Margins Magazine - Volume 4 Issue 4

VOL. IV | ISSUE IV
MARGINS
IN CONVERSATION
WITH:
ANJUM SULTANA
by Farah Ahmad
I had the opportunity to chat with Anjum Sultana, an award-winning public policy
and communications specialist. In this interview, we spoke about her work on
the Feminist Economic Recovery Plan and she gave us some insight on policy recommendations
to address the inequalities faced by women during the COVID-19
pandemic.
Anjum Sultana is a policy professional based in Toronto, Ontario. Anjum holds an
Honours Bachelor of Sciences in Health Studies, Psychology and Neuroscience from
the University of Toronto as well as a Masters of Public Health from the Dalla Lana
School of Public Health. Throughout her career, she has been passionate about
the intersection of public health, human rights and social determinants of health,
focusing on the health and wellbeing of marginalized communities.
In 2020, Anjum was named Global Women of Distinction by the NGO Committee on
the Status of Women. She will be honoured before the 64th session of the United
Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
She currently serves as the National Director of Policy & Strategic Communications
at YWCA Canada, which is the largest women’s multi-service organization in
Canada. Anjum is recognized by Progress Toronto as an inclusive city builder and
a principled supporter of progressive policies to make our city a healthier, happier
and more equitable place to be.
The Feminist Economic Recovery plan was put forward by YWCA Canada and the
Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School
of Management. The plan proposes a new path for the Canadian economy in light
of the COVID-19 pandemic, one that focuses on changing the structure and barriers
that have made some groups more vulnerable to the pandemic and all its fallouts.
This plan discusses a variety of policy recommendations centred around 8 pillars
for recovery that focus on supporting the care economy, investment into social
infrastructures and supporting women-owned businesses.
TW: domestic abuse, COVID-19
FA: Thank you so much for taking the time
to meet with me to talk a bit about the
Feminist Economic Recovery Plan. Before
we start, could you tell us a little bit about
yourself?
AS: My name is Anjum Sultana. Currently, I
serve as the National Director of Public Policy
and Strategic Communications at YWCA.
Before I came to the role here, I spent a lot of
my early part of my career in health equity
and public health. Following my degree at
the University of Toronto Scarborough, I did
a master’s in public health. As I was doing
[my master’s] I had worked internationally,
then also worked in Toronto, – in doing so
I was seeing work around issues related to
immigration, refugees, and migration. That
was a place where I could bring my global
health interest as well as my interest in urban
health equity to the City of Toronto.
And so, right after my master’s, I did a fellowship
at the Wellesley Institute which is a
think tank that focuses on the social determinants
of health and how that can be an
avenue to teaching health equity. I was working
on issues related to housing and employment
and training programs, all looking at
it through an equity lens and also looking
at things like citizenship - for example, how
is that a health equity issue. Whether or not
you’re a citizen has a determination of if you
can vote. And as we saw, you know, earlier
this week, right, elections are very consequential.
So who can and can’t participate
in democracy matters for our well-being in
a broader, more holistic way.
Fast forward a couple of years, an opportunity
came up at YWCA Canada. Throughout
my career, I did a lot of research and analysis,
but I was hungry for how to take that and put
it into action into that public policy space,
and I got a taste of that at Wellesley. So when
this role came up, I was excited and now I’m
leading this work, and doing this through a
pan-Canadian lens, advancing gender equity,
and looking at the same issues I was looking
at Wellesley like housing, employment &
income security, but through a gender lens
now.
FA: Awesome. That’s great. And that sort
of feeds into my next question. I was wondering
if you could tell me a little bit more
about the YWCA?
AS: Yeah, so YWCA Canada is the nation’s
largest and oldest gender equity organization.
So that means we’ve experienced multiple
pandemics and multiple types of emergency
situations. When COVID hit and when,
on March 11, the World Health Organization
called it a pandemic, even before that date,
YWCAs across the country were mobilizing.
We have 31 YWCAs that work in 300 communities
across the country and in real-time,
they are seeing the devastation of this pandemic,
not only on health, and well-being like
physical health and mental health, but also
the devastation on the economic well-being
and social infrastructure. We were seeing
this happen across the country, we were
stepping up and taking action. At the same
time, we were also realizing again what we
were fighting for before the pandemic is even
more important.
We need universal child care because we
saw how the absence of child care grinds the
economy. We saw gender-based violence and
we have been calling for a national action
plan regarding gender-based violence. But
in the pandemic, we saw gender-based violence
increase, and how, because of the lack
of coordination and participation of different
sectors of society, people are falling through
the cracks. Similarly, our income security
programs are insufficient and inadequate for
the needs of the communities that we serve.
So again, this is another place where we need
to see policy action. Realizing that these challenges
were happening on the ground across
the country, we put forward a pan-Canadian
policy report, talking about recovery through
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