Thank you.
Thank you for inviting us to contribute to your discussion on poverty. Our focus today will be on lone mothers in poverty, based on our roles in the national research study. The study is Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion. It's a five-year research alliance that involves academic researchers from five universities across Canada, as well as government and non-profit community organizations. It's funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The research is focused on the three urban regions of Vancouver, Toronto, and St. John’s.
The brief we have provided is based on our research data over the last three years. We interviewed over 100 single mothers from St. John's, Toronto, and Vancouver annually over the last three years. We're about to begin our fourth round of interviews. About one-third of the women interviewed are visible minority or aboriginal, and all were on social assistance at the outset of the project. Since then many have moved back and forth between welfare and work. We'll go over a few of the examples, and refer you to the brief for the more detailed discourse on this.
Our recommendations are based on the suggestion that current policies of gender neutrality are actively disadvantaging Canadian women and therefore failing at neutrality. Women are poorer than men at almost every stage in life, and women have become the dominant workers in the increasingly precarious labour market. These issues are magnified for aboriginal and racialized women.
Women constitute 70% of the part-time labour force. The average annual income for non-aboriginal women is $19,350. Aboriginal women earn only about two-thirds of this, and visible minority women about three-quarters.
On the gender income gap, Canada is 14th of 15 peer countries. I'll refer you to many quotes from the women we've interviewed in the brief we've provided.
A key aspect of our project is that the research team includes lone mothers whom we have hired and trained as research assistants. This offers us a much deeper understanding of the needs and aspirations of these women and their families.
With me today is Elita McAdam, one of Lone Mothers' researcher assistants who has been working with our project over the last three and half years. I'll turn it over to her so she can highlight the seven main issues that are coming out in our research.