I think it's true that many problems of equality require direct spending by government to address; not everything can be done through the tax system to address women's inequality or the problems of low-income people.
This is one of the reasons we need to examine the budget from a gender lens, because there has been such a heavy shift towards tax cuts as the instrument for addressing problems, and we need to scrutinize those to see if they're working equally well for men and women, for low-income and higher-income people.
There is an overlap, however, between taxation and spending, which takes the form of this beast I called refundable credits, which is really a transfer payment delivered through the tax system. So the working income tax benefit your chair just mentioned is a new refundable credit; the child tax benefit is another one. It may be possible to build on those in a way that could address more of the issues of low-income people. The tax system could be used in a way that is more friendly to low-income women and men.