The ACTEW Blog

The Northern Ontario Women's Economic Development Conference took place April 29 and 30 in Thunder Bay. Organized by PARO, and sponsored by ACTEW among others, this event brought together entrepreneurs, community workers, academics and local government workers to look at a wide variety of issues related to northern women’s economic security.

Highlights include:

• Women's stories of economic success: Woven throughout the conference were stories of women's success as entrepreneurs, politicians and community activists. In establishing a business women, such as gallery owner Louise Thomas or contractor Pamela Johnson, often consciously focus on positively affecting the social economy of their community as well as bringing in revenues.
  
  
• Technology: Five communities, including reserves with no road access, attended the conference remotely and participated in workshops via web casts. Roz Lockyer, Executive Director of PARO, reported that northern women want to utilize technology more for learning and professional development according to PARO's recent survey of the region. There was strong interest in participating in the technology training opportunities that Lynda Beavis, ACTEW's northern representative of the Content-Sharing Constellation Network, will provide in coming months. (To learn more about these workshops contact lori@actew.org.)
  
  
• Transportation: "Northern Women on the Move" was a workshop that explored how transportation affects women's economic security. Siobhan O'Leary and Maggie McDonald, researchers with Rural Women Making Change Research Alliance, presented the outcomes of surveys of women living in rural communities in Ontario. Workshop participants, including three web casting remote communities, shared strategies for overcoming women’s varied transportation issues.
  
  
• Activities at the local and municipal level: Kathy Poling, Mayor of Sioux Lookout, described breaking down systemic barriers within municipal government in order to be more inclusive of the aboriginal community, women and youth. Jody Rebek-DiCerbo, Managing Director of Destiny Sault Ste. Marie, explained her city's economic diversification strategy. Dr. Gayle Broad of Algoma University explored the economic and social benefits of social enterprises, such as farm circles in Northeastern Ontario and worker ownership of local industries.
  
  
• An economic overview of the region: Dr. Bob Rosehart, Northwestern Ontario Economic Facilitator, described some of the region's challenges and his recommendations for stabilizing and enhancing its economy and communities based on his recent report: "Northwestern Ontario: Preparing for Change".

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research

Newcomers are settling in the suburbs of Toronto, according to the latest Research Bulletin from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) at University of Toronto.

Prior to 1970, immigrants mainly settled in the downtown core. Due to restrictive immigration policy, they were also very likely to be of European origin. However, by 2006, almost all new arrival were settling in the suburbs. These immigrants are ethnically and socio-economically diverse, with well-educated and financially secure people from China and India settling in Markham and Mississauga, and lower-income immigrants and refugees of African, Asian, and South American origin settling in the inner suburbs.

This pattern will be familiar to community agencies that serve newcomers. Agencies must open new locations in the northern and outlying areas of the city, or relocate entirely in order to reach their clients. Mario Calla, executive director of COSTI Immigrant Services, interviewed in the Globe and Mail yesterday said,

"[W]e're seeing people that are coming directly from Pearson Airport, where they land, to a home in the 905… the way immigration patterns have changed, our staff speak 63 different languages, and we have relocated our centres in new immigrant settlement areas."

While acknowledging the challenges of serving a diverse and geographically distributed newcomer community, CUCS strongly encourages action to meet the needs of immigrants:

"The vulnerability of new immigrants in the inner suburbs highlights the importance of providing appropriate settlement services, adequate and affordable housing, educational opportunities, and skills training – all matters that potentially lead to successful integration. Failure to deliver these services, especially to newly arrived low-income immigrants, risks fuelling social tensions that are increasing in other jurisdictions, especially certain West European cities."

Read the bulletin:
http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/redirects/rb41.html

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Women make up almost three-quarters of the students in private career colleges, according to, Survey of Canadian Career College Students, a new study by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

"Compared to post-secondary students at public colleges, students pursuing post-secondary studies at privately operated career colleges tend to be older, with a mean age of 29, and have a greater reliance on government student financial aid. In addition, most of them (72 per cent) are women, and they are more likely to have dependents under 18 and less likely to have financial backing from family."

Students within the private colleges fit into six main categories, which include new immigrants, women re-entering the workforce after a period of caregiving, and young people preparing to enter a college or university program.

Half of these students will or already rely on a Canada Student Loans or other government assistance to fund their education and have higher debt levels than public college students. The study also shows that compared with their peers at public colleges, private college students are less knowledgeable about various educational loan and grant options.

Download the report: Survey of Canadian Career College Students
http://www.millenniumscholarships.ca/images/Publications/080331_SCCCS_EN.pdf

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Join ACTEW on Wednesday, April 2, as the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto hosts the release of a collaborative report analyzing the effects of 2004 changes to the HRSDC Call for Proposals process.

The report documents the costs of the funding change to organizations, government, and clients, and provides recommendations for improving the funding relationship between government and non-profit organizations. The sudden change threatened the existence of a number of employment and training organizations and interrupted service for many clients.

The report was developed by ACTEW in collaboration with the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, ONESTEP (Ontario Network of Employment and Skills Training Programs), OCASI (Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants), OAYEC (Ontario Association of Youth Employment Centres) and TNC (Toronto Neighbourhood Centres), with funding support from the United Way of Greater Toronto Social Research Initiative.

The event will take place in Toronto. To attend, please contact Mary at 416-351-0095 x 251 or mmary@cspc.toronto.on.ca. For more information, contact Alissa Von Bargen, Community Social Planning Council of Toronto Communications Officer at 416-351-0095 x 214, or avonbargen@cspc.toronto.on.ca.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research

Our fact sheet on Canadian Women's Labour Patterns reveals that while women accounted for 70% of the employment increases in Canada in 2007, a woman still earns only 70% of what a man will in work of equal value. Two recently launched campaigns and a new report challenge this stubborn and glaring economic imbalance in Canadian society.

