Migrant women sustain Canada. It’s time for rights and status
An International Women’s Day reflection
International Women’s Day is often a celebration. We honour progress, spotlight leadership and applaud women breaking barriers. But movements for gender justice also demand truth. They ask us to look beyond the women who are visible and ask who remains excluded, exploited and unheard. This International Women’s Day, migrant justice is not a side issue. It is central. Because gender justice is not worth celebrating if it does not challenge the racialized, colonial and economic systems that make some women’s lives and safety negotiable.
Across Canada, migrant women sustain entire sectors of our economy while being denied full rights, stability and belonging. They harvest and process our food. They work in factories and warehouses. They clean our hotels and form the backbone of our care economy by caring for our children and elders. They send remittances home that support families and entire communities across borders. And thousands of undocumented women also sustain our communities and economy while living in fear of detention or deportation, making regularization and permanent status essential to any serious commitment to gender justice. Their labour is essential. Yet many remain temporary in a country that depends on them permanently. That contradiction is not accidental. It is structural.
Canada’s labour migration system relies heavily on temporary work permits for low-wage labour tied to single employers. This means a woman’s right to stay in the country depends on one employer. Moreover, many migrant women arrive already trapped in recruitment debt, a system that entrenches financial coercion, silences resistance and exposes them to exploitation from the moment they arrive. When work permits are employer-controlled, reporting harassment or unsafe conditions becomes risky. When housing is linked to employment, privacy disappears. When permanent residency pathways are restricted or delayed, family separation can stretch for years. This is a migrant rights issue. It’s also a women’s rights issue.
Climate change is also reshaping migration in deeply gendered ways. Drought, flooding, crop failure and environmental destruction are not random. They are linked to decades of extraction, emissions and economic systems driven largely by countries like Canada. These crises undermine livelihoods and deepen the unpaid care work that women already carry. When livelihoods collapse, migration becomes a survival strategy. Many women displaced by climate impacts are channeled into precarious labour streams with few protections and limited pathways to permanent status. Yet Canada does not formally recognize climate displacement as grounds for protection or residency, even as it continues to benefit from the systems that drive these conditions.
Gender justice requires more than adaptation. It requires accountability. That means recognizing ecological debt and creating permanent, rights-based pathways for those forced to move because the land could no longer sustain them.
International Women’s Day must confront the systems that rely on racialized migrant women’s labour while denying their permanence, safety and political voice. Migrant women are not temporary. Their contributions are not temporary. Their dignity is not conditional.
This is not wishful thinking. Canada has done this before. In the 1970s, the federal government implemented a regularization program that allowed thousands of people without status to apply for permanent residence from within the country. It recognized that people who were already living, working and contributing here deserved stability rather than deportation. The result was not chaos. It was integration. Families were stabilized, workers were protected and communities were strengthened.
There is no gender justice without migrant justice.
