Status of Women Committee on May 30th, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to see that we have some representatives from Stats Canada with us today, who will enlighten us and provide us with some additional information that we very much need to hear.

We welcome Rosemary Bender, director general of social and demographic statistics; Colin Lindsay, senior analyst in the social and aboriginal statistics division; and Karen Mihorean, the chief of integration, analysis and research of the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.

I expect you will have a lot of information for us, and I will turn the floor over to you.

[Rosemary Bender, Director General, Social and Demographic Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure for us to be here with you this morning.

As you said, Madam Chair, I'm the director general responsible for social and demographic statistics at Statistics Canada. This includes a number of social surveys, such as the General Social Survey, from which we'll be drawing a lot of information this morning; post-censal surveys, such as the activity limitation survey; as well as the census. We're in the midst of finalizing the collection of the 2006 census, so we'll be spending some busy summer and fall months processing and analyzing the data, with a view to disseminating the first census counts next February.

This morning I have my two colleagues with me. There's Colin Lindsay, the author of Women in Canada. He's with our social and aboriginal statistics division, and he's here to present the major findings of the study and to answer questions. As well, I have Karen Mihorean of our Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, who will be able to talk to you about violence against women, and spousal violence in particular.

So I'll leave the floor to my colleagues.

I am available to answer your questions on this morning's topic. I will also be pleased to answer more general questions you may have regarding social statistics.

[Colin Lindsay, Senior Analyst, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Divison, Statistics Canada]

Bonjour, good morning.

First of all, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present this material this morning. A great deal of very hard work and effort went into the preparation of the Women in Canada report. It's very gratifying to the whole staff who was involved in the report to know that it's being well used and particularly being used in an environment such as this one.

For the record, the current edition of Women in Canada is actually the fifth in the series of this publication. It's been published every five years beginning in 1985. I can say with a great deal of pride that I've been the editor of the series right from the beginning.

When we were putting together our briefing notes for the release of the 2005 edition back in March, I went back to some of the earlier editions and re-read some of the material we'd written before. In particular, I went back and I looked at the introduction to the very first edition, the 1985 edition. What struck me was that the overall conclusions, consensus, that we had come to when putting together the 1985 version were very similar to the conclusions that we came to when we put together the current edition.

On the one hand, there is no question that the quality of women's lives in Canada has gotten better over the last quarter of a century; however, there are still substantial gaps in the socio-economic status of women in Canada, particularly as measured by primary social indicators. In fact, we were struck also when we were doing the latest issue that some of the trends have actually slowed. The closing of the gap has actually slowed and in some cases has stopped.

One of the very positive story lines that came out of the Women in Canada report this time around, though, is the fact that women continue to make very substantial gains in their levels of educational attainment. As you can see in chart 1 from our package, from the latest data we have from 2001—we had hoped to have the 2006 data, but we'll have to wait a couple of weeks for that—women are currently almost as likely as men to have a university degree. That's a major change from the early 1970s, early 1980s, when women were only about half as likely as their male counterparts to be a university graduate. In fact, it is not going to be too far into the future that women actually surpass men in terms of university graduation rates. Women make up a very substantial majority--57% from the latest data--of the Canadians who are currently enrolled in university programs.

One of the other very positive storylines to come out of the Women in Canada report was the very dramatic decline in the incidence of low income among senior women, and in particular, senior women who live alone. As you can see in the second chart, currently about one in five of senior women who live alone has an income below Statistics Canada low-income cut-offs. However, this is down from almost 60% as recently as the early 1980s. While senior women who live alone are currently more likely than senior men who live alone to have low incomes, in fact, today senior women who live alone actually are less likely to have low incomes than women under the age of 65 who live alone.

While there has been a very significant decline in the incidence of low income among senior women, and again, particularly senior women who live alone, there are other groups of women who remain very much at risk of being in a low income situation, in particular, lone-parent families headed by women. As you can see in the third chart, currently about 40% of all female-headed lone-parent families have incomes below the Statistics Canada low income cut-offs. This is down somewhat from the mid-1990s, when it was around 50%. However, as you can see from the chart, female-headed lone-parent families are considerably more likely than other families with children to have low incomes. Currently, about 7% of two-parent families with children have incomes below the low-income cut-offs.

This is a continuing concern, because female lone parents in Canada continue to make up a growing proportion of all families with children. Currently, there are about 1 million female-headed lone-parent families in Canada, and as you can see in chart 4, they account for about one in five of all families with children. That's up from 16% in 1991. That's quite a considerable change over such a short period, and it's also double the numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, when female lone-parent families accounted for only about 10% of all families with children in Canada.