The Canadian Labour Congress has launched "Equality: Once and For All", a year long campaign for women's economic equality. On International Women's Day, 30 meetings on work-related issues for women will take place in locations across the country. CLC has also produced a report and fact sheets on wage inequity, the gender pay, employment insurance, pensions, the role of unions and child care.

"It's Time for Public Child Care" is another campaign for working women and their families. In Ontario there are regularted child care spaces for only 10% of the children under 12. Driven by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Ontario Federation of Labour, this campaign includes meetings throughout the province on the desperate need for quality child care and against the privatization of such care by the international corporation that is presently moving into the province. Not only does this big box child care offer poor care for children, "In Australia the biggest child care chain, ABC Learning Centres, caps wages at 50% of costs fueling record profits for its shareholders from the low wages of their staff."

Child care is one of the most prevalent employment categories for women in Canada, according to a release from Statistics Canada this week, yet it is also one of the most poorly paid. The annual income for these workers half that of the national income average. Salaries for child care centre staff range from $12,500 to $29,000 per year, providers outside centres have even lower remuneration, and child care providers in Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, due to immigration regulations, are very vulnerable to unfair pay and abuse from their employers.(See our fact sheet on child care for more information.)

A report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives urges the Province of Ontario to fulfill its obligation to child care providers and other public sector workers who are still owed pay equity payments. Twenty years ago, Ontario's Pay Equity Act made pay discrimination illegal, and yet, as Mary Cornish states in "Putting fairness back into women’s pay: The case for Pay Equity in Ontario":

the government is failing to fully fund the pay equity adjustments owing to women in the public and broader public sector. In addition, the Pay Equity Commission and Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal, which enforce the Act, are seriously underfunded.

$78.1 million is currently owing to women in the public sector. Furthermore, Cornish also points out that women in the private sector are much more vulnerable, an issue that snowballs as more government services become privatized, but little is done to prevent or penalize gender-based wage discrimination.

Labels: Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research

Women's organizations have developed innovative initiatives to respond to some of the policy and economic challenges for women in their communities.

• The Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee of Huron, Perth, Grey and Bruce Counties has recently partnered with Rural Women Making Change Research Alliance in a research and community development project aimed at unraveling the workings of municipal governments so that women can access them to affect local change.
  
  
• Women Today of Huron offers "We Belong Here" in which participants learn about citizenship and their rights as women, healthy relationships and local services. They strategize how to utilize new skills and knowledge for individual and collective benefit, building women's confidence in their ability to improve their communities in south-western Ontario.
  
  
• In South River, Women's Own Resource Centre's Rural Outreach Program Endeavor (ROPE) provides mobile self-employment workshops with a focus on economic success and balanced living. You can learn more about ROPE on ACTEW's profiles of programs that serve women well.
  
  
• In 2005, Rural Women Making Change partnered with Women's Employment Resource Centre (WERC) of Woodstock to provide a pre-employment program for women living in the 401 corridor communities where manufacturing is replacing agriculture. The program introduced women to the expectations and workplace culture of the male-dominated manufacturing industry and guided them through the rigorous testing that such employers use when hiring.
  
  
• Currently WERC also offers a networking opportunity for immigrant women. Immigrant issues are rarely acknowledged by rural service delivery, making immigrant women in rural communities twice as invisible.
  
  
• Further afield, the Northwest Territories Status of Women developed "A How to Guide for Participating in Socio-economic Impact Assessments" to encourage women to participate in resource development assessments. Women rarely benefit from resource development projects and may even be negatively impacted, according to the guide. The resource provides strategies on how gather information about the proposed project, talk to others within the community about its impact, and voice your opinion at a public assessment.

These projects share the common thread of increasing women's knowledge of systems and providing strategies to unlock these systems in order that women may participate more fully in the economic development of their community and increase their own financial self-sufficiency.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Provincial and federal policy is developed in urban settings through a gender-neutral lens. The economic development needs of rural communities, and particularly those of rural women, are not well served by such policy. They need policies that respond to rural-specific challenges, such as transportation, the high cost of basic necessities, and limited access to child care and training.

Drawing from work by the Rural Women and Poverty Action Committee, Belinda Leach of Rural Women Making Change says income supports, like Employment Insurance (EI) and Ontario Works (OW), are examples of ill-fitting policy.

OW fines recipients for owning a car of a certain value, yet access to reliable transportation is essential for employment in a rural setting where long distances are the norm and public transit is very limited. In fact, 91% percent of rural women travel to work in a car; 1% take public transit.

Both OW and EI put rural women at a disadvantage because they are more likely to work part-time, seasonally and in self-employment, and thus less likely to meet the required number of hours to access support. (For more on EI eligibility issues for women, see inFocus January 2007, ACTEW’s policy newsletter.)

Rural communities also vary from urban ones in value-based attitudes, which are most obvious at election time but have daily effects in the interpretation of policy at the local level. For example, Leach reports that OW policy is applied differently in different places. Recently, women in receipt of OW in Oxford County were not allowed to take a skills based training program but women in a similar program in Toronto could take the program and, furthermore, earned piece rates.

Leach also offers the example of caregivers in Nova Scotia who are
entitled to more support if they stay at home than if they work. She
suggests that in rural communities, prevailing gender ideologies will
combine with such policies to encourage women to follow traditional roles.

To complicate policy issues further, there is great variation among the rural economies in Ontario. Some are agricultural or resource development based, while others are dependent upon manufacturing, food services or recreation. Some experience tremendous seasonal changes in employment levels. Those rural communities where workers can access diverse and well-paying employment in neighbouring urban areas are comparatively wealthier than more remote communities.

For more on rural poverty and related policy recommendations, see the 2002 report by Rural Women and Poverty Action Committee, "Rural Women Speak Out In the Face of Poverty" on the Women Today of Huron web site at: www.wthuron.ca/pdfs/FinalReport.pdf.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

In partnership with the Rural Women Making Change Research Alliance based at Guelph University, ACTEW has just released a new fact sheet on employment issues for women living in rural communities.


For all the beauty and tranquility of the countryside, there's a price to pay:

• Rural communities have much higher unemployment rates than urban areas. While nationally women have lower unemployment rates than men, rural women in Ontario are the exception.
  
  
• Transportation is a primary concern. Seventy-three percent of rural women work in a municipality other than the one in which they live, compared to 31% of urban women.
  
  
• Rural women earn less than those in urban centres, a pattern that is also true for men. The average income for a Northern Ontario worker is 16.3% lower than the provincial average.
  
  
• While rural women are more likely than their urban peers to be self-employed, only 20% earn an income of $20,000 or more, compared to 31% of self-employed urban women.
  
  
• Employment agencies serving rural communities report a lack of jobs paying above minimum wage and few training opportunities for clients, and are far less likely than their urban counter-parts to provide women-specific services or program supports like child care.
  
  
• Depopulation is a tremendous threat for some communities; in 2001, Elliot Lake in northern Ontario reported a 43% out-migration of young people.

In the coming entries we'll look at some of the specific issues for women trying to work and live in the lower population areas of our province. We'd like to thank Belinda Leach and Soibhan O'Leary at Rural Women Making Change, Maggie McDonald of WERC, Woodstock, and the staff of Women Today of Huron for their research and insight around this issue.

For more facts on rural women's employment, visit our fact sheet at:
http://www.actew.org/projects/pwpsite/snapshots/rural.html

For more on initiatives and research related to issues for rural women, visit Rural Women Making Change at http://www.rwmc.uoguelph.ca.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

The Ontario government's Throne Speech in November 2007 states that: "A new cabinet committee will begin work developing poverty indicators and targets and a focused strategy for making clear-cut progress on reducing child poverty. The strategy includes a plan that would provide dental benefits to low-income families, and builds on measures already in progress. These include boosting the minimum wage to $10.25 by 2010, increasing child care spaces and providing more affordable housing…[and] fully implement the new Ontario Child Benefit, raising it to $1,100 per child."
The anti-poverty cabinet committee is being led by Minister Deb Mathews, who also happens to be the Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues. Other high profile ministers will sit on the committee, including Minister John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, suggesting that the committee is taking a broad and inclusive approach to strategizing poverty reduction in Ontario, including employment and training as a key component along with the focuses listed in the throne speech.

The question yet to be asked and answered is: will the committee consider how gender and equity affect experiences of poverty and pathways towards sustainable livelihoods? ACTEW’s research on women and work finds that women are much more likely to live in poverty, have reduced access to EI and have different labour patterns due in large part to shouldering the responsibility for dependent care.

Note that while several provinces are pursuing poverty reduction strategies, there is no such approach to date at the national level. Campaign 2000 is encouraging the federal government to commit to a national poverty reduction strategy. Their 2007 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty, revealed that 18 years after the 1989 all-party resolution of the House of Commons, the child poverty rate is exactly the same, despite a growing economy, a soaring dollar and low unemployment. (It's important to point out that women are statistically much more likely to be sole-support parents, and statistically more likely to live in poverty, along with their children) In a letter anticipating the First Ministers’ meeting, there was a focus on Employment Insurance coverage (which women, though statistically more likely to live in poverty, are also less likely to qualify or receive EI benefits):

"Employment Insurance coverage, on the table for the First Ministers, should be part of the national Poverty Reduction Strategy. 'This is a self-funded program with huge surpluses that covers less than 40% of unemployed Canadians,' said Anne Decter, national campaign coordinator. 'The money is there, paid in by people who can’t collect when they need it. It’s hard to see the fairness of letting Canadians fall into poverty when they lose their jobs while money deducted from their paycheques sits in a surplus account.'"

We will post updates from the Ontario Committee's work as well as community responses as they are released.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, MTCU_Updates, Resources_and_Research

Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) recently released a fact sheet on women’s experiences of social programs for people with low incomes, based on their research interviewing women in Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg.

This fact sheet examines funding procedures that have negatively affected Canada’s social programs and the lives of millions of children, women and men, providing an overview of policy shifts over the last decade, voices from women clients directly, and recommendations. Some key points:

• Reliance on welfare has drastically increased from preceding years as a result of federal cut back in benefits, funding and the elimination of federal programs. At the same time, fewer Canadians are accessing the funds, not because of reduced need but because of tightened eligibility criteria.


• The federal government requires no basic standards for social programs across provinces, and the main common attribute is in complexity of systems, with many rules that are misunderstood or misapplied by caseworkers.


• The majority of people who rely on social assistance benefits in Canada are mostly likely to be women, children and people with disabilities. They are looked down upon for their reliance on social assistance and yet they do not receive adequate support from the government that will focus on getting them into the paid labour force and off social assistance, such as affordable child care, safe and affordable housing, and access to training and education. Systems in fact frequently punish recipients for trying to improve their economic security, such as the tragic story of Kimberley Rogers who was charged with fraud for receiving welfare benefits and taking out a student loan to upgrade skills.

The CRIAW fact sheet recommends that federal and provincial/territorial governments understand the difference between written policies and real life experiences, such as the ones expressed in the article. They argue that this would establish methods in developing progressive policies that would eliminate poverty and injustices that will ultimately benefit the growth of the economy and Canadians.

View and/or download the fact sheet from the CRIAW web site.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

A ground-breaking new report analyzes the disincentives to achieving greater self-reliance within Ontario's welfare, housing and social support system. Metcalf Innovation Fellow John Stapleton launched a new report in December on behalf of the Metcalf Foundation called: Why is it so Tough to Get Ahead? How Our Tangled Social Programs Pathologize the Transition to Self-Reliance. The report finds that the primary obstacle to supporting the transition to self-reliance exists in the fact that social assistance programs operate within isolation from one another and are based on a business model. This system encourages non-reporting, discourages work, and perpetuates abject poverty. A powerful example of entangled programs and policies is the differing definitions that are associated with who qualifies as a child, an adult, and a resident within various programs.

