Climate Change, Care Work and Women: Ontario’s Overlooked Crisis
As climate change intensifies across Ontario, its impact is being felt far beyond melting ice caps and rising temperatures. A quieter but growing crisis is emerging in the unpaid/underpaid care sector, where women, particularly racialized, immigrant and low-income women shoulder the brunt of environmental disruption. This intersection of climate change and care work remains largely overlooked in policy discussions, yet it is increasingly shaping the lives and livelihoods of thousands of women in the province.
Care work, including child care, elder care and domestic responsibilities, is deeply gendered. According to a 2022 report by Statistics Canada, women perform nearly twice as much unpaid care work as men. This burden increases during environmental emergencies, when school closures, infrastructure failures and health risks demand even more from those in caregiving roles.
During the 2023 Ontario wildfires and the record-setting heatwaves that followed, women working in both formal and informal care roles reported higher levels of stress, burnout and economic insecurity.
Many of these women also work in paid care jobs, often in sectors like home care, long-term care and early childhood education. These roles are critical to community resilience, yet they remain some of the lowest paid and most precarious jobs in the province.
A 2022 report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that personal support workers (PSWs) in Ontario, the vast majority of whom are women, earn below the provincial median wage despite being on the front lines during climate-related emergencies such as pandemics, heatwaves and floods.
Climate change has compounded these challenges. For instance, extreme heat has made in-home caregiving more dangerous, particularly in under-resourced neighborhoods without access to air conditioning. Women caring for elderly or chronically ill individuals are increasingly facing health risks themselves. Such as during major floods in Ottawa and Windsor in recent years, with many women being forced to evacuate homes or provide care under crisis conditions, often without compensation or support.
Racialized women, especially Black and immigrant caregivers, face disproportionate challenges. Research from the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) highlights how migrant women are overrepresented in the most vulnerable care jobs, often with limited access to labour protections or healthcare benefits. Climate change has added a new layer of instability to their already fragile working conditions.
Despite the growing overlap between environmental and gendered labour issues, policy responses have remained siloed. The 2024 Ontario Climate Adaptation Strategy barely mentions gender, and few municipal emergency preparedness plans consider the unequal impact on caregivers. Advocacy groups such as the Canadian Women’s Foundation and the Feminist Green New Deal campaign are calling for gender-responsive climate policies that prioritize care infrastructure, improve wages in care work and recognize unpaid labour in disaster planning.
Organizations like the Workers’ Action Centre in Toronto and the CareMongering Network have mobilized to provide heat relief kits, emergency support and policy advocacy focused on caregivers during climate emergencies. Meanwhile, academic institutions such as York University’s Centre for Feminist Research are producing new data on how climate intersects with gender and labour in Ontario.
Climate change is not gender neutral. As Ontario continues to face environmental uncertainty, the province must recognize that the future of care is a critical part of the fight for climate justice. Without addressing the unequal burden placed on women, particularly those at the margins, the province risks deepening both the climate crisis and gender inequality.