Certainly one of the most significant trends, or perhaps the most significant trend that has affected women over the course of the last quarter-century—and in fact it may very well be the most significant trend in Canada, period—has been the growth of women in the paid workforce. As you can see in chart 5, currently about 60% of all women age 15 and over are part of the paid workforce. That's up from 40% in the mid-1970s. While we've had this long, steady, very continuous growth in the paid workforce participation rates of women, there has been a concomitant decline over the same period in the percentage of men who are employed. As a result, women currently make up almost half--47%--of paid workers in Canada.

Much of the growth in labour force participation rates of women has been fuelled by women with children entering the paid workforce, and as you can see in chart 6, that is even women with pre-school-aged children. Two out of three women in Canada with at least one child under the age of six are now part of the paid workforce. Again, that's double the figures from the mid-1970s. The majority of these women--75%--work full-time. There has also been a fairly significant growth in the labour force participation rates of female lone parents, particularly in the last decade or so. Looking at chart 7, currently about two out of three women who are female lone parents are now part of the workforce. Again, about three-quarters of them work full-time. Their total participation rate is up from around 50% from as recently as the early 1990s.

However, while there has been this very significant growth in the overall labour force participation rate of women, some of the particular work experiences of women have been somewhat slower to change. For example, the majority of women are still concentrated in occupations in which women have traditionally been employed. Currently, over half, about 53%, of all employed women are working in sales and service jobs or clerical and administrative jobs, which, for the most part, are lower paying than other jobs, offer fewer benefits, and fewer career opportunities. At the same time, women also continue to be a disproportionate share of part-time workers in Canada. They are far more likely than male workers to accommodate their work schedule for family and child care needs, and even when employed, they still assume the bulk of child and family care responsibilities in the home.

Finally, women also continue to earn substantially less than their male colleagues. As you can see in chart 8, the final one, women employed on a full-time, full-year basis continue to make only about 71¢ for every dollar made by their male counterparts. After two decades of fairly consistent growth, over the course of the last decade, we have seen no change in that figure, which was one of the more surprising results of our work.

In fact, I could probably spend the whole hour and three-quarters, which I believe we have allocated this morning, reviewing highlights from the Women in Canada report. I think these are the ones certainly that struck us as the most important. However, we've barely touched on issues related to the family. We haven't mentioned health, and we have not discussed diversity issues related to women.

One area that I haven't discussed, but that is certainly a very important one, is domestic violence against women-- spousal abuse and that sort of thing. I'm going to pass the mike to my colleague Karen Mihorean, who wrote our chapter on criminal justice elements, and she's going to talk about some of the specifics of domestic violence.

[Karen Mihorean, Chief, Integration, Analysis and Research, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Thank you, Colin.

Since my time is limited, I've decided to focus on non-lethal and lethal spousal violence. As Colin says, I could probably spend an hour talking about various issues related to violence against women, but I'll focus on these aspects.

Before getting into the data, though, I'd like to very briefly describe how Statistics Canada measures violence against women.

Estimating the prevalence of violence against women is challenging due to the very private nature of these experiences. We rely on a number of data sources, including police-reported statistics, national information we collect from our transition home survey and victims' services survey, and also our national victimization survey, which is conducted every five years, in which we randomly select a segment of the population and directly ask them about their experiences of crime and violence.

Police data, though, are limited. We know that only about a third of cases of domestic violence are reported to police, so there are many that aren't reported. Regarding information we collect from shelters and victims' services, we know that women who use these tend to be fleeing very serious forms of violence and therefore may not be representative of all abused women. Therefore, victimization surveys have become the standard for estimating the nature and extent of violence against women in Canada.

Turning to the first chart, or chart 2 on your slide, according to victimization data, there has been a decline in wife assault since 1993, when we first began measuring spousal violence in the general population. Seven per cent of women who were living in a common law or marital relationship reported in 2004 that they had been physically or sexually assaulted by a spousal partner in the past five-year period. This is a small but statistically significant drop from the 8% that was reported in 1999. These figures represent an estimated 653,000 women in 2004 and 690,000 women in 1999.

The most significant change that we found in spousal violence rates between 1999 and 2004 was for relationships that had ended by the time of the interview. While women reported higher rates of violence by previous spouses than by current spouses, the percentage of women who experienced violence in the previous five years by ex-partners declined from 28% in 1999 to 21% in 2004.