The study finds that working-age social assistance recipients live with disincentives to achieving self-reliance based on the fact that the more they earn, the more they lose in benefits. Stapleton identifies deterrents from achieving self-reliance which include the impact of reduced benefits and increased taxes and premiums on every dollar earned while trying to transition off of social assistance. He notes that the “Marginal Effective Tax Rate” is highest among poor people who receive more than one social service. While transitioning from social services to self-reliance, recipients stand to loose up to 100% of their social assistance, including dental and medical benefits, subsidized housing, clothing benefits, and child care subsidies.

The report outlines a series of recommendations for policy solutions that can be taken right away to eliminate some of the barriers thrown up by multiple subsidies and program policies. The ultimate goal for this report is to call attention to the need for a new governance model – one that enables governments and their agencies to forge policies and procedures in a coordinated way so that the transition to self-reliance is a healthy, supported process for people.

Why is it so Tough to Get Ahead? can be downloaded from the Metcalfe web site at http://www.metcalffoundation.com/

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Today, the Toronto Star published an article revisiting three women that had been featured in articles throughout the year. Rita Daly, the article's author, found that while a moment of fame can change some people's lives forever, "in the case of three single mothers raising children in poverty that Toronto Star readers met over the course of the past year or so, life, well, life goes on." Little has changed for the women.

Read the article that features Amany, who lost her daycare subsidy because she worked an extra few hours at her job; Maheswary, who worked two part-time night jobs, which barely covered the rent for her and her two sons; and Cheryl, who was told that she owed the Ontario government more than $2,000 for the orphan benefits her two children received after their father died.

Read the full article.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Current labour market policies don't recognize women as a significant labour market force with specific patterns. A study released by the government of Canada in 2005 analyzes how Canadian fiscal policy reinforces the many social, economic and legal barriers women face when they try to gain equal access to full-time work with equal pay, and examines structural proposals that would remove or reduce these barriers to women's labour force participation. From the study:

“Five basic structural features of the tax and social assistance system are examined for their tendency to place pressure on women to “choose” unpaid or poorly paid irregular work to optimize the well-being of their families. These include provisions that treat the adult couple as the basic unit of fiscal policy, like the dependent spouse credit, joint income limits on the child tax benefit, and the Goods and Services Tax credit. They also include the tax exemption of unpaid work, the lack of adequate child care resources and the non-deductibility of the many costs that make women's paid work often less profitable than unpaid work, the steep clawback rates in social assistance programs and the relatively high rates of income taxes imposed on the lowest incomes.”

A recent study released from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that, again due to specific labour patterns, most women are getting shut out of Employment Insurance (EI) coverage in Canada. Exclusion from EI also means exclusion from most of the training programs and supports offered through EI funding (Read ACTEW’s blog entry on this research). While individual training programs and supports run by agencies recognize women-specific labour patterns, needs and opportunities, provincial and federal labour market development policy has so far not systemically implemented strategies that would fully maximize women’s participation in the labour force. In fact, data collection segregated by gender is patchy at best, so provinces are hard-pressed to fully understand the ways in which half the labour force is being utilized and where improvements can be made.

Only one province in Canada has made significant progress in understanding and supporting women’s unique contexts to more fully participate in the workforce: Quebec. Quebec has introduced legislation that extends maternity and parental leave to self-employed workers—significantly affecting women who are outpacing men three-fold in becoming entrepreneurs. Quebec is also the only province to implement universal accessible child care, which the Quebec government identifies as a key reason that women’s participation rates have increased dramatically in the last ten years (read Le bulletin du Cetech released by the government of Quebec in Winter 2007).

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, LMDA, Resources_and_Research

ACTEW has just released a fact sheet focusing on Canadian Women’s labour patterns, based on an environmental scan ACTEW recently conducted for the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Women's work patterns are not the same as men's. While men's employment patterns have changed little, women's are changing dramatically. Thirty years ago, the participation rate difference between the sexes was 31%; it is now 8%. Twice as many mothers of preschool children were working in 2006, compared with 1976. Young women are more likely to be university educated than their male peers and older women are working full-time in record numbers. Currently, women make up almost half of the labour force and account for close to three-quarters (70%) of the employment increases in Canada in 2007.

Most governments know that women are participating in increasing numbers, and experiencing low levels of unemployment. They point to this fact as evidence that women no longer require specific policy focus. However, how women access the labour market also differs significantly from men, and women are not experiencing increased income levels commensurate with increased participation.

Women are more likely to have breaks in their work histories, perform unpaid caregiving at the expense of paid employment, work part-time and be in low-paying occupations. Consequently, women have far less access to the benefits of EI, less access to training, and are paid on average 28 cents less per hour then men in work of equal value. Women still tend to be under-represented in “non-traditional occupations”, although some regions in Canada are seeing significant improvements in women’s participation, largely due to programs that support women entering into skilled trades.

Read and/or download ACTEW’s newest fact sheet Canadian Women’s Labour Patterns on ACTEW’s Putting Women in the Picture web site.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Most women are getting shut out of Employment Insurance (EI) coverage in Canada, says a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

The gap between men's and women’s EI coverage is significant: 40 percent of unemployed men received EI benefits in 2004 while only 32 percent of unemployed women did. The study shows the likelihood of most women ever receiving unemployment benefits is slim, largely because EI doesn’t recognize that women have different patterns of paid work than men due to their family responsibilities. The study found a number of changes to EI in 1996 led to increasing the gap between men’s and women’s EI coverage, but the current work hours/weeks required to qualify have been the biggest barrier to women securing benefits.

These findings correspond with ACTEW’s research on Women and EI, released in a fact sheet in January 2007. This research found that women with young children are the least likely to qualify for EI. While women have increased accessing EI through maternal and/or parental benefits, many women do not qualify for maternity/parental leave, either due to being self-employed or being out of the workforce for extended periods.

