Canadian Women's Foundation's 'The Mother Rising' campaign, created by Hard Work Club in 2021, used a 90-second film to demand gender justice for mothers and
Canadian Women's Foundation Demands Gender Justice for Mothers
"The Mother Rising" is a 2021 public interest film campaign created by Hard Work Club for the Canadian Women's Foundation, launched in Canada in May 2021 to challenge how mothers and family caregivers are portrayed in public discourse and to mobilise Canadians around the cause of gender justice for those bearing disproportionate pandemic burdens.
The campaign's premise is grounded in a stark reality. According to canadianwomen.org and supporting research cited through Publications Gc Ca and Canada Ca, mothers and family caregivers in Canada were averaging 95 hours per week in caregiving roles by 2021. The scale of that burden produced measurable mental-health consequences: according to Statistics Canada, 35 percent of mothers reported symptoms of depression in the year preceding the campaign, compared with 19 percent before the pandemic. Those figures gave the Canadian Women's Foundation a factual foundation on which to build an urgent creative call to action.
Operating under the banner of themotherrising.ca, the campaign invited Canadians to share their experiences, raise their voices, participate, honour caregivers, and give — a multi-channel participation model that extended a 90-second film into a broader advocacy movement. The Foundation positioned gender justice as the systemic solution, arguing that the unpaid care and household responsibilities carried by women and gender-diverse people remain chronically undervalued across Canada. The campaign's full title, "Join The Mother Rising for Mothers and Family Caregivers," made that collective invitation explicit, framing individual action as part of a national movement. Hard Work Club's first assignment for the Foundation, the work represented a deliberate shift in creative direction for the organisation, moving away from its earlier supporter-mobilisation platform toward a confrontational, emotionally direct appeal rooted in pandemic-era social conditions in Canada.
The Canadian Women's Foundation grounded the campaign's strategy in a convergence of three compounding crises affecting mothers and caregivers across Canada simultaneously: pandemic-related job losses concentrated in feminised sectors, surging unpaid domestic and care labour, and deteriorating mental health among women with caregiving responsibilities. According to Statistics Canada, the depression rate among mothers climbed from 19 percent pre-pandemic to 35 percent during the period the campaign addressed, establishing the emotional legitimacy of an urgent public interest intervention rather than a conventional charitable appeal.
The strategic timing around Mother's Day in May 2021 was deliberate. As reported by Campaign Canada, Hard Work Club and the Canadian Women's Foundation chose the occasion not for sentimental reasons but to disrupt it — to redirect a commercial holiday toward a conversation about structural inequality and gender justice. Meghan Kraemer, partner and creative director at Hard Work Club, described the campaign's objective as aiming to "disrupt how mothers are portrayed, and really put out a challenge for people to rise up for mothers and give them some of the equality and justice that is so overdue." That disruptive intent separated the campaign from the maternal sentimentality that defines most Mother's Day advertising in Canada.
In the competitive landscape of Canadian public interest organisations, the Foundation operates alongside organisations including Plan International Canada and YWCA Canada, both of which reported substantial 2021 revenues — according to Plancanada Ca, Plan International Canada recorded approximately 237 million dollars in total revenue that year, with 46.1 percent from government and other grants. Against such well-resourced peers, the Foundation's choice to invest in a creatively bold film campaign with donated media support reflected a strategy of earning reach through cultural relevance rather than paid scale, positioning gender justice as a civic imperative rather than a charitable cause.
The Mother Rising takes the form of a 90-second film. Production credits confirmed by Campaigncanada Ca identify Kimberley Veitch as director and Fela Production as the production company, with the campaign supported by donated media across Canada. The creative team at Hard Work Club was led by creative directors Meghan Kraemer and Christian Buer, with Sam Benso serving as agency producer, as documented by clapboard.com.
