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.