (her) daughter’s naps and after she went to bed.”

“I think I posted an ad or responded to an ad (for work) or something in a Facebook group for East End Toronto mom entrepreneurs,” she says. “These were all women with businesses who, a lot of them, were on maybe their second mat leave, or were in between jobs or had recently left their place of work because (the job) didn’t work for them–the hours didn’t work for them, or the work was not aligned (with what they needed). 

Despite the freedom on being an entrepreneur, “They (the women entrepreneurs) were burning the fuck right out because, I mean, insert any one of a million reasons why the traditional job market is hostile to women working parents– and, you know, add in any other intersectionalities on top of that–and you just start to find yourself lower and lower down in the economy.” 

From these experiences, Hazel conceived Curate Concierge–although it certainly wasn’t easy, she says, noting that in the beginning she was under charging for her services and over extending herself personally–things she seeks to help her clients overcome now. 

“It cost me in the beginning way, way more to offer my services than I ever made from it,” she says. “I started learning the lesson (that I) had to value my time–that came very very quickly.”

That lesson became even more important, she says, when she and her partner split, taking her from a dual income parent to a single one–an incident that helped guide her to incorporate feminist ideology into her business, albeit “by accident.”  

“That split came, and suddenly the stakes got so much higher–I had to support myself and two little kids by myself as a solo parent…Toronto is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and I found myself tied here in a co-parenting relationship.”

Although this was difficult, Hazel says the split was ultimately good, because it allowed her to see herself and her work from new, feminist-oriented perspectives. 

“The imbalance (in my work life) started, really, when my children arrived–or, really, if we go back a little bit further than that, the fact that I got knocked up before I could even start my career,” she says. “This was where my life was at the time, and these were things that were not as smack-in-the-face prominent to me at the time, when you start to realize the gender imbalance in the home and in the workplace.” 

“The only reason my new business could take off,” Hazel adds with a laugh, speaking of the unpaid  domestic and emotional labour she juggled prior to her separation,  “is the fact that I wasn’t cleaning up after after a quote unquote  ‘third child’ in addition to my other two actual children.”

Beating Toxic Productivity Culture

The idea that you have to be constantly on and constantly available as a worker–or as a business owner–is a toxic one, says Hazel, and something she works hard to recondition both systems and her clients to fight against. One client, for example–a lawyer who was used to always being “on”–was getting ready to take a vacation for a week, and asked Hazel to watch her inbox for her, even though no one was in litigation and she didn’t really need someone to be paying attention to her emails–she was just so accustomed to being available that she assumed she had to be, even though it wasn’t necessary. 

“I said, ‘Okay, does the auto responder work on your email? Then why don’t you just turn it off, save yourself the money and enjoy your week at the cottage?” she says. “It was honestly so unheard of for her, and she wrote back to me in such shock at such a simple suggestion…those are really common stories that I get with clients.”

Hazel says helping her clients see and beat these toxic patterns is incredibly rewarding for her, especially when it leads to realizations for those clients about creating better and more balanced lives –and businesses for themselves.  

“This is exactly why I went into business for myself,” Hazel says.

On November 3, 2022, the Equal Futures Network in partnership with the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce (CanWCC), hosted an interactive incubator discussion examining the key challenges facing women, gender-diverse, Indigenous and racialized communities when it comes to advancing economic justice. This was the first Equal Futures Network incubator session dedicated to examining the intersection of economic equity and gender equality in Canada. A total of 35 participants attended the session and engaged in the Q&A session. Participants heard insights from the CanWCC, Moms at Work, Canadian Women of Colour Leadership Network, the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA) and the National Collective of Women in Business (NCWIB) who shared their perspectives and insights about the issues, challenges and obstacles that create barriers towards achieving economic justice from their lived and professional experiences. 

Following this in-depth discussion, participants were encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences. This open dialogue was also an opportunity for participants to develop ideas into partnerships. Advancing economic equity will require a substantive shift from the status quo by addressing systemic and structural challenges with women, two-spirit, gender-diverse, LGBTQ+ and IBPOC communities leading the way and in solidarity with each other.

