“Creating Space: Precarious Status Women Leading Local Pandemic Responses” is a collaborative, two-year project out of York University that brings together research units, researchers and partners, working on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion to advance a feminist response to the impacts of COVID-19 through systemic change.

The project, funded under Women and Gender Equality Canada’s Feminist Response and Recovery Fund, aims to centre precarious status women’s experiences to support self-determination and accelerate systemic change to reduce gender-based violence, promote workplace health and safety and increase economic security.

PerSIStence Theatre has been named a subgrantee researcher and has hired St John’s based playwright Leahdawn Helena to conduct confidential, compensated interviews with local women and gender diverse people about their experiences during the pandemic. 

These interviews were recorded, compiled, and archived through York University, and now Helena is curating a collection of monologues based on 13 of these interviews.

This collection premiered in a public staged reading at the First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity on March 22, 2024 at 7pm.

You are probably wondering, what exactly does “precarious status” mean?

Under this project, “precarious status” intersections may include, but are not limited to:

• age
• mental and/or physical health, illness and disability
• immigration and/or citizenship status
• refugee status
• job, career, vocational status
• housing status
• geographic location
• domestic, family, and marital status
• gender and sexual diversity
• racial and ethnic diversity
• financial, economic status
• front-line and essential work during the pandemic
• anyone identifying as a member of an “at risk” population or community