Scholars, journalists and policymakers have a new resource for discovering Canada’s latest research into the crucial issue of care and work policies and how they impact diverse families.

The Reimagining Care/Work Policies website launched Wednesday, Dec. 8 as part of the knowledge mobilization strategy of a seven-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership grant led by Andrea Doucet, Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work and Care and Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brock.

The website is a hub for news and details on the project and its researchers, as well as the latest publications and project outputs. It also serves to amplify the ongoing work of individual scholars affiliated with the project.

“The purpose of the site is to shine a spotlight on the really good work Canadian researchers from universities and community organizations and government are doing,” says Doucet. “From universities to non-profit and charitable organizations to unions, because our partners are from all those sectors, we want to show some of the research and advocacy work that’s been going on and to give people a place to find the most up-to-date research.”

Doucet explains the website was created as a resource for many different audiences, ranging from people generally curious about the issues to policy makers, advocates, researchers and students.

It was also a priority for the development team, which included Doucet, doctoral research fellow Ashley Do Nascimento and postdoctoral research fellow Janna Klostermann, to create a web environment that reflected the values and priorities of the project.

“You can see that a lot of thought went into the drawings, to be as inclusive as possible so that you can’t really tell the gender, race or ethnicity,” says Doucet. “We brainstormed about what we wanted to show, looking at our three research clusters of childcare, parental leave and employment policies and then looked at the different projects, so that we could commission positive, inclusive and evocative imagery.”

Doucet says she is grateful to Do Nascimento and Klostermann, the steering committee for the Reimagining Care/Work Policies research program (which includes Martha Friendly, Donna Lero, Susan Prentice, Syliva Fuller, Sophie Mathieu, Lindsey McKay and Vanessa Watts), and project manager Jennifer Turner, who is currently on parental leave and helped in the early stages of the development before the pandemic disrupted schedules.

She is also excited to see the site launched and available to anyone who needs or wants to learn more about care and work policies and how they impact the lived experience of families in Canada.

“We’ll continue to do more, showcase our research and add more stories, like the recent stories on our first postdoctoral fellows and on Martha Friendly winning a major policy prize,” says Doucet. “It’s living, and we’ll continue to add to it and update it and grow it as a resource.”