Here is what we heard:

Why Economic Equity Matters

Around the world, women, in all of their diversity, perform the most underappreciated work, earn less than cis-gender men and do more unpaid and care work. As a result, they are bearing the brunt of the widening wealth gap. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented economic crisis which has hit the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalized communities the hardest.

Economic equity matters because women, racialized (Indigenous, Black and people of colour (IBPOC)) and 2SLGBTQ+ communities are the most at risk to experiencing the effects of a global recession and these communities are already at a place of disadvantage due to existing systemic barriers to equitable participation in the global economy. At a systemic level, social, political and institutional norms have created structures that support unequal policies, legislation and economic tactics that at best are exclusionary, and at their worst, purposefully perpetuating harm and create barriers for equity deserving and marginalized groups. 

Barriers to Achieving Economic Equity

Youth voices are missing from economic decision-making spaces

Youth are almost entirely left out of the conversation around economic equity. As a result, youth do not see a role for them reflected in the in the work being undertaken to advance economic equity. This work can be inaccessible for youth as it is discussed in technical language that is disconnected from individual lived experiences which further isolates and disengages youth from the process. In order to engage youth, they need to be talked to in accessible and relatable language that is grounded in shared experiences. This will build youth capacity to express their needs and shift the power dynamics so that their voices are heard and involved in decision-making. To see substantive change, we need to create an empowered generation of youth who are aware and understand how economic inequities impact individuals and their communities. 

Individual Economic Empowerment

In the push for advancing economic equity, the role of the individual is too often left out of the conversation as the focus is placed on the systemic level. We need to shift focus to the economic education and empowerment of individuals. Current systems underestimate the decision-making power that is held in the hands of the average person – for context in 2021, small businesses made up 98.1% of all employer business in Canada – this is where change is going to come from. Widespread access to economic education and advocacy is the path towards equitable solutions that shift the narrative, change minds and equalize the balance of power. 

Gatekeeping and industry siloes in the economic ecosystem continue to not only hold back individuals, but also our collective advancements for economic equity. For example, in advocacy spaces economic discussions are inaccessible. Economic equity is talked about in overly technical language, this creates an exclusionary environment that gatekeeps people with different lived experiences and backgrounds from accessing these spaces.   

Indigenous, Black and Racialized Erasure 

Indigenous, Black and other marginalized communities experience significant erasure, silence and barriers within the economic ecosystem. For example, there is a hundred billion dollar Indigenous economy that is being underserved by mainstream financial institutions because they are considered too high risk for investment. These economic policies further reflect ongoing colonial legacies in Canada and demonstrate the multitude of systemic barriers that IBPOC communities face when it comes to advancing their own economic capabilities.

Supporting economic development within Indigenous communities across Canada is a core part of NACCA’s mandate. Over the course of the pandemic. NACCA was able to provide over 1000 business loans of over 100 million dollars in total value and created 3800 full time jobs. This investment in Indigenous communities not only contributes to Canada’s overall GDP but creates a deep and meaningful social impact that drives community wellbeing and closes the dignity gap that many Indigenous and underserved groups face across Canada. 

Steps for advancing economic equity in Canada (and around the world)

Collaboration and Partnerships

Equity work must be done across the board and apply an intersectional lens by focusing on empowering individuals, building partnerships and inclusive spaces. When applying an intersectional lens, we must ask ourselves how to incorporate reconciliation and decolonization into our work. Progress is prevented by division, which is very prevalent in the not-for-profit sector as the system is set up to be inherently adversarial, especially when it comes to acquiring limited funding and resources. For example, a lack of sustainable and long term funding, strict eligibility criteria within the grant model (i.e. needing charitable status to have access to certain grants) and competition for minimal funding dollars pits organizations against one another and breeds a system of insecurity. 

Additionally, the constraints of grants around certain advocacy pieces means that you may not have the ability or freedom to speak/be an advocate for change as your financial security is bound within the constraints laid out in your funding agreement. All of this hinders progress and creates a system of competition that at the end of the day takes away from the work of the movement. We need to work as a collective to figure out ways to operate outside of these systems, to decolonize the spaces where we operate and create partnerships that are supportive and allow for collaboration as we will only see progress through collaboration and coordination. Coming together as an economic equity movement to build understanding and consensus on the issues that are impacting our communities will facilitate change at the individual, organizational and systemic levels and empower grassroots communities and movements. 

Pay equity

Pay equity is a powerful symbol of economic equity and a tangible step forward to rally around. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to close the wage gap.  Women’s labour continues to be undervalued. Additionally, globally, legislation and policies are still being created that are directly biased towards men and create situations where women, on average, are always going to be poorer than men. The wage gap is even larger when you consider intersecting identities like race, ability and sexuality and they are at a heightened risk of experiencing the negative effects of a global recession. Achieving pay equity would be a major step forward towards overall economic equity. 

Post-pandemic recovery and progress 

COVID-19 further exacerbated the economic challenges faced by women, racialized and gender-diverse people in Canada. Over the last two years, there has been a lot of discussion about what is needed in Canada’s post-pandemic recovery. Inequities were brought to the forefront of these discussions and showed us just how much work still needs to be done in order to achieve gender equality in Canada and around the world. Now is the time to think outside of the box and find innovative solutions while amplifying the voices of equity-deserving groups. There is a willingness from decision-makers for community engagement and community driven solutions to economic inequities Through partnerships and collaboration, we can create collective understanding and consensus by bringing people with different perspectives and lived experiences together to address key issues and advance them at all levels.

Look, between the ongoing global pandemic, crushing defeat of Wade v. Roe and an escalating international conflict low-key threatening to go nuclear, we at LiisBeth know it’s been a tough year (or three) but rest and pleasure are an important part of resistance work. To lighten things up a little (and help you get your laugh on) we interviewed Anne Marie Scheffler, a long-time career actor, writer and producer, about her new, up-coming holiday show MILF and Cookies.

Q&A

LiisBeth: Let’s start with the facts. Who is Anne Marie Scheffler?

Scheffler: I was born in Toronto, Rexdale in fact. I’m a first generation Canadian. My parents are German and Polish. My father was a bank manager and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I started getting paid as an actor at the age of 15. I went to the University of Toronto, got a degree in English, and was at the same time booking professional acting gigs while writing my university exams. From there I went to George Brown Theatre School for formal training. And TV. Oh boy, I wanted to marry TV. With TV you could talk to the world, and I really wanted to talk to the world. Not surprisingly, I’ve been in over fifty TV commercials and love being on TV.

LiisBeth: You’re an actor first and foremost. What led you to write and produce your own shows?

Scheffler: When I got my first agent in my 20s, she got me film and TV auditions. And I was thrilled! Until I saw the roles: rape victim. Go into the audition room and scream. Look, I did go into the audition room and scream. But I kinda didn’t want to get the booking. And another audition was “girl number 1” and I went in with “guy number 1” and we had to neck. That was the actual audition. No lines. So, I’m thinking, “maybe I need to write the roles I want to play.” And so I wrote funny monologues for myself. Honestly, I wrote my first play in grade 3 that our class put on in front of the whole school. I had always been writing for myself. Doing improv. Imagining the possibilities.

When you’re hungry and ambitious in your twenties, you want to act as much as possible. My fellow actor friends and I would do open mic nights, fundraisers, anything to see if our stuff worked. I had about five monologues in my back pocket that I wrote for myself and auditioned with. Artistic directors would be like: “That was great! Where did that come from?” And I’d say “I wrote it.” And that sometimes got me writing job offers which I never took because I was an actor!

In 1994, I had a spot in the Summerworks theatre festival in Toronto. Basically you pay for a spot to put on a show in a respected theatre festival. I had been doing clowning at the time, but my clown partner had left me, and all of a sudden, I didn’t have a show! The producer Benj Gallagher said to do a one woman show. I was like, “Hell, no!” but I was working at His Majesty’s Feast as a singing wench, and my fellow wench, Sarah Sked, said she’d be my director. I sewed my five funny monologues together and created my first solo show Situation: NORMA. 

NOW magazine’s late, legendary and much-beloved theatre critic, Jon Kaplan, was at my show on opening night. He loved it so much that he sent a photographer to my house the next day. My picture appeared in the theatre section, with Kaplan’s glowing review in which he called me “a gem.” My career took off. I got a better agent, I worked even more in TV and film, and I wrote two more Norma shows: Watch…Norma’s Back and Leaving Norma.

