Through funding received from Women and Gender Equality Canada, research conducted at HTH aims to restructure current understandings of economic insecurity, specifically, as it relates to the ongoing epidemic of gender-based violence against women and its close interconnection with poverty. The project is working to build a movement for the realization of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) within North Simcoe, through the establishment of a community network made up of municipalities, academic institutions, social services, regional committees, the local health unit, and women with lived experience of violence and poverty.
The project engages women who have survived violence and poverty in feminist research to document their stories, strengthen social connections, and co-develop strategies for systemic change to support livelihoods and reduce gendered violence. By centering women’s lived realities, this project aims to dismantle internalized stigma, build solidarity, and empower women to shape policies and programs that meaningfully address the intersecting structures of gendered violence and economic marginalization.
To understand how multiple systemic forces work together and interact to reinforce conditions of inequality and social exclusion
To understand the sociopolitical context of women’s lives, the importance of sharing power in the research process, and to resist the reduction of experiences of gender-based violence to individual pathology
To enable depth, nuance, and meaning making, allowing women – as experts in their own lives - to articulate how structural conditions shape their safety, dignity, and economic security
To support collective meaning-making and facilitate peer connection
Allowed for the identification of recurring patterns, meanings, and priorities across participants’ experiences, centering women’s voices and ensuring findings were grounded in lived realities
1. Gender-based violence and poverty are interlocking systems not isolated experiences
2. Institutional and social support systems replicate control, enforcing surveillance and economic dependency
3. Indigenous women’s access to systems of support are impacted by colonialism
4. Women carry a gendered burden of system navigation
5. Respectful services foster positive experiences
6. Systems change depends on listening to, valuing, and learning from women’s lived experiences
Strategic guidance for the Thrive project is provided through a multi-sector Stewardship Council that integrates academic, Indigenous, public health, and anti-violence perspectives, strengthening both community accountability and policy relevance. The Stewardship Council includes:
