Overview
- In 2000, Canadians will mark the 30th anniversary of the
groundbreaking Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and
the 15th anniversary of the coming into force of s. 15 of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which formally entrenched womens
equality within the Canadian Constitution.
- Over the 30-year period since the Royal Commission on the
Status of Women, Canada has made significant progress in the advancement of the
status of women. The efforts of individuals, governments and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) have enabled Canada to reap many social and economic
rewards, which benefit all Canadians. Women and womens organizations, in
particular, have been instrumental in this progress.
- Canadian legislation, policies and programs are subject to the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sections 15 and 28 of the
Charter provide constitutional protection for gender equality. Section 15
prohibits discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour,
religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability, or analogous groups,
which has been interpreted to include sexual orientation. Section 28 provides:
Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms
referred to it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons. The
Charter generally governs the relationships between governments (federal,
provincial and municipal) and individuals rather than between individuals.
Federal and provincial human rights codes extend similar prohibitions against
discrimination to the private sector.
- Canada is committed to advancing gender equality and
womens human rights through our domestic and international activities.
Canadas promotion of gender equality is based on a belief that equal
rights for women are an essential component of progress on human rights and
democratic development, and sustainable development will only be achieved if
women are able to participate as equal decision makers in, and beneficiaries
of, that development.
- Canada, along with all United Nations member states, was
called upon to formulate a national plan to advance the situation of women,
both within its own borders and globally. The Federal Plan for Gender
Equality, presented in 1995 at the Fourth United Nations World Conference
on Women in Beijing, is Canadas response to that request. The Federal
Plan is both a statement of commitments and a framework for the future,
representing a collaborative initiative of 24 federal departments and agencies,
led by Status of Women Canada.
- The Federal Plan has eight objectives:
- to implement gender-based analysis throughout federal
departments and agencies
- to improve womens economic autonomy and well-being
- to improve womens physical and psychological well-being
- to reduce violence in society, particularly violence against
women and children
- to promote gender equality in all aspects of Canadas
cultural life
- to incorporate womens perspectives in governance
- to promote and support global gender equality
- to advance gender equality for employees of federal departments
and agencies
- Many of the specific measures taken by Canada toward the
fulfilment of these objectives are discussed in more detail in Part II of this
report. Highlights include the following:
- Guides and symposiums have been prepared on gender-based
analysis by several federal departments. Research and information have improved
through the inclusion of questions on unpaid work in the 1996 Census.
- A federalprovincial/territorial initiative worked toward
the development of gender-sensitive indicators. In 1997, the ministers
responsible for the status of women published Economic Gender Equality
Indicators.
- The federal governments Gathering Strength:
Canadas Aboriginal Action Plan responds to the final report of the
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and includes many initiatives with an
impact on Aboriginal women.
- Sexual orientation has been added as a prohibited ground of
discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. This law is applied
to employment in the provision of goods and services by the federal government
and federally regulated businesses, such as banks and airlines.
- There is a continued commitment to reduce family violence
through ongoing funding for the third phase of the Family Violence Initiative.
- The $4.3 million Shelter Enhancement Program (SEP) resulted in
the upgrading of existing shelters for abused women to acceptable standards and
addresses the needs of children, older clients and persons with disabilities.
Since 1995, 3,000 shelter units have been enhanced under this program.
- Criminal justice initiatives include restrictions to the
ownership and use of firearms, limits to the defence of self-induced
intoxication, more effective peace bonds, the provision of longer sentences for
hate crimes and the prohibition of the practice of female genital mutilation
(FGM).
- There have been improvements in the living conditions of
federally sentenced women.
- The federal Employment Equity Act has been
strengthened.
- The Canadian Opportunities Strategy increases accessibility to
post-secondary education for persons with dependants and those with
disabilities.
- A care giver credit, introduced in the 1998 budget, partially
recognizes unremunerated work, most of which is performed by women.
- The new National Child Benefit (NCB) system was implemented on
July 1, 1998 as a collaborative effort by federal and provincial/territorial
governments. About half of the beneficiaries are lone-parent families headed by
women.
- The $6 billion Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) was introduced
in 1997 and subsequently augmented.
- The Centres of Excellence for Womens Health Program was
established in 1996.
- There have been key reforms to the child support system.
- There continues to be a distinct gender division of labour in
Canada. For much of this century, mens work was concentrated in the paid
market economy, while womens work consisted largely of the unpaid
activities related to managing the household and caring for children and family
members.
