Breaking down a Young Feminist Economy: The Single Tax
What is a Young Feminist Economy?
We know that young women and everyone who experiences gender-based discrimination have been disproportionately affected by the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through extensive conversation and consultation with young leaders navigating gender-based discrimination across Canada, Fora’s Young Feminist Economy report puts forth youth-informed recommendations on addressing everything from the housing crisis, degree inflation, underpaid and unpaid labour, workplace discrimination, the singles tax, and more. This report and the recommendations therein are directly informed by the voices and experiences of young women and gender-marginalized leaders, recognizing them as agents of change capable of advancing Canadian society and economy.
Supported by the Federal Department for Women and Gender Equality, our Young Feminist Economy research project looks beyond recovering from the pandemic, understanding that the cracks in our socio-economic structures and systems pre-date COVID-19, to ask and begin answering the next question: What must the economy do beyond recover?
This framework draws on leading feminist thinkers to imagine a reality where gender-marginalized youth are no longer a footnote in the policies designing their future challenges and opportunities, and are instead given their rightful place as key architects of the world they are inheriting.
The Cost of Living Alone
A major finding of our research lies at the heart of the ‘youth experience’ and the cost-of-living crisis. Across the board, young leaders report it is simply not feasible to live alone. This finding has a few implications: for young people, this often means that one can only consider living with roommates to be able to split rent to an eventually affordable fraction.
As one young leader from Halifax shared:
“It would be nice to have the option to live as a single person — most people are trying to be independent and not live out of their parents’ homes, but you’d have to find roommates — it would be ideal in Canada to have that option to live alone and I don’t think it’s very feasible currently.”
This impairs young peoples’ capacity to grow and develop on their own, a rite of passage past generations entered with ease. In fact, “Households composed of roommates — that is, two or more people living together, among which none are part of a census family — are the fastest-growing household type. From 2001 to 2021, the number of roommate households increased by 54%.” (Statistics Canada 2022a) Statistics Canada reports this option continues to be inaccessible: “In 2021… solo dwellers represented 42% of all people aged 85 and older in private households, compared with 7% of people aged 20 to 24” (Statistics Canada 2022a). But even living with roommates, this reality in urban centres still feels out of reach for many. Due to the high rental rates, as has been mentioned earlier in this chapter, rental costs are still much higher per person in urban centres, such as in Toronto and Vancouver, than in other parts of the country.
The Single Tax
Beyond the prospect of living with roommates to afford rent, there is also the growing notion that one needs to find a life partner to live with to afford housing and the cost of living in today’s Canadian society.
This finding was prevalent across demographics and cities young leaders hailed from. One young leader shared:
“I think our world is extremely structured for a unit of two people-couples. There are a lot of benefits that come your way. This excludes a lot of people who don’t have a partner. If you’re single or non-monogamous, you don’t have the same economic access. This is an access of identity..”
This reality was hyper-prevalent in researching young leaders’ experiences affording housing.
Among those who did not report concerns about affording rent, many shared they were living with partners and were able to afford rent due to dual incomes with one respondent sharing:
“I know my rent’s going down, but I shouldn’t have to live with a significant other to have that.”
Another shared that they currently live in a house owned by her boyfriend’s family, thus not needing to pay rent, and are also able to afford a car as the two of them split the costs.
On the flipside, however, there is a real burden of costs for those who are single and/or non-monogamous, which this report refers to as the single tax. This is less of a tax, however, and more so a reckoning with having to pay the full price for costs, and specifically here housing, that many others do not. Modern life is set up to exist with a partner, be it splitting meals at a restaurant, sharing gas for the car, or adding dependents and partners onto insurance plans. But housing may be the place where it is most explicit. Splitting rent, mortgage payments, and down payments when they are at all-time highs and grossly unattainable on their own becomes slightly more achievable with a partner.
In fact, one respondent who shared she had been saving for the better part of a decade for a home still found that due to inflation rates for housing in Calgary, she still was compromising for the type of home she could afford. She furthermore added that when speaking with a mortgage broker at a bank, she was repeatedly asked if she had a partner to help split expenses with.
One individual, when sharing her dreams of being able to afford the cost of living, housing, and pursuing writing as a career simply joked, “I will need to find a partner that will pay for everything”.
This has gross repercussions. For those in relationships they may rush into living together for the need to save on rising rental costs (Kambhampaty 2022).
It also has repercussions for young peoples’ sense of self and value as individuals. What does it meant to want a partner, and what does it mean to need one?
The Bigger Implications
There are further and bigger questions at play here. In 2023, the economy dictates that for young leaders facing discrimination on the basis of their gender, it is simply easier to survive in codependency through a reliance upon dual incomes. In recognizing the hard-fought battles feminist movements have forged in the last fifty to seventy years, the principles of independence and autonomy that have been actualized to recognize the labour and capacities of those discriminated on the basis of their gender is severely undermined by the current state of the economy.
There is nothing feminist about an economy that requires updating one’s relationship status to survive.
There is nothing feminist about an economy that only permits a young leader to exercise their autonomy and explore their agency if they meet a minimum income threshold.
The repercussions for family patterns, quality of life, and happiness in these circumstances can only be determined in the coming decades. But today, the messaging is clear. Being ‘strong and independent’ comes at a literal and quantifiable cost.
For more on this topic and other issues identified as critical for young people in Canada, read the Young Feminist Economy report here: