Ph.D. student Dana Wray was recently in an article for The Toronto Star shedding light on the existing inequalities in the federal parental benefit and the EI system that has been further exposed by the pandemic. You can read the article 'The pandemic exposed huge gaps in EI — turns out the parental leave system has many of the same problems' here.
Dana is in the fourth year of the Sociology Ph.D. program at the University of Toronto. Before this, she completed a B.A. and an M.A. with a specialization in Population Dynamics at McGill University. Broadly, Dana's research uses time use data to explore the stratification of parent-child time with children and its consequences for gender and class inequalities as well as family well-being. Her dissertation research, supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Award, investigates how work-family policies – such as parental leave and flexible workplaces – shapes parents' time with children in Canada, the U.S., and cross-nationally. One of her recent papers, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2020, finds that Quebec's paternity leave policy led to an increase in fathers' solo parenting or responsibility time with children.
In addition to her own research, Dana collaborates extensively with her supervisor Professor Melissa Millkie and her dissertation committee member Professor Irene Boeckmann, on a SSHRC-funded project entitled, "Time Together and Apart: Clarifying the Family Time Paradox in Canada and the United States." Dana is also currently working to collect interview data on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families through a project led by Professor Milkie and Professor Leah Ruppanner at the University of Melbourne, entitled, "Changing Times: Parents’ Re-Evaluations of Work-Family Boundaries andTime Allocations in a Pandemic Era."
You can learn more on Dana Wray's website.