- Since the 1950s, female participation in the paid labour force
has more than doubled. Women now comprise close to half (46 percent) of all
paid workers in Canada. Mens labour force participation, on the other
hand, has experienced a small but steady decline, mostly due to earlier
retirement. Nonetheless, men are still somewhat more likely than women to be
paid labour force participants, and spend more total time working for pay.
- In the past, relatively few women with children worked for
pay. In the 1960s, labour force participation was very low for women with
children under age 6, and, over her lifetime, a woman could expect to give
birth to an average of four children. Today, the fertility rate has fallen
below the replacement rate of two children per woman, and women with children
account for much of the increase in female labour force participation. More
than six out of ten women whose youngest child is of preschool age are
employed, and most are working for pay on a full-time basis.
- With respect to paid work, although considerable advancements
have been made in increasing the representation of women in all types of
occupations, women still tend to be concentrated in jobs that parallel the
kinds of unpaid domestic and caring work they have historically done in the
home. In the late 1990s close to 68.5 percent of employed women work in
teaching, nursing, clerical, sales and service jobs. Women are also much more
likely than men to have non-standard employment (jobs where the employee does
not work full time, full year for a single employer). This is especially
evident with respect to part-time work (less than 30 hours of paid work per
week), with women accounting for 70 percent of the part-time work force.
Female-dominated and non-standard jobs are typically low paying, and have fewer
benefits, such as pension or drug plans.
- Virtually all adults in Canada do unpaid work; however, some
kinds of unpaid work appear to be more equally shared between men and women
than others. For instance, women perform more than 70 percent of meal
preparation, cleaning, clothing care, child care and other dependent care.
Together, these tasks accounted for more than half of all time spent on unpaid
work in 1998. The type of unpaid work largely done by men includes repairs and
maintenance. Tasks that are more equally shared between men and women include
household management and shopping, transportation and travel. Men are
responsible for slightly less than half the time spent on these types of unpaid
work.
- In addition to gender inequalities, experiences of paid and
unpaid work also differ among women. For example, several groups of women
including women in a visible minority group, Aboriginal women and women
with disabilities are less likely to participate in paid work than other
women in Canada, and when they do they experience higher rates of unemployment.
Women with preschool children devote more time to unpaid work than women
without children, or those whose children are older. Older women are the most
likely to provide unpaid care to elderly relatives.
- Women in Canada spend about the same amount of time doing work
of economic value (paid and unpaid) as men. In 1998, the average total workload
was 7.8 hours for both. However, the allocation of time was different, as the
amount of time spent at paid work is not offset by a decline in the time spent
on unpaid work. For example, women with children who were employed full time
spent an average of 10 hours per day working, compared to eight hours per day
for women who were not employed who had children. As womens involvement
in the paid work force increases, responsibility for housework is more likely
to be shared with their partner, although mens contributions do not
increase enough to approach parity.
- Because of the ongoing gender division of labour, it is still
women who limit their paid work to care for dependents and other family
members. Women are responsible for more than 70 percent of all time spent on
helping and caring for children and other family members. Women also spend, on
average, more than twice the time that men do on primary child care. The gender
imbalance in households where both spouses have full-time employment is
substantial. Furthermore, women with children tend to alter their paid work
arrangements to meet demands of unpaid work, while the age or presence of
children has little similar impact on mens paid or unpaid work patterns.
The struggle to balance paid and unpaid work responsibilities leads to high
levels of time stress, especially among employed women with young children.
This stress, in turn, takes a toll on womens health. The trend of
de-institutionalization in Canadas health care system has placed
increased burdens on women as caregivers in the home.
- In the 1996 Census questions on unpaid work, one in six people
(or approximately 17 percent of the population 15 and over) responded that they
provided some care to seniors. This was defined to include such activities as
providing personal care to a senior family member, visiting seniors, talking
with them on the telephone and helping them with shopping, banking or with
taking medication. More women than men (19 percent versus 14 percent) reported
providing such care. The time spent caring for seniors depended largely on
whether an individual had elderly parents or other elderly relatives. The
Census data showed that the proportion reporting hours of care to seniors
increased as respondents approached middle age, then tapered off. Those aged 45
to 54 had the highest proportion (23 percent) of individuals providing unpaid
care to seniors.
