Teaching has become a much more feminized profession over the years, and recent graduates are even more predominantly women. Teaching has absolutely become much more feminized.

Along with that, obviously, not only women teachers but also women generally in our society disproportionately bear the burden of supporting families, as well as, in this case, supporting our students, so there need to be some things...including the fact that if teachers who are women have children who perhaps can't go to day care or can't attend school because they have symptoms, more and more women need to take that time off work in order to care for their children.

This means they are going to be using up their sick leave and other leave provisions in a much more intense way than perhaps others are, so increasing the federal benefits would really help women teachers in particular to buffer the loss of income they see when they have to take unpaid leave in order to provide family care.

The other issues are the additional stress put upon teachers who are women just because of the additional burdens, which means that they are carrying much more in terms of those stress levels with them into their teaching. Again, having those safety precautions in place, preventative precautions in place in classrooms, would absolutely help support teachers' peace of mind, including the fact that teachers are keenly aware that if they get ill—and this is true across Canada as well—we will have a national teachers shortage.

We also know that when teachers have to be away from their work, there isn't always someone to fill that space. That means their colleagues need to fill in to teach their classes, which means that important services are removed from students who need that support, diverse learners, and students who have their own medical needs.

There is a bit of a snowball effect that happens due to the disproportionate burden on women when they're in classrooms. It has a lot of consequences.

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