The CCPA study recommends the federal government make 360 hours the new magic number for qualifying for EI. Workers could qualify for benefits if they work 360 hours within 12 months or if they averaged 360 hours a year in three of the five years before they apply for EI. The new 360 hour rule would apply to workers seeking all categories of benefits: regular, work-sharing, maternity, parental, sickness, compassionate care and training.

The study, “Women and the Employment Insurance Program”, can be downloaded from the CCPA web site.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that the top 1 percent of families in 2005 paid a lower total tax rate than the bottom 10 percent of families.

The study, Eroding Tax Fairness: Tax Incidence in Canada, 1990 to 2005, which is the first comprehensive review of tax changes at all levels of government in Canada within the past 15 years, finds the system is delivering larger tax savings for high income families. This reinforces the growing gap in market incomes between high income families and the rest of Canadians.

Provincial tax cuts are the key culprit for the increasingly regressive nature of Canada’s tax system but the problem has been exacerbated at the federal level with billions of dollars worth of post-2000 tax cuts.

These findings are particularly important for women, who are statistically more likely to earn less than men, and more likely to head one-parent households, the one of the lowest household income groups in Canada. See ACTEW’s fact sheet on Women and Contingent Work, released in April.

It also bears mentioning that recent reports estimate 39% of women tax filers in Canada compared to 25% of men had no tax liability, i.e. they do not pay tax because they do not earn enough money (see FAFIA’s 2007 Federal Budget Overview). This means that while 39% of women will not be penalized by the trends CCPA identifies, neither do they benefit from the tax breaks and incentives being introduced by the federal government.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

On September 27, 2007, the Wellesley Institute released the study We Can't Afford to Do Business This Way: A Study of the Administrative Burden Resulting from Funder Accountability and Compliance Practices.

The objective of the study was to gather baseline information on the administrative demands made by funders on the nonprofit organizations they fund. Focusing on three multi-service agencies, the research details some significant trends facing the nonprofit sector’s funding streams.

Some of the findings include:

• The actual impact of the funding process is directly at odds with the very reasons governments and other funders engage nonprofit organizations to deliver community services.


• Funders, large and small, rarely give community organizations any latitude to adapt or adjust programs and finances to meet local conditions and changing circumstances.


• The reliability of funding sources for agencies remains tenuous.


• The cumulative administrative burden on agencies is all consuming.


• Multi-year grants, as currently designed, do not solve the administrative burden.


• Both large and small grants impose heavy administrative burdens.


• Grant management, of necessity, takes priority over other management responsibilities.


• Funders need to do things differently.

ACTEW’s May 2007 report, Patching It Together, describes very similar funding issues in the employment sector. Through a province-wide survey we found that women-specific programming in particular, and community-based training in general, work well because agencies in Ontario are dedicated to delivering comprehensive services to diverse and multi-barriered clientele, despite working within the confines of fractured governmental policy and inconsistent funding. Agencies are indeed patching together multiple funding sources to meet the needs of their clients comprehensively.

You can download the Wellesley report at: http://wellesleyinstitute.com/files/cant_do_business_this_way_report_web.pdf

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Ontarians will be going to the polls on October 10 not just to (re)elect politicians but, more importantly, to vote on electoral reform in the referendum.

Changing the electoral system affects who might get elected into office, which in turn affects the policies that our government makes. Whether you vote yes or no, you need to make an informed choice.

Elections Ontario, a non-partisan Agency of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, has set up a web site, Referendum Ontario (visit www.yourbigdecision.ca), to help voters "learn about your choices in Ontario’s first-ever referendum on electoral reform."

Elections Ontario also explains how and where to vote on their main web site, www.elections.on.ca, including electoral districts, voting by proxy, and how to confirm that you are on the voters list. They have information available in 33 languages.

Labels: Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research

A new campaign has been launched called the Colour of Poverty. The province-wide community-based campaign is launching a series of fact sheets and capacity-building initiatives that aim to promote an understanding of how poverty arises within or impacts upon racialized groups, and suggest ways, tools & strategies for people to work toward equity & inclusion in Ontario. So far, 10 fact sheets can be downloaded from the site, covering interconnected topics such as employment, education, food security and health.

The research of the Colour of Poverty Campaign states that by the year 2017, more than half of Toronto’s population will be people of colour. Nearly one in five immigrants experiences a state of chronic low income, which is more than twice the rate for Canadian-born individuals and ethno-racial minority (ie. non-European) families make up 37% of all families in Toronto, but account for 59% of poor families. ACTEW’s recently released fact sheet and e-bulletin on Immigrant Women and Employment found research that demonstrates immigrant and racialized women are particularly vulnerable. One of the most startling statistics is that immigrant women are more highly educated than Canadian-born women, yet are paid substantially less.

Follow the Colour of Poverty Campaign and download the fact sheets at http://www.colourofpoverty.ca/

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Self-employment is one of the fastest growing areas of employment for women. One in ten Canadian women are entrepreneurs.

ACTEW’s newly released fact sheet on women and self-employment finds that while self-employment in general has been on the rise since the mid-1970s, the number of self-employed women has nearly tripled over the last 20 years, compared to a 60% increase for Canadian men.

Here are some general trends and quick facts on women’s self-employment:

• Rural women are more likely than urban women to be self-employed.
  
  
• Much of the growth in self-employment among women has been in traditional female dominated sectors such as child care and janitorial and cleaning work.
  
  
• Self-Employed women are often home-based and own account workers.
  
  
• About one-quarter of self-employed women work part-time.
  
  
• Self-employed women earn significantly less than self-employed men.
  
  
• The self-employed cannot access Employment Insurance (including maternity leave), and are much less likely to be able to access training programs.