- Although women do more total work than men do, their incomes
are lower. Comparing average total income before taxes, women in Canada receive
38 percent less income than men (as of 1997). This gap is related to a number
of factors, such as the concentration of women in part-time and non-standard
employment, family responsibilities, their over- representation among lone
parents and seniors who have few or no earnings, and their under-representation
among those with higher education. However, the income gap has closed steadily
since 1986, when the figure was 51 percent. Canadas progressive tax
system and the redistributive effects of government transfer payments also help
to improve the gender balance in income. After taxes, women receive 33 percent
less income than men.
- More women than men live in poverty. Because economic autonomy
and well-being are linked to access to income from the paid labour force, women
are more likely than men to live with low incomes. Certain groups of women are
particularly at risk; almost 49 percent of all elderly women living alone and
56 percent of female lone parents live in poverty. This has direct implications
for the well-being of children because those living with lone mothers accounted
for 40 percent of all children living in poverty in 1997. Although the rate of
low income remains high among the elderly, the situation has improved since the
early 1980s when nearly 70 percent of elderly women living alone had low
incomes.
- Fifty-four percent of all people below the Statistics Canada
low-income cutoff (LICO) in 1997 were women; 19 percent of the female
population, and 24 percent of all women 65 or older, lived below the Statistics
Canada LICO that year.
- In 1995, 37 percent of visible minority women and 43 percent
of Aboriginal women not resident on a reserve, or in the territories, lived in
a low-income situation. In 1997, the same was true of 56 percent of female lone
parents.
- Many social policy programs allocate benefits using the family
as the basic unit of administration. However, there have been significant
changes to the organization of family life in Canada over the last few decades.
This poses a challenge to policy makers for the development of programs that
recognize the universal nature of unpaid work, encourage economic autonomy and
gender equality, and are compatible with broad national and social objectives.
- Family forms are becoming more diverse in Canada, and a
growing percentage of people live alone. Many factors have contributed to the
diversity of family arrangements. For example, the marriage rate has fallen and
marriage is being delayed. At the same time, the divorce rate has risen
dramatically since the late 1960s, largely as a result of legislation in 1968
easing divorce restrictions. Trends in divorce, as well as an increase in
births outside of a conjugal relationship, have also contributed to the growth
in the number of lone-parent families. In 1996, families headed by one parent
(over 80 percent of whom are women) account for nearly one in six families in
Canada, up from one in ten in 1981.
- The changing attitude of Canadians toward marital unions is
also reflected in the increased popularity of common-law relationships. Over
the last 15 years, the share of common-law families doubled from 6 percent to
12 percent. And there is increasing recognition of same-sex relationships.
Successful challenges under the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedoms have led to an increasing acknowledgment of same-sex
couple families. This has led Canadian governments and employers to review
policies regarding family status and eligibility for qualifying for social and
employee benefits.
- As a result of womens increased participation in paid
work, dual-earner families have become the norm in Canada. Both partners work
for pay in 61 percent of two-partner families. In half of dual-earner families,
both partners work full time. The percentage of dual-earner families has been
relatively stable in the 1990s, following two decades of growth. However, the
proportion of families where neither partner had earnings has increased
gradually, reflecting the aging of the population and the trend toward earlier
retirement from paid work. For an increasing number of families, women have
become the sole earners. This has contributed to the increasing income gap
between dual-earner and single-earner families because women tend to earn less
than men in the paid labour force.
- 30. The majority of Canadian children live in two-parent
families where both parents are employed in the labour force. In 1996, there
were 4.8 million children under the age of 15 living in two-parent families.
Both parents were working in the case of 60 percent of these children, up from
43 percent in 1981 and 58 percent in 1991.
- The 1996 Census showed that trends for preschool children
under the age of 6 were similar to those for all children under the age of 15.
The proportion of preschoolers whose parents were both working for pay has also
increased during the last 15 years. In 1996, both parents were working in the
case of 56 percent of these preschool children, compared with 38 percent in
1981 and 52 percent in 1991. The proportion of preschool children living in a
female lone-parent family in which the mother was working for pay has declined
slightly during the last 15 years. In 1996, the single mother was employed in
the case of 38 percent of these children, compared with 41 percent in 1981.
- The 1996 Census also showed that only 35 percent of female
lone parents had completed a post-secondary certificate or degree, compared to
about 53 percent of women with partners.