I toured my Norma shows at fringe festivals in Canada and the US, selling out and getting rave reviews and honing my comedy chops on stage, really poking fun at what it was like to be (supposedly) following society’s norms. I make fun of myself in my comedy, spoofing the conditions I find myself in, to actually shine a light on the ridiculousness of the roles we play in order to be good.

In 2001, I went to a taping of Everybody Loves Raymond at The Warner Brothers studio in Burbank, and the penny dropped. At this point, I was doing TV roles, TV commercials, doing my own live shows, and here was a multicam sitcom. A marriage of theatre and TV. I fell in love with multicam. Soon after, my live comedy show Not Getting It long-time into a one-hour Comedy Now! special for CTV/ The Comedy Network by SFA Productions. A seven camera shoot. Of course, I’m still priming the pump for the seven season multicam series–or single camera, I’m flexible–but the path was unfolding.

Ironically, my old agent said to me: “I can see you being like the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond!” And I said “I’m Raymond!”

LiisBeth: What is your relationship to feminism? When did feminism come into your life? 

Scheffler: In terms of feminist influences, I can start with my mother. She taught me unconditional love. She is a walking love machine. My mom is, literally, love

My father told me that to have my own money is to have my own freedom. That shaped me a lot. I didn’t think in terms of being a dependent, or a wife, I wanted to make my own money, make my own success, in the way that I wanted to.

That worldview was ingrained in me. It’s why I said no to demeaning roles. I wasn’t up for a career of playing victims. I lobbied with my actor’s union to influence producers to have more women roles that reflected whole, real women.

I knew how to write, and I took charge of my career and wrote and produced “myself.” As Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) told me in an article I wrote for the Alliance of Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) on women in the business: “Don’t wait for the phone to ring–call yourself.” Now that I am older and coming from a place that is so much more whole, I have moved way beyond the “pick me, pick me, pick me!” approach to my career to one where, basically, I pick myself. 

LiisBeth: So as a woman actor making her way in a Harvey Weinstein world, how do you reconcile a highly sexualized approach to comedy and use of the term “MILF” in a world where sexualization of women in entertainment is seen by many as problematic? 

Great question. So, as a comedian, it’s my job to mirror our shared experience as a society back at that society. I push the boundaries. I say what we are all thinking but I’m not afraid to say. To quote my comedy special: “I’ve achieved my goal! I’m fuckable! But now I’m offended by it!” Honestly, the comedy special is partly based on my experiences as an actor in really inappropriate situations with a producer. Which could have been victimizing, but instead I turned it into comedy gold.

Turning on your sexy and beautiful self shouldn’t be bad and unsafe. And if it feels bad or unsafe, I’m happy to shine the light of love and humour on it and expose it.

Getting to the heart of a story is integral for every production company, but in a world that prioritizes growth and efficiency, what is often lost are the people creating that story. Lucky Ones aims to change all of that by being a media production company focused on prioritizing the wellbeing of their staff while also telling stories with heart and stories that give back. They always try to include an element of community building and aim to highlight women and marginalized people.

I sat with Cass Rudolph (she/her) founder of the company, who shared the ethos and vision behind Lucky Ones.

What’s at the heart of your story?

 Part of building Lucky Ones was to circumvent the traditional career path. It was a conscious decision to grow slow and avoid the politics and dangers of male-dominated spaces. The initial vision was to stay small, maybe grow to a team of five. But after working as a production coordinator for a much bigger show, it’s made me realize that I actually want to grow to scale because there is such a need for people-first productions.

The truth is that I was sexually harassed out of a job. I started in the music industry where I was working in-house creating for a record label. It was an incredibly toxic work environment. I was then given an opportunity to work at an advertising agency with one other person. I was treated even worse than at the record label, and there was no one to talk to about what happened. There was no HR department to report what had happened to me. That was the last straw.

I decided to do it alone and do it better. I carved my own path and now I’m working on bigger projects that are much more rooted in who I am and what I believe in.