Self-employment is an important employment option for women. When Canadian women were asked the main reasons they became self-employed, 85% stated that a desire for more challenging work was the most important factor in their decision. Women in rural areas, where employment is limited, are more likely than urban women to be self-employed. This form of work can sometimes offer a more flexible schedule, which is helpful for women who are looking for more life-work balance in their lives.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Today, the Toronto Star profiled a unique women's-only program in residential heating and air conditioning systems installation and repair at George Brown College. The program is designed to train at-risk women for an in-demand trade--in this case, to graduate with a gas technician III license, which would allow women to enter the workforce directly or continue apprenticeship towards a licensed trade.

The George Brown program offers women tuition, books and subsidized transit passes for six months of courses in Toronto, and there's financial assistance for work clothes, boots, and emergency funds for rent arrears, child care and food. In the article, co-ordinator Anna Willats says that "the idea is to eliminate barriers to education, so the women can focus on completing their training and getting into the workforce."

ACTEW profiled our member agency Working Women Community Centre, which piloted a baker/patissier pre-apprenticeship program for women, also offered in conjunction with George Brown College. This 36-week, full-time program was funded by MTCU and designed to tap into a skill set common among women who have stayed at home to raise children and maintain households. Demand for this program was extremely high. Although it was an untested new initiative, 63 women applied. Of these, 20 individuals were selected. Fourteen women completed their paid placements and thirteen are now employed in full-time permanent positions in Toronto-area hotels. Read the full profile.

Clearly, innovative programs like these provide effective training to women by addressing the unique barriers women face who are under-employed or unemployed and by training them for careers that are experiencing skills shortages.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Rural women are invited to participate in a survey on the challenges of getting to work. Women wishing to share their experiences with transportation to workplaces, training, or employment services are encourageed to contact Siobhan O'Leary for more information at: olearys@uoguelph.ca or 519-836-1802.

This project from Rural Women Making Change looks at how the lack of transportation affects the workforce participation of women living in small communities in northern Ontario. The project outcomes will be used in policy discussions at the local, provincial and federal levels. The goal is to improve women’s accessibility to employment and training in northern communities.

According to O’Leary, "Research on northern issues is generally lacking and issues that affect women are no exception. There is currently no published research on women, employment and transportation...."

Information collected for this project is confidential and respondents can withdraw from the survey at any time. The survey is open until mid-October and results will be available in late fall.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Last week Statistics Canada reported that:

For the second straight month, full-time work increased while part-time employment fell. Adult women accounted for most of June's increase in full-time and all of the decline in part-time employment.

Earlier this year, when Stats Canada released its 2006 Labour Force Survey which highlighted the tremendous employment gains among women, we had questions on this blog about what sort of employment gains these were. Currently women are far more likely than men to be employed in part-time and precarious employment situations, at low wages and without benefits, job security, or even basic employment rights.

This latest information from Stats Canada shows that at the national level, at least, women are getting more full-time work, although the compensation levels and stability of this work is still unclear.

At the provincial level, there's a different story for working women. While the number of working women has been increasing, the Government of Ontario's Monthly Labour Market Report for May indicates that, contrary to the national picture, more women in Ontario are working part-time than in the last five years. In May of last year, 766,000 women held part-time positions, whereas this May, 827,000 women worked part-time. Numbers of women working full-time work in Ontario have been steadily rising over the last five years as well.

The provincial Monthly Labour Market Reports may be useful resources for those determining service directions and seeking funding for employment and training programs. The reports include metropolitan, regional, industry and sector specific data. Gender specific information is available only for part-time and full-time employment.

You can find the reports on this page of the Government of Ontario web site:
http://www.gov.on.ca/ont/portal/!ut/p/.cmd/cs/.ce/7_0_A/
.s/7_0_252/_s.7_0_A/7_0_252/_l/en?docid=004759

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

"Provisioning is defined as the work of securing resources and providing the necessities of life for those whom one has relationships of responsibility." - Sandra Tam, WEDGE

Sandra Tam was the guest presenter for ACTEW's June members meeting. Sandra is a researcher at the University of Toronto and has worked in Ontario’s community-based employment and training sector.

As part of the Women on the Edge of the Global Economy (WEDGE) Research Team, Sandra studies young women's provisioning. Her presentation included examples and strategies from women in Toronto as well as in various communities in Canada.

Sandra's review of her research findings inspired an energetic discussion among ACTEW members on how women's unpaid and largely unrecognized obligations affect their access to employment and training services and to participate fully in the labour market.

In particular, child care was noted as a key aspect of provisioning for many clients, or potential clients. Members discussed how often services are inaccessible to women with children when agencies cannot offer care. Some funders seem not to realise the importance of child care as a program support; members were encouraged to utilize ACTEW's new child care fact sheet for statistics and facts upon which to ground funding requests.

Some of the negative effects of provisioning for those who are already employed are illuminated by a research previously covered in this blog. A study at McMaster University found that workers with home commitment get fewer opportunities for career advancement.

The discussion also linked provisioning to work on sustainable livelihoods. The sustainable livelihoods, which is a holistic model similar to provisioning, looks at a client's resources, talents and networks, rather than at her barriers, and leverages assets to support other areas in her life. Both models take into considation the whole person, rather than simply the employment segment.

For more on provisioning, review some of Sandra's publications:
> Slide Presentation from the ACTEW meeting: "Provisioning: Thinking Holistically About Women's Work"
> Research Summary: "Understanding Young Women's Provisioning"
> Information Sheet: "The WEDGE Provisioning Research"

For examples of the sustainable livelihoods model, check out these reports by Eko Nomos on the Canadian Women's Foundation web site:
> Women in Transition Out of Poverty: An asset-based approach to building sustainable livelihoods
> Women in Transition Out of Poverty: A guide to effective practice in promoting sustainable livelihoods through enterprise development

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Resources_and_Research

"Gender Inequality, Growth and Global Ageing", an economics study by Kevin Daly for the investment banking firm, Goldbach Sachs, demonstrates that increased access to subsidized child care improves the likelihood that women will work and have children, thus ultimately improving a country's GDP.