- At the same time, the number of two-parent families with one
partner staying at home to manage the household and care for the children has
decreased dramatically since 1976. As a result, less than one in five families
with children under the age of 16 had a stay-at-home parent in 1997, compared
with half of families in 1976. The proportion of families where fathers are at
home to care for children has remained close to one percent.
- Education is key to womens equality. It has a profound
impact on womens access to employment and on womens economic
independence. The changing nature of employment in Canada and elsewhere
requires Canadians to be prepared to make several career changes during their
adult lives. As well, the emergence of the knowledge-based economy and society
in Canada has made womens access to education and training even more
imperative as technical and scientific fields become the key elements for
growth. However, women receive less employer-sponsored training. Womens
and mens job-related training participation rates are similar, but women
receive fewer hours of training.
- In general, access to higher education has increased. For
example, in 1996, 12 percent of women aged 15 and over, and 14 percent of men,
were university graduates, as compared to 1971 when 3 percent of women and 7
percent of men had a university degree. The gap continues to close, as women
currently make up a slight majority of students in Canadian universities. As of
1998, more women graduated from post-secondary institutions than men did.
- In 1997-98, women accounted for about 29 percent of university
students in mathematics and sciences and for 22 percent of students in
engineering and applied sciences key growth areas in the knowledge-based
economy and society. Women are still under- represented in enrolment in
doctoral programs and on college and university faculties. Rates of higher
educational attainment by Aboriginal women continue to lag behind those of
non-Aboriginal women.
- Although women in Canada have a longer life expectancy than
men (by six years), isolation, illness or disability may mark those additional
years. Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death among women in
Canada. And, while breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among
women, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for women.
- In Canada, women have made advances in numbers and influence
in political, economic and social decision making over the last decade. At the
same time, they continue to be under-represented in decision-making positions.
For example, after the federal election in 1997, Canadas House of Commons
had the largest number of women representatives ever elected in Canadian
history, with 20 percent of its members being women. By comparison, in
provincial legislatures 18.4 percent of members are women.
- The Statistics Canada 1993 Violence Against Women Survey
showed that 51 percent of all Canadian women had experienced at least one
incident of physical or sexual violence since age 16. Twenty-nine percent of
women who had ever been married or lived in common-law relationships had been
physically or sexually assaulted by their partner at some point during the
relationship. Children witnessed violence against their mothers in four out of
ten marriages where violence was reported.
- The rates of both sexual and non-sexual assaults against women
reported to police have increased since the passage of criminal law reforms in
1983. When measured 10 years later, sexual assault reports had increased by 152
percent and physical assaults by 62 percent.
- According to a homicide survey conducted by Statistics Canada
in 1996, married women are seven times more likely to be killed by a spouse
than by a stranger.
- To continue to undertake effective efforts to address violence
against women, root causes such as the social context of power
imbalances and ongoing systemic attitudes and values should be
explicitly named along with the vulnerability to violence that is experienced
differently by the various communities and age groups of women. These include
Aboriginal women, immigrant women, visible minority women, refugee women, women
with disabilities, live-in domestic workers, women from linguistic minorities,
senior women and young women. In fact, the 1993 Violence Against Women Survey
found that the rate of victimization of young women in the months prior to the
study was almost three times higher among 18- to 24-year-olds (27 percent),
than for women in general (10 percent).
- There is not yet a clear picture of whether violence against
women has decreased or increased in Canada. Reports from a sample of 61 police
agencies across Canada indicate that between 1993 and 1996 the number of
reported cases of spousal assault dropped by seven percent. These statistics
look promising. However, a large number of cases are still not reported to the
police. Of those women who reported being victims of spousal violence in the
Violence Against Women Survey, only 26 percent had reported an incident of
violence to police.
- Statistics Canada also publishes an annual statistical review
of family violence, Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile
(available at http://www.statcan.ca). In 2000, Statistics Canada will
release the results of its General Social Survey Victimization Cycle,
which will provide trend information on violence against women and baseline
information on the experience of violence in the general population,
particularly among older adults.
- Statistics Canada released Women and Men in Canada: A
Statistical Glance. Produced for Status of Women Canada, the report
provides a snapshot of gender equality in Canada using data from 1997.
- A more comprehensive overview of the status of Canadian women
will be available with the publication of the fourth edition of Women in
Canada A Statistical Report to be completed and published by
Statistics Canada in 2000.