If you look at the chart that shows differences between women and men, we see that in 2004, 7% of women reported violence, and 6% of men reported spousal violence. While these numbers do seem to be similar, statistically there is a difference between these two figures, so we can say that statistically women are more likely to experience spousal violence than men are.

Turning to the next chart, you'll see that despite the similarity in the overall rates of spousal violence, women are more likely to report more severe forms of violence than are men. For example, when we looked at the most serious types of violence experienced, women were two and a half times more likely to say that they were beaten, choked, threatened with or had a gun or knife used against them, or were sexually assaulted than men were.

Given the more serious or severe types of violence that women are exposed to, we find that women are also more likely to suffer much more serious physical consequences. For example, they were twice as likely to be injured, six times more likely to receive medical attention, five times more likely to be hospitalized due to their injuries resulting from the violence, more than three times more likely to say that they feared for their life at some point because of the violence, and two times more likely to report what we consider chronic or ongoing violence, defined by 10 or more violent episodes.

Turning to the next chart, we see that there are a number of factors that increase the risk of a woman's being the victim of spousal violence. Rates of violence continue to be highest among young women, those aged 15 to 24. Rates are also three times higher for women living in common-law relationships. We also know that being young and living common-law are highly correlated.

We see that women are seven times more likely to report violence by a previous partner than they are to report violence by a current partner, and we know that separation is a particular time of risk for women. Half of the women who reported experiencing spousal assault by a past partner indicated that violence occurred after the couple separated, and in one-third of these post-separation assaults, the violence became more severe or actually began at the time of separation.

We also know that emotional abuse significantly increases the risk of spousal violence. Women living in current relationships where there is emotional abuse are 25 times more likely to say that they also experience violence than women living in current relationships where there's no emotional abuse.

Also, according to the 2004 victim survey, we found that rates of spousal violence were by far the highest for aboriginal women. Aboriginal women were three and a half times more likely than their non-aboriginal counterparts to be the victims of spousal violence.

It's also clear that alcohol plays a role in spousal violence. Just under half of female victims stated their spouse had been drinking at the time of the violence. We also know that when alcohol is involved the violence tends to be more severe, more frequent, and more likely to result in injury. It was also found that women whose partners were classified as heavy drinkers--in other words, binge drinkers--also suffered much higher levels of and more injurious violence than women whose partners were perhaps moderate drinkers or rarely drank.

Women are particularly vulnerable when they're pregnant. In 1993 when we conducted our national violence against women survey, we found that 21% of abused women did say that they were assaulted during pregnancy, and in 40% of these cases that's when the violence began.

Turning to the next slide, looking at rates of police reporting, we see that between the 1993 survey and the 1999 survey there was a marked increase in reporting rates of spousal violence, which went from 29% up to 37%, but rates of reporting to police have stabilized during the 1999 and 2000 period.

A number of factors influence reporting to the police. The primary reason given by women when we asked them directly why they chose to report to the police was to stop the violence and to receive protection. Fewer reported because they wanted to have their partner arrested or punished.

When we statistically compare those who choose to turn to the justice system and those who don't, we find the most important factor is the seriousness of the violence; by this I mean if there was injury, if she had to receive medical attention, if at any point she feared for her life, or if she was exposed to multiple incidents of violence. Also, we found that whether children have witnessed the violence, and by this I mean whether they heard or saw the violence, and the presence of alcohol will also statistically increase the chances a woman will choose to report to the police.

Looking at the next slide, which is from our official police-reported statistics, we know that about 84% of recorded incidents of spousal violence are against women and 16% are committed against men. When police are called, we know a larger proportion of wife assault cases result in police removing, arresting, or laying a charge against the abuser than in the cases of husband assault.

Among all police-recorded incidents of spousal violence, current and former husbands made up the largest number of intimate partner assaults. We also see, however, the number in this group has declined since 2001, in keeping with our victimization survey data. The number of current and former boyfriends reported to police for intimate partner violence has increased since 1998 to become the second-highest category of intimate partner violence, surpassing the number of assaults by wives.

In the following slide, we are now looking at lethal spousal violence: homicide. We know that one in five homicides in Canada involves the killing of an intimate partner. Rates of women being killed by a spouse are four times greater than that of a man being killed by a spouse.

We know that since 1974 spousal homicide for both men and women has decreased by about one-half, and the decrease in spousal homicide rates in recent years may be due to, among other factors, increased community-based support. We know that in the early 1970s there were only about 20 shelters for abused women in Canada. Now that figure surpasses 550.