The study analyzes employment rates in the United States, Japan and various regions of Europe. When the employment gap between the number of women and the number of men working decreases, a country's GDP and fertility rates increase. High employment rates for women improve a country's current economy and have long-term benefits for pension funds and future labour markets. In countries where dual earner families are heavily taxed and child care is expensive, women chose between having children or having a career.

How would Canada's child care system do in comparison to the systems of counties in the Goldbach Sachs study?

Presently Canadian parents pay twice as much for child care compared to their European peers. In fact, the Organization for Economic Co-Operative Development (OECD) recommends that Canada increase its investment in child care, which is currently 0.2% of the GDP; the OECD average is 0.7%.

The OECD also reports that Canada's child care subsidy system is far too complicated, accessible to only 22% of single-parent families. When the average sole-support Canadian mother brings home $30,000, some simply cannot work because they can't get subsidies or afford to pay child care without them.

What's more, even when families can afford child care, there's little care available. According to the Child Care Human Resources Sector Council (CCHRSC) only 10% of kids under 12 in Ontario have access to a regulated space.

It's important also to consider the paid child-caregivers themselves. Almost all are women. Their average income ranges from $15,000 to $21,000 -- half the national average income.

For more statistics and resources, see ACTEW's new factsheet on childcare.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Community Literacy of Ontario has a great new resource that explains Employment Ontario, Ontario’s Employment and Training Network.

The web page uses plain language to describe the Province's new one-stop system. It lists the various programs that will be a part of the new system and provides some background history on why these changes occurred.

While this resource is designed for the literacy sector, it's handy for any service provider struggling to understand what the reorganization of Ontario's employment and training system will mean to workers and clients. For example, the resource includes questions to ask clients as you determine suitable services for referral.

Visit: http://www.nald.ca/clo/employont.htm

Labels: Resources_and_Research

ACTEW has released the report Patching It Together: Employment and Training Opportunities for Women in Ontario Pre-Ontario-Canada Labour Market Development Agreement.

In December 2006, prior to the January implementation of the LMDA, ACTEW surveyed the employment and training sector on programs and services for women. The goal of this Pre-LMDA Survey was to get a picture of the sector before the LMDA.

In 2008, ACTEW will conduct a second survey. A comparison of the 2006 and 2008 survey results will point to ways the LMDA has changed the sector. While Ontario is the last province to sign an LMDA with Canada, ACTEW's research is the country's first effort to understand the effects of such an agreement on a vital and growing labour market: women.

Patching It Together reports that women-specific programming in particular, and community-based training in general, work well because agencies in Ontario are dedicated to delivering comprehensive, holistic services. However, agencies are serving diverse and multi-barriered clientele within the confines of fractured governmental policy and spotty funding. They patch together programs and funding in lieu of any comprehensive or integrated governmental framework.

Over the next few weeks, watch this blog for highlights from the survey analysis, in our series: The Pre-LMDA Picture.

Read the report

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Pre-LMDA, Resources_and_Research

The Women's Future Fund launched the BREAK THE GLASS video campaign (www.breaktheglass.ca) to rekindle debate about women's equality in Canada. Inspired in part by funding cuts to organizations working to improve women's opportunities in Canada, this campaign encourages Canadians to speak up for women's equality.

The Women's Future Fund is a coalition of national, charitable organizations tackling systemic barriers to women’s advancement. Its member groups (of which ACTEW is one) deliver programs to protect and promote the financial independence, legal rights, educational opportunities, safety, health and well-being of the next generation of women.

Women's inequality isn't just a women's issue. Most recently The Economist, in its April 21, 2007 issue, argues that both poor and rich countries lose out when women aren't strong force in the labour market. The article reports that affordable child care and fair taxation systems increase women's employment and that if American women's employment rates were raised to the same level as men's, America's GDP would be 9% higher. Women's employment also addresses labour market shortages being faced by an ageing society.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

A recent report finds that workers whose family commitments impact on their work get fewer chances to advance and have poorer relationships with bosses. The study, conducted by researchers at three Ontario universities, collected nearly 400 responses by public sector employees.

The findings suggest that employees coping with family demands such as rearing children, elderly parents, difficult teenagers and financial difficulties don't get as many opportunities to move ahead in their careers.

"Workers whose mental and physical resources are being especially consumed by home and family demands need to lessen these demands or learn coping strategies. At the same time, employers can assist their employees by providing family-friendly benefits, such as subsidized couple and family counseling, on-site childcare, and subsidized elder care," says Rick Hackett, Canada Research Chair in Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance at the DeGroote School of Business.

Read the news release posted to the National Union of Public and General Employees or this this news release posted to EurekaAlert!. The McMaster study was published in Applied Psychology.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

Statistics Canada has released chapter updates for Women in Canada 2005, which found the entry of large numbers of women into the paid workforce has been one of the dominant social trends in Canada over the last half century.

Among the findings:

• More women are employed now than thirty years ago. In 2006, 58% of all women aged 15 and over had jobs, up from 42% in 1976.
• Women with children are much more likely to be employed than thirty years ago. Female lone parents are less likely than mothers in two-parent families to be employed.

The chapter updates are free and available on the Statistics Canada web site.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

In the Toronto Star series War on Poverty, writer Nicholas Keung profiles hotel workers in Toronto. The hotel industry has seen the elimination of full-time jobs in favour of part-time, casual and subcontracted work, and those positions have seen a decrease real wages and benefits and a substantial cut to training budgets. Keung says:

“To a large degree, poverty in the industry is segmented along race and gender lines. Among its lowest earners, room attendants and laundry workers, 93 per cent are immigrants; 82 per cent are visible minorities; and 80 per cent are women.”

The Task Force on the Toronto Hotel Industry has released a report encouraging “high road economic partnerships” that would benefit both workers and employers. The goal of these high road partnerships is to “build an economy based on skills, innovation, opportunity, sustainability and equitably shared prosperity rather than on low-road practices that lower living and working standards and weaken communities.”

