When Money Isn’t Money - Women and the Myth of the “Free Market”

Season 3 Episode 3

In this episode of She.They.Us., we widen the lens on our core question this season: Did housing ever truly work for women and gender-diverse people in Canada? After exploring the historical and ongoing housing experiences of Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people in previous episodes, we now turn to settler women, beginning with White women, whose stories reveal a different, but no less instructive, relationship to the so-called “free market.” While often positioned as beneficiaries of Canada’s economic and housing systems, White women have also faced structural constraints, exclusion, and gendered assumptions that shaped their access to land, loans, mortgages, and stability.

To help ground this history, Andrea speaks first with Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, a leading housing researcher whose work uncovers the overlooked role White settler women played, sometimes as landowners, small-scale developers, or rooming-house operators, in shaping early urban neighbourhoods. Carolyn traces how White women’s economic survival strategies, such as renting rooms or subdividing homes, collided with gendered moral panic and restrictive zoning that policed who could live together and what counted as a “proper” family. She also shares her own family’s history of renting from women landlords in Montreal, revealing the informal, woman-led housing ecosystems that quietly supported generations of tenants before being eroded by condoization and policy shifts.

Andrea then introduces Jennifer Smith, CEO and founder of Everything Podcasts, whose personal story starkly illustrates how even today, White women, especially queer women, can be denied equal access to financial systems. Jenn recounts being refused a mortgage by her longtime bank solely because she and her wife were a same-sex couple, despite high incomes and previous homeownership. Her experience echoes her grandmother’s decades earlier, when she, too, was denied a mortgage as a single immigrant woman and had to rely on a male intermediary to buy a rooming house. Through Jenn’s family history—from social housing in Toronto’s Jamestown to becoming a homeowner at 19—we see how gender, class, and sexual orientation intersect to shape what should be a simple transaction: securing a place to live.

Finally, Andrea brings in Jill Kelly, former longtime manager of CCEC Credit Union, an institution that became a lifeline for women, queer couples, newcomers, and low-income borrowers who were shut out of traditional banking. Jill offers a rare look at how a community-driven financial model, one that refused to discriminate, helped women secure mortgages, fund co-ops, launch organizations, and navigate an economic system never designed with them in mind. Together, the stories of Carolyn, Jenn, and Jill expose a powerful through line: when women are treated as full economic actors, when their money is simply money, outcomes improve. But when gendered assumptions shape access to land, credit, and capital, the consequences reverberate across generations.

Guests

Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, Adjunct Professor and Senior Housing Researcher, University of Toronto’s School of Cities

Jennifer Smith, CEO and Founder of Everything Podcasts

Jill Kelly, Former long-time General Manager of CCEC Credit Union

Music by: Reid Jamieson & CVM, from The Pigeon & The Dove, an original folk opera about housing insecurity and the many roads you can take to end up on the street.  https://linktr.ee/reidjamieson

Organizations Mentioned in the Podcast

• Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing —https://pcvwh.ca
• Office of the Federal Housing Advocate —https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/individuals/right-housing/federal-housing-advocate
   
  
  
• Maytree Foundation —https://maytree.com
• CMHC Solution Labs —https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/solution-labs
• Everything Podcasts —https://www.everythingpodcasts.com
• OUTtv —https://outtvglobal.com
• Community Savings Credit Union (formerly CCEC) —https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2