Friday, November 02, 2007
Brant, Haldimand and Norfolk Counties Put Women in the Picture
On October 30 and 31, ACTEW had the pleasure of participating in the conference Putting Women in the Picture near Brantford¸ hosted by the Grand Erie Training and Adjustment Board (GETAB). The event brought nearly 60 service providers to discuss how women in the region could be served more effectively.
A panel discussion kicked off the event, highlighting the issues and barriers women in the region face, particularly newcomer women, women survivors of violence, women in the workforce and women’s self-esteem. Key points included:
The participants also heard an update on the development of Employment Ontario in a presentation by Sherree Mahood, MTCU’s Regional Director of the Western Region. We’ll give you a full report on this presentation in the next blog entry.
The remainder of the conference was facilitated by Facilitating Inclusion facilitators from St. Joseph Immigrant Women’s Centre (Hamilton) and led the participants through a planning process to move towards supporting the women of the region more fully.
We’d like to thank Betty Anne, Jill and Tracey for an excellent conference, and we look forward to working with key stakeholders to move towards the goals set out in the session.
A panel discussion kicked off the event, highlighting the issues and barriers women in the region face, particularly newcomer women, women survivors of violence, women in the workforce and women’s self-esteem. Key points included:
- With no public transportation, and the high costs of owning and operating a vehicle, many women cannot physically access services or get to and from available jobs
- Parenting issues for women loom large—child care is hard to find in the region, and what is available is expensive and generally has inflexible hours.
- Young women often face discrimination in the workforce from employers who fear hiring them in case they get pregnant and interrupt productivity.
- Extremely marginalized women have no informal support networks and have no one to turn to if they need emergency child care.
- Newcomer women tend to be better educated than Canadian-born women, but have much lower earnings, on average. Immigrant women tend to work low-skill, low-pay jobs that are not related to the careers in which they are trained.
- Women affected by violence deal with other issues, and there appear to be increasing incidences of harassment in the workplace by a woman’s domestic partner. There have been three cases recently in the area of the woman losing her job because her abusive partner was harassing her at work.
The participants also heard an update on the development of Employment Ontario in a presentation by Sherree Mahood, MTCU’s Regional Director of the Western Region. We’ll give you a full report on this presentation in the next blog entry.
The remainder of the conference was facilitated by Facilitating Inclusion facilitators from St. Joseph Immigrant Women’s Centre (Hamilton) and led the participants through a planning process to move towards supporting the women of the region more fully.
We’d like to thank Betty Anne, Jill and Tracey for an excellent conference, and we look forward to working with key stakeholders to move towards the goals set out in the session.
Labels: ACTEW_Activities, LMDA, Meetings_and_Events, MTCU_Updates