The report makes several recommendations:

• Bringing up wages and benefits to living standards
• work to eliminate racial and gender bias in hiring, promotion, and workplace practices through equity programs
• Comprehensive training and equal opportunity initiative
• Support work and family life through measures such as flexible working hours, personal days, workplace child care programs, and extended parental leave and benefits
• Encourage supports, such as affordable child care, housing and transit

The report is not yet available online, but once it is published, we’ll provide a link here.

Labels: Resources_and_Research

ACTEW has re-launched a more robust fact sheet focusing on contingent workers. Compiling research from multiple sources, we’ve found research that documents the rise of contingent work in Canada. Research demonstrates that contingent workers are paid less, less protected by employment and labour laws and policies, and have less access to work or government benefits. Some key highlights include:

• Contingent employment increased dramatically in the early 1990s.  Currently almost one-third of Canadian workers are employed contingently with higher rates in some areas, like Toronto.
• Women working part-time made up 27% of the total Canadian workforce in 2004. In comparison, part-time male employees made up 11% of the workforce.
• women of colour are the least likely to be employed all year and have the fewest weeks of employment per year.

The fact sheet offers research on different kinds of contingent work.  Read the fact sheet online or download a pdf version.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Resources_and_Research

I presented on ACTEW’s Putting Women in the Picture project at the Jobs and Justice conference. Here are two other initiatives that I found both inspiring and informative:

Well-being through Inclusion Socially and Economically (WISE)
http://www.wise-bc.org/index.html

Daphne Moldowin and Chrystal Ocean gave a presentation entitled Jobs versus Mutual Aid: Taking Back the Meaning of ‘Work’ in Community. WISE is led by women living in poverty. It works to address

• the causal link between policy and poverty,
• educate people about the effects of poverty on the health and wellbeing of citizens and their communities,
• and support one another in introducing and implementing inexpensive, creative solutions at the local level.

WISE has published a very powerful book called Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the front (WISE 2005) in which 21 women tell their stories of poverty, which then lead to policy recommendations. I strongly encourage you to order a copy for yourself at http://www.wise-bc.org/CVProject/book.html.

The women of WISE have also developed workshops, both for women affected by poverty and for service providers. If you are in or near Toronto and are a service provider, catch their upcoming workshop "Honouring the Margins: Their Knowledge, praxis and realities," at the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health 10th annual conference Mobilizing Partnerships for Social Change (April 11-14, 2007).

Redefining Welfare to Work in British Columbia
This research project, presented by Shauna Butterwick (University of British Columbia) and Whitney Borowko (Simon Fraser University) examines training and employment programs for long-term welfare recipients in British Columbia. The researchers critique existing job training and employment programs in BC and conclude that they are based on a “quickest route to a job” philosophy and are punitive and unsuccessful in the long-term. Looking at other models across Canada, they find Quebec programs offering the most promising practices.

The researchers recommended a new model based on the following principles, adapted from Nancy Fraser’s feminist social justice approach:

• Anti-poverty
• Anti-exploitation
• Income equality
• Leisure time equality
• Equality of respect
• Anti-marginalization
• Anti-androcentrism/Europeanism

There is not much written information released on this project, as the work is still in its research phase. As I hear of information becoming available, I’ll post it to this blog.

Jobs and Justice: Strategies and Solutions for Economic Security was hosted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and held in Vancouver March 29 to 31, 2007. Some of the plenary talks were videotaped and can viewed online.

Labels: ACTEW_Activities, Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) recently released a study The Rich and the Rest of Us: The Changing Face of Canada’s Growing Gap. The study, by Armine Yalnizyan, focuses on the incomes of Canadian families through 1970s to 2000s raising children under the age of 18.

Her research demonstrates the Canada's income gap between the richest and the poorest families is increasing. This may not come as a surprise to you, but Yalnizyan points out that the income gap is increasing despite a prosperous economy: "[Canadian families] are falling behind in the best of economic times, under conditions that would typically yield a reduced income gap: low unemployment rates, more Canadians working, and more Canadians putting in longer hours in the workplace."

How much has this gap actually increased? Yalnizyan's economic analysis found that thirty years ago, the richest 10% of Canadians had incomes 31 times as big as the bottom 10%. Today, their incomes are 82 times as big. The bottom 40% of Canadians (about 12 million people) are actually worse off, with lower incomes today (after inflation).

Most of the rest of Canadians are managing to keep pace or slightly improve their incomes only by working considerably longer hours. Yalnizyan found that only the richest families are actually doing better, earning significantly more and working fewer hours.

Yalnizyan concludes that "despite a decade of emphasis on how much Canadian governments can do for working families by cutting taxes, the bigger benefit to families came through income supports (transfers)." In a Toronto Star article from March 16, Linda McQuaig situates the CCPA study within the upcoming federal budget and the focus on tax cuts, arguing "tax cuts are of little benefit to most Canadians. In fact, they ultimately hurt the majority of Canadians, by depriving government of revenue it needs to fund social programs and transfers, which do help Canadians."

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research

ACTEW’s project manager Deanna Yerichuk attended the two-day conference CEDAW in 2007-2008: Preparing for the Upcoming Review at the United Nations in Ottawa on March 9 and 10, 2007.

FAFIA and Oxfam Canada partnered to host this opportunity to discuss the upcoming United Nations review of Canada under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) expected in late 2007 or early 2008 (FAFIA has an excellent overview of CEDAW and the UN recommendations for Canada in 2003).

Some highlights included:

• Sheila Regehr (National Council of Welfare) presented NWC's anti-poverty strategy report, which is based on four cornerstones focus on: 1) creating a national anti-poverty strategy with targets and timelines; 2) developing a coordinated plan of action; 3) ensuring accountability; and 4) establishing official poverty indicators. (Download Solving Poverty: Four cornerstones of a