Mandatory charging policies and improved training of police officers could also contribute to this decline. Research also shows the decline is linked to improvements in women's socio-economic status, some of the things that Colin has spoken to.

Police statistics suggest that a substantial percentage of women accused of spousal homicide were acting in self-defence. In 41% of spousal killings of men in which police had the required information, the police determined that the male victim was the first to threaten or to use physical force in the incident. This was the case for 5% of spousal killings of women.

In a large number of spousal homicides there is a history of domestic violence. For example, in 55% of homicides against women and 72% of homicides against men there was a history of domestic violence between the couple. What we don't know from police statistics is who was the perpetrator in these previous incidents.

The last slide looks at risk of spousal homicide. We see that according to the homicide survey we know that the risk of spousal homicide is highest for young women, and the risk of being murdered by your spouse does decline with age. Women are at particular risk during separation, especially young separated women. While separated women make up 4% of women in the general population, they represent 26% of women killed by spouses. When we look at the data to see if there are differences in rates depending on the length of separation, we found that women are at particular risk of being killed by their spouses in that first two months of separation.

Finally, living common law also increases one's risk of being killed, again, especially for those who are young and living common law. For example, while 13% of Canadians were living in a common law relationship, common law relationships accounted for 40% of spousal homicides.

Like Colin, I'd like to thank the committee for providing me the opportunity as well to appear before the committee. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

As you said, I think you could probably use a whole day of going on in different chapters in that report. We congratulate you and all of your staff who did the work on that. I think it really produces a lot of very important information that can help all of us as parliamentarians move forward an agenda for the women in Canada in particular, and for our families.

We will go into the speaking order.

Ms. Minna, seven minutes, including answers.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Lindsay, you said earlier that single women, women who never marry or are not married, have a higher earning capacity than married women--that is, if they stay single. I think this was one of the things that came out of what you said earlier, if I'm not mistaken. That is, women who are not married with children tend to have an income closer to men's than married women with children, am I right?

[Colin Lindsay]

No. It's possible, but I didn't say that. Certainly that is not a result of Women in Canada.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I wanted to clarify that, because I wasn't quite clear from what you said if there was a break....

One question I wanted to ask, though, is based on something you said, that education is much higher among women and that they are now attaining much closer.... Have you seen a correlation? There doesn't seem to be a correlation between higher education and higher income. You said earlier that most women are still clustered around traditional jobs. I'm wondering if it's too early in terms of the data of the number of women who have education to figure out why, or do you have some magic bullet that can give us an understanding as to why that is happening?

[Colin Lindsay]

No. First of all, the Women in Canada report was really intended largely to be an on-shelf database for women and men, people across the country, working in the areas of gender, and studying and working in those areas. We have 300 or 400 series in the publication, so there really wasn't time to look at the reasons for why these trends were happening. But yes, I think that's one of the two or three real questions that come out of here.

What we're not seeing at this point in time is a payoff in terms of better jobs and higher incomes among these young women who have much better educations right now than their young male counterparts.

We also did another study in coordination with Status of Women a couple of years back where we looked at women who were around 25 years of age in 1976 and their daughters, just to track the changes. It was called A Quarter Century of Change: Young Women in Canada in the 1970s and Today. Again, one of the conclusions we came to was that there does not seem to be this payoff for increased education on the part of these young women.

Why that would be I'm not sure. Is it going to be the case that in a short period of time the baby boomers are going to start to retire and then they're going to take off? That's a possibility. Certainly one of the things we hope for, in a report like Women in Canada, is that it will spur further research. That's certainly one of the questions that really is very obvious and needs some further research, yes.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I find that troubling, obviously, and I think we all do, that gap in income. The only thing I could look at is the possibility that women, those who are married and have children, are spending time raising families and they're in and out of the labour force, and that might impact it. From what you've said, though, it seems to be that they're clustered in traditional jobs, and that doesn't seem to be a major factor.

My other question on this area in terms of income was the issue of diversity. I was wondering whether you had done, as part of your study--you had mentioned it earlier and you weren't able to get into it--something on immigrant women or minority women in terms of where they are--are they worse off than women in general, or are they about the same? Is there a differentiation between them?

[Colin Lindsay]

If you look at the immigrant and visible minority populations, women do make less on average in those two subpopulations than those in the overall population. Obviously there is a lot of overlap between the immigrant population and the visible minority population. However, if you look at immigrant women, and I believe also visible minority women who arrived in Canada before the 1990s, their statistical profile is very similar to that of the native-born population. Immigrant women who arrived in Canada in the last decade don't have as positive a profile as those who have been here for longer periods of time and the native-born population.

