Author: Alishau Diebold, Assistant Professor, Social Work, Mount Royal University
For women who have experienced social and economic challenges, employment can be an important step towards achieving stability, financial independence, and a renewed sense of belonging. However, a job alone cannot overcome the barriers shaping someone’s ability to enter, remain in, and advance within the workforce (Kamaludin et al., 2024; Rey-Martí et al., 2021; Ricciardelli et al., 2017). Research has linked stable employment and strong community bonds with reduced recidivism and improved social experiences (Berg & Huebner, 2011; McKendy & Ricciardelli, 2022). My research suggests that we need to think bigger.
The study explored whether social enterprise programs led by community-based justice organizations could create more liberatory spaces for criminalized women seeking a job. Employment is often presented as an individual achievement goal: obtain training, build a résumé, apply for jobs, and stay motivated (Mazzei et al., 2021; Quinn, 2020). Upon closer examination, these steps can overlook the realities many women encounter (Comack, 2018; Fayter & Kilty, 2024). My research found barriers operating at multiple levels:
- Individual – Women described challenges connected to health, trauma, financial insecurity, and other determinants of well-being.
- Community – They identified family pressures, limited networks, and social stigma.
- Systems – Discrimination and criminal records could create additional obstacles.
For women, employment cannot be separated from the social, economic, gendered, and racialized contexts in which their lives unfold (Duhaney, 2022; Marziah & Lazim, 2018). As one participant put it: “The system doesn’t set you up for success.” This statement captures a central tension in employment programming. We often ask individuals to demonstrate resilience while leaving the structures around them largely unchanged. Through this research, constructing sustainable employment models meant creating a pathway to build careers and futures beyond the barriers experienced in the past.
Listening to women’s employment journeys
Between 2022 and 2024, I conducted a qualitative study with 14 women between the ages of 20 and 63. Seven participants were employed, while seven were receiving some form of social assistance. Five participants identified as belonging to a visual minority. The study included interviews, multiple focus groups, and an arts-based Employment Experience Mapping process. The maps provided participants an alternate way to tell and document their stories.
Participants could visually represent the twists, setbacks, relationships, turning points, hopes, and achievements that shaped their employment journeys. The process created a space for stories that may not have emerged using a traditional interview approach. Most importantly, the maps made visible something that statistics about employment can easily miss. Employment journeys are rarely linear.
Figure 1 – Vivan’s Employment Experience Map
As demonstrated in Vivan’s Employment Experience Map (Figure 1), a person may move between education, unemployment, caregiving, social assistance, temporary work, training, and new opportunities. Within these accounts, the women in this study reported that achieving a job is not the same as achieving economic sustainability. Participants identified a range of needs that extended beyond finding employment. One participant described the problem as a cycle: “There’s obviously demonstrated need in the community for these resources. So why are they not there? It’s all systemic. It’s all a vicious cycle.” This idea of a “vicious cycle” is important. If someone cannot access stable housing, transportation, mental health supports, or childcare because of systemic barriers, telling a person to “secure a job” does little to change the conditions they are navigating. The findings from the study instead point toward employment pathways connecting services and organizations.
What would sustainable support look like?
The women in this study spoke repeatedly about sustainability. A participant explained: “It needs to be more about sustainability, they need to be able to get you to a place where you can maintain that yourself.” This distinction matters. Success cannot solely mean securing a position. It can also mean being able to keep that position or having somewhere to turn when circumstances change. Community-based justice nonprofits, social enterprises, and other community groups each hold different resources and expertise to create opportunities for women seeking employment. For community-based nonprofits, this points toward several possibilities:
- Champion collaboration – Building relationships across justice organizations, social enterprises, and community groups.
- Connect resources – Creating networks that make employment, education, and social supports more accessible.
- Catalyze opportunity – Developing social and economic resources assisting women to participate and contribute.
Moving from individual resilience to collective care
The major finding from this research is that sustainable employment cannot be created by one organization working alone. It requires bridges between employment, social services, nonprofit organizations, and social enterprise (Kamaludin et al., 2024; Nelund, 2020). It also requires listening to the people who have experienced these systems (Tufo & Gonell, 2023). One participant reflected on her Employment Experience Map: “I learned a lot about myself and what will motivate me now. Looking at my map, and my employment journey, seeing how it includes every aspect of the good and bad and what I’ve been through…and what I’m going to bring with me, is really helpful.” This reflection captures why employment pathways matter; they create the conditions for people to understand their own strengths, recognize what they have carried with them, and conceive what they can build next.
Collective care asks us to shift our focus. Instead of asking, how do we improve employability? We can ask, what conditions would allow this person to flourish? This cognitive shift recognizes women as capable of self-authorship, collaboration, career development, and impactful contributions. It also recognizes that accountability and support can exist together in the same circumstance.
What can we build together?
We can build employment pathways to connect people rather than isolate them. We can build partnerships that recognize that justice, employment, housing, health, and community are not separate pieces of a person’s life. Finally, we can build systems that make room for people to contribute, belong, and move forward on their own terms. That is the work ahead of us, and it is a future we can build together.
References
Berg, M., & Huebner, B. (2011). Re-entry and the ties that bind: An examination of social ties, employment, and recidivism. Justice Quarterly, 28(2), 382–410.
Comack, E. (2018). Coming back to jail: Women, trauma, and criminalization. Fernwood Publishing.
Duhaney, P. (2022). Criminalized Black women’s experiences of intimate partner violence in Canada. Violence Against Women, 28(11), 2765–2787.
Fayter, R., & Kilty, J. M. (2024). Walking an emotional tightrope: Examining the carceral emotion culture(s) of federal prisons for women in Canada. The Prison Journal, 104(1), 24–45.
Kamaludin, M., Xavier, J., & Amin, M. (2024). Social entrepreneurship and sustainability: A conceptual framework. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 15(1), 26–49.
Marziah, J., & Lazim. (2018). Employment issues among ex–offenders: Difficulties in securing employment and barriers of employment. International Journal for Studies on Children, Women, Elderly and Disabled, 5, 8–12.
Mazzei, M., Montgomery, T., & Dey, P. (2021). ‘Utopia’ failed? Social enterprise, everyday practices and the closure of neoliberalism. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(7), 1625–1643.
McKendy, L., & Ricciardelli, R. (2022). Non-association conditions among released women: Implications for successful community reintegration. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 37(1), 29–48.
Nelund, A. (2020). A better justice: Community programs for criminalized women. UBC Press.
Quinn, K. (2020). Inside the penal voluntary sector: Divided discourses of “helping” criminalized women. Punishment & Society, 22(2), 161–180.
Rey-Martí, A., Díaz-Foncea, M., & Alguacil-Marí, P. (2021). The determinants of social sustainability in work integration social enterprises: The effect of entrepreneurship. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 34(1), 929–947.
Ricciardelli, R., Evans, D., & Peters, A. (2017). Navigating employment post-release: An introduction. In R. Ricciardelli & A. Peters (Eds.), After prison: Navigating employment and reintegration. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Tufo, A., & Gonell, E. (2023). The little book of restorative justice program design: Using participatory action research to build and assess RJ initiatives. Good Books.