Kraemer, writing and speaking about the work as reported by glossyinc.com and campaigncanada.ca, described it as the most personal work she had ever created, and framed it explicitly as both meaningful on a personal level and as a call for positive change. That dual register — intimate and political — is reflected in the film's aesthetic approach. As characterised by Campaign Canada, the film is "evocative" and "sometimes gritty," a tonal choice that deliberately resists the warm, idealised visual language that dominates maternal advertising in Canada and globally. The film does not present motherhood as fulfilling or picturesque; it surfaces the labour, the loss, and the systemic neglect that caregivers in Canada face.
The creative strategy around representation was also central to the execution. According to glossyinc.com's coverage of Hard Work Club at launch, the agency positioned the campaign around the importance of authentic representation of diverse mothers and gender-diverse caregivers, reflecting the Foundation's explicit mandate to address the compounded barriers facing those experiencing poverty, discrimination, and gender-based violence in Canada. The choice to pair a first-time agency relationship with a film of this emotional weight — and to distribute it through donated media rather than a paid broadcast buy — reflects a production philosophy that prioritises creative conviction over reach guarantees. The campaign archive on clapboard.com documents a single film asset as the campaign's primary media output.
No verified performance data for The Mother Rising in the form of donation totals, fundraising results, brand awareness lift, or media reach figures is publicly available. Campaign-specific metrics of that kind were not published by the Canadian Women's Foundation or Hard Work Club at any documented point following the May 2021 launch. The campaign has also not been confirmed as a winner at Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to publicly available records for those organisations.
What the archive record does capture is audience engagement within the Clapboard platform. The campaign generated 7,172 views and 56 likes on clapboard.com, with no comments recorded — a profile consistent with a public interest film that reaches an engaged professional and creative audience rather than a mass consumer one. The campaign earned positive editorial coverage in two trade publications: Campaign Canada, which described the film as evocative and sometimes gritty, and Glossy Inc., which contextualised it within Hard Work Club's positioning as an agency built around authentic representation. That earned media coverage — both published on May 5, 2021, the same day as the campaign launch — indicates a coordinated communications effort designed to generate cultural conversation at the moment of release.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on its clarity of purpose and its alignment of form with function. A 90-second film, produced with Fela Production and distributed through donated media across Canada, is an economically coherent vehicle for a public interest organisation advocating for gender justice and caregiver recognition. The Clapboard Score for The Mother Rising is 69 out of 100, reflecting solid creative intent and strategic coherence against the constraint of limited measurable public outcomes.
The Mother Rising is a 2021 public interest film campaign created by Hard Work Club for the Canadian Women's Foundation. Launched in Canada in May 2021, it used a 90-second film to demand gender justice for mothers and family caregivers bearing disproportionate pandemic burdens, including 95 hours per week in caregiving roles, according to canadianwomen.org.
Hard Work Club created The Mother Rising for the Canadian Women's Foundation. Creative directors Meghan Kraemer and Christian Buer led the campaign, with Kimberley Veitch directing the film under Fela Production. As reported by campaigncanada.ca, the project was Hard Work Club's first assignment for the Foundation, launched in May 2021 in Canada.
The Canadian Women's Foundation chose Mother's Day to disrupt the holiday's commercial sentimentality. Meghan Kraemer of Hard Work Club stated the objective was to challenge how mothers are portrayed and demand gender justice. According to Statistics Canada, 35 percent of Canadian mothers reported depression symptoms during the pandemic period the campaign addressed.
The Mother Rising drew on research documented through canadianwomen.org, publications.gc.ca, and canada.ca showing Canadian mothers and caregivers averaged 95 hours per week in caregiving roles. According to Statistics Canada, depression symptoms among mothers rose from 19 percent pre-pandemic to 35 percent, providing the campaign's factual foundation for its gender justice advocacy.
The Mother Rising has not been confirmed as a winner at Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to publicly available records. The campaign received positive editorial coverage from Campaign Canada and Glossy Inc. at launch and holds a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100.
The Canadian Women's Foundation described The Mother Rising as an annual campaign as of April 2023, as documented by clapboard.com. The 2021 edition, created by Hard Work Club, was the campaign's founding execution and represented a new creative direction for the Foundation, focusing specifically on mothers and family caregivers across Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
