I don't know if Nancy's going to weigh in, but in the 1960s, the human development agenda was about bringing women into it. Globally there was the notion of human development for rich countries and poor countries, for women and for men. I think the women's movement is, in part, about human development. If you look at what women are asking for, it isn't specific to women; it is specific to human development.
A gender budget analysis is a portal for going into how we can use our collective resources better. I think about what happened in Quebec when they introduced $5-a-day child care. Women's labour force participation rates shot up. The actual net impact on the public treasury was negative, because women were earning more and paying more income taxes.
From a pure and minimalist economic point of view, by putting a little bit of public investment into society you can actually pull more out.
We have had a strange last ten years, however. Even with a strong and growing economic environment and with public coffers growing, we have failed to reinvest this and reap the rewards, whether you're talking about making sure that there are community centres where kids can play, or that women are getting assistance in child care, or that there's enough health care out there so women are not taking care of the elderly or the disabled or the ill at home. There are so many things we could be investing in that actually are win-win for everybody. But the current environment is that investments are best left to the private sector and that the public shouldn't be investing; it should be getting out of the way of the market.
Human development is about public and private investments. It is not specific to women, but when you invest in the things that help women, you automatically see this huge multiplier effect in communities, which then, curiously, leads to greater economic growth. It is a virtuous circle that we have lost track of in the last ten years.