So there are some adjustment problems going on there, obviously.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Otherwise, beyond the adjustment phase, the data doesn't show any major differentiation between the native population and immigrant women with respect to levels of income?

[Colin Lindsay]

I didn't quite get the question.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I'm talking about beyond the settlement stage.

[Colin Lindsay]

Again, when you look at immigrant women who arrived in Canada before 1990, their statistical profile--that is, the employment rate, the low-income rate, things like that--is very similar to that of the native-born population. It's only when you look at women who've arrived within the last decade that you do see some differences, and fairly wide differences.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's interesting.

Ms. Mihorean, I don't have time to go into all of my questions, so I'll just piggyback on what I was just talking about with respect to immigrant and visible minority women on the issue of diversity and violence. I know in many communities it's taboo to discuss it, and women don't report.

Have any studies been done by Statistics Canada to try to get at some of that information through existing organizations, voluntary agencies, or what have you? I know it's there, because I've gotten it.

[Karen Mihorean]

In our national victims survey we ask about race and ethnicity, so we do know if respondents are visible minority or immigrant and when they immigrated to Canada. Remember, this is a telephone survey that is conducted only in English and French, so we are limited.

That said, we have found through our survey that rates of violence for both visible minority and immigrant women are in fact lower than the rates for the general population. We looked at why this might be and found that both visible minority and immigrant women were more likely to report lower rates of emotional abuse, which we know has a high correlation with violence. They are also less likely to say that their spouses are heavy drinkers. Also, there is a much lower prevalence of common law relationships among both visible minority and immigrant women.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay. I'll come back to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Ms. Mourani.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Good morning, Mr. Lindsay.

Firstly, I wish to share with you some information I've heard. You say that there has been a significant increase in the number of women in the paid workforce, that women are better educated and that this is a very positive thing. That gives the impression that everything is fine. However, at the same time, when one looks at the situation more closely, one realizes that even though there has been growth in the workforce participation rates of women, women are still concentrated in precarious, atypical occupations, which you yourself described as being traditionally female occupations. Therefore, to describe certain occupations as traditionally female indirectly means that there are occupations which are reserved exclusively for men. Do you understand my point?

On the other hand, do you believe that the language used in society may contribute to widening the gap between men and women? For instance, we talk about occupations that are traditionally held by women, and the fact that it is normal for a woman to be a secretary, a receptionist, or a salesperson; whereas, men must be CEOs, managers, and so on, and must earn high salaries.

Then again, I am very surprised to hear you tell us that in a society such as ours, where everyone has the same level of education, statistics do not reveal that there are equal jobs. Please correct me if I am wrong. Therefore, women are well educated, but at the same time, there does not seem to be an increase in the number of women who hold good jobs that are well paid, so on and so forth.

However, it's quite possible that I didn't fully understand what you said.

[Colin Lindsay]

Again, I apologize, because my French is not good enough to answer your questions.

I think you're absolutely right. As I said, we did not get into the reasons why these things happen. Certainly, one of the surprising conclusions we came to in this report was that we did not see a further evolution of the occupational distribution of women. If you go back and look at the period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, you would see a breakdown of what used to be called the old pink ghetto types of jobs, the jobs that women traditionally did. When we say they are traditional, we're talking largely statistically. For example, currently about 75% of all clerical and administrative workers are females, and that's a fairly consistent figure. So when we say traditional jobs, it's jobs in which they have been concentrated.

Yes, if you went back to the Women in Canada report in 1995, the third edition, you would have projected that there would have been a fairly significant change in occupational distribution, given that (a) over the previous two decades, there had been some significant changes in that area, and that (b) you are getting this increase in educational attainment on the part of women. Why over the course of the last decade, it kind of flattened out? That's a question we have to throw to other researchers to try to figure out. But you're absolutely right, yes.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Can you tell us a little bit about female offenders? In your report, you talk about crimes committed by women, as well as women who are serving in the correctional service. Can you quickly say a few words on that?

[Colin Lindsay]

That would go to my colleague Ms. Mihorean, who is the expert in that regard.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Very well. Good morning.

[Karen Mihorean]

Bonjour, madame.

What I can tell you about women in the system—because I was part of a larger study back in the early 1990s, looking at federally sentenced female offenders—is that perhaps female offenders have a history of abuse at higher rates than male offenders. They've come from backgrounds where they've suffered sexual abuse and physical violence.

Could you be more specific in your question, about what you're looking for with respect to women offenders in the justice system?